Meta, in its ambitious push to build sprawling data centers to fuel the artificial intelligence revolution, is tapping a 175-year-old glassmaker for a significant portion of its infrastructure needs. The social media giant has committed up to $6 billion through 2030 to secure fiber-optic cable from Corning for its AI data centers, a deal revealed in an exclusive interview with Corning CEO Wendell Weeks from the company’s cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina.
The announcement sent shockwaves through the market, with Corning’s stock surging 16% — its most significant single-day gain in over two decades. This influx of business from Meta is driving an expansion at the Hickory facility, which is set to become the world’s largest fiber-optic cable plant upon completion. Corning is also seeing increased demand from other major players in the AI ecosystem, including Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, as the industry embarks on an unprecedented buildout estimated to cost trillions of dollars.
“Almost every phone call I get from my customers is trying to see, how do we get them more?” Weeks told CNBC. “I think next year the hyperscalers will be our biggest customers.”
Corning’s optical communications segment, now its largest and fastest-growing business, has been a significant driver of its recent performance. The company’s stock has climbed over 75% in the past year, reflecting a broader trend of historic demand for providers supporting the data center boom, now being re-architected for the AI era.
Meta’s AI strategy, however, has faced scrutiny. Despite ambitious spending plans announced for AI infrastructure, the company’s stock underperformed the market in 2025, experiencing its worst day in three years in October following a lack of a clear monetization strategy. Subsequently, Meta pledged $600 billion in U.S. investments by 2028, heavily focused on data centers and their supporting infrastructure, with Corning now a key beneficiary. Of the 30 data centers Meta plans, 26 will be located in the U.S.
“We want to have a domestic supply chain that’s available to support that,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, stated. Addressing concerns about geopolitical competition in the AI race, Kaplan noted, “If we as a country don’t make the right policy choices and the right investments, that’s a real risk.”
Two of Meta’s flagship AI data center projects, the one-gigawatt Prometheus site in New Albany, Ohio, and the five-gigawatt Hyperion site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, will both integrate Corning’s fiber-optic cable under the new agreement.
Corning, having navigated the dot-com bubble, brings a seasoned perspective to the current surge in AI-related investments. While some market observers question the sustainability of this buildout, citing the more than $1 trillion in compute deals announced in 2025, Weeks remains confident. He pointed to the historical growth rate of fiber-optic demand, averaging around 7% annually, suggesting ample use cases. Furthermore, he expressed confidence in Meta’s ability to succeed, emphasizing the critical role of technical excellence and infrastructure commitment.
“We’re built to withstand bad weather,” Weeks asserted, highlighting Corning’s diversified business model and its “more stable, high cash flow businesses.” Meta Marshall, a networking equipment analyst at Morgan Stanley, acknowledged potential volatility in the fiber market but believes Corning is well-positioned, supported by its other core businesses like automotive glass and pharmaceutical vials.
Corning’s resilience stems from a history of reinvention. Founded during the gold rush era, the company supplied glass for Edison’s light bulbs in the late 1870s and evolved to produce Pyrex cookware, automotive filters, spacecraft windows, TV screens, and crucial vials for Covid vaccines. Since the advent of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has been a pivotal customer, relying on Corning’s specialized glass. In a testament to this ongoing partnership, Apple announced a $2.5 billion deal in August to procure cover glass for its iPhones and Apple Watches manufactured at Corning’s Kentucky facility.
The company’s pioneering work in fiber optics dates back to 1970 with the invention of the first usable long-distance communication glass fiber. Today, fiber-based broadband forms the backbone of the internet, with billions of miles of cable connecting global infrastructure.
Fiber optics transmit data at near light speed, using pulses of light (photons) rather than electrical signals, leading to significantly higher speeds and lower energy consumption. “Moving photons is between five and 20 times lower power usage than moving electrons,” Weeks explained. “As power becomes a bigger and bigger issue, fiber inevitably gets closer and closer and closer to the compute.”
This efficiency is a key driver for AI data centers, which demand substantially more fiber than traditional cloud computing infrastructure. Corning’s optical communications segment saw a 33% revenue jump in the third quarter to $1.65 billion, contributing to a 14% overall sales increase to $4.27 billion. The company attributed the 58% surge in enterprise sales of optical communications to the “continued strong adoption of Corning’s new Gen AI products.”
Weeks likened the network of fiber connections to the intricate pathways within the human brain, noting the need for “a whole separate network” to create these links. To meet this escalating demand, Corning developed a new type of fiber specifically for AI applications, named Contour. This innovative cable can accommodate twice the number of fiber strands within a standard conduit and consolidates 16 connectors into a single unit.
The development of these AI-specific products began over five years ago, predating the public debut of ChatGPT. Weeks recalled a conversation with a generative AI leader who emphasized the critical need for increased capacity: “They were saying, ‘Listen, you need to put in a lot more capacity.’ … ‘No, you totally don’t get it. This is what’s going to happen and how much compute is going to be needed, how the scaling laws are working.'”
Corning has already produced over 1.3 billion miles of optical fiber, with an estimated 8 million miles required for Meta’s Louisiana data center alone. The challenge for Corning is to scale production to meet this voracious demand. The transition from copper to fiber is also anticipated within server racks for applications like those used by Nvidia, especially as the number of graphics processors per rack increases. At such densities, fiber optics offer superior economics and power efficiency.
Both Corning and Meta are scheduled to report their fourth-quarter earnings.
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