ÆTHER: The European Consortium for AI Gigafactories is Born. This is How We Challenge the United States and China
A group of European companies operating in the sectors of energy, construction, cloud computing, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence has announced the establishment of ÆTHER, an industrial consortium created with the aim of developing large-scale computing infrastructure for AI in European territory.
The announcement coincides with the consortium's application for the call from the European Commission dedicated to so-called "AI Gigafactories", part of the community strategy for digital and industrial sovereignty. The project’s corporate vehicle, called AETHER Infrastructures, has communicated that it is in an advanced stage of negotiation for the acquisition of two industrial sites located in the Strasbourg area, intended to host computing facilities dedicated to artificial intelligence.
The first data center, identified as FR-SXB1, already has the necessary infrastructure and administrative approvals and is set to become operational in 2027, provided the site acquisition is finalized by the end of October 2026. The second plant, FR-SXB2, will follow a few months later, subject to the completion of its acquisition by December 2026.
Initially, the two sites will jointly provide an electrical capacity of 42 MW, with the objective of adding another 40 MW within twelve months from the start of operations. The consortium claims a long-term ambition of over 400 MW in total, a goal that remains contingent upon network availability and evaluations by the French electricity transmission operator RTE, expected by the end of July 2026 regarding the first site.
The industrial project of ÆTHER is articulated around five declared commitments. The first concerns the containment of land consumption, pursued through the reuse of existing industrial sites: real estate and construction operators Nhood, Demathieu Bard, and Equans will be responsible for the redevelopment and technical management of the campuses.
The second commitment relates to the European hardware supply chain for high-performance computing. This area includes 2CRSi, a European manufacturer of servers and Elite partner of NVIDIA and AMD; Axelera AI, specializing in inference platforms; and SiPearl, a European fabless designer of high-performance, low-power CPUs for supercomputing, artificial intelligence, and sovereign data centers. Their combined contribution is expected to translate into the installation of tens of thousands of processors and accelerators intended for both training and inference of artificial intelligence models.
The third commitment concerns low carbon emission energy sourcing, involving ÉS Group (Électricité de Strasbourg), Socomec, Projex, and Haffner Energy, the latter specializing in thermolysis and gasification technologies for biomass energy and hydrogen production.
The fourth commitment relates to data sovereignty: the infrastructure will be managed by European operators, including Viridien, active in high-performance scientific and industrial computing, and OUTSCALE, the cloud and AI brand of Dassault Systèmes, which will provide sovereign cloud services for organizations subject to European regulatory requirements.
The fifth commitment pertains to the integration of future campuses into the regional economic, academic, and territory fabric. The Grand Est Region and the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg have already expressed support for the initiative.
Among the technology partners is SiPearl, a European fabless company involved in the development of high-performance, low-energy CPUs for supercomputing, artificial intelligence, and sovereign data centers. According to the statements made by the company’s CEO and founder, Philippe Notton, the combination of SiPearl processors with Axelera AI accelerators, integrated into high-density servers from 2CRSi, is expected to provide a complete hardware solution for complex AI workloads, created entirely with European technology.
SiPearl is developing Rhea1, a CPU based on 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores and 61 billion transistors, scheduled for release by the end of 2026 and which was successfully "turned on" just over a month ago. The company’s processors are set to equip the first two European exascale supercomputers: Rhea1 will be integrated into the JUPITER system, hosted in Germany, while Rhea2 will equip the French system Alice Recoque.