Tag: Prysmian

  • Prysmian’s 24-Fiber Hollow-Core Cable Makes AI’s 90 km Reach a Supply Question

    Prysmian’s 24-Fiber Hollow-Core Cable Makes AI’s 90 km Reach a Supply Question

    TL;DR · 30-second read

    The Short Version

    Light moves faster through air than through glass. That is why cable maker Prysmian and fiber developer Relativity Networks are building cable with hollow strands, which carry data nearly 50% faster.

    They have now shown it can be reliably blown through plastic tubes at up to a brisk walking pace.

    Why care? Buildings that run artificial intelligence together must sit close enough to work in step. This cable could stretch that limit from about 37 miles to 56, making land and electricity easier to find. The companies have not said how much they can make or what it costs.

    Prysmian said in a July 22, 2026 press release that it and Relativity Networks had completed high-density cable deployment tests with conduit manufacturer Dura-Line. At Dura-Line’s test facility in Clinton, Tennessee, a cable using Relativity’s ChronoCore hollow-core fibers was installed at jetting speeds of up to 350 feet per minute. Jetting uses compressed air to carry a cable through a narrow duct.

    Prysmian also said its Claremont, North Carolina plant has made a 10mm-diameter cable containing 24 hollow-core fibers that meets customer attenuation requirements, meaning limits on signal loss. The company said it is scaling fiber production, including through investments in its Eindhoven facility, and that hollow-core cables are available now for AI data center deployment.

    Executive Summary

    Hollow-core fiber guides light through an air-filled channel instead of solid glass, and the companies say this moves data nearly 50% faster than conventional fiber. They argue the speed gain could extend the maximum distance between data centers in a synchronized cluster from 60 km to 90 km (56 miles).

    The July announcement addresses a more practical concern: whether this specialized fiber can be packed into a dense cable, manufactured in a commercial plant and installed with the microduct methods used in network construction. Microducts are small protective tubes that carry fiber cable. The reported results point toward yes on each count, although the published evidence includes few performance details.

    That shifts attention to commercial questions. A single 24-fiber cable on a 90 km route would require 2,160 km of hollow-core fiber, and Prysmian and Relativity have not disclosed production volumes, pricing or named customers. For AI infrastructure planners, those figures will help determine whether the extended reach can be built into real site plans.

    Why 24 Fibers Turns 90 km Into a Supply Question

    The reach argument comes down to timing. Data centers working as a synchronized cluster can only be so far apart before signals take too long to arrive. The companies put that limit at 60 km with conventional glass fiber. Because hollow-core fiber carries data nearly 50% faster, they say the limit could extend to 90 km, a 50% increase in reach.

    Relativity CTO Rodrigo Amezcua Correa set out the test for the technology: “A breakthrough fiber technology only matters if it can be manufactured, cabled, and deployed at scale.” The announcement offers evidence on each step, at differing levels of maturity. Production is being scaled, a commercial plant has put 24 fibers into a 10mm cable, and installation reached up to 350 feet per minute, or about 107 meters per minute. At that top speed, a continuous 90 km pull would take roughly 14 hours. Real builds proceed in segments and at varying speeds, but the figure suggests that placement speed is unlikely to be the main limit on a project of this length.

    Fiber volume is a harder constraint to assess. By our arithmetic, one 24-fiber cable over 90 km uses 2,160 km of hollow-core fiber, while two separate routes for resilience would use 4,320 km, before spares or additional cables. An operator planning a multi-site AI cluster needs to know whether that quantity can be delivered on schedule and at what price. Those are now the most consequential unknowns for buyers, even though the companies describe the cable as available now. Prysmian’s Eindhoven investment signals an intent to add capacity, but no output figure accompanies it.

    What the Clinton Test Does and Does Not Establish

    The jetting result has practical value. Compressed-air installation is a demanding step for a cable, and carrying it out with a commercial conduit manufacturer moves the work closer to field conditions than a fiber measurement alone. Combining Relativity’s fiber with Prysmian’s existing Sirocco cable architecture also builds on an established cable design instead of an entirely new one.

    The broader claims go further than the disclosed data. The headline says the companies “deploy” the cable, while the body describes tests at a dedicated facility. Those results are presented as showing readiness for real-world deployment, yet no duct length, route profile or post-installation signal-loss figure has been published. “Highest density” is also a comparison with the companies’ own hollow-core cables, not an industry benchmark. The cable “delivers the expected optical performance” and meets “customer attenuation requirements,” but neither phrase comes with a number.

