3M and AWS Expand Strategic Collaboration to Deploy Expanded Beam Optical Platform for Next-Generation Data Center Infrastructure

3M and Amazon Web Services have announced an expanded strategic collaboration under which AWS plans to deploy and scale 3M's Expanded Beam Optical (EBO) platform across its data center infrastructure, a move that underscores the growing importance of advanced optical connectivity in supporting the performance demands of next-generation artificial intelligence workloads. The agreement brings together two leading American companies to advance co-innovation and investment in optical connectivity and the critical infrastructure required for super intelligence, also known as AI.

The collaboration centers on AWS's adoption of 3M's EBO platform, which the companies say demonstrates the potential of optical connectivity technology to meet the rigorous performance requirements of modern data center environments. Wendy Bauer, Group President of 3M's Transportation and Electronics Business Group, said the partnership leverages complementary strengths. "AWS's adoption of 3M's EBO platform demonstrates the potential of our optical connectivity technology to meet the performance demands of next-generation data center infrastructure," Bauer said. "By combining AWS's infrastructure expertise and scale with 3M's innovation and materials science capabilities, we can accelerate EBO deployment, advance our transformation and strengthen U.S. innovation and investment."

The collaboration is expected to deliver significant economic benefits, supporting more than 500 direct and indirect jobs, including the creation of more than 100 new roles through 2027 across Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin. These positions will focus on customer co-innovation, technology advancement and supply chain development across 3M's optical networking portfolio. 3M expects to contribute nearly $0.5 billion to the U.S. economy through its optical connectivity business, an investment aimed at accelerating innovation in optical networking and fiber termination, enabling commercialization at scale and driving adoption across the data center industry. The initiative builds on 3M's earlier announcement that it will double production capacity at its Menomonie, Wisconsin, manufacturing facility.

Jens Gruenkemeir, Vice President of Supply Chain and Procurement at Amazon, emphasized the broader impact of the collaboration. "Our work with 3M reinforces our commitment to supporting good jobs here in the U.S.," Gruenkemeir said. "Beyond powering the services people use every day, from online banking and hospital data records to streaming entertainment and retail purchases, our data center investments are unlocking economic opportunities in the communities where we invest and across the supply chain, including the hundreds of jobs being supported by 3M as a result of its collaboration with Amazon."

From an industry perspective, the collaboration signals a deepening relationship between hyperscale cloud providers and advanced materials manufacturers as data center operators seek to keep pace with the bandwidth and latency requirements of AI-driven workloads. Optical connectivity has emerged as a critical bottleneck in scaling next-generation data center architectures, and the partnership positions 3M's EBO technology as a key enabler of that transition while reinforcing domestic manufacturing and supply chain resilience in the United States.