By Jack Troy
Publication Date: 2026-03-27 20:37:00
Coherent executive Steve Rummel offered a peek under the hood Friday at the Saxonburg-based manufacturer’s multibillion-dollar deal with Nvidia, a stock market darling and driving force behind much of the artificial intelligence industry.
The agreement was announced March 2 and continues some 20 years of collaboration between the companies. Over that span, Nvidia has become a leading name in chipmaking, while Coherent has evolved into a crucial supplier of fiber optic gadgets that zip information around data centers.
“It really cements the partnership,” Rummel, who serves as the firm’s senior vice president of engineered materials, told TribLive. Moments earlier, Rummel and Nvidia senior AI strategist Shane Shaneman addressed hundreds of people during the Pennsylvania Data Center and Energy Innovation Summit at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.
Shaneman declined to comment to TribLive.
The newly inked deal calls for collaboration in developing better transmission technologies for data centers, Rummel said. These facilities often use thousands of chips, most of which are made by Nvidia, to do the complex computing that marks artificial intelligence.
Nvidia also runs some data centers on its own.
As part of the agreement, Nvidia bought $2 billion in Coherent stock (shares are down nearly 20% since then). It also pledged to buy billions of dollars in Coherent products through the end of the decade. Nvidia and Coherent say the rest…
