If you’ve been following the news lately, you know that AI is becoming pretty popular and it is taking up a lot of space—literally. Big tech companies are building massive data centers to handle the sheer amount of data these AI models need to process. But there’s a physical problem: all those servers have to talk to each other, and they need to do it rather quickly.

That’s where 3M comes in. The company just announced it is significantly expanding production of Expanded Beam Optical (EBO) technology. Essentially, they are more than doubling their U.S. capacity to keep up with demand from these “hyperscale” data centers.

In a standard fiber optic connection, even a tiny speck of dust can ruin the signal. If you have thousands of cables in a room, keeping everything perfectly clean is very challenging. This is a real bottleneck when companies are trying to scale up quickly.

3M’s EBO technology uses a different approach. Instead of a fragile, direct connection, it uses lenses to expand the light beam across a wider area before it enters the next cable. Think of it like a showerhead instead of a single needle-thin stream of water. Because the beam is wider, a little dust doesn’t block the entire signal.

The goal here isn’t just to make cables better; it’s to make sure the infrastructure behind AI doesn’t crash under its own weight. As these data centers get bigger, they need connections that are:

• Faster to install: Technicians don’t have to spend hours cleaning every single connector.

• More reliable: Less downtime means AI services stay online.

• Easier to maintain: These systems are built for high-density environments where space is tight.

3M has been mass-producing this tech since late 2024, but this new investment adds more advanced equipment and floor space to their manufacturing lineup.

By ramping up its U.S. manufacturing, 3M is trying to ensure the “pipes” of the internet don’t get clogged as AI continues to grow.

Source: 3M