Corning’s optical cable factory in Hickory will benefit from “significant capacity expansion,” where Meta will serve as the anchor customer, according to the Jan. 27 press release. In October 2025, Corning announced plans to invest between $170 million and $267.9 million to expand its manufacturing operations in Hickory. “For the full year, our enterprise business, where we capture sales for inside the data center grew 61% year-over-year, and the hyperscale data center portion of our business grew significantly faster,” Schlesinger added. “We also saw year-over-year sales growth in our carrier networks business, which was up 15% for the full year. “We’re doing so in several ways, including changing how we develop data center sites, establishing strategic partnerships, contracting cloud capacity and establishing new ownership structures for some of our large data center sites,” Li said.