Corning CEO Wendell Weeks at Corning’s cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina, on January 9, 2026.
Magdalena Petrova | CNBC
Amazon paying corning It’s the latest mega-deal involving two companies at the center of the artificial intelligence boom, spending billions of dollars on fiber optics to power and connect America’s rapidly expanding data centers.
The agreement, announced Monday, will last for several years and will create 1,000 jobs at Corning’s North Carolina plant, the companies said. Corning fiber optic cables and networking solutions are becoming an essential part of AI infrastructure by enabling high-speed connectivity between data centers and the racks and chips they house.
Corning stock soared 4% on Monday. Amazon’s inventory remained largely unchanged.
“Amazon’s data centers power services that millions of people and businesses rely on every day,” the companies said in a press release. “Corning fiber optics is a critical part of that infrastructure, and together these investments will help power the U.S. economy.”
The agreement also expands Corning’s training program for fiber optic technicians in North Carolina. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said in a press release that the company’s investments in the state have created more than 26,000 jobs. Last year, Amazon pledged to spend $10 billion on a new data center in North Carolina.
New demands from AI are energizing 175-year-old Corning as hyperscalers and AI labs race to meet the exploding need for computing power. Corning stock has more than doubled so far this year and is up nearly sixfold since the end of 2023.
In May, Nvidia The company has committed to investing up to $3.2 billion in Corning as part of a deal that includes the glass company building three new advanced manufacturing plants dedicated to the chipmaker. And in January, Meta announced it would spend up to $6 billion as a lead customer to help Corning build an optical cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina. The expansion is expected to create approximately 1,000 jobs.
Corning is well known for manufacturing all kinds of display glass. appleiPhone, but optical communications remains the company’s largest and fastest-growing business. Since inventing fiber optics for long-distance communications in 1970, Corning has provided millions of miles of cable from every major company to connect racks in AI data centers.
The Trump administration is asking Big Tech to onshore as many stages of the AI supply chain as possible, and Corning is helping meet that need. The bulk of Corning’s business is done overseas, and CEO Wendell Weeks told CNBC earlier this year that that view hasn’t changed. But he also said, “Hyperscalers are going to be our biggest customers next year.”
“This agreement with Amazon is an important milestone for Corning and for American manufacturing,” Weeks said in a press release Monday, adding that it “leads us on the path to building a resilient U.S. manufacturing base.”
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