Lumen Completes Alkira Acquisition to Advance AI-Era Networking
Lumen Technologies, Inc. today announced it has completed its acquisition of Alkira, an on-demand networking platform that helps enterprises connect clouds, sites, partners, and AI workloads quickly and easily. By combining Alkira’s technology with Lumen’s physical infrastructure, programmable network, and partner ecosystem, Lumen aims to simplify how enterprises build and manage their networks as environments grow more complex.
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Unlike providers that offer only connectivity or orchestration, Lumen now brings together both the physical network foundation and an on-demand platform to accelerate a more programmable, AI-ready network experience. The Alkira acquisition strengthens Lumen’s position as the trusted network for AI, while expanding the networking, cloud, security, and AI services customers need to run more agile, connected operations.
For customers, that means a simpler way to manage increasingly complex infrastructure and deploy their choice of services, capacity, and capabilities. Through one programmable network, enterprises can enforce consistent security policies, gain better visibility and monitoring, and reduce manual work and slow provisioning. Over time, deeper integration with Lumen’s connectivity services can help customers extend these benefits across more of their technology footprint.
“AI is reshaping how businesses operate, creating unprecedented demand for intelligent, programmable networks that can move data securely and seamlessly across cloud, edge, and data center environments,” said Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen. “By bringing Alkira into Lumen, we’re combining world-class network infrastructure with cloud networking innovation to make complex environments simpler for customers. This is another important step in our transformation and strengthens our ability to help customers build, scale, and operate in the AI era.”
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Built for the AI Era
The acquisition strengthens Lumen’s ability to support cloud connectivity and the rapid growth of data moving between clouds, data centers, and AI infrastructure. As AI workloads and inference data expand over multiple clouds, regions, and technology platforms, enterprises need a faster, more intelligent way to manage traffic through that complexity.
By combining Alkira’s carrier-agnostic architecture with Lumen’s network, one of the largest fiber networks in North America, Lumen can help customers manage traffic consistently across global environments.
A More Unified Digital Experience
As integration progresses, Alkira’s technology is expected to become a Lumen Connect solution, unifying Lumen Multi-Cloud Gateway, cloud on-ramps, and on-net and off-net connectivity into a more streamlined digital experience. Lumen Connect gives customers one place to build and manage secure connections across clouds, sites, partners, and AI workloads. This simplifies network operations, improving efficiency, and advancing Lumen’s Network-as-a-Service roadmap.
Together, Lumen’s infrastructure and programmable network create a powerful foundation for managing modern technology environments. By combining private network performance, intelligent orchestration, and global reach, Lumen can help customers move faster, operate more efficiently, and adapt as their needs evolve.
Gartner® named Lumen as the Company to Beat in the AI Vendor Race in Enterprise WAN and Connectivity Services for AI published in June 2026. Gartner stated that by combining Lumen’s fiber footprint, dense metro infrastructure, and edge capabilities with Alkira’s cloud-native control plane, the company strengthens its ability to extend its leadership into enterprise AI WAN and connectivity services.1
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