Shares of Corning and Qualcomm jumped on Tuesday, pulling a broad swath of AI-related stocks higher after the two companies announced separate infrastructure agreements that bolstered investor confidence in sustained data center spending.
Corning, the specialty glassmaker whose fiber-optic products have become central to AI data center buildouts, rose 8% on the day, extending its year-to-date gain to 90%. The company said it is entering into a multibillion-dollar partnership with Verizon to manufacture fiber-optic cables for AI connectivity.
The Verizon deal follows a similar multibillion-dollar agreement Corning struck with Amazon in June. That came just a month after Nvidia committed to invest up to $3.2 billion in Corning to help fund three new fiber-optic manufacturing facilities in North Carolina and Texas.
Qualcomm, meanwhile, disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it had issued warrants to Amazon, giving the cloud giant the right to acquire up to $4 billion in Qualcomm stock. The move is tied to a broader pact under which Amazon Web Services has agreed to purchase as much as $60 billion of Qualcomm’s server chips and related technology.
Chipmakers and infrastructure names surge
The deal news lifted a wide range of AI infrastructure plays. Intel shares climbed 9%, while Advanced Micro Devices advanced 6%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose 8%, and photonics company Coherent added 7%.
All of those companies have been standout performers for investors this year. HPE and AMD have more than doubled in value, and Intel has nearly tripled, as the AI buildout expands beyond Nvidia to encompass a broader ecosystem of chipmakers, networking vendors, and optical component suppliers.
Qualcomm’s data center ambitions
Speaking Tuesday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco, Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala said revenue from manufacturing chips for Amazon will begin to be recognized in the December quarter. He described the Amazon business as one of the “core components” that will help Qualcomm reach its $15 billion data center revenue target for fiscal 2029.
At its investor day in June, Qualcomm said it was working with two unnamed data center companies — one of which was Amazon. Palkhiwala said Tuesday that Qualcomm is “similarly proceeding with the other data center customer.”
AMD CFO Jean Hu also spoke at the Goldman event. She said the company now sees the total addressable market for its products reaching $3 trillion by 2030. That forecast was revised after CEO Lisa Su said in July that the semiconductor industry would reach $2 trillion through 2028.
Growing backlash clouds the boom
The rally comes at a time of intensifying public debate over AI infrastructure. According to a Gallup poll from May 2026, 71% of Americans oppose having data centers built in their communities. That sentiment is increasingly viewed as a financial risk — Anthropic is reportedly set to list negative public opinion toward AI and data centers as a risk factor in its forthcoming IPO prospectus.
Despite those headwinds, Tuesday’s moves suggest that investors remain focused on the scale of corporate spending commitments from major cloud providers and telecom operators.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/08/ai-infrastructure-stocks-rally-on-deal-from-qualcomm-and-corning.html
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