Verizon inks $1 billion（約1600億円） Google AI deal, eyes multiple similar contracts

On Friday, July 24, during its second quarter earnings call, Verizon announced it had signed an over $1 billion（約1600億円） artificial intelligence infrastructure deal with Google. In this agreement, Verizon's dark fiber—dedicated, unused fiber-optic lines—will be used to connect Google's data centers. CEO Dan Schulman said the company expects to announce several similar deals by the end of the year, collectively worth "multiple billions of dollars in revenue" over the next several years.

Schulman characterized these agreements as "long-duration, high-quality contracted revenue streams from some of the most demanding infrastructure customers in the world" and stated, "We believe that this is just the beginning. The build-out of AI infrastructure across the United States is one of the largest capital cycles of our lifetime." He emphasized that Verizon is uniquely positioned to participate because it owns an extensive long-haul and metro fiber footprint and has built the carrier-grade, low-latency, highly resilient transport network that hyperscalers (large cloud providers) need to connect compute, models, and regions.

Beyond fiber services, Verizon has begun retrofitting many of its central offices into data centers for inference edge computing and is already in talks with multiple partners eager to use these power-ready and permitted locations. Schulman said: "We are moving quickly to expand our TAM [total addressable market] in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market. The agreements we have signed are the leading edge of a strategy that will become a meaningful, incremental leg of growth for Verizon." The company launched Verizon AI Connect in January 2025, a strategy and suite of products designed to serve hyperscalers, cloud providers, and global enterprises by managing AI resource-intensive workloads; Google Cloud and Meta were among the early adopters. Schulman concluded: "Our core connectivity business is gaining momentum, and with the emergence of AI infrastructure revenue, we are fundamentally reshaping Verizon's growth trajectory."

Verizon's $1 billion（約1600億円） Google deal marks a strategic pivot for the telecommunications company into AI infrastructure services. Rather than competing directly with cloud providers, Verizon is monetizing its existing physical assets—particularly its long-haul and metro fiber network—to support the connectivity demands of hyperscalers building out AI compute clusters. CEO Dan Schulman's framing of AI infrastructure as "one of the largest capital cycles of our lifetime" reflects broader industry dynamics: as companies like Google, Meta, and others race to build AI capabilities, the physical infrastructure to connect data centers and enable low-latency, resilient compute becomes a bottleneck and revenue opportunity.

The company is also expanding beyond pure fiber services into edge computing. By retrofitting central offices into data centers for inference (the step where an AI produces an answer) edge computing, Verizon is positioning itself closer to where data is processed and consumed, potentially capturing additional revenue from the same customers. That Verizon is already in talks with multiple partners for these retrofitted locations suggests strong early demand. The January 2025 launch of Verizon AI Connect, with Google Cloud and Meta already adopting it, provides a product framework that commoditizes some of this work, allowing Verizon to scale across many customers rather than negotiating one-off deals.

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