This tech product is sold out until 2027.

Orders from leading Chinese fiber optic cable manufacturers are now fully booked until early 2027. Photo: Shutterstock .

With the acceleration in the construction of AI data centers globally, the market's focus is now no longer limited to just chips.

Fiber optic cables, the vital infrastructure supporting high-speed connectivity for countless servers, are becoming a new supply bottleneck.

According to a report from technology website DigiTimes , driven by the construction of AI data centers, global demand for fiber optic cables is soaring. Orders from leading Chinese fiber optic cable manufacturers are now fully booked until early 2027.

Speaking to the media, leading companies such as Hengtong Optic-Electric and FiberHome Telecommunication acknowledged that their production lines are currently operating at full capacity.

Delivery times for some products have been extended from a few weeks to several months. Data from the UK-based commodity consulting firm CRU also indicates that in 2024, data centers accounted for less than 5% of total global fiber optic demand. However, with the surge in demand, this percentage is expected to skyrocket to 30% by 2027.

Besides the need for chips, each AI data center consumes a large amount of fiber optic cable to connect numerous servers at ultra-high speeds.

The AI training and reasoning process requires tens of thousands of chips to work in unison. This necessitates a much higher data transmission density compared to traditional cloud computing centers, leading to a surge in demand for fiber optic cables.

Some industry experts estimate that the amount of fiber optic cabling required for an AI data center is approximately 36 times greater than that needed for typical CPU server rack systems.

However, fiber optic cables are not a product whose production can be increased rapidly. The current supply bottleneck is mainly concentrated upstream, specifically in the fiber optic cable blanks – the quartz glass rods used to draw into fiber optic cables.

According to analysts, the process of manufacturing fiber optic cable blanks requires extremely stringent technical requirements. Increasing production capacity typically takes 1-2 years.

Therefore, even if downstream cable manufacturers increase production, bottlenecks will still occur due to short-term upstream material shortages.

Source: https://znews.vn/mat-hang-cong-nghe-nay-da-chay-hang-den-nam-2027-post1652737.html