TL;DR
Eoptolink, a Chinese maker of high-speed optical transceivers, has filed for a secondary Hong Kong listing that could raise up to $5bn, above the $3bn floated in April. The angle: it is the AI boom’s unglamorous “picks and shovels” winner, its 800G/1.6T optical modules wire hyperscaler data centres, and customers include Google, Microsoft and Amazon. 2025 revenue was ~$3.7bn with net profit up 236% to ~$1.4bn. The piece notes the US-China interdependence (American AI runs on Chinese optics) and the capex-thesis risk it shares.
While attention fixes on Nvidia and the AI models, the companies quietly wiring the data centres together are booming. Eoptolink, a Chinese maker of high-speed optical transceivers, has filed for a Hong Kong listing that could raise up to $5bn, Bloomberg reports.
The plan is a secondary listing on top of its existing Shenzhen shares. It could raise $4bn to $5bn, well above the $3bn floated in April, a sign investor demand ran hotter than expected.
What Eoptolink makes
Its products are the unglamorous plumbing of AI. Optical transceivers convert electrical signals into light and back, moving data between servers and chips at enormous speed.
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As AI clusters scale, that plumbing becomes critical. Training and inference shift terabytes per second, which is why hyperscalers are racing to adopt 800G and 1.6T modules, Eoptolink’s specialty.
The customer list explains the valuation. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all rely on its transceivers to knit their data centres together.
The numbers
The AI buildout has transformed the bottom line. Eoptolink posted 2025 revenue of about 24.8bn yuan, roughly $3.7bn, with net profit up 236% to around $1.4bn.
The stock has followed. Its Shenzhen shares are up nearly 80% so far this year, and the listing still needs sign-off from shareholders, China’s securities regulator, and Hong Kong’s.
Part of a bigger rush
Eoptolink is not listing in isolation. Hong Kong has become the venue of choice for Chinese tech, with companies pivoting there as US and EU barriers tighten.
The AI-infrastructure names are leading the way. Baidu’s chip unit is targeting a $50bn Hong Kong IPO, and Apple suppliers have raised billions retooling for AI hardware.
The city has quietly become the hinge of the chip trade, handling more than half of China’s chip imports. The money and the hardware now flow through the same place.
The geopolitical knot
There is an awkward interdependence here. America’s AI boom, built by American hyperscalers, runs partly on Chinese optical components, even as the two economies try to decouple.
Optics have so far escaped the export-control fights that hit advanced chips. Eoptolink selling to Google and Amazon is the kind of link neither government has moved to sever, at least not yet.
The risk it shares
The flip side of riding the AI capex wave is riding it down. Eoptolink’s fortunes are tied to hyperscalers spending around $700bn a year on infrastructure.
That spending rests on AI paying off, an assumption markets are increasingly nervous about. If the buildout slows, the picks-and-shovels sellers get hit alongside everyone else.
For now, the demand is real and the profits are enormous. Eoptolink is proof that in a gold rush, the firm selling the wiring can do very well indeed.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
