San Francisco, CA – April 3, 2025 – Almost 17,000 individuals attended OFC 2025, the premier global event for optical networking and communications. The event concluded today in San Francisco, uniting the optical communications community for a successful week of groundbreaking technical presentations, demonstrations and industry discussions.
OFC is the industry’s most comprehensive gathering—featuring forward-looking research, dynamic exhibition programming and vital industry networking that bridges innovation from the lab to real-world applications and commercial deployments.
The Numbers
16,700 attendees from 83 countries (pre-audit)
685 exhibitors and 170,000 net square footage, the largest OFC Exhibition since 2003
118 technical sessions and poster sessions, including 816 technical talks and posters
1,300 paper submissions, including postdeadline papers
OFC has once again reaffirmed its critical role as the nexus where transformative optical communications research evolves into commercial reality.
General Chair Fotini Karinou, Microsoft, said, “We saw key themes emerge that crossed both the technical conference and exhibition—from data center interconnects to the need for energy-efficient optical networks. There are remarkable advances being made across coherent transmission systems, photonic integration for AI applications and intelligent network automation. These are technologies that will fundamentally reshape global connectivity.”
General Chair Elaine Wong, Univ. of Melbourne, Australia, concurred, “As bandwidth demands accelerate exponentially, the innovations showcased this week will be instrumental in building the sustainable, high-capacity networks essential for our digital future. The collaborative spirit evident throughout the technical sessions and exhibition floor demonstrates why OFC is the premier platform where academia and industry converge to solve tomorrow’s most pressing connectivity challenges.”
The Technical Conference
The OFC Technical Conference presented 118 technical sessions. More than 800 invited and contributed talks provided insights into emerging and diverse research areas —from optics in satellite constellations for inter-satellite mesh networking and space-to-ground optical feeders to low latency optical links using hollow core fiber.
Highlights
Advanced Data Center Interconnects: Technical presentations on 400ZR and 800ZR pluggable optics attracted substantial audiences, with researchers presenting field trial results and integration roadmaps for emerging data center architectures.
Next-Generation Transport Networks: Talks detailed novel approaches to optical network expansion, emphasizing solutions that balance performance gains with practical deployment considerations for metro and long-haul applications.
AI-Specific Network Architectures: Presenters discussed how AI can enable flexible, efficient and resilient resource utilization.
Energy-Efficient Optical Networks: Research addressing sustainability and energy efficiency featured prominently in the program, with multiple presentations outlining architectures that could reduce optical network power requirements by up to 40% through innovative component and system designs.
Purpose-built and Overlay Optical Fiber Sensing: The topic was well-represented with use cases such as vehicular traffic monitoring and earthquake detection.
Quantum Communications and Security: The growing importance of quantum technologies was reflected in sessions exploring both fundamental research and practical implementations of quantum key distribution in optical networks.
“The combination of a high-quality technical program with a vast showcase of commercial advancements is unique to OFC and has brought me back year after year,” said Chris Doerr, Founder and CEO, Aloe Semiconductor. “If you want to see the latest in optical communications and be around the top of the top, OFC is the place to be.”
The Exhibition
The OFC Exhibition featured a vibrant showcase of innovations spanning the entire optical communications supply chain. From global industry leaders to cutting-edge startups and pioneering research institutions, 685 companies highlighted breakthrough technologies across multiple domains—driving progress, enabling next-generation connectivity and advancing a more sustainable, connected future.
Key Takeaways
Coherent Transmission Systems: Exhibitors demonstrated significant progress in 1.6T and 3.2T coherent systems, with advances in digital signal processing (DSP) technology enabling 35% power consumption reductions while delivering substantially higher capacity for long-haul, metro and data center interconnect applications.
Co-Packaged Optics (CPO): The CPO ecosystem is taking shape, with vendors showcasing key components and advancements. While CPO is seen as the inevitable next step in optical networking, its widespread implementation is not imminent. Exhibitors highlighted progress in integrating optics with semiconductor chips, improving efficiency and reducing power consumption, setting the stage for future data center and high-performance computing deployments.
Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs): The exhibition highlighted the growing maturity of integrated photonics technology, with multiple vendors presenting solutions specifically designed for AI/ML applications. These demonstrations featured improved integration density and energy efficiency critical for next-generation data center interconnects.
Component and Test Solutions: Optical component manufacturers and test equipment providers showcased comprehensive validation platforms for 800G networks, automated testing suites that accelerate deployment, and precision measurement systems for high-speed optical interfaces.
Network Automation and Intelligence: Multiple exhibitors presented advanced optical network management solutions leveraging artificial intelligence for predictive maintenance and automated optimization, as well as showcasing
