Grouped by the era and company in which each person first takes the stage. Titles are the ones they held in this story, and the years are the years in which they appear in it, not necessarily their full tenure.
The Glass House#
IBM
- Thomas J. Watson Jr., chairman (1964)
- Fred Brooks, the IBM executive who described the System/360's storage (1964)
- Walt Grom, IBM executive who said IBM was "happy to do the plumbing" for web hosting (1999)
Electronic Data Systems
- Ross Perot, founder (1962–1984)
University Computing Company
- Sam Wyly, chairman (1968–1972)
- Charles J. Wyly Jr., president, and Sam Wyly's brother (1969)
Time-Sharing and the Computer Utility
- Robert A. Leonard, ITT executive who forecast the "data-center industry" (1965)
- Tom O'Rourke, president of Tymshare (1968)
- John T. Gilmore and Charles W. Adams, founders of Keydata (1965–1970)
- James H. Binger, chairman of Honeywell, which bought GE's computer business (1970)
- Jeff Wilkins, founder of CompuServe (1969)
- Bill Loudin, manager of GE's GEnie service (1985)
Disaster Recovery
- Kenneth N. Pontikes, head of Comdisco (1982–1987)
- Raymond R. Hipp, president of Comdisco (1983)
- Martin A. Weinstein, head of Comdisco Equities (1987)
- Paul Catalano, founder of DataPort, beneath the World Trade Center (1986)
- Richard Reese, of Iron Mountain (1986)
The Customers
- Arthur Collins, founder of Collins Radio, who fended off Perot (1969)
- Katherine Hudson, Kodak's director of corporate information systems (1989)
- George DiNardo, of Mellon Bank, who negotiated with IBM by waving a sword (1989)
Where the Networks Meet#
The National Science Foundation
- Stephen Wolff, NSFNET program director (1994)
- Don Mitchell, NSF official who oversaw the late handoff (1994)
MFS
- Jim Crowe, chairman and chief executive, later founder of Level 3 (1993–1996)
- Royce Holland, MFS executive who assigned Dan Caruso to open local competition (1993)
- Kevin O'Hara, who hired Dan Caruso at MFS and later worked with him at Level 3 (1991–2000)
- Scott Yeager, city manager of MFS Houston, whose idea helped spark MAE-East, later a leader of Enron Broadband (1989–1992)
- Steve Feldman, MFS Datanet's NAP principal investigator and MAE's principal engineer (1994)
UUNET
- Rick Adams, founder (1987–1996)
- John Sidgmore, chief executive, later vice chairman of WorldCom (1993–2002)
PSINet
- Bill Schrader, founder and chief executive (1995–2001)
The Palo Alto Internet Exchange
- Brian Reid, Digital Equipment researcher behind the exchange (1994–1997)
- Paul Vixie, cofounder and keeper of Root Server F, later chief technology officer of Metromedia Fiber Network (1997–2001)
The Carrier Hotels
- Ken Carmel, general partner of the owner of 60 Hudson Street (1999)
- Charles Bendit and Paul Pariser, founders of Taconic Investment Partners, which bought 111 Eighth Avenue (1997–1998)
Northern Virginia
- Robert Pittman, of AOL (1996)
- David McWatters, Loudoun County supervisor (1997)
- Stephen Belomy, executive vice president of AboveNet (1999)
The Internet's Elders
- John Curran, BBN technology chief (1996)
- Bill Woodcock, of Packet Clearing House (2021)
- Vint Cerf, of MCI (1997)
The Hosting Gold Rush and the Bust#
Exodus Communications
- K.B. Chandrasekhar, cofounder and later chairman (1992–2000)
- B.V. Jagadeesh, cofounder (1992–1998)
- Ellen Hancock, president from 1998, later chairman and chief executive (1998–2001)
Equinix
- Jay Adelson, cofounder and chief technology officer (1998–2000)
- Al Avery, cofounder, later president and chief operating officer (1998–2000)
- Peter Van Camp, chief executive, later executive chairman (2000–2007)
