Zayo Secures Anchor Customer to Accelerate AI Network Expansion

8,000 route miles of new builds and overbuilds underway as industry-wide capacity constraints intensify across AI-driven markets

Zayo, a leading communications infrastructure provider, today announced it has secured an anchor customer to enable and accelerate its buildout of new routes and extend its existing network with infrastructure purpose-built to support AI-driven demand. This includes 8,000 route miles of new builds and overbuilds to deliver the capacity needed to support next-generation AI and cloud growth across key high-demand corridors. Zayo will build, own, and operate all routes as part of its existing network footprint. These commitments are anchored by a specific agreement with a leading global AI infrastructure partner; additional details will be disclosed at a later date.

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Having secured the anchor tenant for these key routes, Zayo is actively building 8,000 route miles, representing more than 15 million new and overbuild fiber miles. This includes six new long-haul fiber routes totaling 3,000 route miles and overbuilds of 9 high-capacity corridors covering over 5,000 route miles. This is the largest single network investment in new build and overbuild miles in Zayo’s history.

In January 2025, Zayo announced plans to build 5,000 new route miles by 2030. In less than 18 months, the company has expanded that plan significantly, with build and overbuild projects now underway spanning more than 15,000 route miles and ~20 million fiber miles. Construction is already underway or commencing on many of these routes. This level of investment is critical to addressing the potential bandwidth gap as AI-driven demand continues to accelerate.

“AI demand is no longer theoretical. It’s showing up as real customer requests in corridors where it’s scaling fast,” said Bill Long, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Zayo. “We’ve been looking closely at how that demand is developing, where it’s concentrating, and what it means for the network over the next several years. That’s shaping where we build and how quickly we start construction. We’re not building speculatively; we’re actively building markets where we can already see that pressure taking hold and where demand is clearly headed. We’re doing it at a scale that not only supports these initial commitments but puts additional capacity in place ahead of the next wave of AI demand.”

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AI workloads are reshaping how and where bandwidth demand shows up, concentrating growth in a defined set of high-value corridors where power availability is driving data center demand and those data centers need to connect to adjacent metros. Zayo is prioritizing these corridors, building where demand is already materializing and where capacity constraints are expected to intensify as AI deployments scale. This targeted approach enables Zayo to deliver high-capacity, low-latency infrastructure ahead of competitors and ensures the network will support AI-related bandwidth demand projected to grow 2–6x by 2030 without becoming a constraint.

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