AI infrastructure stocks rally on deal announcements from Qualcomm, Corning

Corning CEO Wendell Weeks talks to CNBC's Katie Tarasov at Corning's cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina, on Jan. 9, 2026.Magdalena Petrova | CNBCCorning and Qualcomm rallied on Tuesday and brought a host of AI-related stocks along with them, as a pair of infrastructure deals lifted Wall Street's confidence that data center spending will remain strong. Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices gained 9% and 6% respectively, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise climbed 8% and photonics company Coherent added 7%. All of those companies have been massive winners for investors this year, with HPE and AMD more than doubling in value and Intel almost tripling, as the artificial infrastructure buildout expands to companies beyond Nvidia. Corning, the glassmaker whose fiber-optic technology is becoming a key piece of AI data centers, jumped 8% on Tuesday bringing its gain for the year to 90%. The company said it's entering into a multibillion-dollar partnership with Verizon to build fiber-optic cables for AI connectivity. -In June, Corning struck a multibillion-dollar deal with Amazon, a month after Nvidia promised to invest up to $3.2 billion in the company to build three new fiber-opt...