What’s up with… Ciena, SK Telecom, Foxconn

• Ciena reports blockbuster fiscal Q2 but stock slumps
• SK Telecom joins Anthopic’s Project Glasswing
• Foxconn gets jiggy with Intel and SK Group

In today’s industry news roundup: Despite beating sales and margin expectations and raising its annual revenues forecast, Ciena’s stock has dropped off a cliff; SK Telecom becomes the latest telco to join Anthropic’s AI security initiative; contract manufacturing giant Foxconn forms a strategic partnership with Intel and plans infrastructure product and design collaboration with SK Group; and much more!

The ongoing investments in AI-related network infrastructure and capacity has helped Ciena to report a 39.5% year-on-year increase in revenues to $1.57bn for its fiscal second quarter that ended 2 May 2026, while its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) grew by 324.4% to $283.1m. The vendor’s gross margins increased to 44% from 40.2% a year earlier, while its operating margin leaped to 15.1% from 2.9%. “Today’s results reflect the strength of our portfolio, the power of our business model, and disciplined execution in a dynamic supply environment,” stated president and CEO Gary Smith, who has now been in the role for a staggering 25 years. “Our long-term strategy to be the global leader in high-speed connectivity – both across the WAN and in and around the datacentre – is tightly aligned to the structural, multi-year opportunities created by AI-driven demand, positioning us to capitalise on market dynamics and drive sustained, profitable growth.” Ciena expects revenues in the current quarter to hit $1.625bn and raised its full fiscal year sales forecast to  around $6.3bn, about 32% better than last year. The numbers are better than had been expected by financial analysts, but… Ciena’s share price slumped in early trading on Thursday morning by 18.3% to $507.25 because shareholders were hoping for even better numbers. Greedy!! However, anyone holding Ciena stock for some time will still be happy as the company’s share price has risen by more than 645% (that is not a typo!) over the past year. 

SK Telecom is one of the latest companies to have joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, which was expanded to a further 150 companies earlier this week. The initiative was set up in April by Anthropic to test the security implications of using its new frontier large language model (LLM) Claude Mythos. In a note sent to the media, SK Telecom noted that it has been “granted access to Claude Mythos Preview, Anthropic’s most advanced frontier AI model. Through its participation in this project, SK Telecom intends to further strengthen the security of its core infrastructure and services by proactively identifying and mitigating risk factors. As a company operating the telecommunications and AI infrastructure that runs through the daily lives of tens of millions of Koreans, we are committed to contributing to the strengthening of Korea’s digital security through this collaboration. SK Telecom is conducting all testing activities in strict accordance with the protocols and governance guidelines established for the project, to ensure that emerging technologies are deployed safely and responsibly.” In mid-May Verizon became the first telco to join Project Glasswing.

Contract tech manufacturer Foxconn (aka Hon Hai Technology) has struck a strategic collaboration with Intel “to jointly accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation AI infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms. By combining Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem with Foxconn’s global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI datacentre deployment capabilities, the two companies will explore comprehensive AI solutions spanning silicon, rack, system and application layers. The collaboration also aims to accelerate the large-scale deployment of AI-driven technologies across edge and physical AI applications,” noted Foxconn in this announcement. Foxconn’s chairman and CEO Young Liu stated: “AI is rapidly transforming industries and society worldwide. Through our ‘3+3+3’ strategy, Foxconn continues to advance key technologies, including AI, semiconductors and next-generation communications, while driving the development of our three core platforms: Smart manufacturing, smart EV, and smart city. Our collaboration with Intel will combine the strengths of both companies across computing platforms, system integration and global supply chain capabilities to jointly build next-generation AI infrastructure, edge AI and physical AI ecosystems, accelerating the adoption of AI applications worldwide.” Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan added: “The rapid growth of AI – especially in inference and agentic workloads at scale – is redefining what modern computing must deliver. These demands require innovation across the full stack – from new silicon and chip design to rackscale systems and extending all the way to edge and physical AI deployments.”

Foxconn has also been making friends with SK Telecom’s parent company, South Korea’s SK Group: The two companies are set to collaborate on the development of “AI servers, AI datacentres, and energy solutions”. In this announcement, Foxconn noted: “Leveraging its strengths in AI server vertical integration, rack-scale system integration, advanced thermal technologies, and AI datacentre solutions, Foxconn aims to work closely with industry partners to advance the development of next-generation AI infrastructure. With its industry-leading technological capabilities, SK Group is accelerating the development of core technologies essential for the AI era. Going forward, SK will continue to strengthen its global competitiveness through innovation in next-generation AI memory technologies [through SK Hynix]. In addition, the two companies discussed opportunities in robotics, energy management and battery technologies. By combining SK Group’s expertise in energy and critical technologies with Foxconn’s strengths in global manufacturing, system integration, and AI application deployment, both parties look forward to exploring future collaboration opportunities and creating new value in the AI era.” 

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has shared its IPO pricing details ahead of its planned debut on the Nasdaq exchange on 12 June. The company, which includes the Starlink low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite operation as well as Musk’s xAI operation, is on course to raise $75bn by issuing 555,555,555 shares at $135 each in a move that values the whole company at $1.75tn. Between now and then, though, that price could go up or down, depending on the appetite of investors, which appears to be very strong. Last month, SpaceX published a document with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which showed that the company believes it has “identified the largest actionable total addressable market (TAM) in human history” of $28.5tn: Most of that – $26.5tn – is related to xAI’s prospects, but $1.6tn is related to SpaceX’s connectivity business via its Starlink satellites, with SpaceX believing that the value of the addressable market for Starlink Broadband is $870bn, while the value of its satellite-enabled direct-to-device (D2D) operation, Starlink Mobile, is $740bn. Those numbers look wilder and wilder by the day.  

IBM and Google Cloud have spied “a multibillion-dollar opportunity” and launched a new Google Cloud Practice “designed to help organisations more quickly scale AI into production and modernise core systems”, the partners announced. The new practice “combines IBM’s deep industry expertise and IBM Consulting Advantage – the company’s AI-powered platform that helps IBM teams design, build and deploy AI solutions faster using agents and industry workflows – with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, cybersecurity and data capabilities.” IBM says it is “creating a portfolio of industry-specific AI agents built on IBM Consulting Advantage and optimised for Gemini Enterprise. These agents support use cases for banking, government, retail, telecommunications, energy, security, insurance and life sciences, helping organisations automate workflows, improve decision-making and accelerate autonomous operations powered by Gemini models.”

– The staff, TelecomTV