Antin Infrastructure Partners has dropped out of the second round of a process for a stake in Iliad’s data centre business Opcore, said sources familiar with the deal.

The exit of the Paris-listed fund manager, which was shortlisted in summer, leaves InfraVia Capital Partners and Morrison in the running for a 50% stake in Opcore, with binding offers earmarked for mid-October.

Opcore owns and operates 15 data centres with 31 MW of contracted capacity across France and Poland.

Iliad is looking for an investor to help it fund the expansion of the business to reach 131 MW at its existing sites – a plan that requires more than EUR 800m of capex to be spent in the next few years.

The sources said Iliad is having parallel conversations with other possible investors that could enter the race even though the process is already at an advanced stage, with one of the sources adding that Stonepeak and Mubadala are possible candidates.

Both have experience in the data centre sector, with Mubadala recently investing in London-headquartered Yondr Group and last year taking a stake in US-based Aligned Data Centers, while Stonepeak owns assets including US group Cologix.

Opcore currently generates around EUR 35m of annual EBITDA and could fetch an enterprise value in the EUR 800m-1bn region, based on recent prices for data centre businesses. The company expects to add a further 11 MW to reach EUR 52m of EBITDA by 2026.

The business benefits from a contract with Iliad and other two hyperscale customers for more than half of its capacity, with the rest contracted to smaller enterprise clients. One of its possible areas of growth is shifting more from a colocation service provider to a hyperscaler.

Opcore’s auction is progressing roughly at the same time as the sale of Spanish peer Nabiax by Asterion Infrastructure Partners, for which at least six bidders have recently been shortlisted.

Iliad, Stonepeak and Mubadala declined to comment. Antin did not respond to a request for comment.