As Meta tries to quickly assemble large knowledge facilities to maintain tempo with the factitious intelligence craze, it is turning to a 175-year-old glass producer for assist.
Meta has dedicated to paying Corning as much as $6 billion by 2030 for fiber-optic cable in its AI knowledge facilities, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks advised CNBC in an unique interview in regards to the deal from a cable manufacturing facility in Hickory, North Carolina.
Corning’s inventory popped 16% on the information, its greatest day in additional than 20 years.
Corning is increasing the power to accommodate rising demand from Meta and different large spenders like Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Microsoft as a part of an prolonged business buildout that is reaching into the trillions of {dollars}. When the undertaking is full, Corning says it is going to be the most important fiber-optic cable plant on the planet.
“Nearly each telephone name I get from my clients is making an attempt to see, how can we get them extra?” Weeks stated. “I feel subsequent 12 months the hyperscalers will likely be our greatest clients.”
Shares of Corning, as soon as a boom-and-bust dot-com period story, have risen greater than 75% within the final 12 months, with optical communications as the corporate’s largest and fastest-growing enterprise phase. Corning is amongst a wider swath of suppliers to the info heart growth seeing historic ranges of demand because the stack will get refreshed for the AI age.
Meta’s AI technique, however, has puzzled Wall Road. The inventory, which underperformed the market in 2025, had its worst day in three years in October after the corporate introduced bold AI spending however with out a clear monetization plan. The subsequent month, Meta dedicated to spending $600 billion within the U.S. by 2028, on knowledge facilities and the infrastructure they require. Corning is a part of that.
Meta’s plan for 30 knowledge facilities contains 26 amenities within the U.S.
“We need to have a home provide chain that is accessible to assist that,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief international affairs officer, stated in an interview.
In addressing considerations that China may win the AI race, Kaplan stated, “If we as a rustic do not make the proper coverage decisions and the proper investments, that is an actual danger.”
Two of Meta’s largest knowledge facilities presently underneath building are its Prometheus one-gigawatt website in New Albany, Ohio, and five-gigawatt Hyperion website in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Each will embrace Corning fiber-optic cable as a part of the brand new deal.
Meta’s 5-gigawatt “Hyperion” knowledge heart underneath building in Richland Parish, Louisiana, on January 9, 2026.
Meta
Having lived by a previous tech bubble, Corning is acquainted with the narrative that is rising in elements of the market, with skeptics questioning whether or not all of this constructing turns into new, sustainable companies. AI introduced greater than $1 trillion in compute offers in 2025, main some business specialists to foretell a brand new bubble is forming.
Fiber introduced Corning large success within the dot-com growth as a consequence of demand for communications tools. The inventory multiplied by about eightfold from the start of 1997 by its peak in September 2000, earlier than dropping over 90% of its worth over a roughly two-year market collapse.
“What we realized then was that it wasn’t sufficient to do nice improvements,” Weeks stated.
With respect to the present knowledge heart buildout and the opportunity of a slowdown, Weeks stated fiber-optic demand has grown at about 7% yearly on common, “so we’ll discover a good use for it.”
He stated he is additionally “not involved about Meta being profitable on this house,” as a result of, “In the long run, actually technical excellence, willingness to decide to the infrastructure, compute issues.”
‘Constructed to resist dangerous climate’
Key to Corning’s degree of confidence is that its enterprise is diversified with “some extra steady, excessive money circulate companies in our combine.”
“We’re constructed to resist dangerous climate,” Weeks stated.
Meta Marshall, an analyst protecting networking tools at Morgan Stanley, stated “there’s volatility on the fiber aspect,” however that Corning can seemingly handle by it.
“The market will nonetheless want TVs and telephones and automobiles and auto glass and vials for drugs,” stated Marshall, who has the equal of a maintain score on the inventory.
Corning has needed to re-invent itself repeatedly to get so far.
Based within the gold rush period, the corporate constructed glass for Edison’s gentle bulbs within the late 1870s, and over the next a long time moved into Pyrex cookware, automotive filters, spacecraft home windows, TV screens and vials for Covid vaccines.
