Hyperscaler-Led Open Line System Revenue in the United States to Reach US$5 Billion by 2035 as Distributed AI Data Centers Reshape Optical Connectivity

As distributed AI data center deployments accelerate, global technology intelligence firm ABI Research forecasts that Open Line System (OLS) scale-across revenue in the United States will grow to roughly US$5 billion by 2035, driven primarily by hyperscaler Tier One deployments. The firm finds that AI training mega-clusters are increasingly being split across smaller data centers to work around power constraints and grid connection delays, creating significant demand for optical systems that can make these distributed assets function as a logical data center. ‌

“AI infrastructure is forcing a structural rethink of data center design, and connectivity is now a strategic differentiator rather than a supporting layer,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, Senior Research Director at ABI Research. “As operators distribute compute across campuses and regions to access available power, OLS becomes a natural fit because it supports more open, flexible, and cost-sensitive optical interconnect strategies for scale-across architectures.” ‌

ABI Research forecasts that hyperscalers will remain the dominant segment in the United States, accounting for nearly 70% of OLS links deployed, while Europe is expected to shift more strongly toward neocloud adoption, with hyperscalers’ share of activated links falling from 59% in 2026 to 44% in 2035. In the U.S., annual OLS scale-across revenue rises from under US$1 billion in 2026 to about US$5 billion in 2035, while Europe is expected to peak around 2033 before settling as capacity matures in the market. ‌

The market opportunity is expanding beyond hyperscalers alone. While major incumbent vendors such as Cisco, Ciena, and Nokia continue to dominate data center interconnect through scale, R&D depth, and integration capabilities, ABI Research notes that OLS specialists and newer entrants including Edgecore, Ekinops, PacketLight, and Smartoptics are positioned to capitalize on growing demand for more disaggregated optical infrastructure. At the same time, mature standards and open-source efforts such as OpenROADM, OpenConfig, OIF, and TIP are reducing vendor lock-in and broadening multi-vendor integration options.
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“The next competitive battleground will be orchestration software, not just photonic hardware,” Mavrakis said. “Although pluggable-line system disaggregation is now mainstream, the vendors that can simplify AI-driven, low-latency control across distributed data center environments will be best positioned to capture the largest share of this market over the next several years.”

These findings are from ABI Research’s OLS Market Update for Scale-Across Data Center Connectivity market data report, part of the company’s Cloud research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.