European telecoms player Iliad Group and private equity firm InfraVia are joining forces to create a large-scale European hyperscale data centre operation.
InfraVia will invest €430 mln (50% equity stake) in European data centre operator OpCore, valuing the company at €860 mln. This partnership secures significant financing (up to 75% debt) to support OpCore’s expansion, starting with a 100MW data centre near Paris and eventually reaching several hundred megawatts across Europe.
Iliad Group and its cloud subsidiary, Scaleway, will continue their strong partnership with OpCore to fuel growth for both companies. Scaleway will remain OpCore’s key customer and leverage its AI expertise to help OpCore become a leading provider of next-generation AI data centres in Europe.
Thomas Reynaud, CEO of the Iliad Group, said: ‘The Iliad Group’s ambition is Europe-wide. Together with our partner InfraVia, we plan to invest more than €2.5 bn into making OpCore the leading independent data centre platform in Europe.’
Vincent Levita, founder and CEO of InfraVia, commented: ‘This transaction draws on all our experience in hyperscale data center development. Data centres have become an essential digital infrastructure that is experiencing high demand and requiring significant investments.’
Arnaud de Bermingham, CEO of OpCore, added: ‘At OpCore, we are seeing unprecedented growth in the capacity demands expressed by hyperscaler and AI customers. Our experience, track-record, and unique technologies are key assets in a radically changing data centre industry.’
The deal is expected to be finalised in the first half of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals and other standard closing conditions.
