Strengthening the Digital Infrastructure Backbone for AI: Zayo Completes Acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions Business

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zayo (“the Company”), a leading digital infrastructure provider, today announced the successful closing of its acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions business, significantly expanding its metro fiber footprint and enterprise reach across key U.S. markets. As demand for AI and cloud infrastructure accelerates, this transaction further scales one of the industry's most extensive fiber networks, strengthening the digital infrastructure backbone for the next wave of AI growth.

Zayo’s national network across both long-haul and metro serves the world’s largest carriers, hyperscalers, AI providers, and enterprises at scale. The addition of Crown Castle’s highly complementary metro and regional fiber assets adds approximately 90,000 route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations to Zayo’s network. For existing Zayo customers, this delivers more on-net access, route diversity, and capacity in key markets. For new enterprise customers, it adds the scale of Zayo’s national backbone, enabling greater access into the data centers, cloud platforms, and AI ecosystems where bandwidth demand is growing fastest. This combination of long-haul scale and dense metro reach is critical to supporting the next wave of AI demand, as workloads move from centralized training to distributed, latency-sensitive inference.

The acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions business marks Zayo’s 50th and largest to date. It builds on more than $35 billion in investments by Zayo to develop one of the industry’s highest-performing fiber networks, which, with the completion of this acquisition, now spans 224,000 route miles across North America. The deal underscores Zayo’s disciplined investment strategy, focused on advancing the future-ready infrastructure customers need to scale and compete in the digital economy.

“As AI is increasingly embedded in the global economy—bringing with it unprecedented connectivity needs—high-capacity fiber infrastructure has become indispensable,” said Steve M. Smith, CEO of Zayo. “Zayo has been exclusively focused on building and operating fiber networks at scale for decades. That is why we are built for this moment and the right company to unlock the full value of these assets. This acquisition expands our ability to deliver capacity where it matters most and strengthens the critical fiber infrastructure powering today’s AI, cloud, and enterprise ecosystems. By combining Zayo’s national scale and the expanded metro depth of these assets, we are building a differentiated platform that positions Zayo as the partner of choice for high-capacity connectivity.”

“We see long-term tailwinds driving demand for fiber infrastructure, and that continues to inform how we invest in our business,” said Jeff Noto, Chief Financial Officer of Zayo. “We are focused on deploying capital with discipline to capture the most attractive growth opportunities ahead. This acquisition solidifies our digital infrastructure leadership, enabling us to drive greater value across our network and generate durable, long-term growth from the industries shaping the digital economy.”

Transaction Information

As part of the transaction, Zayo has completed the acquisition of Crown Castle’s Fiber Solutions business, while the EQT Active Core Infrastructure fund has independently completed the acquisition of Crown Castle’s Small Cells business (“Arium Networks”), as communicated in a separate transaction announcement today. Concurrent with the acquisitions, Zayo and Arium Networks have entered into a long-term commercial agreement for Zayo to provide fiber to Arium Networks. The total combined value of the Fiber Solutions and Small Cells transactions is $8.5 billion.

Advisors

PJT Partners, J.P. Morgan, and UBS Investment Bank served as financial advisors and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett served as legal advisor.

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act. Forward-looking statements represent management’s current expectations and are based on information presently available to the Company. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors, some of which are beyond the Company’s control, that may cause actual events to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

About Zayo

The world’s digital future depends on networks that perform. Zayo builds and operates those networks. As the leading digital infrastructure provider, the Zayo network spans 32 million fiber miles and 224,000 route miles across North America and connects more than 400 markets globally. With dense long-haul and metro fiber connectivity, tailored connectivity solutions, and managed services, Zayo’s network underpins the cloud, AI, and enterprise platforms powering the digital economy. Carriers, cloud providers, data centers, enterprises, schools, and governments rely on Zayo’s future-ready infrastructure and expertise to design, scale, and operate the networks that connect what’s next. Discover more at www.zayo.com and follow us on LinkedIn.