By Unknown
Publication Date: 2026-06-08 19:46:00
Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) dominates many headlines about the booming artificial intelligence (AI) market. As the world’s largest producer of data center GPUs for training AI algorithms, it’s still selling the best picks and shovels for the AI gold rush.
Yet over the past 12 months, an oft-overlooked optical networking stock outperformed Nvidia by a wide margin. That stock was Coherent(NYSE: COHR), which surged more than 400% and crushed Nvidia’s near-50% gain. Let’s see why the AI tailwinds propelled Coherent’s stock higher — and if it can stay ahead of Nvidia and the other AI leaders.
Will AI create the world’s first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an “Indispensable Monopoly” providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue »
Image source: Getty Images.
What does Coherent do?
Coherent, which was known as II-VI until it acquired the original Coherent and inherited its brand and ticker in 2022, is the world’s leading photonics company. It manufactures optical transceivers and components that convert electronic data into light signals, transmit them through fiber-optic cables, and convert them back into accessible data.
In the past, data centers mainly used traditional copper wires to transfer their data between servers. But today, those wires are too slow and generate too much heat to handle the soaring data needs of the expanding cloud infrastructure and AI markets. Those limitations are driving more data…