en.Wedoany.com Reported - U.S. high-capacity dark fiber infrastructure provider BIG Fiber officially announced on May 19 that it has completed a $250 million debt financing, with an additional $100 million accordion feature. The financing was co-led by Stonepeak Credit and La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (La Caisse, formerly known as CDPQ), injecting capital momentum into the Sunnyvale, California-based dark fiber operator to accelerate expansion in its core markets.
BIG Fiber CEO Bruce Garrison stated in the official announcement that the partnership with Stonepeak Credit and La Caisse marks a pivotal turning point in the company's mission to empower customers with highly scalable, dedicated dark fiber solutions. This financing ensures the company has the scale to continuously stay ahead of the growing demand from the AI ecosystem for modernized infrastructure, providing the backbone for the digital highways of the coming decades. Stonepeak Credit Managing Director Arun Varanasi noted that BIG Fiber's infrastructure provides the critical bandwidth needed to meet data and computing capacity demands in key markets, positioning the company to become a leader in the U.S. dark fiber operating space. La Caisse Head of Private Credit Jérôme Marquis emphasized that BIG Fiber's resilient business model is built on long-term contracts and strong structural demand, placing the company in a favorable growth position.
The financing will be directly channeled into already initiated multi-market network expansion projects. Construction plans for adding over 205 route miles and 165,000 fiber miles in the Greater Atlanta area have entered the construction or contracting phase. Upon completion of the expansion, BIG Fiber's network capacity in Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay Area will reach 850 route miles and over 3 million fiber miles, with related projects expected to reach service-ready status in phases by early 2027. Previously, BIG Fiber's network in the San Francisco Bay Area already covered over 310 route miles and 2 million fiber miles, connecting 65 data centers; its network in the Greater Atlanta area covered over 170 route miles and 20 data centers. This newly added capacity will nearly double the network's scale on its existing foundation.
As an important backdrop to this financing, BIG Fiber completed the dark fiber industry's first green loan in 2024, led by ING Capital LLC, increasing the green loan facility from $90 million to $140 million. This $250 million debt financing marks another step-change in the company's financial capabilities. BIG Fiber is backed by Columbia Capital and SDC Capital Partners, with a portion of the funds used to refinance existing debt while providing ample capital headroom for ongoing network expansion.
BIG Fiber, formerly known as Bandwidth IG, completed a rebranding in 2025 to focus on the dark fiber infrastructure market with a sharper positioning. The company was founded in 2019 by Jim Nolte, with Bruce Garrison serving as CEO since 2022. BIG Fiber utilizes a 100% underground network, providing high-capacity dark fiber solutions to hyperscale data center operators, enterprises, and cloud service providers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Portland Area, and Greater Atlanta Area. In early 2024, the company laid the first telecommunications submarine cable under the San Francisco Bay in over two decades, constructing a high-capacity fiber ring network connecting the South Bay, East Bay, and Peninsula.
The expansion of AI-driven large-scale data center clusters is reshaping the demand structure of the dark fiber market. The demand for high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnection between data centers from hyperscale cloud service providers and AI computing operators continues to rise, while the traditional fiber networks of existing operators are approaching capacity limits in some core markets. BIG Fiber's choice of Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay Area as key expansion markets precisely targets the structural interconnection gaps created by the dense deployment of AI data centers in these two regions. Atlanta is rapidly growing into a data center hub in the Southeastern United States, while the San Francisco Bay Area has long hosted the world's densest clusters of AI R&D and computing power. Newly built dark fiber networks in these regions have a clear customer base and long-term contract security.
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