Zayo Group has named Sowmyanarayan Sampath as the company's new CEO.Sampath, a former Verizon executive and most recently consumer CEO at the carrier, will take over from current CEO, Steve Smith, who is retiring.Sampath will take the helm at the company on September 1, 2026. He previously departed Verizon earlier this year, where he worked for more than a decade.Zayo confirmed that Smith will continue to serve on the company's board of directors. Smith has been CEO at the company since October 2020."On behalf of the board, I want to thank Steve for his leadership and the important role he has played in strengthening Zayo’s market position,” said Kevin Turner, chairman of Zayo’s board of directors.“Steve has sharpened Zayo's strategy and positioned the company for its next phase of growth. This planned transition reflects the strength of our business, the depth of our leadership team, and the board's confidence in the path ahead. Sampath’s track record of scaling complex networks and driving enterprise revenue makes him the right leader to maximize the potential from Zayo’s market-leading assets.”During Smith's tenure, Zayo has grown its fiber network to span 224,000 route miles across North America and 32 million fiber miles.“Leading Zayo has been a privilege, and I’m deeply proud of what our team has built as we prepare the Company for the next generation of digital infrastructure,” said Smith.The company also oversaw its 50th and largest acquisition since it was founded in 2007, earlier this year, when Zayo finalized the acquisition of tower company Crown Castle's fiber assets. Smith previously told DCD that these fiber operations are located in desirable metropolitan areas that will help the company support the AI rollout.His replacement, Sampath, will continue the company's AI push, as noted in Zayo's announcement today (July 14)."As AI workloads, distributed applications, dense GPU clusters, and hyperscale environments change where capacity is needed, and as large enterprises manage increasingly complex connectivity needs, the network is the ultimate constraint, and Zayo is built to solve this," said Sampath. "We already connect more data centers in the US than anyone else, and that is increasingly important as AI companies and large enterprises look for the scale, reach, and performance AI-driven infrastructure requires."In January of last year, Zayo announced plans to build 5,000 route miles of long-haul fiber across the US to meet the growing demands of AI workloads by 2030. Smith noted to DCD in May that this planned buildout has since tripled.