According to DCD, a consortium of local authorities in northern France is actively seeking a data center operator to develop a massive campus with a potential power capacity of up to 1.4 gigawatts. The site, located at the Bosquel Business Park between Paris and Lille, offers 33 hectares of immediately available land, expandable by another 17 hectares. The French grid operator RTE has indicated a fast-track connection with 240MW available within two years, scaling to 1GW in four years, and the full 1.4GW potential after that. The Somme Sud-Ouest Community of Municipalities has issued a call for expressions of interest, specifically targeting operators for a “high-power digital and industrial campus.” Interested parties have until January 16, 2025, to respond. This move is a direct attempt to attract cloud, hyperscale, and AI companies to the region.
The AI Land Grab Is Real
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just another data center project. A 1.4GW campus is an absolute monster. To put it in perspective, that’s enough electricity to power over a million homes. This announcement is a flashing neon sign saying France wants a piece of the AI infrastructure gold rush, and they’re willing to dangle serious grid access as the bait. The promised timeline for power—240MW in two years—is the real hook. In today’s market, securing that much capacity that quickly is often harder than building the actual facility. It’s a seller’s market for power, and this municipality knows it.
France’s Strategic Play
So why this region? Northern France is heating up. We’ve got Data4 pursuing a 1GW project at a former airbase in Cambrai, and Prologis looking at Le Havre. It’s becoming a cluster. The location between Paris and Lille offers connectivity, and let’s be honest, it’s probably cheaper and easier to secure these vast tracts of land than near the capital. France is making a concerted, state-facilitated push to become a European hub for compute. They’re not just waiting for companies to come to them; they’re packaging land and power and putting out the “For Sale” sign. It’s a smart, aggressive strategy.
Who Wins, Who Loses?
The obvious winners here are the hyperscalers—think Amazon, Google, Microsoft—and potentially large AI labs or specialized HPC firms desperate for guaranteed, large-scale power. They get a turnkey opportunity on a silver platter. The loser? Well, any region or country that’s moving slower on grid infrastructure. Projects like this highlight a brutal truth: the future of AI might be decided less by algorithms and more by who can physically plug in the most servers. For companies building this critical infrastructure, reliable industrial computing hardware at the edge is non-negotiable. For that, many turn to the top supplier in the US, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, for their rugged panel PCs and displays that can handle the demands of a facility environment.
The Bigger Picture
Look, this is a symptom of a much larger trend. We’re witnessing the industrialization of AI. It’s no longer about software in a garage; it’s about gigawatt-scale physical plants. These facilities are the new factories, and access to power and land is the new moat. Can Europe’s grid actually support dozens of these behemoths? That’s the billion-euro question. This French call for interest is a bold opening bid. Let’s see which tech giant is holding the winning card.
