Fiber optic concept shows strong performance, institutions optimistic about niche sectors

Ask AI · Why can CPO technology become a key innovation to break through the bandwidth bottleneck?

【Global Times Finance, compiled and reported】The explosive growth in global AI computing demand has triggered a rush to buy optical fiber and cable worldwide. According to East Money’s analysis, the A-share market has a total of 34 optical fiber concept stocks, with a combined total market value of approximately 1.35 trillion yuan. FiberHome Technologies and Tianfu Communications have market values of about 256.2 billion yuan and 232.5 billion yuan, respectively. Changfei Optoelectronics and Zhongtian Technology also have market values exceeding 100 billion yuan.

Since this year began, optical fiber concept stocks have shown strong performance, with more than 70% of individual stocks rising. Hangdian Co., Ltd. surged by 2.5 times to take the top spot, while Farsun Victory saw a gain of 204%. Changfei Optoelectronics, Zhongtian Technology, and Tongding Interconnection all saw their share prices double. In terms of funding, East Money’s Choice data shows that over the past month, 11 optical fiber concept stocks received net financing purchases. Changfei Optoelectronics received an increase of 1.018 billion yuan in leveraged funds. Fiberhome Technology and Zhongtian Technology received net financing purchases of 545 million yuan and 251 million yuan, respectively.

According to analysis by Guotai Junan Securities, the direction is one where the AI infrastructure “slope” is relatively high. From 2023 to 2025, demand for optical interconnects mainly focused on iteration in Scale out scenarios and rate upgrades. It is expected that starting in 2026, the Scale out scenario will still maintain a relatively high growth rate in demand. At the same time, on the Scale up side, optical interconnects in forms such as CPO/NPO begin to penetrate, opening up a new incremental market. It is expected that the proportion of optical interconnects’ value in AI clusters will continue to rise. 2026 will be a year in which both existing scenarios and products continue to surge, and new scenarios and products enter mass production in an interwoven way. Companies in sub-segments with deeper moats are expected to continue to benefit.

CITIC Securities states that the long-term trend of moving away from copper and toward optics is likely irreversible. The long-term popularization of CPO has a high degree of certainty, and it is bullish on investment opportunities in optical chips and optical fiber and cable. Over the past twenty years, computing power growth has been about 60,000-fold, but interconnect bandwidth has only grown by about 30-fold; interconnect bandwidth has become the core bottleneck for computing power growth. By bringing the optical engine closer to the switch ASIC, CPO can reduce power consumption from 30–35 watts to 7–9 watts (a 70% reduction). (Wen Hui)