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01 Apr 2026
6-inch wafer diameter production line in North Carolina will ramp to volume for data center applications in 2028.
Lumentum, one of the key manufacturers of lasers and other optical components used in data center interconnects, has revealed plans to establish a major new fabrication facility in the US.
The 240,000-square-foot site in Greensboro, North Carolina, which has been acquired from RF and power chip specialist Qorvo for a reported $18 million, will be adapted to fabricate photonic components on 6-inch indium phosphide (InP) diameter wafers.
The announcement comes less than a month after Lumentum and rival Coherent both received multi-billion-dollar backing from AI chip giant Nvidia, already a major customer for the optical devices that serve as critical components in the world’s largest AI data centers.
Lumentum said that the Qorvo site was selected for its highly skilled workforce and robust infrastructure, alongside economic support from both federal and state partners. Qorvo produced RF chips on gallium arsenide wafers at the site, but said last summer that it intended to consolidate production elsewhere.
“The facility is currently operational and will be retrofitted to manufacture Lumentum’s InP-based optical products including continuous wave and ultra-high-power lasers,” stated Lumentum.
“The purchase agreement includes the transfer of an experienced workforce, enabling Lumentum to accelerate capacity expansion and ramp production efficiently.”
Scaling up and out
While Nvidia was named by Lumentum as a key customer, the photonics company says it also plans to support other leading AI infrastructure firms via Greensboro as scale-out and scale-up optical requirements grow.
Lumentum CEO Michael Hurlston commented: “Our customers are building the infrastructure that will define the next era of computing.
“Adding this new InP manufacturing facility significantly expands our capacity, deepens our strategic partnerships, and ensures we can deliver the performance, reliability, and scale required for the AI revolution.”
Debora Shoquist, Nvidia’s executive VP of operations, added: “As AI workloads scale at an unprecedented pace, secure and reliable access to high-performance optical components is critical.
“Lumentum’s investment in expanded US manufacturing capacity strengthens supply continuity and positions us to meet growing infrastructure demands with confidence.”
The Greensboro fab will complement Lumentum’s existing wafer production facilities, which are largely in the US and UK, as the company works to meet what is expected to be a huge ramp in demand as electrical links are increasingly usurped by optical connectivity.
‘Fourth wave’
Speaking to investors in February, Hurlston predicted a major shift away from the use of copper for ultra-short links within data centers, saying that the adoption of optical transceivers, optical circuit switches (OCS), and co-packaged optics (CPO) would be followed by a “fourth wave” of demand.
“Now, a fourth growth driver is taking shape, one poised to be a generational game-changer for the industry: optical scale-up,” he said.
“Today, data center architectures have a clear divide. Optical links handle scale-out networking, connecting relatively longer links within the data center. Conversely, copper links dominate scale-up connectivity, referring to the ultra-short reach high-speed paths within a single rack or a cluster.
“While copper has long been the gold standard for scale-up for simplicity and cost, it is hitting a physical wall. An industry pivot is underway to bypass the scaling limits of copper. By late calendar 2027, we would expect our first scale-up CPO shipments replacing longer copper connections.”
If that outlook is accurate, the anticipated scale of demand would require the kind of step-change in volumes of photonic component production that would be met in part by the Greensboro fab.
“As we look into the not-so-distant future, it is only right to assume that optics begins to capture more and more of the connectivity, eventually subsuming copper. In response to these demand projections, we have initiated proactive capacity planning,” said Hurlston in February.
“Given the sheer magnitude of the scale-up optics market, we are carefully assessing our projected wafer output plans. We are in active negotiations with leading customers to offset our capital requirements in exchange for long-term supply assurances.”
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