• French telecom group joins forces with European private equity firm InfraVia for datacentre ramp-up
• InfraVia is to take a 50% stake on OpCore, Iliad’s datacentre operation
• The two companies plan a €2.5bn capex splurge over next 10 years
• A new 100MW datacentre is planned for Paris, with “multiple hundreds of megawatts in Europe” to be added
• Iliad says it want to capitalise on the “booming” European hyperscale datacentre market for cloud and AI

Iliad Group, a disruptive and innovative telco chaired by French billionaire businessman Xavier Niel, has unveiled that it is in “exclusive discussions” with European private equity firm InfraVia to become its datacentre partner.

Ongoing reports that Iliad was on the lookout for an investment buddy to bolster OpCore, its European datacentre operation, were confirmed by Iliad in its first-quarter FY24 presentation. According to today’s press release, InfraVia, through its infrastructure funds, will acquire a 50% equity stake in OpCore, which boasts an enterprise value of €860m. The outcome of those discussions, therefore, appear to be pretty much a slam-dunk.

Iliad makes no bones about the size of its ambition: To turn OpCore into a major European hyperscale datacentre platform, something which the region has notably lacked. By regrouping its eight datacentres in France (of which six are in the Paris area) and the seven it has in Poland, Iliad, with the help of InfraVia, wants to position itself as a “pure-play provider” able to capitalise on the booming European hyperscale datacentre market for cloud and AI, which the France-headquartered group believes is bouncing along at an annual growth rate in excess of 20%.

“Iliad Group’s ambition is Europe wide,” emphasised CEO Thomas Reynaud. “Together with our partner InfraVia, we plan to invest more than €2.5bn [over the next 10 years] to make OpCore the leading independent datacentre platform in Europe.”

According to Iliad, the InfraVia partnership gives OpCore “the right financial structure”: Dedicated financing is slated to cover up to 75% of OpCore’s investment needs with bank debt. The plan is to enable OpCore to scale to more than 130 megawatts (MW) through the development of a new 100MW datacentre in the Paris region, and then to “multiple hundreds of megawatts in Europe”.

The onboarding of InfraVia, insists Iliad, will not loosen ties between OpCore and the rest of the group. The two will continue to work together to drive the “rapid expansion” of Scaleway, the group’s cloud subsidiary, as well as coordinate on fulfilling OpCore’s Europe-wide ambitions. “Scaleway will retain its status as a privileged client of OpCore and... will help position OpCore at the forefront of the next-generation AI datacentre landscape,” noted the press release.

At its Q1 FY24 presentation, Iliad claimed it has more than 150 enterprise customers for OpCore’s datacentre facilities (in addition to its own operations). 

- Ken Wieland, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV