Ciena to acquire Nubis Communications for high performance optical and electrical interconnects to support AI workloads

New Ciena Acquisition:

Today, Ciena announced it will acquire electronics startup Nubis Communications, a privately-held company headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey for $270 million. Nubis specializes in high-performance, ultra-compact, low-power optical and electrical interconnects tailored to support AI workloads. The Nubis acquisition will give Ciena access to technology that supports a wider range of data center use cases. It is is expected to close during Ciena’s fiscal 4th quarter.

Nubis’ solutions complement Ciena’s existing high-speed interconnects portfolio and will enable new capabilities to support growing AI workloads by significantly increasing scale up and scale out capacity and density inside the data center. The Nubis portfolio includes two key technologies:

Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) / Near Packaged Optics (NPO): Nubis’ compact, high-density optical modules deliver ultra-fast data transfer using light instead of traditional electrical signals. Supporting up to 6.4 Tb/s full-duplex bandwidth, these modules are optimized for low-latency, low-power operation – making them ideal for scaling AI systems. Combined with Ciena’s high-speed SerDes, Nubis’ optical engines enable differentiated CPO solutions to address high-performance connectivity needs inside and between racks.

Electrical ACC: Nubis’ advanced analog electronics enable Active Copper Cables (ACC) to support high-speed data transmission, allowing data to travel up to 4 meters at speeds of 200 Gb/s per lane. This low-power, low-latency solution helps customers connect more AI accelerators across racks without the limitations of traditional copper or DSP-based solutions

Nubis has developed two products to increase bandwidth and reduce latency within and between data center racks:

XT Optical Engines is a series of optical modules that support up to 6.4 Tbps of full-duplex bandwidth while using light instead of traditional electrical signals.
Nitro Linear Redriver aims to improve the performance of all the copper cables that are wired into the data center. Bloomberg has predicted copper usage in North American data centers could increase by 1.1-2.4 million tons by 2030 as “AI demands mount.”

“The acquisition of Nubis represents a significant step forward in Ciena’s strategy to address the rapidly growing demand for scalable, high-performance connectivity inside the data center, driven by the explosive growth of AI-related traffic,” said David Rothenstein, Chief Strategy Officer at Ciena. “With ownership of these key technologies for a wider range of use cases inside the data center, we are expanding our competitive advantage by advancing development of differentiated solutions, reducing development costs, and driving long-term efficiency and profitability. Nitro also supports up to 4m of reach for 200G per lane active copper cables, far beyond the limits of passive copper and legacy analog solutions. This is a game-changer for AI infrastructure, where short-reach, high-bandwidth copper is preferred for cost and latency reasons,” Rothenstein added.

“The Nubis team is thrilled to join Ciena and enhance its industry-leading portfolio with our breakthrough interconnect technologies,” said Dan Harding, CEO of Nubis. “Together, we will advance Ciena’s data center strategy by delivering reliable, high-quality, and high-performance interconnect solutions to support the next generation of AI workloads.”

Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu said Nubis is probably “one of [Ciena’s] most forward-looking” acquisitions, since the company is assembling the pieces it thinks are necessary to support future data center networking. “This acquisition aligns well with Ciena’s overall strategy to expand into the data center market, and it likely played a role in their decision to exit future investments in broadband PON,” Yu said.

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Ciena Cutting Back on Residential Broadband Access investments to focus on AI and Coherent Optics:

The Nubis takeover comes shortly after Ciena announced it will reduce investment in residential broadband access (e.g. 25G PON) to focus more on AI applications and its coherent optics business. Ciena CEO Gary Smith said on the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call:

“Folks are more concentrated on 10-gig and driving that out, and there’s a good market for that. As we looked at our overall portfolio and our investments in [25-gig], we see so much opportunity in these different AI workloads that we want to continue to really make sure we’re heavily invested in that….To be clear, we will continue to sell and support our existing broadband access products. However, we will be limiting our forward investments only to strategic areas such as DCOM [1.].”

Note 1. DCOM refers to Ciena’s data center out-of-band management solution, which involves replacing bulky legacy hardware like copper cabling and console servers with passive optical network (PON) technology.

Dell’Oro Group’s Jimmy Yu thinks Ciena’s move to re-allocate R&D dollars makes sense so that the company is not spread too thin and [misses] out the biggest opportunity sitting in front of them. “My guess is that to address the future of AI workloads and AI data center interconnect, Ciena will need to not only maintain their cadence on launching new high performance coherent optics like the WaveLogic 6e for long distance 1.6 Tbps connections, but also optical devices for shorter distances like 800 ZR/ZR+ plugs and even shorter distances that take them inside the data center,” Yu explained.

Ciena considers the WaveLogic series its bread-and-butter for coherent optics. The company in Q3 gained 11 new customers for its WaveLogic 6 Extreme product, bringing its total customer tally to 60. Companies deploying WaveLogic 6 include operators such as Arelion, Lumen and Telstra, which are upgrading their networks to support demand from cloud customers.

Supplemental Materials:
In conjunction with this announcement, Ciena has posted to the Events and Presentations page of the Investor Relations section of its website a recorded transaction overview presentation and accompanying transcript.

About Ciena:
Ciena is the global leader in high-speed connectivity. We build the world’s most adaptive networks to support exponential growth in bandwidth demand. By harnessing the power of our networking systems, components, automation software, and services, Ciena revolutionizes data transmission and network management. With unparalleled expertise and innovation, we empower our customers, partners, and communities to thrive in the AI era. For updates on Ciena, follow us on LinkedIn and X, or visit the Ciena Insights webpage and Ciena website.

About Nubis Communications:

Nubis says they innovate across photonics, electronics, packaging and manufacturing to create optics significantly more dense, scalable and lower power than existing solutions, breaking the I/O wall in data centers and enabling more advanced compute, AI and machine learning. The startup has raised over $50 million in funding with the help of investors such as Ericsson and Marvell Technology co-founders Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja.

Nubis has just over 50 employees including a seasoned executive team. Founder Peter Winzer previously led fiber optic transmission research at Nokia’s Bell Labs, while CEO Dan Harding spent over 15 years at Broadcom.

References:

https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/ciena-to-acquire-nubis-communications-to-expand-its-inside-the-data-center-strategy-and-further-address-growing-ai-workloads

https://www.nubis-inc.com/about-us/

https://www.nubis-inc.com/products/

https://www.fierce-network.com/broadband/ciena-ramps-data-center-focus-new-270m-deal

https://www.fierce-network.com/broadband/ciena-pulls-back-broadband-focus-more-ai