Nvidia has committed at least $6.5 billion into companies developing photonics technology in the past three months, as the company races to invest in solving one of the major bottlenecks to the rollout of artificial intelligence.

Photonics, the use of light to transmit data, is an emerging technology considered to be a more efficient alternative to the current process of transferring data using electricity. Electrical data transfer consumes more energy — a factor which is increasingly seen as a blocker to the broader deployment of AI.

Since the beginning of March, Nvidia has announced $2 billion investments into Lumentum , Coherent and Marvell , all of which are developing photonics tech.…