The deal brings together Exa’s extensive terrestrial and subsea footprint with Aqua Comms’ portfolio of high-capacity submarine cable systems linking North America, Ireland and mainland Europe.

Aqua Comms owns and operates the AEC-1 and AEC-2 transatlantic systems, the CeltixConnect-1 and CeltixConnect-2 cables between Ireland and the UK, and is part of the consortium behind the Amitié system.

Exa, a London-based portfolio company of I Squared Capital, already operates more than 160,000km of digital infrastructure across 37 countries.

Its network includes seven transatlantic routes and 22 cable landing stations across Europe and North America. The addition of Aqua Comms enhances route diversity and resiliency while creating new options for customers seeking scalable, low-latency connectivity between key digital markets.

The acquisition builds on a period of sustained investment by Exa, including a major upgrade of its Paris–Marseille route and the rollout of a new pan-European backbone fibre network. Together, these assets form a more deeply meshed subsea and terrestrial platform designed to support rising traffic volumes and increasingly distributed workloads.

Jim Fagan, chief executive officer of Exa Infrastructure, said the completion of the transaction materially enhances the company’s transatlantic and European connectivity capabilities, delivering greater resilience and route diversity across a unified network.

For the wider digital infrastructure ecosystem, the deal underlines the strategic value of subsea assets as hyperscalers, carriers and enterprises seek reliable, diverse paths across the Atlantic. Ireland’s role as a landing point for transatlantic cables also continues to grow in importance as a gateway between the US and Europe.

With Aqua Comms now fully integrated, Exa Infrastructure is positioning itself as a more comprehensive provider of long-haul connectivity, aligned with the evolving requirements of cloud, content and AI-driven traffic flows.

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