The company says this move strengthens its position as a frontrunner in the European data centre market and expands its footprint and service offerings across the continent.

For Exa Infrastructure, the deal allows it to focus on its extensive, owned terrestrial and subsea fibre network, and on continuing to invest in the infrastructure.

nLighten and Exa are both portfolio companies of I Squared Capital, a leading global infrastructure investor.

“The digital landscape is undergoing rapid transformation, particularly as the demand for artificial intelligence continues to soar across industries,” said Harro Beusker, co-founder and CEO of nLighten.

“This dynamic landscape offers many opportunities for digital infrastructure but also requires robust and scalable data centre solutions.

“By expanding our European operating base, nLighten customers will benefit from nLighten’s diverse portfolio, including a wide range of colocation, connectivity, and on-site services.

“This acquisition underscores nLighten’s commitment to empowering businesses across Europe with world-class data centre solutions and brings us closer to our goal of building and operating a leading European edge data centre platform.”

By acquiring these data centres, nLighten will expand to Belgium, Switzerland and Spain. It will also add sites in existing nLighten markets such as Germany, France, the UK and the Netherlands.

The expansion brings nLighten’s total number of edge data centres to 34 in Europe, including the key business hubs of Amsterdam, London, Paris, Madrid, Geneva, Zurich and Ghent.

“This is the start of an exciting collaboration with our sister company, nLighten, as we each focus on our core competencies to better fulfil our missions,” said Nick Collins, chief commercial officer at Exa Infrastructure.

“The sale allows EXA Infrastructure to exclusively focus on building and operating the mission-critical network infrastructure that enables our customers’ growth.”