I mean I didnt think Linode had the financial means to build their own global backbone, I dont consider Linode special. Vultr relies exclusively on transit providers, DigitalOcean uses a mix of transit providers and often direct connection to popular local peering fabric or two. Building your own global backbone like HE, OVH, or any of large transit providers like NTT, Level3, Cogent etc must be a massive cost.