French consortium to bid for EU's AI datacentre fund

The AION consortium, which groups some of France's biggest tech and infrastructure companies, will seek EU funding for an expected €10 billion ($11.60 billion) data centre it plans to build in France.

To try to close the gap between Europe ‌and the ⁠United States ⁠and China, which have invested heavily in high-capacity data centres, the ​European Union's executive in December launched a €20 billion fund to boost investment ​in AI infrastructure.

The AION consortium, formed last year to respond to EU efforts to become more internationally competitive on AI, comprises tech companies Artefact, Bull and ⁠Capgemini, telecoms ‌Orange and Iliad including its data centre arm Scaleway, private equity firm Ardian, and French utility ⁠EDF.


Ardian's head of infrastructure investment Benoit Guillochet said ​the French project alone could cost the equivalent ​of half of the EU's new fund.

He said he expected funding from a combination of private investors, including Ardian, and bank lending, as well as EU fund money.

Iliad said it was ready to deploy €4 billion, notably through its ‌datacentre arm Scaleway.

Scaleway CEO Damien Lucas said the ultimate aim was for the data centre to ​have a ​gigawatt of capacity, ⁠effectively doubling France's computing capacity, and that the initial phase would probably be around 100 megawatts.

EDF said last year that it ​was opening calls for tenders for several of its old industrial sites with direct grid connections so data centre operators can speed up the time needed to get linked up to power supplies.

($1 = 0.8623 euros)