5 Best Fiber Optics Stocks to Buy for the AI Data Center Boom

3. Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is one of the Best Fiber Optics Stocks to Buy for the AI Data Center Boom. On June 8, 2026, Bank of America raised its price target on Cisco to $150 from $135 and reiterated a Buy rating, extending a bullish view that had sharpened after the firm’s late-May optics note. BofA said Cisco and Ciena were benefiting from the migration from 400G to 800G optical networking, essentially the move to faster fiber-based links used to push far more data between data centers and cloud networks.

The firm pointed to more than $1 billion in Cisco Acacia optical orders in fiscal Q3, with AI-related optics demand nearly quadrupling to about $950 million. It also expects the 800G optical market to expand nearly tenfold in 2026 as hyperscalers upgrade data center and networking infrastructure. Cisco is still a broad networking company, but Acacia gives it a direct optical layer tied to AI bandwidth demand rather than a loose AI label.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) designs and sells networking, security, collaboration, observability, and cloud infrastructure products. Its optical networking exposure comes partly through Acacia, which supplies coherent optical interconnect technologies used by webscale, data center, service provider, and cloud networks.