    None of this undercuts the milestone, which is a reasonable step 15 months into the partnership. It does separate what has been shown, a successful installation test and plant production, from what still needs proof: sustained performance on long operating routes carrying live traffic.

    A Wider Map, Not More Power

    The siting implication is the strongest commercial argument. On a simple geometric view, raising the radius around an existing campus from 60 km to 90 km expands the potential search area by about 2.25 times. Actual fiber routes follow roads and rights-of-way rather than straight lines, so the usable gain would be smaller and would vary by location. Even so, more candidate sites matter to operators that the companies describe as competing for scarce land, power and water.

    A larger search area does not create any of those resources, however. A site 90 km away still needs its own electricity supply, permits and water plan, as well as a fiber route that can be built. Hollow-core fiber makes more locations eligible for a synchronized cluster without making any given site viable. The economic test is whether a site in the 60-to-90 km band offers enough advantage to justify any added cost for specialty fiber on that route.

    If the economics work, likely beneficiaries include operators with campuses near the current distance limit, landowners and power-rich areas in that wider band, and suppliers of the cable and conduit. Prysmian’s Claremont production also matters for a market it describes as the major US data center market, since cable made in the US may simplify logistics for domestic projects. How much advantage that offers depends in part on where the fiber itself will be produced, which the companies have not fully laid out.

    Background

    Prysmian, a Milan-based cable maker, formed its partnership with Relativity Networks to industrialize hollow-core fiber 15 months before this announcement, according to the company. In the arrangement described, Relativity contributes its ChronoCore fiber technology, while Prysmian provides high-density cable design and manufacturing and is scaling fiber production.

    Hollow-core fiber has drawn interest because AI data center networks are sensitive to latency, the time data takes to travel between points. If operators can place synchronized facilities farther apart, they can look beyond the immediate area of an existing campus for land, power and water, provided the specialized fiber can be produced and installed economically.

    Sources

    Source: Hollow Core Fiber: Prysmian and Relativity Networks deploy their highest density HCF cable to date, Prysmian’s July 22, 2026 press release on high-density hollow-core cable testing with Dura-Line.

  • Molex-Prysmian 10-Year Pact Shows AI Fiber Supply Starts at the Glass Preform

    Molex-Prysmian 10-Year Pact Shows AI Fiber Supply Starts at the Glass Preform

    TL;DR · 30-second read

    The Short Version

    Two companies behind the cables inside the giant computer buildings that run artificial intelligence have signed a ten-year deal. Molex, a maker of connectors, will supply its customers with glass-fiber cable made by Prysmian, one of the world’s biggest cable makers.

    Prysmian says it will spend $1.43 billion to more than double how much fiber it makes in the United States, adding about 600 American jobs. The money reaches all the way back to the first step: making the glass rods that fiber strands are pulled from.

    Artificial intelligence runs on light moving through these hair-thin threads, and big buyers now want supply promised a decade ahead.

    Molex and Prysmian have entered a 10-year supply agreement to expand fiber connectivity for AI data centers, Lightwave reported on July 21, 2026. Under the arrangement, hyperscalers (the largest cloud and internet operators) and data center builders can secure Prysmian fiber cable supply through Molex.

    Alongside the agreement, Prysmian will invest $1.43 billion to extend fiber cable production at U.S. plants, including the glass preform stage, which it says will more than double its domestic fiber capacity. The company expects to create 1,000 jobs worldwide, 600 of them at U.S. manufacturing sites.

    Executive Summary

    The deal pairs a connectivity specialist with one of the world’s largest cable manufacturers for a decade. Molex CEO Joe Nelligan called it “a strategic expansion in the U.S., bringing increased capacity to support the growing demand for data center solutions.” Prysmian CEO Massimo Battaini said the agreement and capacity investments “strengthen our leadership in data centers.”

    What makes the announcement more than a distribution tie-up is where the money goes. Prysmian’s investment reaches upstream to preform, the glass that every strand of fiber is drawn from. That is the step that determines whether new cable capacity is real or merely a reshuffling of existing output, and it is why a ten-year term makes sense for both sides.

    For data center buyers, the agreement adds another source of fiber connectivity in a market where Corning has already signed a string of large partnerships. For Prysmian, it marks a push from grid, long-haul and submarine cable into the fiber that runs inside data centers, a segment it forecasts will add $11 billion of value through 2035.

