Nvidia, Corning partner on 3 U.S. fiber optic factories for AI

According to the companies, the caller plants are projected to make a minimum of 3,000 jobs portion multiplying Corning's home optical manufacturing capableness by ten. Financial presumption were not disclosed.

Shares of Corning climbed 14% pursuing the announcement, portion Nvidia's banal was up adjacent to 3%.

"AI is driving the largest infrastructure buildout of our clip — and a once-in-a-generation accidental to reinvigorate American manufacturing and proviso chains," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said successful a statement. "Together with Corning, we are inventing the aboriginal of computing with precocious optical technologies — gathering the instauration for AI infrastructure wherever quality moves astatine the velocity of airy portion advancing the arrogant contented of Made successful America."

"What Nvidia is doing is thing abbreviated of extraordinary, not conscionable for the aboriginal of AI, but for the American precocious manufacturing workforce," Corning CEO Wendell Weeks said successful a statement.

Central to the concern is optical fiber, a exertion successful which information travels arsenic airy done solid cables — a method that outpaces copper wiring successful some velocity and vigor efficiency, according to CNBC. Though neither institution offered details astir the products being developed, analysts expect Nvidia to integrate Corning's solid fibre into its rack-scale AI platforms — displacing copper connections done an attack called co-packaged optics.

Co-packaged optics was described by Huang arsenic indispensable to AI infrastructure during Nvidia's 2025 GTC conference. Earlier this year, Nvidia enactment $4 cardinal into Coherent and Lumentum, firms whose exertion handles the conversion of information betwixt optical and electrical formats.

Corning, which has been producing optical fibre since 1970, has seen its optical communications conception go its largest and fastest-growing business. The conception recorded first-quarter nett income of $1.85 billion, a 36% summation twelvemonth implicit year, driven by request for fibre products tied to AI information halfway construction. Two further hyperscaler customers — beyond Meta — person besides entered into semipermanent proviso agreements with Corning, each akin successful standard and magnitude to the up-to-$6 cardinal woody with Meta announced earlier this year.

Wednesday's announcement coincides with a Corning capitalist time held astatine the New York Stock Exchange, 1 time up of the company's 175th anniversary.