3M: Is the R&D engine re-igniting? Thoughts on the EBO partnership with Microsoft for data center connectivity.

Research evidence excerpt

3M: Is the R&D engine re-igniting? Thoughts on the EBO partnership with Microsoft for data center connectivity.

Varun Govindaraj +1 917 344 8543 varun.govindaraj@bernsteinsg.com 17 July 2026

DETAILS

Optical fiber cables are the circulatory system of modern data centers. Rather than transmitting electrical signals through

copper wires, they carry information as pulses of light, enabling high bandwidth, low latency, and efficient transmission across

the entire data center ecosystem. As AI rack densities continue to increase, the volume of data moving between GPUs, switches,

and servers has increased exponentially, making optical fiber the preferred medium for high-performance networking and

data transfer. In simple terms, the primary function of optical fiber is to move data quickly, reliably, and with minimal signal

loss between servers, racks, rows and buildings, allowing thousands of servers to operate as a single coordinated system. In

hyperscaler and AI-focused data centers, network performance is increasingly becoming as important as compute performance

itself.

However, optical fibers are only useful if they can be efficiently connected together throughout the network. This is where

optical fiber connectors come into play. Connectors are the physical interfaces that join one optical fiber to another, creating the

data pathways that link servers, switches, storage systems, and networking equipment across a data center. Because light must

pass from one fiber into the next with very high precision, connector quality directly impacts network reliability and performance.

Traditional connector designs (called Multi-fiber Push On or MPO) rely on physical fiber-to-fiber contact, which makes them

highly sensitive to contamination and handling.