ABI Research Forecasts US$5 Billion OLS Scale-Across Revenue in US by 2035 for Distributed AI Data Centers

As AI training clusters spread across campuses, cities, and regions, Open Line System (OLS) is emerging as a critical enabler of scale-across data center connectivity. ABI Research forecasts that OLS scale-across revenue in the United States will grow to roughly US$5 billion by 2035, driven primarily by hyperscaler Tier One deployments. AI training mega-clusters are increasingly split across smaller data centers to address power constraints and grid connection delays, creating demand for optical systems that allow these distributed assets to 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.”

In the United States, hyperscalers are expected to account for nearly 70% of OLS links deployed. Annual OLS scale-across revenue in the US is projected to rise from under US$1 billion in 2026 to about US$5 billion in 2035. In Europe, the market is expected to shift more strongly toward neocloud adoption, with hy...