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In his corner office at Corning Inc.\u2019s towering steel-and-glass headquarters in Corning, N.Y., CEO Wendell Weeks keeps a small, yellowed piece of paper in a dark wood frame behind his desk. Dated Nov. 17, 1880, it\u2019s Thomas Edison\u2019s $311.97 order for Corning Glass Works to produce the glass for a risky new invention of his: the lightbulb.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI keep that to always remind me: If someone comes to you with an idea that seems small, but there\u2019s a way to make the world just a little bit better, say yes,\u201d Weeks says. \u201cA lot of ideas won\u2019t work, but the ones that do, those are really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 173-year-old glass company has proved this concept again and again. The creator of iconic kitchen brands such as Pyrex and CorningWare also developed the glass for telescopes, the earliest TV picture tubes, and heat-resistant glass windows for spacecraft. It answered the call of Apple\u2019s Steve Jobs to create Gorilla Glass\u2014that touch-sensitive, hard-to-shatter glass encasing your smartphone. And it created the fiber-optic cables connecting much of the internet\u2014and those now powering the AI revolution.<\/p>\n
Those innovations help explain why the CEO of a company in upstate New York with just $13 billion in 2023 revenue has the admiration and friendship of some of the biggest names in business, from Silicon Valley tycoons such as Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos to Motor City moguls like Ford\u2019s Jim Farley. Jony Ive, Apple\u2019s former head of design, says there are few collaborators he holds in higher regard\u2014high praise from the man who crafted the industry-shifting iPhone. \u201cAs a designer, as a creative, it\u2019s a complete honor to work with somebody like Wendell,\u201d Ive says. \u201cHe is utterly consumed by trying to work with you to solve difficult, sometimes almost seemingly impossible challenges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The original purchase order from Thomas Edison to Corning for the glass encasement for Edison\u2019s lightbulb in 1880. <\/p>\n
Lauren Petracca for Fortune<\/p>\n
A formative failure<\/p>\n
But it hasn\u2019t all been smooth sailing for the 6-foot-7, 65-year-old Corning CEO. In the 1990s, Weeks was the Corning vice president tapped to run a new optical fiber business to power the burgeoning internet\u2014an innovation that drove Corning\u2019s valuation to nearly $100 billion at the height of the internet bubble in 2000.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That bubble burst the following year, sending the company\u2019s stock price plummeting from some $100 to $1. But Weeks proved his mettle by remaining committed to the enterprise after the dotcom crash. Even when Corning lost 99% of its value and had to lay off half its employees, Weeks insisted on the soundness of the strategy and continued to develop the company\u2019s fiber tech.<\/p>\n
He recalls begging company leadership not to fire him and instead let him stay on to clean up the mess: \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m chaining myself to the wheel here. I\u2019ll be a janitor or whatever it is, but I\u2019m staying until this gets fixed.\u2019 They said, \u2018Well, it\u2019s not going to be a janitor. We\u2019d like you to become president.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, Corning\u2019s big bet on optical fiber has paid off, and it now accounts for 30% of the company\u2019s revenue. Thanks to the rise of AI, tech giants such as Microsoft are flocking to Corning\u2019s new and improved optical fibers to support hyperscale data centers and generative AI, which require far more fiber than has been used in the past, at much higher speed capabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With a market cap of $41 billion, Corning\u2019s stock price has increased some 50% since January. In October, the company announced a $1 billion multiyear deal with AT&T to provide this next-generation fiber, and Weeks has set a target of adding more than $3 billion in annual sales over the next three years. \u201cWe were right that ultimately there\u2019d be a lot more fiber required,\u201d Weeks says, laughing. \u201cWe were just off by a decade or two.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s ordeal at the turn of this century forged Weeks\u2019 leadership style, observed Amazon founder Bezos, who met and befriended the Corning CEO when he joined Amazon\u2019s board in 2016. \u201cMy gut is that Wendell was greatly shaped by Corning\u2019s near-death experience,\u201d Bezos tells Fortune. \u201cAnd it has made him a much better leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
From Scranton to Corning<\/p>\n
Weeks joined Corning 132 years into the company\u2019s 173-year history. Founded in 1851 by a merchant named Amory Houghton Sr., it began as the Bay State Glass Co., a small company in Massachusetts. Houghton moved it a few years later to Brooklyn before settling upstate in Corning in 1868 and changing the company\u2019s name to match the town\u2019s. The company spun off the Pyrex and CorningWare businesses in 1998, but the names and tech they\u2019ve created remain. The Houghton family took the company public in 1945 and sold its controlling stake in 2005.<\/p>\n
