ROME — Prysmian struck a deal worth up to €5.5 billion with Molex. The agreement runs as long as 10 years. It includes a €550 million payment from Molex right away. The Italian cable maker will deliver optical cables for installation inside AI-driven data centers. Short sentence. Yet the numbers tell a longer story of surging demand that few suppliers can fully meet.
The pact announced Monday marks more than a single transaction. It anchors Prysmian’s bigger ambition to capture over €10 billion in added revenue from hyperscalers and data-center builders through 2035. Annual revenue from those sources could hit €1.1 billion starting in 2031. Reuters first detailed the terms and their link to AI infrastructure growth. But the arrangement also forces immediate action on capacity. Prysmian plans to spend €1.25 billion on expansions through 2031. That investment will more than double its optical-fiber output in the United States. And the company expects the program to generate more than 1,000 new jobs worldwide. Some 600 of them will sit in the U.S.
Data centers have become voracious consumers of fiber. AI workloads require vastly more internal connections than traditional server racks. One analysis found AI-specific designs need 36 times the fiber. Lead times for some products already stretch to a full year. Chinese producers such as Hengtong and FiberHome report order books filled deep into 2027. Prices for general fiber have climbed more than 15 percent in the past year. Tom’s Hardware laid out the shortage dynamics in May. Supply simply has not kept pace with the buildout.
Prysmian’s chief executive framed the Molex deal as pivotal. “This is a transformative moment for Prysmian’s Digital Solutions,” Massimo Battaini said in the company’s official release. The cables in question handle dense internal wiring. They link servers to switching gear inside the halls themselves rather than long-haul routes between sites. Molex, a connector specialist owned by Koch Inc., will integrate those cables into its own offerings for shared customers. Joe Nelligan, Molex’s chief executive, struck a note of mutual benefit. “We’re excited about this long-term agreement with Prysmian because it enables us to better support our mutual customers.” Those words appear in both PR Newswire and Prysmian’s press materials.
The upfront cash from Molex stands out. Most AI-related commitments remain forecasts. This payment hands Prysmian immediate liquidity and visibility. It reduces risk in a market where hyperscalers push hard for speed. Electricity demand tells part of the tale. U.S. data centers consumed 4.4 percent of national power in 2023. Projections show that share could reach 12 percent by 2028. Every added megawatt pulls in miles of additional fiber. Architecture shifts toward higher density only accelerate the need. Prysmian’s own blog post from May described the engineering challenges: bend-insensitive fibers, ultra-high-count ribbons, and designs that support both today’s 800G transceivers and tomorrow’s optical budgets.
Yet the industry picture remains uneven. Fiber vendors have sold out 2026 inventory at several major North American plants. Preform production — the glass base for fiber — takes up to two years to scale. Corning’s senior vice president noted the surge in hyperscale and AI loads has lifted expectations dramatically. Similar comments surfaced from STL, CommScope, and Clearfield in late 2025. Fierce Network captured those conversations in December. Expansion announcements now arrive almost monthly. But actual new capacity still lags the orders.
Prysmian brings more than volume to the table. The company has manufactured optical fiber in North America since the 1980s. It recently acquired Warren & Brown to add ducting and optical distribution frames. Earlier this year it partnered with Relativity Networks on hollow-core fiber. That technology promises lower latency and higher speeds for AI clusters. Prysmian’s March release positioned the collaboration as critical for volume production. Hollow-core designs could influence site selection by extending reach between facilities. They also complement the high-density cables headed to Molex.
The deal arrives against a backdrop of broader consolidation. Prysmian bought Encore Wire last year for $4.2 billion. It agreed to acquire Channell for up to $1.15 billion in March 2025. Those moves strengthened its U.S. presence in both power and digital connectivity. Executives forecast adjusted EBITDA could rise as much as 64 percent by 2028. Much of that optimism rests on data-center tailwinds. Reuters reported those targets in March last year. The Molex contract now provides concrete evidence that the strategy is landing.
Europe watches closely. The continent seeks its own compute capacity to match U.S. and Asian hyperscalers. Sovereign AI initiatives repeatedly run into physical limits — power, land, and now cabling. Prysmian’s European manufacturing footprint offers one partial answer. Still, most near-term growth stays concentrated in the United States where AI investment flows fastest. The company’s new U.S. lines will feed both domestic hyperscalers and global supply chains.
Market forecasts reinforce the momentum. The global data-center cable sector stood at $13.7 billion in 2025. It could exceed $37 billion within a decade. Fiber-optic cables already claim nearly half the total. AI workloads drive adoption of 400G, 800G, and soon 1.6T links. Active optical cables alone are projected to grow from $3.6 billion in 2024 to $7.8 billion by 2030. Precedence Research and related studies highlight the same forces: low latency, high bandwidth, and dense GPU clusters. Copper still handles short runs. But optics dominate the spine-leaf backbones and any distance beyond a few meters.
Supply-chain realities add urgency. Glass shortages have pushed some cable lead times to 12 months. Vendors respond with new fiber types, tighter manufacturing processes, and strategic partnerships. Prysmian’s Molex agreement locks in demand for one major integrator. It also signals confidence that capacity investments will pay off before the decade ends. The €550 million upfront payment de-risks part of that bet. Hyperscalers gain assured supply. Molex secures a reliable source for its connector assemblies. Everyone moves a step closer to matching AI ambition with physical infrastructure.
Analysts caution that not every forecast will materialize at the high end. Customer names remain undisclosed. Exact splits between hyperscalers and other data-center players stay private. Yet the structural trends appear clear. Power consumption climbs. Rack densities rise. Fiber counts inside each facility multiply. Modernization cycles aimed at energy efficiency only compound the effect. Prysmian has positioned itself at the center of that cycle. The Molex deal supplies immediate scale. The capacity build-out supplies future optionality. And the jobs and investment figures supply political and economic ballast on both sides of the Atlantic.
Short term the market will watch whether other suppliers announce comparable multi-year commitments. Longer term the test will be execution. Can Prysmian bring the new U.S. lines online on schedule? Will hollow-core and high-density designs deliver the performance edge operators expect? Those questions linger. But one fact stands firm. The wiring inside AI data centers has become a strategic chokepoint. Prysmian just secured a front-row seat to ease it. So did Molex. The rest of the industry now races to catch up.
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