CityFibre CEO and founder Greg Mesch has stepped down.

Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that Mesch was leaving for personal reasons and with immediate effect. He will be replaced by COO Simon Holden.

Mesch said in a LinkedIn post: “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together and excited to support the next chapter as vice chairman. Congratulations to Simon Holden in his new role – the company is in great hands.”

This announcement follows the closing of a £2.3 billion ($3.1bn) financing round in July amidst rumors that the company was struggling to secure funding. Bosses at the company had warned that funding would run out in mid-2025 “in all scenarios.”

CityFibre will use the funds for a fiber rollout to eight million premises across the UK, with the company more than halfway to this total with around 4.3m premises passed.

£500 million ($673m) of the total funding amount came from new equity secured from existing CityFibre shareholders, including Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Antin Infrastructure Partners, Mubadala Investment Company, and Interogo Holding.

This was accompanied by £960m ($1.3bn) in debt, supported by lenders including ABN AMRO, BBVA, Crédit Agricole CIB, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo IMI CIB, Lloyds, the National Wealth Fund, NatWest, SEB, and Société Générale.

An additional accordion facility of £800m ($1bn) is also being made available to drive CityFibre’s expansion through M&A opportunities around fiber network assets.

Founded in 2011, CityFibre is a fiber-only provider. The company has been pushing to take on the UK’s incumbent fiber providers, Openreach and Virgin Media O2. The company’s network passes more than 4.3 million premises, according to Mesch, which is slightly behind Virgin Media O2’s 6.4 million. Both trail behind Openreach, a subsidiary of BT Group, which has passed around 17 million premises.