Meet the Brilliant AI Stock Obliterating Nvidia in 2026 With a Return of 44%
Key PointsNvidia stock is up 16% so far in 2026, but investors who bought Corning stock at the start of the year would be sitting on a return of 44% instead.
Corning Inc (GLW) is a company that manufactures glass, including fiber-optic cables used in data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Since early 2023, Nvidia (NVDA) has seen more demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) than it can supply, causing its market capitalization to skyrocket from $360 billion to over $5.2 trillion.
However, Nvidia's stock growth for 2026 is only 16%, making other data center hardware suppliers potentially more appealing. Corning has become a key player in the AI boom due to its fiber-optic data center cables. The company's Multicore Fiber (MCF) cable, which packs four cores into a single 125-micron strand of fiber, is four-times as dense as traditional cables and offers 75% fewer cables required for the same performance.
Major hyperscalers like Meta Platforms and Amazon have signed significant agreements with Corning for optical connectivity solutions. Corning's optical communications segment generated $2.4 billion in revenue in Q3 2026, a 44% increase, and core net income from this business surged by 80% year over year to $532 million. With a current P/E ratio of 40.6, Corning's stock appears more expensive than Nvidia's, but its projected growth to $40 billion by 2030 suggests it could be a bargain in four years, making it a strong candidate for a diversified investment portfolio.
Written by urgent.news from Motley Fool's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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