COHR, AAOI, LITE, POET: Photonic Stocks Join Google Capex-Fueled AI Rally

Investor interest in all four has surged as hyperscalers ramp AI infrastructure spending.

• Alphabet increased its 2026 capital expenditures forecast by $15 billion, and a large part of that investment is going into building new data centers.
• Chipmakers and AI infrastructure players are seen to be the biggest beneficiaries of the Big Tech capex boom.
• Stocktwits sentiment was ‘bearish’ for COHR, LITE and POET, and ‘neutral’ for AAOI.

Photonics stocks jumped late Wednesday after Alphabet reported a 100% year-over-year increase in capital expenditures last quarter and raised its full-year spending forecast, fueling expectations of stronger demand in the fast-growing AI infrastructure segment.

Shares of Coherent Corp., POET Technologies, Lumentum Holdings, and Applied Optoelectronics rose 1% to 1.7% in overnight trading. The Google-fueled bump was in sync with gains in chip and memory semiconductors.

Alphabet on Wednesday said its June quarter CapEx doubled from a year ago to $44.92 billion, bringing the investment so far in 2026 to $78.6 billion. The Search and cloud giant then updated its full-year CapEx guidance range to $195 billion to $205 billion, up from the previous estimate of $180 billion to $190 billion.

Alphabet’s aggressive spending plans bode well for its vendors and partners, especially firms that supply components for data centers. Most of the investment is said to go toward expanding AI infrastructure and building new data centers, with the updated outlook reinforcing expectations that the tech investment cycle still has room to run.

AI Hyperscaler Boost For Photonics

Coherent, POET, and Lumentum Holdings are all key suppliers in the fast-growing optical networking and photonics market. Coherent sells lasers, optical transceivers, silicon photonics and advanced materials used to connect GPUs across massive AI clusters, while Lumentum and Applied Optoelectronics supply high-speed optical transceivers, lasers and networking components that move data between AI servers. 

POET, a much smaller player, develops optical engines and its proprietary Optical Interposer platform designed to make AI optical modules cheaper, faster and more power efficient. 

Investor interest in all four has surged as hyperscalers ramp AI infrastructure spending, driving expectations of a multi-year boom in optical connectivity, which is increasingly viewed as a critical bottleneck in scaling next-generation AI data centers.

COHR, AAOI, LITE, POET Stock Move, Retail View

Shares of the four companies climbed sharply for most of the year, before a pullback starting in May. Applied Optoelectronics and Lumentum remain the top performers in the group, with 202% and 125% year-to-date gains, respectively. POET shares are up about 20%, with the stock suffering after the cancellation of the company’s orders with Marvell in April.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment was ‘bearish’ for COHR, LITE and POET, and ‘neutral’ for AAOI as of late Wednesday. “$LITE and other optics/networking names. Hyperscaler earnings calls remain the key signal for the AI capex trade,” a trader wrote.

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