Applied Optoelectronics makes its own laser chips, from the raw material up, in a Houston suburb. Most optics companies buy those chips from someone else. Thompson Lin founded the company in 1997 in Sugar Land, Texas. Its lasers go into transceivers, the small modules that turn electrical data into light and back. By 2013, giant internet companies were building data centers stuffed with them. AAOI filed to go public as that build-out began.

Owning the Whole Chain

Lin, an engineer with a Ph.D., founded the company in February 1997 and has run it as CEO since. AAOI grows its laser wafers, packages the chips, and assembles finished modules. It sells to cable TV operators, which use optics to carry signals across their networks, and to data center operators, which became its biggest market. Doing every step in-house cost more up front, but let AAOI control quality and cost as speeds rose.

Riding the Data Center Waves

AAOI priced its IPO at $10 a share in September 2013 and listed on Nasdaq as AAOI. It raised about $30.8 million. The stock swung hard over the next decade, rising and falling with the spending plans of a few huge cloud customers. Its fortunes turned again as AI data centers needed faster optical links. Applied Optoelectronics still trades on Nasdaq as AAOI.

Cover: Profile of Light, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a profile in light (lasers).