By Kevin Ellis for Business North Carolina
A $6 billion agreement for Corning to supply Facebook owner Meta Platforms with fiber-optic cable for its AI data centers could pay huge dividends in Hickory.
Corning shares jumped more than 17% in early morning trading on Tuesday to a new 52-week high after the announcement. Shares of the Corning, New York-based company have more than doubled over the past year, bolstered by soaring sales of cable to data centers.
To support the deal, Corning plans to expand manufacturing capabilities in North Carolina, including a significant capacity expansion at its optical cable manufacturing facility in Hickory where Meta will serve as the anchor customer, Corning said today.
The company now employs more than 5,000 people here, and that is likely to be closer to 6,000 as the Meta expansion kicks in. CEO Wendell Weeks said N.C. employment would “increase Corning’s employment levels in the state by 15 to 20%, and help sustain a highly skilled workforce of more than 5,000 — including the scientists, engineers, and production teams at two of the world’s largest optical fiber and cable manufacturing facilities. ”
He added that the partnership “reflects Corning’s commitment to develop, innovate, and manufacture the critical technologies that power next-generation data centers here in the U.S. … Together with Meta, we’re strengthening domestic supply chains and helping ensure that advanced data centers are built using U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing.”
Besides Hickory, Corning has fiber manufacturing facilities in the Catawba County town of Newton, Wilmington, Winston-Salem and Concord. The headquarters of its optical communications is in Charlotte.
In November, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, said it would spend $600 billion through 2028 to build out artificial intelligence-related infrastructure, such as data centers, in the U.S. Meta plans to build 30 data centers, including 26 in the U.S. It operates a center in Forest City in Rutherford County.
In October, Corning said it would invest as much as $268 million in expanding its operations at the Trivium Corporate Center in Catawba County. The expansion includes adding at least 132 jobs, which pay an average annual salary of more than $65,000 a year.
“This is one of the primary commitments they have been working on that facilitated” the expansion at the Trivium center, says Scott Millar, president of Catawba County Economic Development.
Corning’s plans will make the Hickory facility the largest fiber-optic plant in the world, Weeks said in an interview today with CNBC.
“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 made glass encasements for inventor Thomas Edison’s lightbulbs starting in the late 1870s. In 1970, three Corning scientists invented optical fiber, revolutionalizing the way people connect, communicate and conduct business. Optical fiber uses light signals to carry voice, data and video information at nearly the speed of light, at a low loss of energy.
Demand for Corning’s fiber has skyrocketed in part because AI data centers require more fiber than traditional cloud computing infrastructure. Revenue in Corning’s optical communications business, which includes fiber, jumped 33% in the third quarter to $1.65 billion, while total sales rose 14% to $4.27 billion. Corning said in its earnings release that enterprise sales of optical communications soared 58% in the quarter, “driven by the continued strong adoption of Corning’s new Gen AI products,” according to CNBC.