How the 173-year-old glass-maker behind Edison’s light bulb and iPhone screens became a Silicon Valley darling

Wendell Weeks is the CEO of Corning Glass Works , a 173-year-old glass company.

The company created the glass for telescopes, the earliest TV picture tubes, and heat-resistant glass windows for spacecraft.

It also created the fiber-optic cables connecting much of the internet and those now powering the AI revolution.

Jony Ive, Apple 's former head of design, says there are few collaborators he holds in higher regard.

Weeks ' path to becoming CEO of a Fortune 500 company wasn’t a straight line.

Weeks was born in Scranton , Pa. , where his father was a plumber and his mother a secretary at the local elementary school.

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.

Corning is pivoting yet again, this time to build the “pipes” for the rise of generative AI .

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.

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.