Serenity
AI & Semiconductor Supply-Chain Researcher, Trader
Copper scale-up is dead, making optics hyper bullish, especially Lumentum. Nvidia's Rubin NVLink Nyquist cut from 56 to 47 GHz signals failure: reflections matter, and bidirectional links make them worse. Feynman will have to use 16-wavelength DWDM ring-modulator CPO at roughly 50-64G NRZ. x.com x.comÂ
Copper connectivity stays in Nvidia's racks longer than anyone modeled, a win for Amphenol and Credo. Per @SemiAnalysis_, the Kyber NVL144 rack is delayed more than 12 months to 2028 because its PCB midplane cannot be made at scale, and the NVL72x2 backup was cancelled. Co-packaged optics will not arrive until the Feynman generation, so the shift away from copper in scale-up moves out with it. x.comÂ
Copper could see extreme demand from the AI buildout over the next few years, enough that $8,000 may end up being the Wave 5 target zone. x.comÂ
Semtech benefits from Nvidia's strategy of scaling up with copper for as long as possible. At Computex 2026, Jensen Huang said to use copper wherever you can and optics only where you must. Nvidia's Blackwell NVL72 racks use thousands of copper cables rather than fiber to link GPUs within a rack, and keeping data intact over that copper relies heavily on signal-integrity chips from Semtech's active copper cable alliance. x.comÂ
Copper will follow the AI trade lower, making it a good catch-up short. x.comÂ
Copper is the boring version of the AI trade because every data center needs miles of it. Per CNBC, as cited by Unusual Whales, copper has surged to its highest level ever. x.comÂ
Credo Technology's copper interconnects should do well after SemiAnalysis reported that Nvidia's Kyber NVL144 rack has been delayed by more than 12 months to 2028 and its NVL72x2 back-to-back architecture was cancelled, leaving Rubin Ultra with a limited scale-up domain. x.comÂ
Lumentum is an essential, bottleneck-constrained supplier to AI clusters as optics replace copper at its physical limit, not a commoditized transceiver vendor, so it remains undervalued with a path well above $1,000 a share. Per CEO Michael Hurlston, capacity is sold out. Gross margins are nearing 48%, backlog stretches through 2028 and Nvidia's $2B partnership runs through it. The shift to scale-up CPO and indium phosphide lasers and a reported US ban on Chinese data center sourcing favor it. … Show more
Copper, along with gold and silver, has been building tremendous underlying strength while everyone hated metals and focused on semiconductors. Metals did not make new lows during the last ten weeks of neglect, and industries can swing quickly from hated to loved. x.comÂ
Credo is a main winner if the story @HyungsokAhn describes proves true, in which copper, pluggables, legacy power and testing benefit while co-packaged optics and 800VDC lose out. x.comÂ