    Why AI Fiber Capacity Starts at the Glass Preform

    Optical fiber begins as a preform: a thick rod of ultra-pure glass that is heated and drawn into strands thinner than a human hair, which are then bundled and jacketed into cable. The sequence matters. A manufacturer can add cabling lines, but unless it buys glass from someone else, the amount of fiber it can ship is capped by how much preform it can make. So the most telling detail in this announcement is not the $1.43 billion figure itself but where it is spent: extending U.S. production “including the glass preform stage,” with the stated result of more than doubling Prysmian’s domestic fiber capacity.

    Doubling fiber output without more preform would simply move the constraint one step upstream. Glass-making capacity is a long-lived asset, and a commitment of this size is easier to underwrite against a long contract than against spot orders. The ten-year term lines up with that logic, and with Prysmian’s own planning horizon, which runs to 2035.

    The people affected are those who buy connectivity for AI clusters, where large numbers of processors and switches are linked by fiber. Customers who source through Molex gain access to supply backed by new glass capacity rather than a reallocation of existing cable. The broader lesson for buyers is practical: a fiber or connectivity supply promise is only as firm as the preform behind it, and where a supplier’s glass comes from is now a fair question in any procurement discussion.

    Molex Turns Itself Into a Route to Fiber Supply

    Molex is best known for connectors, not glass. The agreement repositions it as a channel through which hyperscalers can lock in fiber cable, with both companies stressing “supply chain optionality and resilience through diversified sourcing” and improved lead-time reliability. The company describes the deal as one pillar of a broader global strategy to scale fiber cable supply, which suggests Molex intends to add further sources rather than rely on one.

    The more interesting fit is with Molex’s work on co-packaged optics (CPO), which places optical connections directly beside a processor or switch chip instead of in pluggable modules at the edge of the equipment. That shortens the electrical path, which matters as AI systems push more data between chips. Molex recently completed its acquisition of Teramount, a fiber-to-chip connectivity provider, and has expanded its CPO interconnect toolkit. A vendor that controls both the connection at the chip and a long-term supply of the cable leading to it can offer customers a more complete package than either piece alone.

    Corning Has Already Drawn the Map

    Molex and Prysmian are following a pattern rather than inventing one. Corning has secured multi-billion-dollar partnerships across nearly every layer of the AI connectivity chain: a service provider (Lumen), cloud and data center operators (Amazon and Meta), GPU maker NVIDIA, chip designer Broadcom and connector maker US Conec. The common thread is fiber producers tying their manufacturing to the companies that design, buy and install AI infrastructure, years in advance.

    For buyers, a second vertically linked supply chain is useful in its own right: it provides an alternative, and with it some negotiating leverage, when demand is outrunning manufacturing. For Prysmian, the agreement extends a business built on power grid cable, long-haul digital links and submarine telecom into the “inside” data center market, which it expects to grow with modernization cycles for performance and energy efficiency, AI-driven architecture changes and higher fiber density.

    What the Numbers Do and Do Not Establish

    Several figures in the announcement are firm commitments: a ten-year agreement, a $1.43 billion investment, a doubling-plus of U.S. fiber capacity, and 1,000 expected jobs, 600 of them in the U.S. Others are forecasts. Prysmian values the data center segment at $11 billion on an incremental basis through 2035 compared with 2025, including $1 billion of yearly revenue from 2031. That is a projection of market opportunity, not contracted business.

    The capacity claim is also relative. “More than double” is measured against a current baseline that has not been quantified publicly, so the absolute amount of new fiber, and how much of it is earmarked for Molex customers, cannot yet be calculated. That does not weaken the direction of the deal; it limits how precisely anyone can size it.

    Background

    Prysmian is one of the world’s largest cable makers, operating 112 manufacturing facilities in 50 countries, including more than 20 plants in North America. Its U.S. footprint includes optical fiber plants in Claremont and Lexington and a submarine cable facility under development in Somerset, Massachusetts. Historically its data center business has centered on energy and long-distance digital connections, such as grid cables and long-haul fiber, rather than cabling inside the building.

    Molex is a connectivity manufacturer led by CEO Joe Nelligan. It has been building out co-packaged optics interconnect products and recently completed its acquisition of fiber-to-chip specialist Teramount. Demand for fiber inside data centers is being driven by modernization cycles aimed at performance and energy efficiency, AI-driven changes in system architecture and rising fiber density, the same forces behind Corning’s recent partnerships with cloud providers, chipmakers and connector firms.

    Sources

    Source: Molex and Prysmian enter fiber AI data center supply pact, Lightwave’s report on the companies’ 10-year fiber supply agreement and Prysmian’s $1.43 billion U.S. capacity expansion.