SoftBank Group announced today that it plans to part with up to €75 billion (around $87 billion) to expand data center capacity in France, because nothing says "je ne sais quoi" like a giant server farm.
The firm says the goal is to develop and operate up to 5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity. The first phase involves building data centers in Dunkirk (Loon-Plage), Bosquel, and Bouchain to deliver 3.1 gigawatts of capacity to the Hauts-de-France region by 2031. That's a lot of compute, or as the French might say, "beaucoup de calcul."
SoftBank, which is both an investor in and customer of OpenAI, calls this its largest AI infrastructure investment in Europe. Because when you're betting on AI, you need a place to store all those hallucinated facts.
In a statement, French economic minister Roland Lescure described the announcement as a “testament to President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition to position France as a leading destination all along the AI value chain.” Translation: France wants to be where the AI action is, and it's willing to let a Japanese conglomerate build the power-sucking hubs to prove it.
Meanwhile, in the United States, opposition to data center construction is heating up over environmental concerns and questions about how data centers affect the electrical grid and utility prices. Undeterred, SoftBank earlier announced plans to build a data center in Ohio, powered by a new 9.2 gigawatt natural gas plant. Because solving AI's energy needs with fossil fuels is definitely a forward-thinking strategy.