Global Crossing
- Gary Winnick, founder (1999–2002)
- Leo Hindery, chairman and chief executive of GlobalCenter (1999–2000)
WorldCom and Digex
- Bernie Ebbers, chief executive of WorldCom (1996–2002)
- William B. Chandler III, Delaware chancellor in the Digex lawsuit (2000–2001)
The Carriers
- Joe Nacchio, chief executive of Qwest (1997–2002)
- Lew Wilks, Qwest executive (2000)
- Phil Anschutz, who replaced Nacchio (2002)
- Jimmy Byrd, Level 3 senior vice president who warned of a data-center glut (2000)
- Ron Vidal, Level 3 senior vice president (2001)
- Paul Gudonis, chief executive of Genuity (2000–2002)
Metromedia Fiber Network and AboveNet
- Steve Garofalo, founder and chief executive of Metromedia Fiber Network (1999–2002)
- Howard Finkelstein, of Metromedia Fiber Network (1999)
- Bill LaPerch, chief executive of the reorganized AboveNet (2003–2012)
The Developers
- Andrew Penson and Mark Teitelbaum, of Argent (2000)
- Manny Medina, founder of Terremark and its NAP of the Americas, later chief executive of the company that bought CenturyLink's data centers (2000–2016)
Akamai
- Tom Leighton, cofounder (1998)
- Danny Lewin, cofounder (1998–2001)
- Jonathan Seelig, cofounder (1998)
- George Conrades, chief executive (1999)
- Paul Sagan, president and chief operating officer (1999)
The Analysts and Buyers of the Bust
- Stephen Murphy, CIBC analyst who counted the empty space (2001)
- Ted Chamberlin, Gartner analyst (2001)
- David Schaeffer, founder of Cogent Communications (2002)
The Phoenix#
Equinix
- Steve Smith, chief executive (2007–2018), later chief executive of Zayo (2020)
- Lee Theng Kiat, chief executive of ST Telemedia and Equinix's chairman after the rescue (2002)
- Rich Kalbrener, chief executive of Pihana Pacific (2002)
GI Partners and Digital Realty
- Richard Magnuson, founder of GI Partners and executive chairman of Digital Realty (2001–2012)
- Michael F. Foust, chief executive of Digital Realty, later chairman of Vantage (2004–2017)
Switch
- Rob Roy, founder (2002–2022)
- Mike Borden, president, and Rob Roy's brother (2008)
Managed Hosting
- Rob McCormick, chairman and chief executive of Savvis (2004)
- Jim Ousley, chief executive of Savvis under CenturyLink (2011)
- Glen F. Post III, chief executive of CenturyLink (2011)
DuPont Fabros
- Hossein Fateh, chief executive (2008)
- Mark Wetzel, chief financial officer (2008)
The Cloud#
Amazon Web Services
- Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon (2006)
- Andy Jassy, founding head of Amazon Web Services, who by 2026 was setting Amazon's capital spending (2003–2026)
- Chris MacAskill, of SmugMug, an early AWS customer (2006)
Building Their Own
- Danny Hillis, the computer scientist who called Google's network "the biggest computer in the world" (2006)
- Curt Morris, of the Port of Quincy, and Tim Snead, Quincy's city administrator (2006)
- Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (2011, 2025)
- Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook's vice president of technical operations (2011)
- Amir Michael, Facebook hardware engineer (2011)
Data Center Alley
- Buddy Rizer, of Loudoun County's economic-development office (2012–2016)
- Ron Meyer, Loudoun County supervisor (2016)
The Wholesale Developers
- Chad Williams, chairman and chief executive of QTS (2013–2021)
Zayo and zColo
- Dan Caruso, founder and chief executive of Zayo Group (2007–2020)
- Greg Friedman, of zColo (2015)
- Kevin Ooley, president of DataBank (2020)
- Raul Martynek, chief executive of DataBank (2020–2021)
The Reconsolidation#
Digital Realty
- Bill Stein, chief executive (2015–2017)