Because the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has been a key buyer, counting on Corning’s glass for its flagship system. Apple introduced a $2.5 billion deal in August, to fabricate all the duvet glass for the iPhone and Apple Watch at a Corning plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
In 1970, Corning invented the primary glass fiber that was helpful for long-distance communication. Fiber-based broadband makes up the vast majority of the web’s spine, with billions of miles of cable connecting continents, knowledge facilities, companies and houses.
Extremely-pure glass begins the method of being stretched right into a hair-thin piece of fiber, melting and dropping down a number of tales from the furnace above, at Corning’s fiber manufacturing facility in Harmony, North Carolina, on January 8, 2026.
Magdalena Petrova
Fiber can transmit knowledge at practically the velocity of sunshine. In contrast to conventional copper telephone traces that transmit info as electrical alerts, fiber-optic cables are tiny bendable strands of glass by which knowledge is distributed as photons — lasers emitting pulses of sunshine — at far greater velocity, utilizing much less power.
“Transferring photons is between 5 and 20 occasions decrease energy utilization than transferring electrons,” Weeks stated. “As energy turns into a much bigger and larger challenge, fiber inevitably will get nearer and nearer and nearer to the compute.”
‘It’s good to put in much more capability’
Demand for Corning’s fiber has skyrocketed of late partly as a result of AI knowledge facilities require extra fiber than conventional cloud computing infrastructure. Income in Corning’s optical communications enterprise, which incorporates fiber, jumped 33% within the third quarter to $1.65 billion, whereas complete gross sales rose 14% to $4.27 billion. Corning stated in its earnings launch that enterprise gross sales of optical communications soared 58% within the quarter, “pushed by the continued sturdy adoption of Corning’s new Gen AI merchandise.”
Weeks described it as a “complete separate community” that is “making an attempt to create the connections identical to it’s between the neurons in your mind.”
All these connections require a lot fiber that Corning invented a model new sort particularly for AI, referred to as Contour. Weeks’ title is on the patent. He confirmed CNBC the brand new cable that matches twice as many fiber strands into a regular dimension conduit, and reduces a set of 16 connectors all the way down to a single one.
Corning CEO Wendell Weeks confirmed CNBC Contour, it is new smaller, denser fiber-optic cable invented particularly for AI, in its cable manufacturing facility in Hickory, North Carolina, on January 9, 2026.
Magdalena Petrova
Weeks advised CNBC improvement of the brand new AI merchandise started greater than 5 years in the past, lengthy earlier than the 2022 debut of ChatGPT, following a dialog he had with a pacesetter in generative AI.
“They have been saying, ‘Hear, it is advisable to put in much more capability,'” Weeks recalled, with out naming the individual. “He is like, ‘No, you completely do not get it. That is what is going on to occur and the way a lot compute goes to be wanted, how the scaling legal guidelines are working.'”
Mike O’Day, Corning’s head of fiber optics, advised CNBC that the corporate has now revamped 1.3 billion miles of optical fiber. Weeks says 8 million miles will likely be wanted in Meta’s Louisiana knowledge heart alone. Maintaining with demand is Corning’s present problem.
It might get even tougher as fiber finally replaces copper inside server racks like these utilized by Nvidia. Copper cables nonetheless dominate in the case of connecting chips inside a server, however Weeks says the change to fiber is “inevitable” as soon as the variety of graphics processors in every rack climbs into the a whole lot.
At that scale of connectivity, Weeks stated, “Fiber optics change into rather more economical and rather more energy environment friendly.”
Corning and Meta each report fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday.
Watch: Contained in the world’s largest fiber manufacturing facility, the place Corning is profitable the AI infrastructure growth
CNBC’s Katie Tarasov excursions Corning’s largest fiber facility on the planet with fiber optics enterprise head Mike O’Day in Harmony, North Carolina, on January 8, 2026.
Magdalena Petrova
