---
title: "French consortium to bid for EU's AI datacentre fund"
type: "News"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/287097560.md"
description: "The AION consortium, comprising major French tech and infrastructure firms, plans to bid for EU funding to build a €10 billion data centre in France. This initiative aims to enhance Europe's AI infrastructure competitiveness against the US and China. The EU has launched a €20 billion fund to support such projects. The consortium includes companies like Artefact, Bull, Capgemini, and Iliad, with Iliad ready to invest €4 billion. The data centre aims for a capacity of one gigawatt, potentially doubling France's computing capacity."
datetime: "2026-05-20T16:30:23.000Z"
locales:
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/287097560.md)
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/287097560.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/287097560.md)
generator: "portal-rs"
---

# French consortium to bid for EU's AI datacentre fund

(Fixes incorrectly spelled name from Guillochet to Gaillochet in paragraph 4)

By Forrest Crellin and Leo Marchandon

PARIS, May 20 (Reuters) - 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 Benoît Gaillochet ​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)

(Reporting by Forrest Crellin in Paris and Leo Marchandon ​in Gdansk; Editing by Matt Scuffham)

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> **Disclaimer: This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.**