Corning Q2 Optical Communication Grows by 32%

Corning Inc. announced its Q2 2026 financial report on July 28th. Overall core sales increased by 17% year-on-year to $4.74 billion, and core earnings per share increased by 30% to $0.78. Among them, the optical communication business performed particularly well, with sales increasing by 32% year-on-year to 2.07 billion US dollars and net profit increasing by 77% year-on-year to 438 million US dollars, setting a quarterly profit record for this business department.

Optical communication business: AI driven strong growth

In the optical communication business, enterprise network sales increased by 65% year-on-year, with Gen AI product sales almost doubling. Corning stated that demand for generative AI products remains strong and orders are accelerating. The company pointed out that the optical communication business is currently driven by Scale Out, and there are greater opportunities in the future in the fields of Scale Up and Photonics.

Wendell P. Weeks, CEO of Corning, stated, “We continue to deepen our long-term customer relationships with industry leaders, as evidenced by our recent collaborations with Amazon and NVIDIA.”

Recent cooperation with important clients

In the second quarter, Amazon announced a multi-year, multi billion dollar agreement with Corning to supply fiber optic, fiber optic, and connectivity solutions for Amazon’s expanded data center infrastructure across the United States.

NVIDIA and Corning announced a long-term partnership, with Corning expanding its US optical connectivity manufacturing capacity tenfold and increasing its US fiber optic capacity by over 50% to meet the accelerated demand brought about by AI factory construction.

Outlook for Optical Communication Services

Corning stated that in the long run, driven by FTTH deployment and data center interconnection demand, operator business is expected to grow in the mid single digits. The company also pointed out that optical Scale Up is a new technology that may present an exponential adoption curve. Although time and scale are difficult to predict, based on discussions with customers, Corning believes that there is a $10 billion market opportunity for optical communication business by 2030.

In the field of CPO/NPO, Corning is introducing optics into the “box interior” – passive photonics plays a key role in managing optical signal transmission. With the development of silicon photonics optical engines, all passive photonics components that manage optical signal transmission will be integrated into the box. Corning expects that the optical content per GPU will increase by 1.3 to 1.5 times by 2028.

Third quarter outlook

The management expects core sales to increase by approximately 16% year-on-year in the third quarter, ranging from 4.9 billion to 5 billion US dollars; Core earnings per share increased by approximately 28% year-on-year, ranging from $0.85 to $0.89.