A major chipmaker just made a massive bet on next-gen data center tech. The company's dropping $3.25 billion to snap up an optical interconnect startup — we're talking $1 billion cash plus 27.2 million shares in the deal.

What's the play here? Optical interconnects are becoming critical for AI infrastructure and high-performance computing. Think lightning-fast data transfer between chips and servers, which is exactly what blockchain nodes and decentralized networks desperately need as they scale.

The numbers tell the story: they're projecting this acquisition will hit a $500 million annualized revenue run rate by Q4 of fiscal year 2028. That's not pocket change. It signals serious confidence that data-hungry applications — from AI training clusters to Web3 infrastructure — will devour this technology.

For anyone tracking where crypto infrastructure is headed, this matters. As blockchains chase higher throughput and lower latency, the physical layer tech enabling those gains is getting snatched up at premium prices. The race for computational dominance just got another billion-dollar data point.