3M announced a major planned expansion of U.S. manufacturing capacity for its 3M Expanded Beam Optical (EBO) interconnect technology, an optical connectivity solution engineered to improve deployment speed, reliability, and operational efficiency within AI data centers.
The expansion will include adding new advanced manufacturing equipment and additional production space to support increasing global demand.
"Key customers understand the benefits of our EBO technology, and with infrastructure scaling at an unprecedented pace, data center customers need optical connectivity solutions that can deploy quickly and operate reliably at massive scale," said Alex An, vice president, Data Center Vertical Business for 3M. "By expanding our manufacturing capacity for 3M Expanded Beam Optical technology, 3M is helping to ensure our customers have the high-performance interconnect solutions they need to build and scale the AI data centers that are powering the digital economy."
This investment will also strengthen 3M's ability to support customers across the data center ecosystem—including hyperscalers, optical network equipment providers, and cable assembly partners—while expanding our production capacity. 3M EBO is in mass production and has been commercially available since late 2024.
3M Expanded Beam Optical solutions use the company's material science expertise to enable durable, dust-resistant optical connections designed for high-density computing environments.
