Quintillion acquired by private equity firm

Quintillion, the Alaska-based fiberoptic provider, has been acquired by a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm, Grain Management.

Mac McHale, president of Quintillion, said the deal has been in the works for almost a year, initiated in March 2023. McHale told the Nugget that he doesn’t expect Alaskans to notice many changes due to this deal.

“The Grain team really bought into our overall strategy,” he said. “It’s good to have an investor with a perspective and a fresh view on what we’re trying to do.”

The previous majority investor in the company had been Cooper Investment Partners, a private equity firm based in New York. McHale said that the Quintillion management team has been retained and that he didn’t expect any other changes to the structure of the company or its partnerships with local telecommunications providers like GCI and TelAlaska (Fastwyre). Nor will it change the infrastructure work the company has committed to fulfill.

Last summer, Quintillion won an $88.8-million grant through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. That money will fund the so-called Nome to Homer Express Route, which will close the loop in the undersea fiberoptic network off the coast of Alaska.

Quintillion’s undersea fiberoptic cable currently connects with terrestrial systems in Deadhorse but comes to a dead-end in Nome. The need for redundancy in that system was underscored this summer. A cut in the undersea fiberoptic cable off the North Slope led to a three-month in the high-speed broadband internetusers had come to rely on in Nome and other cities west of the break. Had the cable to Homer been in place, high-speed broadband still would have been available in Nome.

Grain specializes in digital infrastructure investments.

Chad Crank, Grain’s managing director, said in an announcement from the companies that the firm’s leaders believe in Quintillion’s “distinct competitive advantage and its unparalleled market position and look ahead to expanding its presence in Alaska and the North American Arctic.”