Origen Resources Inc. (CSE:ORGN, FSE:4VXA)
A. RARE EARTHS BEGIN HERE. ORIGINATING NEW OPPORTUNITY IN BRAZIL AND BEYOND. B. Building the Next Rare Earth District – Starting in Brazil
A 175-year-old manufacturer that once supplied glass for Thomas Edison’s original lightbulb is now emerging as an unlikely powerhouse in the artificial intelligence boom, riding the wave of data center fiber-optic connectivity solutions. Its stock has surged 129% over the past 12 months, leaving Nvidia—the undisputed king of AI hardware—in the dust with its meager 8% return during the same period.
Corning—the century-old company best known for supplying glass for Apple’s iPhones—has now found its biggest opportunity in data center optical communications. As AI computing clusters continue to scale up, data transmission bottlenecks are replacing raw computing power as the new critical constraint. Corning’s fiber-optic solutions happen to sit right at this strategic choke point.
Fiber Replaces Copper: The Inevitable Path for the Era of Massive Computing
Nvidia’s NVLink 72 data center rack integrates 72 GPUs, 36 CPUs, and various networking components, all connected by roughly two miles of copper cabling. However, the industry is accelerating its shift toward fiber optics—which offer faster transmission speeds and greater energy efficiency. Corning’s recently launched Multicore Fiber (MCF) product packs four cores into a single 125-micron strand of optical fiber, enabling data center operators to achieve the same performance as single-core solutions with just 25% of the cable count—a critical advantage for increasingly large and complex GPU clusters.
Corning notes that when clusters surpass 130,000 GPUs, an additional optical layer will be required, translating to more than 50% additional fiber content. Innovative products like MCF are key to helping operators control costs and maximize processing speeds as they scale up.
Billions in Orders from Tech Giants, Tenfold Capacity Expansion
In January, Corning announced a $6 billion multi-year agreement to supply optical connectivity solutions to Meta Platforms, followed by a similar blockbuster deal with Amazon in June. To fulfill these commitments (and others in the pipeline), Corning plans to expand its optical connectivity manufacturing capacity tenfold and has partnered with Nvidia to secure the necessary funding and technical expertise.
This strategic transformation is already clearly reflected in the company’s financial results. In the second quarter of 2026 (ended June 30), Corning generated $4.7 billion in total core revenue, a 17% increase year-over-year. Its optical communications business contributed $2.1 billion of that total, growing at a much faster 32% clip, with AI-related sales nearly doubling. The segment’s net income surged 77% year-over-year to $438 million, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the company’s $680 million in core net income—underscoring its emergence as the primary earnings driver.
Target: Doubling Revenue to $40 Billion by 2030
Corning expects to reach approximately $20 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026 and believes it can double that figure to $40 billion by 2030. This ambitious outlook has kept the market highly optimistic about its long-term growth trajectory.
On the valuation front, based on trailing-12-month adjusted earnings of $2.87 per share, Corning currently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of approximately 44.5—higher than Nvidia’s 30. However, Wall Street projects earnings of $4.28 per share for 2027, translating to a forward P/E of just about 29.9. If the company succeeds in doubling revenue by 2030 as guided, earnings could expand in tandem, potentially making the valuation even more attractive.
For investors, Corning’s stock price over the next few months may be subject to uncertainty. But for those willing to hold through 2030, as AI infrastructure investment continues to unfold, this century-old glass giant’s fiber-optic growth story is just beginning to write its next chapter. Of course, converting its order pipeline into revenue and earnings still depends on flawless execution—and each quarterly report from here on will be an important milestone to watch.
