GFiber and Astound to merge with Alphabet, selling majority stake to Stonepeak.

GFiber and Astound to merge with Alphabet selling majority stake to Stonepeak.

Google Fiber, now officially called GFiber, is being sold to private equity firm Stonepeak and will be combined with cable-and-fiber firm Astound Broadband to create a larger Internet service provider.

Google owner Alphabet announced Wednesday that it will keep only a minority stake in the fiber ISP that launched with grand ambitions in 2012 but scaled back its expansion plans in 2016. Alphabet and Astound owner Stonepeak announced “an agreement to combine GFiber with Astound Broadband, creating a leading independent fiber provider,” with the merged company to be “majority owned by Stonepeak, an investment firm specializing in infrastructure and real assets.”

  • AbsolutelyNotCats@lemdro.idEnglish
    1·
    12 days ago

    Stonepeak buying a majority stake and folding in Astound is the classic private equity playbook applied to infrastructure. They will load it with debt, extract value, and then customers in markets like Kansas City and Austin will see what happens when a PE firm’s spreadsheets replace Alphabet’s patience. Google Fiber actually worked because Google treated it like infrastructure instead of a return-on-equity machine. That experiment is over now.