3M has issued Amazon a warrant to buy up to 3,162,015 3M shares at $164.89 each over seven years, and 85 per cent of it vests only as Amazon pays 3M for optical connectivity and other data center products, up to $6 billion.
The terms are in a Form 8-K dated 19 October. 3M said that day it had entered an "expanded strategic commercial relationship" with one wholly owned Amazon subsidiary and issued the warrant to a separate one. Its third-quarter results release on 20 October said the deal is meant to "deploy and scale 3M's optical connectivity and other Data Center related products."
What exactly did Amazon get?
A right to buy shares, earned by buying products first. Under the filing, 85 per cent of the warrant shares vest "subject to payments from Amazon for optical connectivity and other Data Center products, with full vesting once cumulative payments reach $6 billion." The other 15 per cent vest "subject to event-based milestones," which 3M has not described. Neither filing names the Amazon subsidiaries.
By this publication's arithmetic, 3,162,015 shares at $164.89 would cost Amazon about $521.4 million if fully exercised. That is about 0.6 per cent of the 516,729,574 shares 3M had outstanding at 30 September, according to its quarterly report. If Amazon reached $6 billion evenly over seven years, it would be buying about $857 million a year from 3M.
The warrant is not a purchase order. Nothing in the filing obliges Amazon to buy anything. The more Amazon spends, the more of the option it earns.
How big is the data center business at 3M?
The filings do not say. 3M reports by segment, and data center sales sit inside its Transportation and Electronics business. The 10-Q lists data center among the sources of that segment's organic growth in the quarter, alongside semiconductors and aerospace, without a figure. Segment sales were up 0.4 per cent in U.S. dollars.
The release adds one more piece. 3M is working with Genius Electronic Optical Co., Ltd. on expanded beam optics, a connector design that carries light between fibres without the tight alignment standard connectors need, and is "investing to acquire ~4.7% of GSEO's common shares."
Without a data center revenue figure, $6 billion cannot be set against the business it would come from. That is the information gap the warrant leaves open.
What else did 3M report?
A steady quarter. GAAP sales were $6.6 billion, up 1.0 per cent, and GAAP earnings per share were $2.63, up 70 per cent from $1.55, helped by a $0.60 increase in the value of 3M's stake in Solventum. Adjusted sales rose 4.2 per cent, with organic growth of 3.3 per cent. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.50, up 12 per cent from $2.23, on a new basis that treats amortization of intangible assets as a special item and adds about $0.04.
3M raised its 2026 adjusted EPS outlook to $9.10 to $9.15 and expects adjusted free cash flow of about $4.8 billion. "We delivered another quarter of strong results," Chief Executive William Brown said in the release.
What to watch next
Three disclosures will show what this is. The first is the milestone list for the remaining 15 per cent of the warrant. The second is the accounting: neither the 8-K nor the 10-Q says how 3M will book a warrant granted to a customer, and the release does not address it. The third is whether 3M starts reporting data center sales at all. As with RTX this week, the headline numbers are public and the footnotes carry the information. Here the footnote is a customer holding an option on its supplier.
The warrant share count, exercise price, term and vesting structure come from 3M's Form 8-K dated 19 October 2026. Quarterly results, guidance, the description of the Amazon relationship, the Genius Electronic Optical investment and the William Brown quotation come from 3M's results release of 20 October 2026. The 516,729,574 shares outstanding and the absence of any warrant accounting disclosure come from 3M's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, filed 20 October. A widely circulated summary of the earnings call attributed data center revenue figures and other remarks to 3M executives; we could not check them against a transcript and have left them out. The $521.4 million aggregate exercise value, the 0.6 per cent share and the $857 million annual average are this publication's arithmetic. The analysis is our own.
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