Thursday Bytes: CityFibre, Mitsubishi, Lightpath

Some last mile fiber, cooling, and traffic growth:

CityFibre is looking to raise money for future acquisitions. According to reports citing ‘a person familiar with the matter’, the alternative UK fiber builder and operator may make a move to raise $1.2B in equity financing, with Goldman Sachs, Antin Infrastructure Partners, Mubadala Investment, and Interogo Holding in the mix. CityFibre has spent the last decade building out last mile networks in markets across the country. Consolidation has been on the rise, and this move would follow last year’s raising of $2.26B for similar purposes.

Mitsubishi Electric has announced plans to move into Ohio in force with a new subsidiary. They will establish MEHITS US, Inc next month, which will manufacture IT cooling equipment in the city of Mason, which is about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati. They are investing $30M to repurpose part of an existing Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America facility to address the cooling needs of the data center industry. Currently, such needs are met from a facility in Italy.

And Lightpath says it is seeing a surge in internet traffic and that AI is driving it. According to the company, IP traffic is up 32% over the last 18 months amid a trend toward AI inference model usage. Lightpath’s extensive enterprise fiber footprint across the NY/NJ metro area touchs a wide range of enterprise verticals, and the company is seeing those enterprises tap into LLMs as part of their daily operations.

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