GFiber and Astound to Combine
Investment firm Stonepeak will be the majority owner, with Alphabet retaining a ‘significant minority’ stake.
WASHINGTON, March 12, 2026 – Google’s fiber unit is combining with cable broadband operator Astound Broadband.
The combined company would be majority owned by investment firm Stonepeak, which spent $8.1 billion to acquire Astound in 2020. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, would stay on as a “significant minority shareholder,” the companies said Wednesday.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.
GFiber’s executive team, led by CEO Dinni Jain, will run the company.
“This partnership will be transformational for the businesses, with GFiber and Astound’s complementary networks and extraordinary teams enabling the combined company to better serve millions of customers and the demand for a next generation network and ubiquitous connectivity,” Andrew Thomas, senior managing director at Stonepeak, said in a statement.
In total, Astound has about 4.5 million cable and fiber passings, and GFiber counts 2.8 million passings, New Street Research analysts said in an investor note, citing a proprietary database. There’s little overlap there, and the combined company would have 7.1 million passings according to New Street.
Astound also offers mobile service on T-Mobile’s infrastructure, plus video service.
The New Street analysts said they had some questions about the combined company’s ambitions.
“Will they continue to overbuild footprints of existing cable and fiber operators? Does the combined company plan to overbuild its cable footprint with fiber?” New Street analysts David Barden and Vikash Harlalka wrote.
The deal comes after Bloomberg reported in January that Google was in talks with Astound to establish a joint venture in which Stonepeak would be the majority shareholder.
Jim Holanda, Astound’s former CEO, joined Cable One in January as CEO. Astound said last November it had selected a new CEO but would not announce who it was until sometime this quarter. That announcement did not come before Wednesday’s merger was announced. John Freehan, Astound’s CFO, has been serving as interim CEO.
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