The buildout will deliver six net-new long-haul routes across emerging AI corridors, alongside overbuilds of existing infrastructure in ten high-demand markets. Zayo said the expansion is designed to connect AI factories, GPU clusters and hyperscaler deployments as they move beyond traditional data centre hubs.
Steve Smith, chief executive of Zayo, said the company had invested significantly in modelling where AI-driven demand will emerge and was building ahead of that demand, rather than concentrating solely on existing routes. He added that the work with Nvidia was intended to extend high-capacity connectivity to neoclouds and enterprise AI users, not just the largest hyperscalers.
Dylan Patel, chief executive of SemiAnalysis, said connectivity was becoming as significant a constraint on AI scaling as compute itself, with long-haul fibre needed to link distributed infrastructure in corridors where capacity is currently scarce.
The announcement follows Zayo’s acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions business, which added 90,000 metro route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations to its network, strengthening its metro density for AI inference workloads. Over the past 18 months, Zayo said its AI-focused build and overbuild projects have spanned more than 15,000 route miles across North America.
The company also recently launched its AI Infrastructure Blueprint, a framework intended to connect training, inference and interconnection environments across the AI ecosystem.
Vladimir Troy, vice president of engineering for AI infrastructure at Nvidia, said network capacity was becoming as critical to AI progress as compute.
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