By Xavier Martinez

Shares of fiber-optic companies tumbled early Tuesday after Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said the company intends to use both copper and optical networking-not one at the expense of the other.

-- "For everybody who is in our ecosystem, we need a lot more capacity," Huang said at Nvidia's GTC conference in San Jose, Calif., on Monday. "We need a lot more capacity for copper. We need a lot more capacity for optics."

-- Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Applied Optoelectronics all fell by more than 5% Tuesday morning before recovering some. Lumentum and Coherent shares were up by the afternoon.

-- Chipmakers have increasingly turned to optical networking because fiber transmits data faster than copper and generates less heat, a meaningful advantage as AI workloads push power and cooling demands to their limits.

This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 17, 2026 13:48 ET (17:48 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.