3M Doubles U.S. Optical Fiber Capacity to Support AI Data Centers

3M said it will expand U.S. manufacturing capacity for its Expanded Beam Optical (EBO) interconnect technology as demand from AI data centers increases. The company said the investment will more than double production capacity and add new equipment and floor space.

The expansion is aimed at hyperscale data center operators, where large clusters of servers must exchange data at high speed. 3M said the technology has been in commercial production since late 2024 and is being deployed across data center environments.

“Data center customers need optical connectivity solutions that can deploy quickly and operate reliably at massive scale,” said Alex An, vice president of 3M’s data center business.

AI workloads are driving changes in how data centers are built. Larger clusters increase the number of physical connections required between systems, which raises the importance of installation time and ongoing reliability.