By Anthony Di Pizio
Publication Date: 2026-10-08 15:06:00
Graphics processing units (GPUs) are the data center chips that do most of the heavy lifting in artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Nvidia (NVDA -0.68%) supplies the world’s best GPUs, and sales have been so strong that the company’s market capitalization has grown from $360 billion to a whopping $5.8 trillion since the start of 2023.
However, it will be hard for Nvidia to replicate those returns going forward because of its enormous size, which is why its stock has only mustered a 28% gain so far in 2026 (at the market close on Monday, Oct. 5). Corning (GLW -4.13%) stock, on the other hand, has rocketed higher by 82% this year.
Corning is a 175-year-old glass manufacturer with a wealth of experience serving the electronics industry. It supplied the glass for Thomas Edison’s original lightbulb in 1879, and today, it makes the glass for all of Apple‘s iPhones. But the company is now at the center of the AI boom thanks to its fiber-optic data center cables, and here’s why its stock probably isn’t done going higher over the long term.
Image source: Getty Images.
The shift to optical fiber presents a big opportunity
The typical Nvidia NVLink 72 data center rack includes 72 GPUs, 36 central processing units (CPUs), and various networking components, which are connected using two miles of copper cables. However, there is an ongoing shift toward fiber-optic cables instead, because they can transmit data much faster and with better energy efficiency — a great combination…