Over $4B AI-driven new business and pipeline spurs Zayo’s investment to build the backbone of AI
DENVER–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zayo, a leading communications infrastructure provider, today announced it intends to build more than 5,000 long-haul fiber route miles to meet the growing demands of AI workloads. As the only digital infrastructure company to build long-haul networks at scale in the last decade, Zayo’s investment will be critical to averting a potential bandwidth gap in the U.S. as AI-driven data center capacity is expected to grow 2-6X over the next five years.
“Keeping pace with the next wave of AI growth will require new long-haul networks to enable the rapid scaling of capacity needs in both existing and emerging AI data center markets. In 2024, Zayo saw significant AI-driven demand for long-haul routes, including more than $1 billion in AI-related deals and an additional $3 billion in pipeline. This demand shows no signs of letting up,” said Steve Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Zayo. “As the complexity of long-haul builds continues to be prohibitive to many providers, Zayo remains the only company building long-haul routes at scale to lead this next phase of infrastructure growth.”
To ensure customers can scale alongside AI demand, Zayo plans to build five new long-haul routes, in addition to overbuilds of seven key existing routes, over the next five years. The routes will enable direct, low-latency, and scalable paths between key data center hubs and forecasted growth areas. The route locations were determined based on expected data center growth, power availability, existing capacity constraints, and other regional characteristics. Additional routes and investments will be determined throughout the year.
The new and expanded routes will include:
New Routes:
- Chicago to Columbus
- Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada
- Atlanta to Ashburn, Virginia
- Minneapolis to Chicago
- Columbus, Ohio to Indianapolis
Overbuilds:
- Denver to Dallas
- Denver to Omaha to Chicago
- Denver to Salt Lake City
- Salt Lake City to Reno
- Dallas to Atlanta
- Columbus, Ohio to Ashburn, Virginia
- Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona
Over the last five years, Zayo has completed 15 new long-haul routes totaling over 5,000 fiber route miles, including:
New (approximately 2,700 route miles)
- Portland to Umatilla, Oregon
- Umatilla, Oregon to Reno, Nevada
- Denver to Salt Lake City
- Atlanta to Dallas
- Cleveland to Columbus, Ohio
- Columbus, Ohio to Pittsburgh
- St. Louis to Indianapolis
- Columbus, Ohio to Ashburn, Virginia
Overbuild (approximately 2,600 route miles)
- Las Vegas to Phoenix
- Denver to Dallas
- Omaha, Nebraska to Denver
- Seattle to Vancouver
- St. Louis to Memphis, Tennessee
- Chicago to St. Louis
- Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska
In addition to its capital investments, Zayo is scaling its long-haul deployment capabilities by expanding its team and introducing specialized functions to drive project efficiency and oversight. These functions include new tools, standardized workflows, and future-ready automations to support increasing workloads and drive value of long-haul projects.
Why This Matters: In Q4 2024, along with an independent research firm, Zayo worked to forecast the magnitude, duration, and location of AI-driven bandwidth demand. The findings, which helped inform Zayo’s accelerated investment, include:
- New fiber routes are needed to support demand increase. Without additional fiber infrastructure, specifically long-haul networks, a bandwidth shortage is imminent and could limit customer ability to fully harness the power of AI adoption growth.
- U.S. data center capacity to increase 2-6X by 2030. The U.S. data center capacity is currently 25 GW. Zayo estimates capacity to grow to between 65 GW and 148 GW by 2030, driven primarily by increased demand from AI adoption.
- Leading AI providers are moving to secondary and emerging markets in search of lower power costs. Zayo identified the high cost of power in major areas as a primary reason AI providers are seeking out new markets. As this shift occurs, it’s important to consider the geospatial optimization between fiber and power and ensure enough fiber can be built in locations with more affordable energy sources to meet demand.
Zayo’s Additional North American Network Investments:
Zayo continues to be one of the only providers actively investing in expanding its network. Zayo’s North America network spans 16.5 million fiber miles with 700,000 fiber miles and 14 new 400G-enabled wavelength routes added in 2024. Zayo also reached a petabit of active Waves services in 2024, and its North American network will be fully 400G enabled by the end of 2025.
For more information on Zayo’s network capabilities, please visit www.zayo.com.
About Zayo
For more than 17 years, Zayo has empowered some of the world’s largest and most innovative companies to connect what’s next for their business. The Zayo group of companies connects 400 global markets with future-ready networks that span over 18.7 million fiber miles and 146,000 route miles. Zayo’s tailored connectivity solutions and managed services enable carriers, cloud providers, data centers, schools, and enterprises to deliver exceptional experiences, from core to cloud to edge. Discover how Zayo connects what’s next at www.zayo.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
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