Compute & Cloud
SoftBank plans €75B investment in French data centers
SoftBank plans to invest up to €75 billion to build data centers in France, aiming to develop up to 5 gigawatts of additional capacity by 2031.
SoftBank Group announced today that it plans to invest up to €75 billion (around $87 billion) to expand its data center capacity in France. The project represents the company’s largest investment in AI infrastructure—the physical hardware and facilities supporting artificial intelligence workloads—in Europe to date. SoftBank, which is both an investor in and a customer of OpenAI, is focusing this massive capital deployment on securing the physical foundations necessary for advanced computing.
The firm aims to develop and operate up to 5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity. A gigawatt is a unit of power capacity used to measure the electrical output required to run large-scale computing facilities. The first phase of the expansion plan targets delivering 3.1 gigawatts of capacity to the Hauts-de-France region by 2031. This initial phase involves constructing data centers in Dunkirk (specifically Loon-Plage), Bosquel, and Bouchain to establish the necessary regional infrastructure.
The scale of the commitment has drawn praise from French government officials. Roland Lescure, the French economic minister, 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.”
While SoftBank scales its European operations, it is also pursuing energy-intensive projects in the United States. The company previously announced plans to build a data center in Ohio, which will be powered by a new 9.2 gigawatt natural gas plant. However, these massive energy requirements are drawing public pushback. In the United States, opposition to data center construction is heating up over environmental concerns, as well as questions about how data centers affect the electrical grid and utility prices.
Why it matters
SoftBank’s planned €75 billion investment in French data centers marks its largest AI infrastructure project in Europe to date. The move signals a major push by the conglomerate to secure the physical power and computing capacity required to anchor the AI value chain.