A consortium that includes Orange, Iliad Group, and Capgemini, unveiled plans to bid for EU funding to build an AI gigafactory in France. The project could cost around €10 billion.
The AION consortium also includes Ardian, Bull, Artefact, Scaleway, and EDF Group. It has the support of various other technology and industrial players, including Hugging Face, Nokia, and Schneider Electric. The group plans to submit a proposal under the EU’s AI Gigafactories scheme, which carries a €20 billion fund to support up to five large-scale AI facilities to bolster sovereign compute capacity across the region.
Ardian's head of infrastructure for Europe, Benoit Gaillochet, estimated the total cost of the French facility could go over €10 billion. Iliad CEO Thomas Reynaud apparently added that the operator could earmark as much as €4 billion for the project. The site would initially provide around 100MW of capacity, with chips to be sourced from Nvidia, AMD, or other suppliers, depending on performance requirements, the news outlet noted.
AION stated Europe’s AI competitiveness will depend on access to massive, available, competitive, and sovereign computing power, adding that the challenge is industrial, economic, and strategic. The consortium explained that the project intends to deliver sovereign, high-performance computing capacity for European companies, researchers, and public bodies, in a bid to promote autonomy through complete control of the AI value chain.
EDF senior EVP for customers, services, and territories Beatrice Bigois highlighted France’s competitive, sovereign, and low-carbon electricity as an advantage, while Orange CEO Christel Heydemann pointed to the country’s first-rate digital infrastructure and a dynamic research base. The consortium said it remains open to additional French and European partners.
Croatia’s data center market is no longer a narrow infrastructure niche. It is becoming part of a much broader discussion about digital sovereignty, artificial intelligence, and the ability of the domestic economy to keep data, services, and development within a controlled technology environment.
A consortium that includes Orange, Iliad Group, and Capgemini, unveiled plans to bid for EU funding to build an AI gigafactory in France.
Poland has become one of Europe’s most dynamic data centre markets in just a few years, and its development is increasingly seen as a model for digital infrastructure investment.
