Global OCS Market to Exceed $8 Billion by 2030

Recently, market research firm Cignal AI released its Optical Circuit Switch Market–Q2 2026 report, raising its forecast for the optical circuit switch (OCS) market to over $8 billion by 2030. This significant upward revision from previous projections reflects new visibility into emerging Scale-Up opportunities within NVIDIA and other GPU networks, which will complement Google's established Scale-Out (TPU) applications. This report update provides detailed Scale-Up models, updated OCS port-to-XPU ratios, and expanded vendor coverage of more than 20 suppliers.

Scott Wilkinson, Lead Analyst for Optical Components at Cignal AI, stated: "OCS started as a Google story, and we have been looking for the next high-volume customer or application – and that is next-generation optical-based scale-up architectures. As NVIDIA brings optics into Scale Up through CPO and multi-rack architectures like NVL576, OCS gains a second market that can rival the scale of TPU deployments that currently dominate OCS sales."

Because market size depends heavily on a few highly variable assumptions (price per port, XPU shipments), the OCS report includes an interactive tool that allows users to substitute their own TPU and GPU shipment forecasts for Cignal AI's projections and observe how the forecast changes.

Key highlights from the Optical Circuit Switch Market–Q2 2026 report:

- Scale-Out for TPU networks remains the only volume application today and will continue to dominate the market over the next two to three years. Near-term revenue is concentrated at Google, whose OCS development was previously conducted in-house but is now shifting to third-party suppliers.

- Scale-Up in GPU networks is an emerging application tied to rack-to-rack optical interconnects, particularly within NVIDIA's rack-level roadmap. NVIDIA plans to integrate OCS in its upcoming Rubin Ultra NVL576 architecture, with high-volume shipments expected to begin in 2028.

- OCS revenue is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate exceeding 30% between 2026 and 2030. Revenue and port shipments by application are detailed in the report.

- The supplier landscape continues to expand with the introduction of silicon photonics-based startups. Google has issued purchase orders to Lumentum, Coherent, and Huber+Suhner, transitioning from in-house development to a competitive commercial supply system, while Scale-Up applications provide a compelling entry point for silicon photonics-based suppliers.

- OCS deployment is reshaping data center transceiver requirements. Standards such as single-fiber FR optics and the OCI MSA are gaining favor over parallel-fiber DR optics, while custom solutions requiring higher optical power and circulators for bidirectional operation are becoming more prevalent.