My Top 5 Interconnect stocks ranked:
1.
$CRDO (Credo Technology)
The AEC copper pure-play with the best growth rate in the group, 274% YoY revenue growth last quarter. Hyperscalers are choosing copper wherever physics allows, and Credo owns that socket. But they’re not standing still: DustPhotonics ($750M) gives them silicon photonics, Hyperlume gives them microLED, and the optical DSP portfolio (Bluebird, Cardinal) is doubling revenue annually. Credo is building a full-stack interconnect company across all distance tiers. Smaller and higher-growth than Marvell.
2.
$AAOI (Applied Optoelectronics)
A transceiver company riding the current 800G/1.6T wave, and riding it well. The capacity story is the bull case: AAOI is building toward 500,000 units/month of combined 800G and 1.6T transceivers by year-end. Raymond James models annualized EPS of $11-12 at that capacity level. The geopolitical angle is underappreciated, AAOI is positioning as the largest U.S.-based producer of AI-focused transceivers. The bear case: they don’t have a visible path into the CPO, microLED, or silicon photonics architectures that will define the next era, but their execution on the present cycle earns them a spot.
3.
$MRVL (Marvell)
The most diversified interconnect play in the market. Optical DSP leader (70% interconnect revenue growth this year), CPO scale-up via the $5.5B Celestial AI acquisition (targeting $1B run rate by end of 2028 with Amazon Trainium 4), microLED through the Mojo Vision partnership, and copper connectivity for NVLink Fusion. Jensen Huang called it the next trillion-dollar company. The risk is valuation, 96x trailing P/E prices in a lot of execution.
4. Lumentum ($LITE)
The structural chokepoint. Only supplier shipping 200G-per-lane EMLs at volume, the component everyone needs for 1.6T transceivers. CPO is actually bullish for Lumentum because CPO switches still need external laser sources, and Lumentum just booked its largest CPO laser order ever (hundreds of millions, H1 2027 delivery). NVIDIA has pre-allocated laser capacity so aggressively that lead times stretch past 2027. The risk is concentration — Lumentum is a laser company, and if a competitor qualifies a second source at 200G, pricing power erodes.
5.
$TSEM (Tower Semiconductor)
The picks-and-shovels play. Tower is the leading silicon photonics foundry, SiPh revenue grew 70% YoY, with $650M invested to triple capacity by mid-2026. Every CPO optical engine, every silicon photonics transceiver, and most photonic integrated circuits need a foundry, and Tower is where the industry is building. Less sexy than the chip designers, but foundries tend to win regardless of which architecture or end customer dominates. Lower volatility, lower ceiling, but the most technology-agnostic bet on the interconnect buildout.
Honorable mentions:
$ALAB (Astera Labs) would rank if it weren’t trading at a steeper premium with a narrower product focus (PCIe/CXL retimers and fabric switches). Worth watching if valuation pulls back.
$COHR (Coherent Corp) NVIDIA’s named silicon photonics collaborator for Spectrum-X. Coherent plays both sides, laser sources (where CPO is bullish) and transceivers (where CPO is bearish). The bear case is a messy transition where transceiver revenue drops before CPO revenue fills the gap.