Prices are as reported in the chapters. Where the announced and closing values differ, both are given. "Including debt" means the price was reported as an enterprise value. Deal-structure detail and source conflicts are in the chapter footnotes.
The Prologue Cycle#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 1969 | University Computing Company | Gulf Insurance | $240 million merger | I |
| March 1969 (withdrawn) | Electronic Data Systems | Up to 82 percent of Collins Radio | EDS stock worth $65 a share | I |
| August 1970 | Honeywell | GE's computer business (time-sharing excluded) | About $237.5 million in Honeywell notes and stock | I |
| November 1979 | H&R Block | CompuServe | About $23 million in cash and stock | I |
| June 1984 (closed October 1984) | General Motors | Electronic Data Systems | As much as $2.55 billion | I |
| July 1989 | IBM | Operation of Kodak's data centers | Terms not disclosed | I |
The Networks Meet#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 1993 (declined) | MFS | UUNET | $8 million offered | II |
| April 1996 | MFS | UUNET | $2 billion | II |
| August 1996 | WorldCom | MFS | $14.3 billion | II |
| 1997–1998 | Taconic, with Blackacre and Goldman Sachs | Four Sylvan Lawrence buildings, including 111 Eighth Avenue | $387.5 million | II |
| 1997 | WorldCom | The networks behind AOL and CompuServe | $1.2 billion in stock and $175 million in cash | II |
| December 1999 | The Rudin family | 32 Avenue of the Americas | About $250 million to buy and renovate | II |
The Hosting Gold Rush#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 1999 | Exodus | Cohesive Technology | $100 million | III |
| June 1999 | Metromedia Fiber Network | AboveNet (owner of PAIX) | $1.76 billion in stock (the Times said $1.55 billion) | III |
| October 1999 | Exodus | Service Metrics | $280 million in stock | III |
| March 2000 | PSINet | Metamor Worldwide | $1.9 billion | III |
| August 2000 (offer; withdrawn August 30) | Exodus | Digex | $250 million in cash plus 1.70 Exodus shares per Digex share; the press valued the bid at about $8.5 billion | III |
| September 5, 2000 | WorldCom | Intermedia, and control of Digex | $39 a share in stock, close to $3 billion plus debt; about $6 billion in all | III |
| September 2000 (closed January 10, 2001) | Exodus | GlobalCenter | About $6.1 billion in Exodus stock | III |
Empty Floors#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 2001 | Settlement with Digex minority holders | WorldCom–Intermedia lawsuit | About $165 million in WorldCom stock plus $15 million to Digex | III |
| June 2001 | Genuity | Integra | $114 million | IV |
| November 2001 | Divine | Data Return | About $31 million in stock | IV |
| November 2001 (closed February 1, 2002) | Cable & Wireless | Twenty-eight of Exodus's data centers | $560 million in cash, per Exodus's disclosure statement (the press reported about $570 million plus liabilities) | IV |
| Before November 2001 | Cable & Wireless | Digital Island | $340 million | IV |
| February 2002 | Cogent Communications | PSINet's U.S. business | About $10 million | IV |
| After January 2002 | ST Telemedia | 61.5 percent of Global Crossing | $250 million, valuing the company at $600 million | IV |
| May 2002–September 2003 | Undisclosed buyers | Metromedia Fiber's Northern Virginia real estate | $63 million combined | IV |
| June 2003 | Level 3 | Genuity | $60 million in cash plus $77 million of prepayments (announced at $242 million) | IV |
The Phoenix#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2, 2002 (closed December 31, 2002) | Equinix | i-STT and Pihana Pacific | All-stock combination plus a $30 million ST Telemedia investment | V |
| 2002–2004 | GI Partners | 25 data-center properties | $280 million of equity | V |
| December 2002 | Rob Roy (court records name "Colo Gateways") | Former Enron Broadband building, Las Vegas | $930,000 | V |
| January 2004 | Savvis | Cable & Wireless USA assets, the remains of Exodus | $155 million in cash plus about $12.5 million of liabilities | V |
| January 2004 | Du Pont Fabros Interests | Savvis's rights to several former Exodus data centers (sale-leaseback) | $52 million | V |
| October 2004 | Tom Thomas of Thomas & Mack | The former Enron building, leased back to Switch | $3 million | V |
| October 28, 2004 | IPO | Digital Realty Trust | 20 million shares at $12, or $240 million | V |
