Corning Says Its Gen AI Fibre Sales Doubled in Q3

Corning’s optical fibre business grew 44% in the third quarter, and the US glass maker says sales of its products for generative AI data centres more than doubled from a year earlier. Its results release, also filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 27 October, puts core sales at $5.08bn, up 19%.

Core figures are Corning’s own adjusted measures. On standard accounting (GAAP), sales were $4.86bn, up 18%.

In brief

Optical Communications sales rose 44% to $2.38bn, and 15% from the second quarter.
Corning says Gen AI product sales grew by more than 100% and that it signed four long-term, multibillion-dollar agreements in the quarter, including with Verizon and AT&T.
It expects fourth-quarter core sales of $5.2bn to $5.3bn, while its solar business is growing more slowly than it had planned.

Optical sales led the quarter

Optical Communications, which makes fibre, cable and connectivity kit, is now Corning’s largest segment. Its sales reached $2,379m in the third quarter, and its net income rose 80% to $532m. Within the segment, sales to enterprise networks, the category that includes data centres, rose 84%.

Corning says “Gen AI product sales” grew by more than 100%, but it does not give a dollar figure for them. Chief executive Wendell Weeks said the company was able to “double our Gen AI sales year over year in the quarter, outpacing GPU unit growth”.

That claim matters because AI clusters link thousands of processors, and much of the traffic between racks and buildings runs over fibre. TSN has reported that research firm TrendForce expects optical fibre prices to stay high as AI demand outruns supply until 2028.

Corning also said it signed four long-term, multibillion-dollar agreements in the quarter and named two of the customers, Verizon and AT&T. Verizon has already said it buys fibre from Corning for its AI network deals, including the dark fibre agreement it signed with AWS.

Group profit rose faster than sales. Core earnings per share were $0.91, up 36%, and GAAP earnings per share were $0.78, up 56%. Core gross margin rose 1.5 percentage points to 40.5%, and core operating margin rose 3.1 points to 22.7%. Adjusted free cash flow was $661m, after capital spending of more than half a billion dollars.

Solar lags, and the outlook

Not every new business is moving as fast. Solar sales rose 37%, but Corning says the ramp is happening “at a slower pace than anticipated”, and it points to a US Section 232 trade action. It still says it is building a solar revenue stream of more than $3bn.

Glass Innovations, which includes its display and specialty glass, had sales of $1,506m. Automotive sales were $470m.

For the fourth quarter, Corning expects core sales of $5.2bn to $5.3bn, about 19% higher than a year earlier, and core earnings per share of $0.96 to $1.00, up about 36%. It repeated the goal of its Springboard plan: to take annualised sales from a $20bn run rate to $40bn by the end of 2030.

AI fibre is carrying Corning’s growth plan

The numbers show how much of Corning’s plan now rests on one customer group. Optical sales grew more than twice as fast as the company as a whole, and the segment’s net income rose 80%. The enterprise line, up 84%, is where data centre fibre sits.

Two things should be kept apart. First, “Gen AI product sales” is Corning’s own category, with no dollar figure, so readers cannot check how big it is or how it is defined. Second, the four multibillion-dollar agreements are multi-year supply deals, not revenue already booked. Corning named only two of the four buyers.

The carriers’ role is also worth noting. Verizon, at least, is buying fibre partly to lease capacity to cloud and AI companies, so some of Corning’s demand depends on carriers winning AI contracts of their own. That links Corning’s outlook to network spending further down the chain, alongside new optical switching start-ups such as Salience Labs and data centre builders such as CoreWeave, which is extending its network into Asia.

Solar is the weak point. A business Corning wants to reach more than $3bn is growing more slowly than planned, and part of the reason is US trade policy that Corning cannot control. The test for the Springboard target is whether fibre can keep growing at this pace while solar catches up.