Alger Capital Appreciation Fund Highlights Astera Labs as Key AI Infrastructure Play in Q2

Nvidia has committed at least $6.5 billion to photonics companies over the three months prior to May 2026, including $500 million to Corning for advanced optical connectivity solutions and $2 billion each to Lumentum, Coherent and Marvell, according to CNBC. The impact has been significant, with Marvell shares gaining 183.4% year to date, while Lumentum, Corning and Coherent have advanced 142.5%, 68.8% and 60.3%, respectively. Goldman Sachs projects the total addressable market for optical networking to grow from roughly $15 billion in 2026 to about $154 billion by 2028, a more than ninefold increase. Adoption of co-packaged optics is expected to accelerate starting in 2027, reaching roughly 20% to 30% penetration by 2028, while Mordor Intelligence estimates the global photonics market will reach $1.46 trillion by the end of 2026. Investors seeking diversified exposure can consider the Roundhill Photonics & Optics ETF LYTE, with $254.2 million in assets under management across 19 holdings; the KraneShares Photonic and Optical ETF LUMA, with $9.76 million in net assets; and the Tema Photonics & Optical ETF LAZR, with $94 million in net assets across 27 companies.

Amphenol's IT datacom business, which represented 43% of the company's total sales in the second quarter of 2026, saw revenues surge 89% year over year and 63% organically, with management saying the AI revenue run rate has reached roughly $10.5-$11 billion. Management noted that virtually all of the 22% sequential IT datacom growth in the quarter came from AI-related products, as customers require more copper, optics and power for larger, more complex AI clusters. The company's acquisition of CommScope contributed more than $1.2 billion in sales in the quarter, with CommScope's IT datacom business nearly doubling year over year; management expects that market to account for just under half of CommScope's 2026 sales, compared with roughly one-third in 2025. Amphenol faces tough competition from TE Connectivity, whose Digital Data Networks sales rose 34% year over year in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 with bookings up more than 70% year to date, and from Marvell Technology, whose data-center revenues increased 46% year over year to $2.17 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027. Amphenol shares have risen 16% year to date, trailing the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector's 17% gain, and trade at a forward 12-month price/earnings of 25.32X versus the sector's 20.38X, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings stands at 72 cents per share, up 5 cents over the past 30 days and implying 53.19% growth.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sitting on a record pile of AI networking orders it cannot yet ship, and the gap between bookings and revenue is now the central question for the stock. Orders for the Networks for AI portfolio reached $700 million in fiscal Q3 2026, a new high, after the company blew past its cumulative fiscal 2026 target of at least $2 billion and raised that target to $2.5 billion to $3 billion. The hardware behind those orders includes routers and switches HPE is supplying to Oracle for one of the largest AI cloud infrastructure build-outs, work that extends more than a decade of engineering between Oracle and Juniper Networks, the business HPE acquired last year. Networking revenue rose 10% in fiscal Q3 2026 against a prior-year base that includes Juniper Networks, while networking orders rose 36%, and the segment brought in $2.9 billion of the $12.2 billion in total revenue HPE reported for the quarter. Management attributes the gap to supply, citing memory and wafer capacity that have gated supply since the start of fiscal 2026, and HPE has more than doubled its networking purchase commitments quarter over quarter while signing multiyear supply agreements to lock capacity. Networking revenue growth is guided to 11% to 13% in fiscal Q4 2026 and 14% to 17% in fiscal 2027, with the next scheduled look at the business coming at the Networking Investor Day on September 30, 2026.