- Orange is forming a 50-50 joint venture with Morrison to deploy 400 MW of sovereign compute capacity
- The operator will contribute five “future-proof” French data center sites, using the JV to unlock more value from existing assets
- The deal comes as European data center demand tightens, with vacancy rates falling and operators racing to add capacity across the region
French telecom operator Orange is looking to beef up its data center portfolio, launching a $3.4 billion (€3 billion) joint venture with investment company Morrison aimed at deploying 400 MW of sovereign compute capacity.
Through the 50-50 JV, it’s planning to crank up its compute capacity by nearly 10x.
Orange is no stranger to the cloud game. It operates its own sovereign data centers to serve AI to its employee base, has its own telco cloud and its Orange Business unit has long offered private cloud services. It also teamed with Capgemini and Microsoft in 2024 to launch Bleu, a cloud platform designed to meet the needs of French government entities and critical companies in the country.
Speaking on Orange’s Q2 2026 earnings call, Group CEO Christel Heydemann said the deal is a way for the operator to squeeze more value out of data centers that are currently used for its network and IT infrastructure as well as to serve Orange Business customers.
“We see not only the potential to upgrade those data centers, but also there's untapped potential with sizable power and connectivity on those sites. And so 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,” Heydemann said.
All told, Orange will contribute five data center facilities from campuses it has in Chevilly-Larue, Aubervilliers, Chartres and Val-de-Reuil. Heydemann said Orange has been working to consolidate its data center footprint in France, with plans to decommission smaller, enterprise data center-type sites. The five sites included in the JV are those that are “future-proof.”
Morrison will contribute equity and debt. Orange Business will be the exclusive distribution partner for colocation and hosted offers for enterprises and public sector players.
Orange EVP of Finance, Performance and Development Laurent Martinez noted that Orange expects to reap the benefits of revenue and margins generated by Orange Business’ use of the facilities for B2B services and higher efficiencies for these particular assets.
“Finally, of course, there is a value creation by developing and scaling up this asset,” he added. “So, we have 50% of the global value creation generated by the intrinsic value of the joint venture.”
The JV deal is expected to close in Q1 2027.
European data center landscape
Though perhaps less searing than the red-hot U.S. data center market, activity across the European market is heating up.
Real estate firm CBRE noted that vacancy rates in European data centers are at all-time lows, and expected to continue falling to 6.5% by the end of this year. To keep up with this rising demand, CBRE noted operators are expected to add more than 750MW of capacity across the continent – a figure equivalent to France’s entire colocation capacity in 2025.
Meanwhile, a recent report from DC Byte listed Paris as the number four data center market in the EMEA region, highlighting major build activity in the city by Data4, Opcore, Equinix, Colt DCS, CloudHQ and NTT. However, it noted that permitting delays, grid constraints, land availability and public pushback are slowing the conversion of projects in the city and tipped larger-scale projects to “to spill over into regional hubs such as Marseille, Dunkirk, Lille, Lyon and Bordeaux.”
Read more about Orange and its AI and cloud efforts here:
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