Exa Infrastructure has expanded its long-haul terrestrial network with a new route directly connecting the northern Spanish cities of Barcelona and Bilbao. The company said the route creates a strategic corridor serving transatlantic, Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa, and Asia traffic flows, marking a significant step in strengthening connectivity across Southern Europe.
The new link is a key milestone for Barcelona's role in the network, as Exa seeks to transform the city from a predominantly Mediterranean exchange point into a true east-west gateway with seamless access to Atlantic and transatlantic cable systems. According to the company, the route reduces cross-Spain latency by 52 percent, providing direct Atlantic access for subsea cables landing in the Mediterranean.
The route also serves the Zaragoza region, positioning new data center resources at the intersection of Lisbon and Madrid traffic flows to the rest of Europe, and now connecting transatlantic traffic to Mediterranean-facing locations. Zaragoza has become one of Europe's fastest-growing hyperscale and AI data center hubs, with AWS, Microsoft, and QTS all investing heavily in the city.
Across Catalonia, Exa said it connects to the region's eight main data centers. The addition of the long-haul terrestrial route to Bilbao, the company added, creates an unbroken, high-performance path that brings those cables measurably closer to North America.
"Barcelona has always been a natural meeting point between East and West," said Steve Roberts, SVP of strategic investments and product management at Exa Infrastructure. "By extending our terrestrial long-haul footprint directly to the Atlantic corridor, we are giving our customers, and the subsea players that already land there, a genuinely shorter and more resilient path to transatlantic systems."
The expansion comes on the heels of a busy period for Exa. Last year, the I Squared Capital-owned company refinanced its existing facilities and raised more than €1.3 billion ($1.52 billion) in new financing. At the end of last year, it completed the acquisition of subsea cable operator Aqua Comms from Digital 9 Infrastructure.
Exa's network footprint now spans more than 160,000 kilometers (99,419 miles) of digital infrastructure across 37 countries, including seven transatlantic routes and 22 cable landing stations across North America and Europe. The Barcelona-Bilbao route underscores the company's broader strategy to enhance resilience and reduce latency for customers relying on transatlantic and intra-European connectivity, particularly as data center demand continues to surge in key hubs like Zaragoza.