Zayo Group has signed an Nvidia partnership to support construction of more than 8,000 miles of fiber, plus a long-term supply agreement with Corning for fiber-optic cable. Neither August deal disclosed financial terms. Both landed as worldwide data center capital expenditure jumped 92% year on year in the second quarter, according to Dell'Oro Group, which forecasts global capex will exceed $3 trillion by 2030.

The Boulder, Colorado infrastructure firm, now approaching its twentieth birthday, is trying to expand steadily in a market that many observers consider overheated. CTO Troy Lupe laid out the discipline behind that stance in an interview on the sidelines of SCTE TechExpo in Atlanta this month.

"We've been building for a number of years at this point, so we went through a lot of painful learning over that time," Lupe said. "You've got to have thorough project management plans, you've got to develop lots of partnerships, and you've got to plan far in advance."

Why does Nvidia need Zayo's fiber?

The Nvidia deal reflects the compute vendor's recognition that its customers cannot run GPUs without transport capacity. Nvidia sells the silicon; Zayo builds the fiber that moves data between data centers.

"Nvidia recognizes that their customers are going to need capacity," Lupe said. "The conversation came together pretty quickly as we're working strategically on the overarching ecosystem and what will be required to put all this compute into use."

He framed the Corning agreement as one of several moves "to de-risk our entire supply chain" amid resurgent fiber demand. After years in which fiber attracted little attention, Lupe noted the change with some satisfaction.

"Fiber is cool again, you know?" he said. "It's been a long time since fiber was cool."

What about the financial risk?

The scale of data center spending worries investors. The 92% capex increase in Q2, tracked by Dell'Oro, has prompted comparisons to a bubble. Lupe acknowledged that Zayo's institutional shareholders share those concerns.

"We've got several large institutional investors who are very concerned about those kinds of things," he said. He insisted the company is managing exposure deliberately.

"We're making bets that make sense," Lupe said. "We're timing capital inflows with outflows; we are not taking much risk in the current ecosystem."

Zayo does not expect the buildout to slow. "For this foreseeable future, we believe we'll continue to be building and augmenting," he said.

Are permitting and local opposition a threat?

Local resistance to data centers is growing over their electricity and water consumption. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has ordered a pause on permitting for new data centers. Lupe conceded the pressure is real in some markets.

"You definitely see pockets that are getting overwhelmed," he said. Still, he predicted opposition will shift where and how fast facilities get built, not whether they get built: "I don't think it stops it from happening."

Permitting delays remain Zayo's biggest operational bottleneck, independent of data center politics.

"The long pole in the tent is getting the green light to actually put shovels in the ground," Lupe said. "We've got to ensure we're doing it responsibly and in partnership with the cities, counties, states, and right-of-way owners."

Permitting reform has become a popular policy topic, but Lupe said Zayo has seen few concrete results so far. He also declined to say how much of Zayo's revenue depends on data centers, while stressing the company serves broader connectivity needs: "From the digital infrastructure side, we provide a lot more value than just data centers."

Where does AI fit in Zayo's own operations?

In September, Zayo announced a set of agentic monitoring tools, including what it called the industry's first production Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. The company is applying AI to manage the networks it is building, not only responding to AI-driven demand.

Lupe drew a firm line on autonomy. "We believe the decision-making still has to be with the humans," he said. "We know we've got to approach this pretty cautiously when it comes to critical infrastructure."

He sees AI's value in speed: rapid problem analysis and suggested fixes that spare engineers from scrambling to gather data themselves.

On space-based data centers, the SpaceX project that has also drawn interest from Google and dedicated startups, Lupe was unmoved. "I look at it as just another part of the ecosystem," he said. "All of that needs to be downlinked."

For now, the terrestrial work continues. "I've got a lot of building to do," Lupe said, with the Nvidia-backed fiber program running well into the years ahead.