Coherent took centre-stage at ECOC 2025, marking the event’s 30th anniversary with two prestigious awards, standing-room-only Market Focus sessions, and a showcase of innovations that point to the future of optical communications.
“It’s a very special ECOC for us,” said Sanjai Parthasarathi, Chief Marketing Officer at Coherent. “Our heritage goes back to the pioneers of optics, and our association with ECOC dates to the very first event 30 years ago. I’d say no other company here can likely say it’s been there from the start like we can.”
It felt like something of a shared celebration for the photonics giant and the long-running show, which for many is one of the highlights of the European calendar.
Next-generation EML lasers power 1.6T and 3.2T optics
This year, Coherent’s 400G D-EML laser and 200G D-EML laser were both honoured with industry recognitions. In particular, the 400G device, first demonstrated at OFC earlier this year, was named Most Innovative Photonic Component Award at the ECOC Exhibition Industry Awards, and paves the way for next-generation 3.2T pluggables. It’s the industry’s first 400G D-EML, offering >100 GHz bandwidth, low reflections, and reduced power consumption for cost-effective, scalable optical transceivers.
The 200G version underpinned one of the most striking demonstrations at the show: a 1.6T direct-detect link over 6km, addressing the surging connectivity demands of AI workloads that stretch across distributed datacentres.
Advanced resource pooling for optical transport
Securing the Optical Transport Award was the company’s Multi-Rail Resource Pooling System, which is an advanced optical amplification architecture that pools dynamic gain equalisers, channel monitors, and pump lasers across multiple transmission paths to boost C- and L-band throughput while cutting power, space, and hardware requirements.
For Coherent, awards are more than trophies. “Winning awards matters because it’s recognition,” Parthasarathi explained. “It’s exciting for our R&D teams. It’s not just me saying, ‘we’re the greatest,’ but the industry – our customers, end customers and even our competitors – recognising our innovation. That kind of third-party validation means a lot.”
Beyond the award-winning lasers, Coherent also used ECOC 2025 to spotlight its full portfolio of innovations. These included: new variants of the unique 100G QSFP28-DCO ZR transceivers, 1.6T transceivers, silicon photonics solutions already in production, and advances in VCSEL technology.
The company also reinforced its leadership in co-packaged optics (CPO) – a technology set to transform hyperscale networks. Coherent stands out as the only company with a complete CPO photonics portfolio, from high-power external laser sources (ELS) to passive components. At ECOC, Coherent introduced a new ELSFP built on eight of its own high-performance 400 mW CW lasers, achieving 24 dBm power per lane and showcasing the company’s vertically integrated laser technology.”
“CPO is not just about silicon photonics and lasers,” Parthasarathi noted. “There are many hidden heroes in the technology stack that must scale for it to reach prime time. That’s where we’re focusing, across platforms such as our 6-inch InP wafer production.”
“CPO is a technology that we believe is a market expansion opportunity for the industry, as we expect it to be featured in the scale-up network that today is just electrical. CPO is not just about ELS, but there are other components like lenses, isolators, thermal management solutions and fibres and there was great agreement at the panel I contributed to: for CPO to get into primetime, all these platforms need to scale, and we are actively working on them. The panel was about the manufacturing challenge on CPO; all the focus is on silicon photonics and ELS now, but the rest needs to ramp up to make CPO a reality.”
Addressing AI's bottlenecks: thermal management, industrial growth, and supplier resilience
While Coherent’s data centre portfolio often dominates headlines, especially with the AI and data centre boom, Parthasarathi pointed out that the company’s industrial business is equally exciting and quite often overlooked. “We’re delivering innovations from next-generation display processing, to thermal management solutions. Thermal management is critical to scaling next-gen AI datacenters. We are showing our thermal management portfolio including diamond loaded Silicon carbide composites, silicon carbide wafers as well as our CVD diamond.”
Parthasarathi also reflected on how fast the industry is moving, citing Coherent’s early insights into the role of generative AI in driving demand. “When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, we were challenged to forecast the impact on our data centre business,” he said. “By early 2023, we developed our first projections of the datacenter transceiver market well before traditional market analysts. While those projections seemed quite stretched at that time, the market has continued to grow faster than those projections.”
The company's vertically integrated technology stack is also a key advantage when it comes to supplier resilience. “In today’s unpredictable business landscape - marked by shifting demand, supply constraints, and geopolitical complexity - supplier resilience has become a crucial competitive advantage.” – said Sanjai. ”At Coherent, we approach it with agility, flexibility, and proactivity, supported by our global manufacturing footprint and broad portfolio”.
With two award-winning innovations, record booth attendance, and a strong voice in industry debates, Coherent made its mark at ECOC 2025 as both a technology leader and a company with unmatched depth. “This is what makes ECOC so important for us,” Parthasarathi concluded. “It’s not just about showcasing products – it’s about showing the industry how we’re shaping the future.”
Learn more about Coherent's award-winning optical solutions for data centres.
