Summary
- Orange and Morrison propose a 50:50 venture targeting 400MW of French data centre capacity.
- Five operating Orange facilities would seed a €3 billion expansion programme funded through contributed assets, equity, and debt.
- Grid delivery, customer commitments, and the retrofit of existing campuses will determine how quickly the platform reaches scale.
Orange and infrastructure investor Morrison have entered exclusive negotiations to create a 50:50 French data centre platform targeting 400MW of capacity through a €3 billion investment programme.
Five existing Orange facilities across campuses in Chevilly-Larue, Aubervilliers, Chartres, and Val-de-Reuil would form the initial portfolio. Orange would contribute the operating assets, engineering capability, and customer relationships, while Morrison would commit equity through its infrastructure investment strategy. Debt would support the wider development programme.
At almost ten times Orange’s current French data centre capacity, the target would create one of the country’s larger domestically controlled platforms. Reaching 400MW will require expansion at the existing campuses, new construction, firm grid commitments, and customers willing to take capacity in multi-megawatt blocks.
Operating assets provide the starting point
Rather than assembling a land portfolio and waiting for its first energisation, the proposed venture would begin with live infrastructure, established operational teams, and customers already using the facilities. Existing utility relationships, fibre routes, security procedures, maintenance regimes, and performance records can all support further investment, although construction at operating campuses introduces its own constraints.
Orange Business would become the exclusive distributor of the venture’s colocation and hosting services to companies and public-sector organisations. Orange’s own platforms and services would remain inside the facilities, with the telecoms group retaining operational control over areas dedicated to its internal systems.
That arrangement gives the venture access to an established sales channel, but it also requires a clear separation between Orange’s internal infrastructure, shared facility systems, and capacity sold to external customers. Power, cooling, security, maintenance access, and incident management will need to remain coordinated across buildings serving different operational and contractual requirements.
The proposed ownership structure would move part of Orange’s future data centre expenditure outside its consolidated balance sheet while preserving strategic influence through a half share in the venture. Morrison would add long-duration infrastructure capital to a programme whose electrical and mechanical requirements are likely to exceed the investment profile of conventional telecoms property.
Orange expects the parties to sign the transaction by the end of 2026, subject to employee consultation and regulatory approvals, with completion targeted for the first quarter of 2027. The transaction outline sets out the proposed ownership, assets, and investment programme.
Power delivery will set the pace
France’s low-carbon electricity mix has made it an increasingly attractive location for cloud and AI infrastructure, particularly as operators face grid constraints in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dublin, and parts of London. National generation capacity alone does not guarantee that several hundred megawatts can be delivered at the required campuses.
Each site will need sufficient transmission or distribution capacity, resilient feeds, substations, transformers, and an energisation programme aligned with construction. Network reinforcement and long-lead electrical equipment can take longer to deliver than the buildings themselves, especially where an expansion changes the scale or operating characteristics of an existing connection.
Brownfield development may shorten the route to market because power, fibre, and operational infrastructure are already present. It can also require live-site construction, temporary plant, phased shutdowns, and the replacement of systems serving occupied data halls. Those constraints become more demanding where older facilities must support the concentrated loads and liquid-cooling systems associated with accelerated computing.
The balance between conventional colocation, wholesale cloud capacity, and AI infrastructure has not been disclosed. Each model produces a different facility brief. Retail colocation requires customer flexibility and smaller increments of power, while hyperscale and AI users tend to demand dedicated electrical blocks, tightly defined redundancy, larger cooling loops, and long-term capacity reservations.
Orange says the venture would pursue high standards of energy efficiency and environmental performance. The carbon intensity of French electricity provides a favourable operational baseline, although cooling architecture, refrigerants, water consumption, generator operation, embodied carbon, and waste-heat use will still determine the performance of individual campuses.
Heat reuse may be practical at sites close to housing, public buildings, or industrial users, but it requires viable off-takers, pipe networks, suitable temperatures, and commercial agreements. The higher return temperatures available from some liquid-cooling systems can improve the opportunity, provided the surrounding heat network is ready when capacity is commissioned.
Morrison manages more than US$30 billion of assets and brings experience in long-duration infrastructure investment. Its participation follows a wider movement of pension, sovereign, and infrastructure capital into data centres as the cost of land, power, construction, and customer fit-out pushes individual programmes into the billions.
The proposed venture retains a closer operational link to its original owner than a conventional property disposal. Orange would remain a shareholder, customer, operator, and distributor, while Morrison would share control and capital allocation. Governance provisions will therefore influence which campuses expand first, how internal Orange demand is prioritised, and when additional equity is committed.
Regulatory clearance and employee consultation are the immediate transaction milestones. Beyond completion, the programme will be judged through secured power, signed capacity, planning progress, construction packages, and the conversion of the 400MW target into credible energisation dates.
