PITTSBURGH — Shares of Coherent Corp. jumped more than 17% in morning trading Tuesday, reaching $427.42 as investor enthusiasm for the photonics company's critical role in artificial intelligence data center infrastructure continued to drive significant gains.

The sharp rise came on elevated volume, reflecting broad optimism around Coherent's positioning in high-speed optical connectivity solutions essential for AI training and inference workloads. The company has emerged as a key beneficiary of hyperscaler spending on advanced transceivers and silicon photonics technology.

As of 11:19 a.m. EDT, Coherent shares had climbed $64.52, or 17.78%, on the New York Stock Exchange. The move pushed the company's market capitalization above $83 billion, extending a remarkable rally that has seen the stock more than quadruple over the past year amid the AI boom.

AI-Driven Growth Accelerates

Coherent's surge builds on robust fiscal 2026 performance fueled by explosive demand in its Datacenter & Communications segment. In the fiscal third quarter ended March 2026, the company reported revenue of $1.81 billion, up 21% from the prior year, with the data center business contributing significantly through 800G and emerging 1.6T transceiver shipments.

The segment's strength reflects Coherent's ability to address the "connectivity bottleneck" in AI clusters, where faster optical links are required to support massive parallel computing. Book-to-bill ratios in data center products have exceeded 4x in recent quarters, signaling substantial backlog and future revenue........

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