Huawei leads 20+ firms to set China's first optical interconnect standard

China's launch of OPEN NPO reflects a deliberate strategy to build indigenous technical standards in infrastructure critical to artificial intelligence. Near-packaged optics—the fiber-optic connections that bind together massive AI processors—have historically been supplied by external vendors; standardizing them domestically allows Chinese companies to coordinate development, reduce foreign supply dependence, and accelerate deployment of AI supercomputing clusters at scale. The breadth of the coalition, anchored by major players such as Huawei, China Mobile, and Baidu, suggests the initiative has backing from both hardware vendors and cloud operators, which may increase the likelihood of adoption across the industry. By establishing a multi-source framework rather than a single-vendor specification, the organizers may be aiming to foster ecosystem competition while maintaining interoperability—a common pattern in Chinese technology standardization efforts.