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Gary Smith

Chief Executive Officer, President & Director, Ciena

Search every verified Gary Smith interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Gary Smith, President and CEO of Ciena, discussed the company's fiscal Q3 2026 results during an earnings call on September 2, 2026. He addressed growing demand for optical networking systems and cloud provider orders, noting that connectivity between data centers is a major driver of demand. Smith stated that Ciena was the first to offer a scale-across piece for data center connectivity and that the rollout is in its early stages, with activity currently concentrated in the United States. Smith also commented on the market for "neocalers," which he described as entities leaning into networking, securing networks on multi-operator agreements, and beginning to deploy their own fiber. He said Ciena is taking more than its fair share of that growing market and expects it to become an increasingly important part of the business through 2027 and 2028. He highlighted Ciena's position in the hyper-scale data center market, citing roughly 70% market share in the industry-standard RLS platform and the company's modem technology for moving bits faster and farther than competitors.

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Notable quotes

“However, be careful about personal information. Uh, especially medical and financial information. Some of these bots, probably most of them, store your information somewhere for some period of time. So, be careful what you say.”

“Lots of billions of dollars are being invested in AI because it creates it needs a lot of power and a lot of computing uh uh heavyweight investment. It really works.”

“The World Economic Forum says that AI will displace 9 million jobs by 2030, but it says it'll create 11 million in place of those jobs. So, certain people are going to have to change and adjust to what they do or what their jobs are. Uh but there will be plenty of work for everyone.”

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