| December 2004 | Equinix | Data-center assets at 1735 Lundy Avenue, San Jose, from AboveNet | About $900,000 | V |
| 2005 | Verizon | MCI | $6.6 billion | VI |
| June 2007 | Equinix | IXEurope | $482 million | V |
| August 7, 2008 | IPO | Rackspace Hosting | 15 million shares at $12.50, about $187.5 million | V |
| September 2009 | Equinix | GI Partners' former Exodus center in Frankfurt | $28 million | V |
| October 21, 2009 (closed April 30, 2010) | Equinix | Switch and Data | About $689 million announced; $683.4 million at close | V |
| January 2011 (closed April 11, 2011) | Verizon | Terremark | $19 a share in cash, about $1.4 billion of equity | V |
| April 2011 (closed July 15, 2011) | CenturyLink | Savvis | $40 a share, about $2.5 billion of equity, about $3.2 billion including debt | V |
The Cloud#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2006 (tentative) | Microsoft | 74 acres in Quincy, Washington | About $1 million | VI |
| March 2006 (tentative) | Yahoo | 50 acres in Quincy, Washington | About $500,000 | VI |
| October 2007 | IPO | DuPont Fabros Technology | $21 a share, raising $641 million | VI |
| September 9, 2009 | Zayo | FiberNet Telecom Group, the seed of zColo | $104.1 million | VI |
| 2010 | Cincinnati Bell | Cyrus Networks | A reported $525 million | VI |
| September 2010 | IPO | CoreSite Realty | $16 a share, raising about $270 million | VI |
| December 2010 | 111 Eighth Avenue | About $1.9 billion (reported; never officially disclosed) | VI | |
| December 31, 2011 | Zayo | MarquisNet, Las Vegas | $13.6 million | VI |
| July 2, 2012 | Zayo | AboveNet | $2.21 billion | VI |
| January 2013 | IPO | CyrusOne | $19 a share | VI |
| October 2013 | IPO | QTS Realty Trust | $21 a share, raising $257.25 million | VI |
| 2013 | American Tower | Global Tower Partners | $4.8 billion | VII |
| July 1, 2014 | Zayo | Colo Facilities Atlanta (AtlantaNAP) | $51.9 million | VI |
| February 23, 2015 | Zayo | Latisys | $677.5 million, net of cash | VI |
The Reconsolidation#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 29, 2015 (closed January 15, 2016) | Equinix | TelecityGroup | £2.35 billion, about $3.6 billion; about $3.8 billion at close | VII |
| July 14, 2015 | Digital Realty | Telx | $1.886 billion in cash | VII |
| July 2016 | Digital Bridge | DataBank | Undisclosed | VII |
| November 4, 2016 | BC Partners, Medina Capital and Longview | CenturyLink's 57 data centers (Cyxtera) | $2.15 billion in cash plus a $150 million stake | VII |
| December 2016 | Equinix | Verizon's 29 data centers | $3.6 billion in cash | VII |
| February 2017 | Stonepeak | Majority of Cologix | Undisclosed, with a $500 million growth commitment | VII |
| March 2017 | Digital Bridge, PSP and TIAA | Vantage | Undisclosed | VII |
| June 9, 2017 | Digital Realty | DuPont Fabros | About $7.6 billion including debt, all stock; about $7.8 billion at close | VII |
| April 2018 | Macquarie Infrastructure Partners | Aligned Energy (joint control) | Undisclosed | VII |
| 2018 (closed January 1, 2019) | Brookfield Infrastructure | AT&T's 31 data centers (Evoque) | $1.1 billion | VII |
| May 8, 2019 (closed March 9, 2020) | Digital Colony and EQT | Zayo Group | $35 a share, about $14.3 billion including debt | VII |
| July 1, 2019 | GIC (80 percent) and Equinix (20 percent) | xScale joint venture | More than $1 billion | VII |
| July 2019 | Colony Capital | Digital Bridge Holdings | $325 million | VII |
| October 29, 2019 (closed March 12, 2020) | Digital Realty | Interxion | About $8.4 billion including debt, all stock | VII |
| April 2020 | Macquarie-led consortium | 88 percent of AirTrunk | Valuation above A$3 billion | VII |
| August 2020 | EQT Infrastructure IV | EdgeConneX | Undisclosed | VII |
| September 29, 2020 (closed December 15, 2020) | DataBank | zColo | About $1.2 billion for 39 U.S. and U.K. data centers | VI, VII |
| June 7, 2021 | Blackstone | QTS | $78 a share, about $10 billion including debt | VII |
| November 15, 2021 | KKR and GIP | CyrusOne | $90.50 a share, about $15 billion including debt | VII |
| November 15, 2021 | American Tower | CoreSite | $170 a share, about $10.4 billion including debt | VII |
| May 11, 2022 (closed December 6, 2022) | DigitalBridge and IFM | Switch | $34.25 a share, about $11 billion including debt | VII |
The AI Gold Rush#
