The Next AI Chip Battleground: What Is an InP Substrate?

Описание: As the AI buildout accelerates, everyone is watching GPUs and HBM. But the real constraint may be forming one layer deeper in the stack — in the compound-semiconductor substrate that powers the optics moving data between accelerators.
That material is indium phosphide (InP), the substrate behind the lasers and photonics inside optical transceivers. When a player like Coherent prepays tens of millions of dollars to lock in years of InP capacity, it's telling you where the AI supply chain is really tightening. Drawing on 31 years in the industry, this video breaks down why InP is quietly becoming the next battleground.

▼ Key points in this video
• What indium phosphide (InP) is and why it underpins optical transceivers
• Why AI data centers are limited by data movement, not just raw compute
• How optics — and therefore InP — became a hidden bottleneck in the AI buildout
• Coherent's ~$22.3M prepayment to AXT for three years of 6-inch InP substrate capacity
• Why prepaying years in advance signals what a major player is really afraid of
• How the frontier keeps moving upstream: GPU → HBM → optical interconnect → substrates
• What to watch next as compound-semiconductor capacity turns strategic

▼ More in-depth analysis on Medium
  / before-the-gpus-run-out-the-substrates-might  

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