Zayo Expands To Accommodate AI Boom

WASHINGTON, June 26, 2025 – A fiber infrastructure provider is observing a massive growth in bandwidth demand, attributing the increase to the recent boom in artificial intelligence.

Zayo released its inaugural “bandwidth report” yesterday which analyzes trends in the connectivity market from 2020-2024. The report summary says since the pandemic “we [have] entered a new technological era marked by the rise of AI – what we call ‘the Intelligence Era.’”

Hyperscalers (computing storage services that manage the “cloud”) have been expanding massively in recent years, largely due to their expansion into AI. In response to these growing needs, Zayo plans to build 5,000 new miles of dark fiber specifically for AI.

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“Bandwidth is the new oil, and Zayo is building the pipelines,” the company report said.

Zayo, based in Denver, Colo., reports hyperscalers were responsible for more than half of their metro dark fiber sales from 2020-2024 and have been finding new “non-traditional” locations for their own data centers such as Salt Lake City, Utah; Pendleton, Ore.; and San Jose, Calif.

Zayo itself is investing $90 million to build fiber infrastructure in Tennessee, reporting wavelength demand in Memphis, Tenn., grew 4,300 percent from 2023-2024 alone.