Zayo, Nvidia Target Fiber Capacity as AI Infrastructure Spreads

Zayo is building more than 8,000 miles of long-haul fiber across emerging AI corridors with anchor customer Nvidia as demand for dedicated connectivity grows.

The Denver-based digital infrastructure provider says it will build six new long-haul routes and expand capacity across 10 high-demand markets. The broader program now spans more than 15,000 route miles across North America, according to Zayo.

The buildout adds networking to the infrastructure required to support AI, alongside power, data center capacity and computing hardware.

Analysts differ on how quickly network constraints are developing.

Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell’Oro Group, said he has not heard of wide-area network bottlenecks caused by AI traffic. The industry remains in the early stages of the AI infrastructure cycle, he said.

Ron Westfall, vice president and practice lead for networking and infrastructure at HyperFrame Research, said existing routes are already running into capacity limits as AI factories move into new markets to access available power.

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Existing fiber routes were designed around legacy data center topologies, Westfall said. As AI factories spread geographically, wide-area optical capacity is becoming a rate-limiting dependency for distributed computing clusters.

The longer-term requirement is massive data center interconnect capacity between AI facilities.

Yu said purpose-built routes with low latency and thousands of…