/ From： / Review：2
NVIDIA and Corning have entered into a multi-year commercial and technological collaboration. Under the agreement, Corning will build three new state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in North Carolina and Texas dedicated to producing optical connectivity solutions for NVIDIA, creating more than 3,000 high-paying jobs.
Corning plans to boost its optical connectivity manufacturing capacity in the United States by 10 times and increase fiber-optic production by over 50%. This expansion directly responds to surging demand driven by the accelerated construction of AI factories. The two companies state that modern AI workloads require thousands of NVIDIA GPUs, creating unprecedented scale requirements for high-performance optical fibers, connectors, and photonic components.
Corning’s expanded capacity will supply optical interconnects for hyperscale data centers, enabling large-scale deployment of NVIDIA-accelerated computing. Modern AI workloads demand tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs—requiring an unprecedented volume of high-performance optical fibers and optical interconnect technologies to transmit data at extreme speed and scale. As AI factories grow larger and more numerous, optical interconnects have become a critical component of AI infrastructure.
Corning, the inventor of low-loss optical fiber and a leading innovator in glass science and optical physics, is well-positioned to meet this demand at scale.
Industry sources indicate the core technical route of this partnership focuses on co-packaged optics (CPO). NVIDIA is expected to fully replace traditional copper cables with Corning optical fibers in its AI rack-scale systems.
According to Fiber Online, NVIDIA first announced a collaboration with Corning on CPO optical components at its 2025 GTC conference. The move aims to accelerate the commercialization and breakthrough of CPO technology while securing and locking in core supply chain resources.
Earlier this year, NVIDIA also announced a combined $4 billion investment in Coherent and Lumentum. Multiple signals show NVIDIA is fully positioning itself to accelerate the rollout of next-generation optical interconnect solutions.
Meanwhile, in January this year, Meta committed $6 billion to help Corning expand its fiber optic cable plant in Hickory, North Carolina, a project expected to create approximately 1,000 jobs. The latest partnership with NVIDIA further strengthens Corning’s strategic position in AI infrastructure. In a press release, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks stated that everything NVIDIA is doing is not only pivotal to the future of AI but also to America’s advanced manufacturing workforce. He noted that this collaboration proves AI is not just a technology story but also a manufacturing story.
