French telco Orange and investment fund Morrison have announced plans to create a 50-50 joint venture dedicated to data centers in France with the expectation of delivering capacity of 400MW (Megawatts), ten times what Orange currently boasts.

Orange will not contribute equity in the transaction, rather assets in the form of five major data centers across four campuses in France - Chevilly-Larue, Aubervilliers, Chartres and Val-de-Reuil. Meanwhile Morrison commits equity through its global value-add strategy to support the growth of the platform via an investment program of €3 billion.

With a view to the growing debate outside of the US about sovereign cloud, the hope is that the JV will boost France’s status as a potential ‘safe’  location for AI firms to set up business.  The new platform will serve as a strategic foundation for Orange Business's cloud and AI solutions, would enable the company to deliver advanced, trusted services to its customers.

Orange’s platforms and services would continue to be hosted in the contemplated joint venture’s data centers, with Orange retaining operational control over the areas dedicated to its own operations.

William Smales, Chief Investment Officer, Morrison, says of the plans:

Europe's digital future will require significant new investment in trusted infrastructure capable of supporting the growth of cloud services, artificial intelligence and data-intensive applications. Together with Orange, we are contemplating the creation of a platform that combines strategic infrastructure assets, operational expertise and long-term capital to meet that challenge. We believe France is exceptionally well positioned to play a leading role in Europe's digital economy, and this partnership represents an important step towards building the sovereign infrastructure needed to support future growth and competitiveness.

France ranks 5th worldwide with 47.8% generative AI usage among working-age population, according to Microsoft's latest AI  Economy Institute report released in May 2026. This marks a significant increase from previous quarters and places France ahead of many major economies, including the US, the UK, and Germany. The UAE, Singapore, Norway and Ireland come higher in the ranking than France. 

Mistral is France's biggest AI success story to date, now regarded as a viable European alternative to the likes of OpenAI, but President Emanuel Macron has made no secret of his ambitions for the country's tech standing, particularly in the aftermath of Trump 2.0's recent actions against Anthropic which saw the rest of the world cut off from the US firm's latest models. Macron warned this emphasized the importance of European tech sovereignty:

If we don't have our own models, we will be forced to consume the values of others.

For Orange, CEO Christel Heydermann says:

We're unlocking potential from data centers that we have today that are hosting some of our, I would say, network and IT infrastructure.  It's also an infrastructure that's used by Orange Business to serve customers for its cloud offers, but we see not only, of course, the potential to upgrade those data centers, but also there's untapped potential with sizeable and power and connectivity on those sites.

That's why we decided that we wanted to unlock the potential also to create a specific entity to manage that because it's a very different business. Of course, it's infrastructure as we've done in the past. So the carve-out will also allow to professionalize and to accelerate the development.

In terms of derived value, Heydermann argues that it’s important to retain some flexibility in the plans:

We're not talking of building an AI gigafactory, but we're not excluding working in the context of our partnership that we have in place with other French players on AI, but also to make sure we can serve private cloud needs from our Orange Business customer. Also there is potential needs we may have on our own AI need as well as AI solution for our B2B customers. So for us, it's really a way to capture value to unlock potential of an asset that was not managed to its full potential as well as to create flexibility on potential upside.

She confirms that part of the work has started already to consolidate the firm’s data center footprint in France:

The five data centers that are considered in the JV are actually the ones that were future-proof.   have other smaller sites that are still for some of them operational, but that will be progressively de-commissioned. We will see what we want to do, but they were typically very small enterprise data center type of sites. So those five data centers were already the one where even without the JV, we were consolidating our private cloud traffic internally.

The signing of the transaction is expected by the end of 2026, subject in particular to consultation with the relevant employee representative bodies and receipt of the required regulatory approvals. Closing is expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Another recent development in fleshing out Orange’s Trust the Future AI strategy, which aims to generate more than €600 million in value by 2028, was the appointment of Usman Javaid as Chief AI Officer with effect from 1 September.  Reporting directly to Bruno Zerbib, the Group's Chief Technology & Innovation Officer, Javaid will be charged with accelerating and scaling up Orange's AI initiatives. In particular, he will aim to embed AI and agentic AI at the heart of Orange's operations, across networks, customer relations, operations and services for businesses.

Javaid has more than twenty years of international experience in technology, innovation and business transformation. He’s currently Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Orange Business, where he led the strategy, development and marketing of products and services, as well as data and AI transformation. Prior to Orange, he held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services, including responsibility for Cloud Services across EMEA, and Vodafone.

Given the high level of interest on sovereign cloud and AI, this is a timely venture being laid on the table by Orange. How far it does boost France’s status as an AI leader within the European Union (EU), let alone the global markets, remains to be seen. The devil will, as ever, be in the detail.