CityFibre, the UK’s largest provider of fibre infrastructure, has secured €354.53M from Mubadala

London-based CityFibre, a company claiming to be the UK’s largest independent fibre infrastructure provider, announced that it has raised £300M (nearly €354.53M) in a fresh round of funding from existing investor Mubadala Investment Company.

With this, the company has now raised a total of £1.425B in funding in the last six months – the largest ever financing for UK Full Fibre deployment.

Investors

Under the infrastructure vertical of the UAE–UK Sovereign Investment Partnership, the new equity commitment builds on Mubadala’s initial £500M investment into CityFibre as part of wider financing in September, 2021.

With this financing, CityFibre is now jointly owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mubadala Investment Company, and Interogo Holding.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive at CityFibre, says, “Mubadala’s confidence in our business is a testament to our growing momentum and progress. The need and appetite for carrier-neutral wholesale network competition at scale is clear, and CityFibre continues to demonstrate the benefits as a driver of wider investment, improved services and better value. With Mubadala’s continued support, we are well funded to deliver the UK’s finest Full Fibre network and help to level up the UK.”

“UK’s finest fibre broadband network”

Founded in 2011 by Greg Mesch, CityFibre provides access to Full Fibre infrastructure to consumer and business Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners, service integrators and mobile operators.

The company is already the largest provider of Full Fibre in 26 cities and its rollout has passed 1.5 million homes. 1.3 million of these homes across 60 cities are Ready For Service, enabling residents to get connected in as little as 5 working days. 

CityFibre offers users to choose Gigabit-capable, symmetrical services from its consumer Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners, including Vodafone, TalkTalk and Zen, as well as over 30 independent ISPs across the UK.

The company’s new ‘city-wide’ networks are designed to underpin the digital requirements of all market verticals, including public sector and business, as well as enabling the rollout of 5G services and other Smart City initiatives.

Capital utilisation

CityFibre says that the funds will help accelerate its growth plans and enable participation in Building Digital UK’s (BDUK) ‘Project Gigabit’ rural programme.

Currently, the company is engaged in a £4B investment programme to roll out dense Full Fibre infrastructure to up to 8 million homes by 2025. This rollout continues to accelerate with deployments underway across more than 60 major metro areas, spanning 285 cities, towns and villages.