Weeks\u2019 path to becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company wasn\u2019t a straight line. He was born in Scranton, Pa., where his father was a plumber and his mother a secretary at the local elementary school. Neither went to college, and both were alcoholics, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Looking for a way out of the chaos, Weeks enrolled at Lehigh University, studying finance and accounting, he says, because his \u201cdad went bankrupt, and I wanted to make sure I always understood financial stuff, even though I wasn\u2019t particularly adept at it.\u201d After graduating in 1981, Weeks started as an auditor at the firm Price Waterhouse, where Corning was a client. He soon realized that the people he was interacting with at Corning were exactly the type of people he wanted to be\u2014stable, committed, kind, and family-oriented. In 1983 he was hired as a controller at Corning, where he took on the painful job of helping to shut down an old factory and restructure the industrial business. In his own words: \u201cI much prefer hiring people versus firing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corning CEO Wendell Weeks is a frequent and regular visitor to the company\u2019s research and development labs, and holds 44 patents himself. <\/p>\n
Lauren Petracca for Fortune<\/p>\n
After a short detour to Harvard for business school, Weeks came back to Corning in 1987 to develop a strategy for specialty glass and ceramics, studying science textbooks in his off hours to gain the technical knowledge the job required. He was appointed CEO in 2005 and chairman of the board in 2007.<\/p>\n
Weeks never received a degree in the sciences, but in his time at Corning, he has earned 44 U.S. patents in his own name. These include patents for Valor Glass Vials\u2013the crack-resistant vials that played a key role in enabling the delivery of COVID vaccines\u2014and for the bendable glass used in interior automotive displays.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Weeks\u2019 approach to problem-solving is what sets him apart, says Samsung executive chairman Jay Y. Lee, who developed a close friendship with Weeks thanks to the tech giant\u2019s more than 50-year partnership with Corning, which has made LCD monitors and foldable smartphone glass, among other inventions, for the company.<\/p>\n
Corning Chairman and CEO Wendell Weeks, and Jay Y. Lee, executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, are shown a bendable glass spool in 2023.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Corning<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t hesitate to roll up his sleeves and work alongside his colleagues when there\u2019s a complex problem to solve or a tough issue to be faced,\u201d Lee says via email. \u201cHe inspires everyone to bring their best game to the table in the search for the best solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he relies upon Weeks for directness and fresh perspectives. \u201cHe tells it to you straight,\u201d Jassy tells Fortune. \u201cI\u2019ve had many instances over the years where I\u2019ve called Wendell for input and advice, and where I started a conversation was very different from where I ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picking up the pieces<\/p>\n
Former Corning CFO Jim Flaws, who was by Weeks\u2019s side during the dotcom disaster, sees in Weeks a kind of \u201cyou broke it, you fix it\u201d mentality. He tells a story to illustrate: The office dress code was very casual at that time, but to show their dedication to righting the company in the wake of the crash, Flaws and Weeks vowed to wear suits and ties every day until the company was successful again. \u201cWe were going to show the seriousness of this,\u201d Flaws said. (Weeks still wears a suit and tie daily, though the company\u2019s dress code has remained more casual.)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one of Bezos\u2019s favorite anecdotes about Weeks too. \u201cIt was a very deliberate, internal thing to say, \u2018We are going back to the basics. We are going back to the future. We are returning to our roots,\u2019\u201d Bezos says. \u201cWe are not a startup in Silicon Valley. We are an important, 100-plus-year-old company. We are innovative, but buttoned-down too.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the massive hit the company took when the dotcom bubble burst, Weeks and Flaws made three big bets in 2002 that are still paying off today: They doubled the amount of money Corning was pouring into research and development. They invested in developing LCD, flat-screen TV displays. And they created new ceramic filters to trap smog and exhaust from trucks.<\/p>\n
Five years later, they got their next big break. In 2007, Apple founder Steve Jobs cold-called Weeks after being introduced briefly by a mutual friend. Jobs explained he was creating a new type of cell phone, called the iPhone, where the whole front face would be a display. He was having trouble finding glass to cover it that wouldn\u2019t easily break or scratch. Jobs asked if Corning could make a super-resilient glass\u2013and deliver it in under six months. The Corning board balked, but the CEO pushed ahead anyway\u2014and pulled it off.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gorilla Glass, the glass still used on the screen of the iPhone and almost every smartphone in the world, was one of the most consequential inventions in modern history. Without it, the smartphone revolution would not have been possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, we thought in total we\u2019d sell maybe $50 million worth of product to the iPhone,\u201d Weeks says. \u201cSteve didn\u2019t actually think it was going to be that big either.\u201d Since then, Gorilla Glass has generated more than $20 billion in revenue for the company, and is used globally on more than 8 billion devices made by Apple and other companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colored glass for mobile devices on display at Corning\u2019s R&D labs in Corning, NY.<\/p>\n
