Meta Pledges $6 Billion to Corning by 2030 for Fiber-Optic Cable Purchases

Amid the global AI boom, Meta is accelerating its large-scale data center expansion to secure a competitive edge. To do so, the tech giant is turning to Corning Inc., a 175-year-old U.S. glass manufacturer.

According to CNBC, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks stated at the company’s cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina, that Meta has pledged up to $6 billion (approximately RMB 41.79 billion) to Corning by 2030 for fiber-optic cable procurement for its AI data centers.

To meet the growing demand from Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other tech giants, Corning is expanding the factory, which will become the largest fiber-optic cable production facility in the world once completed.

Fiber optics are expected to gradually replace copper cables inside server racks. Weeks noted that as the number of GPUs per rack reaches hundreds, the switch to fiber will be inevitable.

Corning’s stock has surged more than 75% over the past year, with optical communications now its largest and fastest-growing business segment. Having survived the rise and fall of the internet bubble, Corning is now riding the wave of the next-generation data center boom, alongside many suppliers, to meet historic demand.