Status: Groundbreaking (Today) | Location: Former Industrial Site, Bordeaux Metropole
The Osae-NFU Bordeaux AI Megacampus has officially broken ground today, February 23, 2026, signaling a new era for the French digital economy. This $3.59 billion infrastructure project (which scales to over $14 billion when including GPU hardware) is designed to be Europe’s premier destination for generative AI training and sovereign cloud services. Strategically located in the Bordeaux Metropole, the site leverages the city's unique position as a landing point for major trans-Atlantic subsea cables, including the AMITIE and Dunant systems, ensuring ultra-low latency connections between Europe and North America.
Technically, the campus is a departure from traditional data center design. It consists of five massive, vertically-integrated buildings designed to maximize land use in an urban industrial zone. The facility is one of the first in France to abandon air cooling entirely for its high-density halls. Instead, it utilizes a hybrid liquid cooling system—combining direct-to-chip cold plates for standard AI workloads and full liquid immersion cooling for the most intensive GPU clusters. This allows the facility to support rack densities of up to 125 kW while maintaining a remarkably low PUE of 1.10.
The power strategy is a core component of the project's "Green Compute" promise. By tapping into France’s low-carbon energy grid (primarily nuclear) and securing PPAs from emerging offshore wind farms in the Bay of Biscay, the campus operates on 100% carbon-free energy. Furthermore, the project includes an innovative waste-heat recovery system that will provide carbon-neutral heating to over 15,000 homes in the surrounding Bordeaux neighborhoods through a municipal district heating loop.
As of its launch today, the project is a centerpiece of the "France 2030" plan, aimed at securing digital sovereignty. The partnership between real estate giant Osae Partners and developer NFU ensures that while the scale is hyperscale, the integration is "community-first," focusing on urban revitalization and high-tech job creation. With Phase 1 set to go live in early 2027, the Bordeaux Megacampus is poised to challenge the traditional FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin) dominance in the European market.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Project Name | Osae-NFU 250MW AI Data Center Bordeaux France |
| Location | Former Industrial Site, Bordeaux Metropole |
| Status | Groundbreaking (Today) |
| Project Type | Hyperscale / AI Training Campus |
| Commissioning | 🔒 Subscriber Intelligence |
| Total IT Load | 🔒 Subscriber Intelligence |
| Total Capacity | 🔒 Subscriber Intelligence |
| Tier Level | 🔒 Subscriber Intelligence |
| Header | Details |
|---|---|
| City Name | Bordeaux |
| Population | 257,068 (as of 2020) |
| Urban Agglomeration | 1,233,000 (Bordeaux Métropole) |
| Economic Profile | 🔒 Detailed city intelligence available to subscribers |
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