{"id":4585,"date":"2026-06-16T23:40:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2026\/06\/16\/coherent-breaks-ground-on-expanded-texas-facility-scaling-ais-optical-backbone\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T23:40:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:40:30","slug":"coherent-breaks-ground-on-expanded-texas-facility-scaling-ais-optical-backbone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salarydistribution.com\/machine-learning\/2026\/06\/16\/coherent-breaks-ground-on-expanded-texas-facility-scaling-ais-optical-backbone\/","title":{"rendered":"Coherent Breaks Ground on Expanded Texas Facility, Scaling AI\u2019s Optical Backbone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

AI runs at the speed of light. More and more, that light is made in Texas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coherent broke ground today on an expanded manufacturing building in Sherman, Texas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The company makes the lasers, optical components and compound semiconductors that wire AI systems together \u2014 and runs what it calls the world\u2019s first 6-inch indium phosphide fab.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Coherent CEO Jim Anderson were on hand for the ceremony, joined by Sherman Mayor Shawn Temann and Adriana Cruz, executive director of Texas Economic Development and Tourism, who delivered remarks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The expanded building will scale production of the same InP wafers that carry data between chips, servers and data centers at the speed of light \u2014 the optical backbone of modern AI infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of milestone that turns a commitment into construction: a concrete step in expanding advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAI is the ultimate general-purpose technology,\u201d Huang said during a conversation with Anderson at the groundbreaking. \u201cBecause intelligence is fundamental \u2014 the ability to process information, to reason and solve problems \u2014 it affects every single industry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Public programs like the CHIPS Act, funded at roughly $50 billion, were designed to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of today\u2019s event, <\/span>Coherent is announcing a $50 million CHIPS Act grant<\/span><\/a> to help finance the expanded Sherman facility \u2014 building on roughly $17 million in earlier support from the Texas CHIPS program and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation.<\/span><\/p>\n

NVIDIA\u2019s own <\/span>commitment<\/span><\/a> to produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. through industry partnerships with new sites in Arizona and Texas adds private-sector momentum.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCoherent is a world-class company, and the work you do is vital to our future, vital to the future of artificial intelligence and vital to reindustrializing the United States,\u201d Huang said. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Coherent CEO Jim Anderson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Compound semiconductors like indium phosphide and gallium arsenide \u2014 the materials behind the high-speed networking and optical interconnects that modern AI runs on \u2014 don\u2019t get the headlines that logic chips do. But their domestic supply chains have been thin for years. Today\u2019s event was an argument that the gap is closing.<\/span><\/p>\n

When 576 GPUs span eight racks and operate as a single system \u2014 as they will in NVIDIA Vera Rubin Ultra NVL576, which links eight NVLink racks of 72 NVIDIA Rubin Ultra GPUs into one 576-GPU domain \u2014 copper can\u2019t carry the signal across that distance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To connect hundreds of thousands of processors separated by hundreds or thousands of feet across a data center, the only way to solve that problem is silicon photonics, Huang explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As signaling rates climb, the reach of a metal trace shrinks, and spanning eight racks in copper would burn power on retimers and signal conditioning that a data center would rather spend on compute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Optics pays a one-time penalty to move from electrical to light, but once paid, distance is nearly free. At NVL576 scale, light is the most power-efficient option.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NVIDIA and Coherent aren\u2019t new to each other \u2014 they\u2019ve worked together for roughly two decades.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In March, they deepened the <\/span>relationship<\/span><\/a> into a multiyear strategic partnership: NVIDIA is investing $2 billion in Coherent to support R&D, future capacity and U.S.-based manufacturing, alongside a multibillion-dollar purchase commitment for advanced laser and optical networking products.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sherman, a city of roughly 45,000 people an hour north of Dallas, has become the latest dateline for the AI era \u2014 emblematic of a boom built as much on picks, shovels and manufacturing muscle as on software.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cWhen we get to full capacity, this site will support more than 550 direct jobs \u2014 and thousands of jobs, direct and indirect,\u201d Anderson said.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the factory ships isn\u2019t a single product dropped into a single slot. It\u2019s the lasers, transceivers and pluggable optical modules that move data across NVIDIA networking \u2014 each enabling a different part of the system.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cAs AI systems grow larger and more powerful, connectivity is just as important as compute,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cAI runs on compute, but it scales on connectivity \u2014 and Sherman is where that connective tissue gets built.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s event made that visible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Before the groundbreaking, guests toured the existing fab and previewed the equipment that will populate the expanded building once it\u2019s running. An NVIDIA rack stood on the factory floor, one of the six stops on the tour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The tour was followed by a fireside chat with Huang and Anderson<\/a>, where the two CEOs discussed the partnership and what scaling domestic optical manufacturing means for the AI buildout ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday marks an important milestone \u2014 not just for Coherent, but for American manufacturing and for the future of AI infrastructure,\u201d Anderson said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The semiconductor laser was born in U.S. labs \u2014 Bell Labs demonstrated a room-temperature version in 1970 \u2014 before the technology and its manufacturing largely migrated overseas.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cWe were founded as a manufacturing company in 1971. We\u2019ve always been a U.S. manufacturing company \u2014 and after 50 years, the most advanced 6-inch indium phosphide line in the world is right here in Sherman,\u201d Anderson said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That manufacturing gap shows up in the wafers themselves: while silicon fabs run on 12-inch wafers, most of the world\u2019s InP production is still stuck on 3- and 4-inch wafers \u2014 lower yields and far fewer components per run.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving to 6-inch wafers roughly quadruples the usable area of a 3-inch wafer (area scales with the square of the diameter), driving down cost and unlocking the volume the AI buildout demands.<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
It took 50 years to build the first line, Huang said \u2014 and in one year, they\u2019ve quadrupled it, a measure of the demand for accelerated computing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, the core processes are familiar: lithography, photoresist, depositing and etching materials, layer by layer. The difference is the material. On an InP substrate, engineers grow exotic compound-semiconductor layers and tune them for precise optical properties \u2014 the physics that lets a chip emit and modulate light.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, that InP travels inside Coherent\u2019s pluggable optics \u2014 transceivers about the size of a USB stick that plug into the front of NVIDIA networking switches and move data between racks across the data center floor, where copper can\u2019t reach. Each module carries an indium phosphide laser.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those same modules now help enable <\/span>NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics and Quantum-X Photonics<\/span><\/a> switches with co-packaged optics: Coherent supplies the external laser module that plugs into the switch\u2019s front plate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And as NVIDIA works to keep optics from becoming the next bottleneck, demand for those lasers only climbs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTen years from now, I think we\u2019ll look back and realize AI is what made it possible to invest in sustainable energy, upgrade our energy grid and reconstitute a workforce,\u201d Huang said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have only information workers in an economy \u2014 you also have to have builders. We have an opportunity over the next 10 years to reshape our communities and be much more balanced.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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