Molex and Prysmian enter fiber AI data center supply pact
Key Highlights
- The 10-year agreement aims to expand fiber cable production in the U.S., supporting the AI data center industry’s growth.
- Prysmian will invest $1.43 billion to double its fiber capacity and create 600 U.S. jobs, boosting domestic manufacturing.
- Molex’s partnership with Prysmian enhances supply chain resilience and supports rapid customer buildouts in data centers.
- The collaboration leverages Prysmian’s technical expertise and Molex’s co-packaged optics capabilities to address industry bottlenecks.
- Both companies are positioning themselves to capitalize on the long-term growth of inside data center markets and digital modernization trends.
Prysmian’s fiber manufacturing reach
Prysmian operates 112 manufacturing facilities across 50 countries globally, including over 20 plants in North America. Key US production sites are heavily localized; Massachusetts is developing a submarine cable facility in Somerset, while nearby plants in Claremont and Lexington, NC manufacture optical fiber.
Molex and Prysmian entered into a 10-year supply agreement to address the AI data center industry’s need for expanded fiber connectivity, giving the industry segment another joint source.
Through a $1.43 billion investment, Prysmian will extend fiber cable production in plants across the U.S., including the glass preform stage, doubling Prysmian's domestic fiber capacity.
In addition to enhancing capacity, Prysmian expects to create 1,000 jobs worldwide, including 600 jobs across U.S. manufacturing sites.
For Molex, the agreement is a key piece of its U.S. expansion and represents one pillar of the company's broader global strategy to scale fiber cable supply.
Joe Nelligan, CEO of Molex, said its agreement with Prysmian will help it support its mutual customers.
"For Molex, this represents a strategic expansion in the U.S., bringing increased capacity to support the growing demand for data center solutions with the quality and reliability our customers expect,” he said.
An adaptable agreement
A key feature of the Molex/Prysmian agreement is its adaptability.
Access to expanded fiber cable capacity will enable hyperscalers and data center architects to secure supply through Molex, supporting continuity as market conditions change.
The agreement also accelerates capacity scaling in the U.S. to support rapid customer buildouts and aggressive market growth while delivering increased supply chain optionality and resilience through diversified sourcing for fiber connectivity deployments.
Molex said that by pairing its data center connectivity expertise with Prysmian's manufacturing scale and technology capabilities, both companies are uniquely positioned to help customers reduce risk, improve lead-time reliability and support long-term planning for critical deployments.
Prysmian, likewise, sees its deal with Molex as part of an overall set of new agreements and commercial initiatives with hyperscalers and data center infrastructure providers. This market segment is forecast to be valued at $11 billion on an incremental basis up to 2035, versus the 2025 baseline, including $1 billion of yearly revenues from 2031.
Massimo Battaini, CEO of Prysmian, said its agrement with Molex "and capacity investments strengthen our leadership in data centers, with every part of our business benefiting—from upgrading electricity grids and supplying electrical cable solutions to leveraging our expertise in long-haul digital connections and advancing our role in submarine telecom deployment.”
Raising capacity
To support this growth, Prysmian will implement a significant expansion in capacity for optical cables and fiber, which will more than double fiber capacity in the U.S. versus the current baseline.
The capacity expansion and agreements build on Prysmian’s data center strengths in both digital and energy connections. They will now bring the company’s fiber and cables into the “inside” data center space.
As a long-term trend, the inside data center space will drive significant growth in the years ahead, thanks to structural modernization cycles to enhance performance and energy efficiency, AI-driven architecture shifts, and upgrades to fiber density.
These long-term trends are an opportunity to utilize Prysmian’s technical know-how as a leader in fiber technology, as well as its U.S. manufacturing footprint.
Molex can also combine its larger cadre of fiber cabling capabilities via Prysmian with its growing expertise in co-packaged optics (CPO).
In addition to its recently completed acquisition of fiber‑to‑chip connectivity provider Teramount, Molex expanded its CPO interconnect toolkit designed to eliminate the most critical bottlenecks in AI cluster scaling.
While the Molex and Prysmian partnership is new, the companies are hardly alone in their desires to align capabilities to address the data center segment.
Fellow fiber vendor Corning has also been pursuing similar arrangements that combine its expertise in fiber and emerging areas like co-packaged optics (CPO). Corning has secured multi-billion-dollar partnerships to supply and manufacture advanced optical fiber and connectivity solutions to address the bandwidth, scale, and density requirements of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
The fiber vendor has struck partnerships on a few key data center vectors: service providers (Lumen), data center/cloud providers (Amazon and Meta), GPUs (NVIDIA), silicon (Broadcom) and connectors (US Conec).
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About the Author
Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategy of Lightwave across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products.
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