fiber-infrastructure
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The Company That Rents the Internet Its Roads - and Just Bought the Traffic Back
Uniti spent a decade as the landlord of a fiber empire. In 2025 it bought its biggest tenant back, and set out to sell strands of glass to the companies building the AI internet.
Steve Smith
Steve Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of Zayo Group, one of the world's largest independent fiber network and infrastructure companies. A West Point engineering graduate and former eight-year U.S. Army officer, Smith built his reputation scaling Equinix from a $2 billion company to a $34 billion global data center giant over 11 years as CEO. Appointed to lead Zayo in October 2020 after the company went private under EQT and Digital Colony, he is now steering the company through a massive AI-driven infrastructure buildout - securing over $1 billion in AI-related deals in 2024 alone, with a pipeline exceeding $3 billion. Under his leadership, Zayo operates 240,000+ route miles globally and 34 million fiber miles, serving customers across healthcare, finance, media, and enterprise sectors.