Zayo mentioned the acquisition will broaden its fiber community and reinforce its strategic deal with enabling AI and digital transformation throughout the U.S.
Communications infrastructure supplier Zayo has agreed to amass Crown Fortress’s Fiber Options enterprise in a deal valued at roughly $4.25 billion. Zayo, backed by DigitalBridge and EQT, mentioned the acquisition will broaden its fiber community and reinforce its strategic deal with enabling synthetic intelligence (AI) progress and digital transformation throughout america.
With this acquisition, Zayo will add roughly 90,000 route miles of fiber to its community, growing its total attain to greater than 70,000 on-net places. Crown Fortress’s metro-focused fiber belongings complement Zayo’s current long-haul infrastructure, enhancing connectivity options for enterprises, information facilities, and AI-driven functions.
The deal aligns with Zayo’s long-term funding technique in high-capacity, low-latency fiber networks, that are crucial for cloud computing, AI and enterprise connectivity. Zayo has spent greater than $20 billion on fiber infrastructure growth over the previous 5 years and plans to proceed investing billions extra to strengthen america’ digital economic system.
In January, the corporate introduced its intentions to construct greater than 5,000 fiber route-miles particularly to satisfy the calls for of AI workloads. Invoice Lengthy, Zayo’s chief product officer, instructed RCR Wi-fi Information that the funding “will likely be crucial to averting a possible bandwidth hole within the U.S. as AI-driven information heart capability is anticipated to develop 2-6X over the following 5 years.” Zayo plans to construct out 5 new routes and add over-builds of seven current routes over the following 5 years, totaling about 5,000 new route-miles of fiber transport particularly to satisfy anticipated demand pushed by elevated AI use.
Of the Crown Fortress deal, Zayo CEO Steve M. Smith mentioned: “We’re strategically investing in increasing and enhancing our nation’s crucial community infrastructure to satisfy the calls for of hyperscalers, information facilities, enterprises, and carriers that may facilitate the rising AI economic system. This acquisition strengthens our potential to ship the dependable, low-latency, high-capacity fiber options our clients have to scale in an more and more data-driven world.”
Marc Ganzi, CEO of DigitalBridge, additional said that the acquisition “underscores” the growing significance of fiber networks as the inspiration for AI-driven innovation and financial progress. “With Crown Fortress’s strong metro-focused belongings, Zayo will likely be well-positioned to gas AI adoption, improve connectivity options, and speed up technological progress,” he continued.
Jan Vesely, Associate at EQT, echoed this sentiment, emphasizing that “the addition of Crown Fortress’s Fiber Options enterprise is a strategic transfer to assist fortify america’ AI-driven future by delivering the bandwidth, scalability and reliability required for next-generation functions.”
In parallel with this acquisition, EQT’s Lively Core Infrastructure fund will independently purchase Crown Fortress’s Small Cells enterprise in a separate transaction, bringing the full mixed worth of each offers to $8.5 billion. As a part of the settlement, Zayo and the newly acquired Small Cells enterprise will enter right into a long-term industrial partnership, guaranteeing ongoing fiber help for small-cell deployments.
The transaction is anticipated to shut within the first half of 2026, topic to regulatory approvals and customary closing circumstances.
