French modular data center operator Eclairion has raised €50 million ($52m) and revealed it is hosting AI lab Mistral’s new training cluster.
The company has received the cash from existing backer Tikehau Capital, which previously invested €110 million ($115.2m) in Eclairion in November 2023. It means the fund has now put €160 million ($167.7m) into the data center company.
Eclairion’s modular AI data center set-up
Launched last year and owned by High Performance Capital (HPC Group), Eclairion’s colo data center is set on a four-hectare site at Bruyères-le-Châtel, in the Essonne region outside Paris.
It offers up to 60MW of capacity in separate modular data centers, and its website says its pods can accommodate racks of between 30kW-200kW, making them suitable for high-density workloads such as AI and high-performance computing.
Jean Odendall, deputy head of tactical strategies and head of Middle East at Tikehau Capital, said: "We are proud to support the HPC Group and the Eclairion platform in developing one of Europe’s most advanced high-performance computing infrastructure projects currently underway.
“This investment aligns with our conviction that France and Europe will play a key role in the ongoing global tech revolution. It also reflects Tikehau Capital’s strong expertise and industry relationships at the forefront of the technological transformation.
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with Eclairion as this platform scales, driving further innovation in AI and high-performance computing, as well as broader economic growth across Europe.”
Mistral moves in at Eclairion
One company taking advantage of Eclairion’s infrastructure is French AI lab Mistral, long touted as the European company most likely to challenge US firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
As reported by DCD last week, Mistral announced it was opening its first data center in France as part of the international AI summit hosted by the French government.
Now it transpires this will be hosted by Eclairion with the help of GPU cloud provider Fluidstack. The companies have signed a multi-year agreement that, according to Eclairion, “embodies disruptive innovation and a sovereign strategic vision.”
It has not been disclosed how much space Mistral is taking at the Eclairion data center, or what sort of hardware it will be deploying, though the announcement mentions Nvidia and Dell as technology partners, suggesting they may be running the latter’s AI servers equipped with Nvidia chips.
The AI summit saw the French government announce a deluge of investments in AI infrastructure worth €109 billion, including a €20 billion ($20.7bn) commitment from Brookfield, owner of data center company Data4.
It has been reported that most of this investment will be made in Cambrai, Northern France, where Brookfield and Data4 plan to construct an AI data center with a capacity of more than 1GW
Speaking to France Info, Marie-Anne Delavallée, first deputy mayor of Cambrai, said: "We need to prepare housing and schools, as well as training so that the company does not have a recruitment problem when the time comes.”