| Date | Buyer | Target | Price | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2023 | Microsoft | OpenAI (third phase of partnership) | Undisclosed; the press reported $10 billion | VIII |
| November 2024 | Amazon | Anthropic | $8 billion in total investment | VIII |
| March 27, 2025 | IPO | CoreWeave | $40 a share, raising $1.5 billion at a value of about $19 billion | VIII |
| May 2025 | Investors | Crusoe, for the Abilene campus | $11.6 billion raised | VIII |
| September 2025 | Nvidia | OpenAI | Up to $100 billion, tied to 10 gigawatts of deployments (letter of intent, later described as not finalized) | VIII |
| October 2025 (rejected) | CoreWeave | Core Scientific | About $9 billion in stock | VIII |
| October 2025 | Blue Owl-run vehicle, arranged by Morgan Stanley | Meta's Hyperion campus | About $27 billion of debt and $1.5 billion of equity | VIII |
| November 2025 | Nvidia and Microsoft | Anthropic | Up to $10 billion and up to $5 billion | VIII |
| February 2026 | SpaceX | xAI | Combined company valued by Bloomberg at $1.25 trillion | VIII |
| February 2026 | Investors | Anthropic | $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation | VIII |
| March 2026 | SoftBank, Nvidia, Amazon and others | OpenAI | $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation | VIII |
| May 2026 | Investors | Anthropic | $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation | VIII |
What the Prices Said#
The prologue. The first prices in this book were paid in paper. University Computing used a stock valued at more than 100 times earnings to buy an insurance company, and Perot offered EDS stock for a radio maker with 55 times his sales. When GM paid $2.55 billion for EDS in 1984, it paid mostly in cash for a business with real contracts, and the stock market of 1970 had priced in most of that value 14 years early.
The networks meet. The early prices were small and then suddenly very large. The NSF obligated $211,587 for the Washington NAP. Crowe offered $8 million for UUNET in 1993 and paid $2 billion three years later, and WorldCom paid $14.3 billion for MFS a few months after that. The buyers were paying for the meeting places and the traffic, though most of them still thought they were buying networks.
The Gold Rush. The prices of 1999 and 2000 were set by forecasts and paid in stock. When news of the GlobalCenter talks leaked, Exodus's shares jumped 49 percent, and because Exodus was paying in shares, the price of the deal jumped with them. Digex, worth $5.3 billion on the market, drew an $8.5 billion offer. The currency was as inflated as the target.
The Bust. The Bust repriced everything at once. Exodus's best data centers sold for less than 3 percent of its peak Market Value, Data Return for about one-fifteenth of its IPO valuation and PSINet's U.S. business for about $10 million against nearly $3 billion of debt. The buildings changed hands at a fraction of their cost, and the customers stayed in them.
The Phoenix. The Phoenix prices were the cheapest in the book and the best trades. Equinix paid about $900,000 for the guts of a finished building that could bring in $30 million a year. GI Partners turned $280 million of equity into more than $1 billion. By 2011, the same buildings were being sold to the phone companies at prices that looked a lot like another top.
The cloud. The cloud era added a new kind of price: the IPO of a wholesale landlord, valued like real estate. Digital Realty, DuPont Fabros, CoreSite, CyrusOne and QTS all went public between $12 and $21 a share. Zayo's own zColo purchases, from MarquisNet to Latisys, show what a fiber company paid to own the rooms at the ends of its fiber.
The Reconsolidation. By 2021, the buyers were paying for cash flow, and they were paying with cheap capital. QTS sold for about 3.7 times its IPO price, CyrusOne for almost five times and CoreSite for more than ten times. American Tower paid about 30 times CoreSite's EBITDA, a tower multiple for a data center. Four companies changed hands for about $46 billion in 11 months.
The AI Gold Rush. The prices of this cycle are mostly investments, and many of the investors also sell to the companies they back. Nvidia invested in OpenAI, Anthropic and CoreWeave's IPO. Amazon, Microsoft and Google invested in Anthropic while selling it computing. Anthropic went from a $124 million Series A in 2021 to a $965 billion valuation in May 2026, and in the first week of November 2026 the market began to argue about what it was worth.