AI networking power is the electricity consumed by the switches, NICs, optics, cables and interconnect hardware that move data between accelerators inside and between AI factories. It is not the largest line item in an AI factory, but it is the constraint that shapes the next architectural decade, because every watt spent moving data is a watt not spent computing, and cooling multiplies the cost of both.
Where Does the Power Go in AI Networking?
It depends on the architecture you run. The big consumers are the switch silicon, the SerDes lanes that feed it, the optics, and the retimers and copper links inside the rack. As of October 2026, optical connectivity already nears 10% of a total AI factory’s power, which is a striking number for components that carry no compute at all. The pressure doubles at each speed transition: an 800G port is not twice the power of a 400G port at the same efficiency, and 1.6T arrives with new form factors precisely because the old ones would not fit the power envelope (see What Are 400G, 800G and 1.6T Ports?).
The server side of the AI factory tells the same story: PCIe’s climb from Gen 4 at 16 Gbps per lane toward Gen 6 at 64 Gbps per lane shrank the usable copper trace from about eight inches to under four, pulling retimers into every AI rack, and each retimer adds its own power draw (see PCIe Retimers Market to Surge Driven by AI/ML Computing).
Why Do Optics Matter So Much for Power?
Optics convert electrical signals to light and back, and every conversion costs power in lasers, DSPs and drivers. As scale-up GPU domains grow from 8 GPUs toward 72, 576 and 1,152, the reach and power limits of copper push more of the domain boundary onto optics, which is why optical connectivity’s share of AI factory power keeps climbing. The same forces run across the whole fabric: more speed, more lanes, more reach, more power, unless the architecture changes.
What Do Co-Packaged Optics Change?
Co-packaged optics (CPO) move the optical engine onto the switch package itself, cutting the power spent driving signals across the module socket and board traces. We examined the shift with the switch silicon vendors: co-packaged optics entered production and cuts optical network power by nearly 5x (see Marvell’s CPO Story Unfolds at Its Industry Analyst Meeting and What Are CPO, NPO and Lasers?). That is why CPO is moving from differentiator toward requirement in the 102.4T switch generation aimed at clusters beyond 100,000 accelerators (see our OCP Summit slate analysis).
What Arrives With 1.6T?
The 1.6T cycle brings new form factors built around power. Credo’s 1.6T active light cable targets up to 50 meters at 12W per cable end, shipping in 2027, bringing copper-class reliability to row-scale optics (see Credo’s 1.6T ZeroFlap Active Light Cable). Row-scale optics and co-packaged designs sit alongside pluggables in the same racks, and buyers choose among them on power, reach and serviceability.
How Do Operators Reduce Networking Power Today?
It depends on where you are in the upgrade cycle, but the levers are architectural: efficient fabrics, flexible topologies and right-sized optics. We published the design patterns in Networking Power Efficiency and Flexible Architectures Drive Lower Costs in AI Data Center Networks. The practical sequence most operators follow: size the fabric to the workload, move short-reach traffic onto copper or active cables where power favors them, adopt CPO where switch density demands it, and let the port-speed ladder, not over-provisioning, carry the growth.
How Was This Calculated?
The figures in this Explainer come from 650 Group’s published quarterly research on AI networking, data center switching and interconnect components, which track power, shipments and vendor designs each quarter. Each figure links to its publication, and the full catalog is on our research reports page.
What to read next: Ethernet Switching Is the Heart of AI Factories for the architecture context, What Is Optical Circuit Switching (OCS)? for the switching alternative, and our optical category for quarterly updates.