Verizon seeks AI profits with mini data centers, $1B dark fiber deal with Google

Verizon announced a $1 billion deal to connect Google data centers using its dark fiber routes and is converting central offices into small data centers for AI inference workloads, as part of a new 'AI Connect' initiative. CEO Dan Schulman said the company expects additional AI deals worth 'multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years.'

Verizon is seeking to tap into Silicon Valley’s AI spending in a big way. The telecom giant revealed a deal worth more than $1 billion to link Google data centers https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/googles-ai-buildout-drove-37-increase-in-electricity-use-in-2025/ using Verizon’s dark fiber routes—and it’s also tearing copper wiring out of central offices as it converts them into small data centers suitable for supporting AI inference workloads. The telecom company publicly disclosed the Google partnership and data center conversion efforts as part of a new “AI Connect” business initiative during an earnings conference call https://www.verizon.com/about/investors/quarterly-reports/2q-2026-earnings-conference-call-webcast covering the second quarter of 2026. Verizon also expects to announce additional AI-related deals by the end of the year that would be “worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue over the next several years,” said Dan Schulman, CEO of Verizon Communications, during the earnings call https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnys/vz/earnings . “Now it really is about, ‘how do you connect data center to data center to assure that you can optimize to maximize the ever-exploding need for compute?’” Schulman said. “And while that data center connectivity demand is exploding, there’s an equal amount of desire and demand to power inference models and applications that need ultra-low latency, like robotics or remote surgery, autonomous driving, and move that out into the edge, as opposed to these big, massive data centers.” Beyond repurposing dark fiber for hyperscalers’ AI data centers, Verizon is in the early stages of retrofitting some of its own central offices—locations that house the physical equipment for Internet and mobile networks—to become small data centers. Such “remote data centers” aim to support “inference edge computing” with minimal data latency for customers’ deployments of AI-driven services, such as autonomous robotaxi fleets https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/robotaxis-dont-cut-traffic-any-more-than-ride-hailing-study-finds/ or robotics applications https://arstechnica.com/tag/robotics/ , according to Schulman.