Sesterce launches a €52 Billion AI Infrastructure Plan to position France as a global leader by 2030

Sesterce, a French company founded by entrepreneurs Anthony Tchakerian and Youssef El Manssouri, is launching an ambitious €52 billion investment plan to deploy cutting-edge AI training infrastructure in France. The initiative aims to deliver 1.5 gigawatts of computing power and deploy 1.2 million GPUs by 2030.

 

Phase one: A flagship datacenter in Valence

In the first phase of this strategic plan, Sesterce will build a flagship datacenter in Valence, designed to provide AI training, inference, and high-performance computing services with a capacity of 40,000 GPUs. This initial deployment will represent an investment of €450 million in infrastructure, reaching a total of €1.8 billion when including the cost of GPUs.

 

Scaling across the Grand Est Region

The second phase will scale operations to the Grand Est region, where two sites will be developed to deliver 600 MW of computing capacity and 500,000 GPUs by 2028, with plans to scale to 1.2 GW and over 1 million GPUs by 2030.

 

Supercomputer in the South of France

In parallel, Sesterce will develop a 250 MW supercomputer in southern France, representing an additional 200,000 GPUs. This facility will further strengthen Europe’s AI sovereignty and support innovation at massive scale.

 

A plan aligned with National and European sovereignty goals

This bold initiative directly aligns with the vision of the President of the Republic and broader European objectives for AI sovereignty. Designed with resilience and sustainability at its core, Sesterce’s roadmap includes:

• Building supercomputing facilities on former industrial or polluted sites
• Using closed-loop liquid cooling systems, which also power residential and industrial heating networks in nearby areas
• Creating 5,000 jobs by 2030 across engineering, research, industrial safety, electrical maintenance, and heat network management

 

From Supercomputing to AI Cloud Leadership

Beyond its physical infrastructure, Sesterce also aims to become Europe’s leading AI cloud provider. The company plans to launch a suite of software services specialized in AI training, inference, and high-density data processing, creating a complete ecosystem for next-generation AI workloads.

This plan demonstrates France’s capacity to rise to the global top 3 in artificial intelligence, leveraging the country’s energy assets, world-class researchers and engineers, and—critically—the commitment and efficiency of public authorities, regional leaders, and RTE.