Hoping to dominate the next phase of AI networking, Marvell Technology plans to acquire photonics giant Lumentum in an all-stock deal valued at $115 billion. The move will fill several key gaps in Marvell’s photonics portfolio, particularly with regard to high-performance laser sources, optical transceivers, optical circuit switches, and specialized compound semiconductor manufacturing capabilities involving indium phosphide. Higher speed interconnects combined with larger compute domains are the driving forces behind the move to photonics. As interconnects push beyond 400 Gbps per lane, copper interconnects are being pushed to their limit, necessitating denser, hotter rack systems. Optics offer a reprieve from these scaling laws. Traditional copper wire can only maintain a 400 Gbps signal over about 1. 25 meters. Every time the per lane speed doubles, the reach is halved. Photonics are largely immune to this and can push that signal over kilometers, enabling infrastructure providers to scale their systems across entire aisles, while also reducing the power and cooling requirements of each individual rack. Due to close in the first half of 2028, the all-stock transaction comes as AI infrastructure builders, including Nvidia and AMD, eye larger rack-scale systems, which will rely heavily on optical interconnects to stitch hundreds and even thousands of GPUs together into a single compute domain for training or inference…