Nvidia is at the center of the artificial intelligence (AI) universe, thanks to its industry-leading graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the primary chips used in training and inference workloads.
The company is experiencing more demand for its chips than it can possibly supply, which is boosting its revenue and earnings, resulting in a 20% gain in its stock this year so far
But one under-the-radar semiconductor stock is doing even better. Corning (NYSE: GLW) was founded in 1851, and it has manufactured glass for some of the world’s most pivotal products, from Thomas Edison’s original lightbulb to Apple’s iPhone. But its stock is up 120% this year because of soaring demand for its fiber-optic cables, which improve processing speeds in the data centers used by the AI industry.
Since January alone, Corning has signed several multibillion-dollar deals with AI customers like Meta Platforms and even Nvidia, which could see its optical communications revenue grow by several orders of magnitude in the coming years. The shift to fiber-optic cables represents a major opportunity The AI hardware stack is complex. Many operators configure Nvidia’s chips in the company’s NVLink-72 data center rack, which includes 72 GPUs, 36 central processing units (CPUs), Ethernet switches, and other networking equipment.