Lauren Petracca for Fortune<\/p>\n
Corning\u2019s next big bet<\/p>\n
Now, with its buzziest innovation nearly two decades old, Corning is pivoting yet again, this time to build the \u201cpipes\u201d for the rise of generative AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1970, the company created optical fiber, a highly pure optical glass, as thin as a strand of human hair, that could transmit light signals over long distances. Prior to that, copper was the dominant cable material\u2014and it\u2019s still used today to power the internet for many households. Today, if you stream a movie, post to a social network, or pose a question to a generative AI application on your mobile phone, you\u2019re able to do so because of optical fiber connectivity in a data center.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Corning rolled out its \u201cnext-generation optical cable,\u201d and it inked a multimillion-dollar deal with Lumen Technologies to reserve 10% of Corning\u2019s global fiber capacity for each of the next two years to power data centers for customers like Microsoft.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How are these fibers different from the ones Corning has produced in the past? It all comes down to density. Gen AI requires 10 times the fiber currently used, but needs to fit in the same space, Weeks says. These new, thinner fibers will allow Lumen and other customers to fit two to four times the amount of fiber into their existing ducts. Unlike copper, fiber has virtually limitless data capacity. In one fiber pair (one sending and one receiving), half of the humans on earth could be talking to the other half simultaneously, Weeks says.<\/p>\n
But while there\u2019s a whole lot of fiber out there, the market for it is unlikely to die down anytime soon. \u201cSince we invented fiber, there\u2019s now been enough installed in the world to go back and forth to the sun 20 times,\u201d Weeks says. \u201cAnd still some 50% of Americans aren\u2019t connected directly by fiber\u2026 You think of all that copper cabling that you see\u2014all that ultimately will fall to fiber optics for communications. So we\u2019re still at the beginning of this long-term technology curve.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Corning invented optical fiber in 1970. Today the company is the world leader in fiber optic technology.<\/p>\n
Lauren Petracca for Fortune<\/p>\n
Corning may have invented the stuff, but it\u2019s not the only player in the market for the original optical fiber now: Weeks is keeping his eye on competitors in Asia, including Japan\u2019s Sumitomo Electric and Furukawa Electric Co. Corning\u2019s new fibers and designs for AI applications are still under patent, however.<\/p>\n
The situation shows how essential it is that the company keep breaking new ground. Ford CEO Jim Farley says he has learned more from Weeks than any other CEO. (Corning provides much of the exterior and interior glass for Ford\u2019s vehicles.) \u201cHe\u2019s in a thermonuclear war of innovation, and we all know that the IP getting created in places like China, Vietnam, and India and around the world is real,\u201d Farley tells Fortune. \u201cHe has to stay in front of it, so constantly fueling the innovation, constantly making the right bet on which innovations, that\u2019s a risk for him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
William Kerwin, an equity analyst at Morningstar, says the biggest risk he sees ahead for Corning is how capital-intensive its products are to produce\u2014in terms of both manufacturing and research and development. But he thinks Weeks\u2019 three-year, $3 billion sales plan is realistic, thanks to Corning\u2019s diversification.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a company that is not confined to one product or one market,\u201d Kerwin says. \u201cGlass can sound so boring, but the things they\u2019re able to do with it in terms of durability or the iPhone screens or data-center connectivity with optical fiber is really impressive. They\u2019re really stretching material science to its limits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weeks says he\u2019s betting on gen AI and a trend toward full-screen interior car displays to drive profits going forward. And after decades in the business, he focuses more on finding the right innovation than on predicting the timing of the next blockbuster market for a product.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you understand innovation deeply, you understand that getting the timing right is almost impossible,\u201d Weeks says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be able to instead go to work on s\u2013t that matters early, and then just scale it fast when all of a sudden it ends up you\u2019ve got to be fast. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing now.\u201d<\/p>\n
#173yearold #glassmaker #Edisons #light #bulb #iPhone #screens #Silicon #Valley #darling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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