FiberLight LLC recently announced an additional $350 million capital investment to build approximately 1,400 miles of new high-capacity fiber network in West Texas, USA, further deepening its footprint in the AI and data center corridor. This new funding supplements an earlier $150 million plan, bringing the company's total investment commitment in the region over the past year to nearly $500 million.
This network expansion includes a third diverse route to Abilene and adds 1.2 million fiber miles, increasing FiberLight's coverage in Texas from 3.6 million fiber miles to nearly 4.8 million fiber miles. The project focuses on constructing high-count dark fiber and conduit infrastructure, aiming to support hyperscale, AI, and cloud workloads. Construction has commenced, with phased deployment expected to deliver portions of the network within six months, and the entire project is planned for completion within two years.
West Texas, with its power resources, land availability, and geographic advantages, is emerging as a key region for AI-driven data center development. FiberLight's latest investment aims to enhance route diversity, network resilience, and fiber capacity to meet the growing demands of hyperscale operators, cloud service providers, carriers, and enterprise customers.
FiberLight stated that this expansion will accelerate the deployment of hyperscale and AI data centers, provide dense fiber pathways for exponential capacity growth, and strengthen regional and national carrier backbone connectivity. The company also anticipates that this move will extend high-capacity infrastructure to rural and underserved communities, promoting edge computing and broader economic development.
FiberLight operates a fiber network of approximately 22,000 miles, serving nearly 300,000 buildings. Its service portfolio includes Ethernet, wavelength services, cloud connectivity, dedicated internet access, dark fiber, and wireless backhaul, catering to telecommunications carriers, cloud providers, enterprises, government, and educational institutions.
"The nearly $500 million investment demonstrates that we are firmly entrenched in West Texas," said Bill Major, CEO of FiberLight. "We invested $150 million early on because we saw where the AI market was heading. This additional $350 million accelerates that momentum and raises the bar. West Texas is rapidly becoming a powerhouse in the AI economy, and we are building the high-count, high-capacity infrastructure that hyperscale operators and enterprises need to scale massive workloads quickly and reliably. As AI demand surges, we will continue to expand in Texas and beyond, delivering the speed, density, and resilience our customers need to win."
FiberLight's expanded investment in West Texas reflects the industry's trend toward AI-centric infrastructure transformation, where fiber density, route diversity, and power proximity increasingly influence the siting of hyperscale campuses. The addition of a third diverse route to Abilene exemplifies the growing need for physical path redundancy to address AI cluster expansion and carriers' desire to reduce single points of failure.
Texas continues to attract large-scale data center projects due to its competitive power market, renewable energy availability, and land resources. Fiber providers are racing to establish long-haul and metro fiber positions in AI corridors to secure long-term contracts with hyperscale and cloud operators. FiberLight's nearly $500 million regional investment keeps it competitive in a market where capacity, deployment speed, and dark fiber scalability are key competitive factors.
