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Speaking during Verizon’s latest earnings call, the company’s chief executive officer Dan Schulman said the telco had signed a dark fiber agreement with Amazon Web Services valued at more than $2 billion
In sum – what to know
AI contracts scale – Verizon has signed approximately $4 billion in contracts tied to AI infrastructure, including a new AWS dark fiber agreement worth more than $2 billion.
Hyperscalers connect – The AWS agreement builds on a Google deal announced in the previous quarter, with Verizon supplying dark fiber connectivity for AI infrastructure.
Edge gains momentum – The U.S carrier is also seeing signed deals for AI inference at its network hubs, with the company expecting AI-related fiber and edge computing revenues to begin contributing in 2027.
Artificial intelligence infrastructure is emerging as a new growth opportunity for Verizon, with the U.S. telecom operator reporting approximately $4 billion in signed contracts spanning fiber connectivity and edge computing.
Speaking during Verizon’s latest earnings call, the company’s chief executive officer Dan Schulman said the telco had signed a dark fiber agreement with Amazon Web Services valued at more than $2 billion, building on a Google agreement announced during the previous quarter.
“Finally, AI infrastructure is becoming a real growth driver for Verizon. We have signed a dark fiber agreement with Amazon Web Services valued at over $2 billion, building on the Google agreement we announced last quarter,” the executive said.
Verizon said the AWS agreement establishes a commercial framework to scale distributed compute and meet the real-time demands of agentic and generative AI workloads.
The AWS agreement follows Verizon’s July announcement of a deal with Google valued at more than $1 billion. Verizon said the Google agreement involved providing dark fiber connectivity for Google’s data centers.
The two agreements are part of what Verizon calls its AI Connect strategy. The company describes AI Connect as network infrastructure for AI workloads, including high-speed metro fiber for AI training, programmable control of network resources, AI factory facilities and security.
The U.S. telco has previously described AI Connect as involving new high-capacity fiber pathways connecting data center locations. In an AWS agreement announced in November 2025, Verizon said it would build new long-haul, high-capacity fiber pathways to connect AWS data center locations.
The latest earnings call indicates that the opportunity is expanding beyond individual hyperscaler agreements. Schulman said Verizon has an active pipeline of additional hyperscalers, neocloud providers, and large enterprise customers negotiating for either dark or lit fiber connectivity.
Verizon is also pursuing AI inference at the edge. Schulman said the company is seeing momentum from partners seeking to use Verizon’s network hubs for AI inference computing and that this activity is already producing signed deals.
Schulman said the first long-term contracts are expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over their terms. Verizon now has approximately $4 billion in signed contracts, while the company expects both fiber and edge computing to contribute meaningfully to future growth.
“All of these revenues come with attractive margins and we will begin to see their impact in 2027,” he said.
Verizon says the contracts are long-duration agreements with high-quality counterparties that leverage its existing fiber capabilities and real estate assets. Schulman also said the incremental capital required to deliver against the agreements is modest, success-based, and tied to defined contracts.
The company has also been building its fiber supply position. In September, Verizon announced a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar agreement with Corning covering more than 80 million miles of high-density optical fiber through 2032. Verizon said the fiber would support both its broadband expansion and the long-haul backbone required by AI hyperscalers.
