Lumentum, Qualcomm, Corning Unveil Die-to-Die Optical Interconnect for AI Scale-Up at ECOC 2026

Lumentum (LITE), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Corning (GLW) announced a joint demonstration of high-density die-to-die optical interconnects for AI scale-up architectures at the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC) in Spain on Sept. 21, 2026. Lumentum shares rose more than 3% at the open, Corning gained over 2% and Qualcomm added more than 1.5%. The demo integrates Qualcomm's D2D interface IP subsystem, Lumentum's VCSEL-based optical interconnect platform and Corning's multimode fiber connectivity. The companies said the architecture targets future co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-packaged optics (NPO) implementations and supports emerging D2D interfaces such as UCIe. By extending high-density D2D links across optical spans of tens of meters while maintaining low latency and low power, the design aims to deliver scalable bandwidth density as AI systems push interconnect demand beyond the practical limits of electrical connections. Lumentum CTO Matt Sysak said the demo shows how the company's 1060 nm VCSEL platform brings high-density optical connectivity closer to AI compute.