Light is the new Copper
Photonics is already a trillion dollar industry holding up the AI boom. Quantum will borrow its supply chain
The easiest way to understand photonics is to look inside an AI data center rack. The expensive part is not the servers (although they are pricey), it is the spaghetti of fiber optic cables connecting them, and the transceivers at each end that turn electrical signals into light and back again. Those little metal plugs cost more per port than the silicon they connect to. That is the photonics industry in one image.
According to multiple sources, the global photonics market crossed roughly one trillion dollars in 2025. Consulting says the industry is around $1,094 billion, . By the count, core optics and photonics components alone reached $381 billion in 2024, underpinning a much larger market of products enabled by photonics. Lasers held about 38 percent of the market in 2025, by
So the photonics business is a mature, trillion dollar industry, and most people have never heard of it.
