Inside the American factory proving U.S. manufacturing still powers the future
Inside Corning’s North Carolina factory, workers are producing the optical fiber that has become a critical piece of the infrastructure powering the AI boom. (Footage courtesy of Corning)
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The race to build more data centers for artificial intelligence is driving demand for more than chips and electricity.
It also requires vast networks of high-speed optical fiber to move data between servers, putting one of America’s oldest manufacturers at the center of the boom.
Corning, the New York-based company best known to many Americans for its kitchenware and smartphone glass, is ramping up optical-fiber production as the data-center buildout accelerates. Nearly 175 years after its founding, the company is supplying a critical piece of the infrastructure behind the AI boom, the glass connections linking the servers inside the facilities powering it.
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A Corning employee handles optical fiber as part of the manufacturing process that supports broadband and telecommunications infrastructure.(Courtesy of Corning)
The company is partnering with NVIDIA to build three advanced optical-manufacturing facilities in North Carolina and Texas. The project is expected to create more than 3,000 jobs and expand Corning’s U.S. optical-manufacturing capacity tenfold.
The investment offers a window into how the data-center boom is reaching well beyond the massive facilities themselves, creating demand for American factories and workers who make the equipment needed to keep them connected.
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At a time when many Americans worry that artificial intelligence will replace human workers, Corning chairman, CEO and president Wendell Weeks said the opposite is happening inside one of the nation’s oldest manufacturers.
“AI is a huge job creator, and it’s a huge manufacturing job creator,” Weeks told Fox News Digital.
He said demand for Corning’s optical fiber is fueling the company’s fastest period of growth in nearly two centuries.
“As a 175-year-old company, we’re going through our fastest growth period,” Weeks said. “We will probably double our size over the coming years and almost all of our new hires will be in advanced manufacturing, a significant part of them right here in America.”
The rapid buildout of data centers and other infrastructure could intensify an existing shortage of skilled workers as construction demand grows.(Patrick T. Fallon/
That growth is already taking shape on Corning’s factory floors.
“As the world develops and tells us what it needs, we’re right there at the forefront,” Emily Capek, planning supervisor at Corning’s Wilmington, North Carolina, facility, told Fox News Digital.
She said employees are seeing firsthand how demand for AI platforms is driving demand for Corning’s products.
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Inside the data centers powering the AI boom, Corning’s optical fiber helps move enormous volumes of information between the servers and chips doing the computing.(Mikala Compton/The Austin American-Statesman/
“Right now, the world needs our glass optical fiber to support the AI demand we’re seeing,” Capek said. “It’s a great feeling on the factory floor.”
While much of the attention surrounding AI has focused on chipmakers and software developers, companies like Corning are supplying the glass technology that connects those systems and supports the industry’s rapid expansion.
“The common story is AI being powered by chips, but actually, those chips are connected by glass,” Weeks said.
