At Nvidia's (NVDA) 2026 GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in March, CEO Jensen Huang made one thing clear to the data center industry: copper is still going to matter in server racks for a while. His comment that copper remains important rattled optical component companies immediately, with Corning (GLW), Lumentum (LITE), Coherent (COHR), and Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) all falling more than 3% on the news, while Ciena (CIEN) lost more than 1%. The move showed how much of the AI infrastructure trade had been built on the idea that optics would slowly replace copper, and how quickly that view got harder to hold.
That same day, Credo Technology (CRDO) stood out as one of the names most directly in line with Huang's comments. Credo makes high-speed copper-based active electrical cables (AECs) and connectivity ICs that go straight into the kind of AI server racks Nvidia is scaling. The company had just reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 results on March 2, with revenue of $407 million, a 201% year-over-year (YOY) jump. The firm also guided Q4 revenue between $425 million and $435 million.
