Jensen Huang attended the groundbreaking as Coherent broke ground on an expanded manufacturing building in Sherman, Texas to scale production of 6-inch indium phosphide wafers.
The expansion, backed by a $50 million CHIPS Act grant, adds U.S. capacity for lasers, optical components and compound semiconductors that carry data between chips, servers and data centers.
Coherent 6-inch InP Expansion
Coherent runs what it calls the world’s first 6-inch indium phosphide fab, and the expanded building will scale production of 6-inch indium phosphide wafers that carry data between chips, servers and data centers because copper cannot carry the signal across eight racks in NVIDIA Vera Rubin Ultra NVL576 and silicon photonics is the only way to connect hundreds of thousands of processors separated by hundreds or thousands of feet across a data center, which means the Sherman site aims to supply the optical interconnect components that enable rack-scale GPU domains such as one 576-GPU domain and larger multi-rack deployments.
Jensen Huang and Jim Anderson
"AI is the ultimate general-purpose technology," "Because intelligence is fundamental — the ability to process information, to reason and solve problems — it affects every single industry," and "Coherent 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," Jensen Huang said during a conversation with Jim Anderson at the groundbreaking, and Shawn Temann and Adriana Cruz also delivered remarks at the ceremony in Sherman, Texas.
$50 Million CHIPS Act Support
Coherent announced a $50 million CHIPS Act grant to help finance the expanded Sherman facility and said it had about $17 million in earlier support from the Texas CHIPS program and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation, and in March NVIDIA deepened its relationship with Coherent into a multiyear strategic partnership that included a $2 billion investment and a multibillion-dollar purchase commitment for advanced laser and optical networking products, so the $50 million federal grant equals 2.5% of the $2 billion announced investment while the purchase commitment creates forward demand that can justify adding U.S.-based production capacity even as the domestic supply chains for indium phosphide and gallium arsenide have been thin for years.
How much total capital will the Sherman expansion require, and how much of that total will come from public grants versus NVIDIA and other private partners?
