Quantifi Photonics focuses on scalability as AI drives optical interconnect growth
The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is reshaping every segment of the optical networking industry, and one of the most significant impacts is now being felt in manufacturing and testing. As hyperscale data centers scale AI clusters and optical interconnect volumes surge, the industry is facing a growing bottleneck—not in design or component innovation, but in testing throughput.
At OFC 2026, Quantifi Photonics discussed how AI-driven data center growth is accelerating demand for optical interconnects at a pace the industry has never seen before. Analysts now project the optical interconnect market could reach 1 billion units shipped annually by 2028, but achieving that level of production will require major improvements in manufacturing test efficiency.
“That’s what we do. We’re a test and measurement company,” said Dr. Iannick Monfils, Quantifi Photonics’ president and co-founder, during a conversation on the show floor.
As optical modules move from 800G to 1.6T and beyond, the number of optical lanes and parallel channels continue to grow, creating new challenges in manufacturing environments. Traditional test setups often require multiple high-end oscilloscopes to test parallel channels simultaneously, which quickly becomes cost-prohibitive and slows production throughput.
Quantifi Photonics is working to address this challenge by enabling more efficient parallel testing architectures for high-speed optical manufacturing. The company’s high-speed I/O segment includes high-speed sampling oscilloscopes used in manufacturing test, with 100G solutions already shipping and 200G products expected later this year. The goal is to make parallel testing more affordable and scalable as optical device manufacturers move toward increasingly parallel optical architectures required for AI-scale data centers.
The company operates across three primary business areas:
- High-speed I/O test: This unit develops sampling oscilloscopes for manufacturing environments.
- PXI-based photonics test bench: This forms the backbone of many optical test systems and supports a wide range of optical and electrical measurements.
- Automated test integration: Quantifi Photonics achieves this through its relationship with Teradyne, which acquired the company nearly a year ago.
Quantifi Photonics continues to operate as an independent business unit while integrating its instruments into Teradyne automated test platforms, including systems designed for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) testing.
The company's relationship with Teradyne has provided deeper visibility into customer technology roadmaps, which has become increasingly important as optical technology cycles accelerate. Historically, new optical transceiver generations arrived roughly every five years, but that cycle has now compressed to approximately two and a half years. That means test and measurement companies must develop new instrumentation well in advance of each new transceiver generation to ensure manufacturing test capacity is ready when production ramps.
As AI infrastructure continues to scale and optical interconnect volumes climb, manufacturing test is emerging as a critical enabling technology for the optical networking industry. While much of the industry’s attention remains focused on lasers, DSPs, and co-packaged optics, the ability to test optical devices quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively at scale will play a major role in determining how fast the industry can meet AI-driven demand. Quantifi Photonics is positioning itself directly at that intersection, working to remove one of the key bottlenecks standing between optical innovation and AI-scale deployment.
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