Co-organized by Optica and APC, the Summit brings together the supply chain to discuss the deployment of optics in data centers and AI infrastructure in a confidential, in-person setting.

Now in its 5th edition, the Summit has become a key industry forum for senior leaders shaping the future of photonics-enabled AI and cloud infrastructure. Reflecting the enormous ramp in optics deployment across AI infrastructure, the 2026 edition will be extended to two full days with an added special focus on manufacturing, scalability, packaging, and high-volume deployment challenges. This year will also feature the industry release of APC’s CPO / multi-core fiber / silicon photonics manufacturing portfolio of specifications, developed with contributions from more than 60 companies across the ecosystem.

Topics will include AI-driven architectures, optical interconnects and packaging, hyperscaler requirements, and emerging materials shaping next-generation systems. A major focus will be the growing role of photonics in enabling scale-up AI networks, where bandwidth, latency, power consumption, and memory access are rapidly becoming the defining constraints on compute performance. Discussions will explore how photonic technologies are helping to break the memory wall, enable ultra-high-bandwidth short-reach interconnects, support photonic computing architectures, and drive the adoption of Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) to improve efficiency, flexibility, and utilization across massive AI clusters.