- Christopher Eldredge, chief executive of DuPont Fabros (2017)
- David Ruberg, chief executive of Interxion (2019–2020)
Equinix
- Charles Meyers, chief executive (2018–2019)
- John Hughes, executive chairman of TelecityGroup (2015)
DigitalBridge
- Marc Ganzi, cofounder of Digital Bridge and chief executive of DigitalBridge Group (2013–2022)
- Ben Jenkins, cofounder of Digital Bridge (2013)
- Tom Barrack, founder of Colony Capital (2019)
- Sureel Choksi, chief executive of Vantage (2017)
The Take-Private Wave
- Tyler Henritze and Greg Blank, of Blackstone (2021)
- Dave Ferdman, cofounder and interim chief executive of CyrusOne (2021)
- Bruce Duncan, chief executive of CyrusOne (2020–2021)
- Tom Bartlett, chief executive of American Tower (2021)
The Infrastructure Funds
- Grant van Rooyen, chief executive and chairman of Cologix, and a Level 3 colleague (2017)
- Jan Vesely, of EQT (2019–2020)
- Andrew Schaap, chief executive of Aligned Energy (2018)
- Robin Khuda, founder and chief executive of AirTrunk (2020)
- Frank Kwok, of Macquarie (2020)
The Analyst
- Nick Del Deo, MoffettNathanson analyst who compared dark fiber with towers (2014)
The AI Gold Rush#
Nvidia
- Jensen Huang, cofounder and chief executive (1993–2026)
- Colette Kress, chief financial officer (2025)
OpenAI and Stargate
- Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI (2023–2026)
- Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank and of Stargate (2025)
- Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle (2025)
CoreWeave
- Michael Intrator, cofounder and chief executive (2017–2026)
xAI
- Elon Musk, founder of xAI and builder of Colossus (2024–2026)
The Cloud Builders
- Amy Hood, chief financial officer of Microsoft (2026)
- Anat Ashkenazi, chief financial officer of Alphabet (2026)
- Rachel Peterson, of Meta (2026)
Power
- Joe Dominguez, chief executive of Constellation Energy (2024)
- Bobby Hollis, of Microsoft (2024)
- Mark Christie, FERC commissioner (2024)
- Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova (2025)
- Stu Bresler, PJM executive (2025)
- Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy (2026)
Anthropic
- Dario Amodei, cofounder and chief executive (2021–2026)
- Daniela Amodei, cofounder, president and chair of the board (2021–2026)
- Jaan Tallinn, cofounder of Skype, who led Anthropic's Series A (2021)
- Alfred Lin, of Sequoia Capital (2026)
The Neighbors and the Politicians
- KeShaun Pearson, of Memphis Community Against Pollution (2025)
- Paul Young, mayor of Memphis (2025)
- Abre' Conner, of the NAACP (2026)
- Laura Thoms, of Earthjustice (2026)
- Debra Brown, the federal judge who let the xAI turbine case proceed (2026)
- Greg Abbott, governor of Texas (2025–2026)
- Gina Hinojosa, who defeated Abbott (2026)
- Amy Acton, elected governor of Ohio (2026)
- Greg Casar, U.S. representative (2026)
- Josh Levi and Dan Diorio, of the Data Center Coalition (2024–2026)
The Skeptics and the Analysts
- Jim Covello, head of global equity research at Goldman Sachs (2024)
- David Cahn, of Sequoia Capital (2024)
- Michael Burry, the investor who bet against housing before 2008 (2025)
- Stacy Rasgon, Bernstein analyst (2025)
- Aswath Damodaran, NYU professor who valued Anthropic by its cash flows (2026)
Returning from Bandwidth#
- Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, whose Cinderella's Ball frames both books
- Andrew Odlyzko, the AT&T Labs researcher who debunked the Internet traffic myth (1998)
- Jack Grubman, the telecom analyst who amplified it (late 1990s)
- Brad Feld, cofounder of SoftBank's venture fund and author of Bandwidth's foreword (1996–2000)