Sesterce plans €10bn AI data centre campus in Finland

Jämsä, Finland - French AI infrastructure company Sesterce is planning an investment of more than €10 billion in a large-scale artificial intelligence data centre campus at the former Kaipola paper mill site in Jämsä, Central Finland.

The project is planned as a phased development, beginning with 200MW of capacity. A second phase would increase the site to 600MW, while Sesterce says its longer-term ambition is to develop more than 1GW of AI capacity in Finland across suitable industrial locations.

Construction of the first phase is expected to begin in 2026. Around 2,000 people are expected to be employed during the construction period, with approximately 300 permanent jobs anticipated once the campus is fully operational. Sesterce says it intends to work primarily with Finnish contractors and subcontractors during delivery.

The Kaipola site previously operated as a paper mill and already has access to infrastructure including high-voltage electricity, water systems, buildings and logistics connections. Sesterce plans to reuse those assets as part of the redevelopment rather than building the entire campus on a greenfield site.

The company says the project will support supercomputing and AI workloads and will be designed around renewable energy and high-efficiency operations.

Its cooling system is planned around closed-loop liquid cooling, supplemented by recycled water and collected rainwater. Sesterce says drinking water will not be used for cooling.

The company has also committed to supporting new renewable generation on the Finnish grid, with a target of enabling one megawatt of new renewable capacity for every megawatt consumed by the campus within 10 years of operations beginning.

Waste-heat reuse and flexible power consumption are also being assessed as part of the site’s energy strategy.

According to Sesterce, the project already has an anchor customer and committed workload capacity, although the identity of the client has not been disclosed. The company’s chief executive, Youssef El Manssouri, has separately confirmed that an investment decision has been made and that a contract has been signed with the future customer.

The company is also planning a €10 million community fund to support local projects in Jämsä once the campus is commissioned. Public-facing facilities such as restaurants and educational spaces are also included in the concept, while the core computing infrastructure would remain in secured areas.

The development adds to a wider wave of AI infrastructure investment across Europe as operators look for locations with strong power networks, renewable energy availability and existing industrial infrastructure.

If delivered as planned, the Jämsä campus would become one of the largest AI infrastructure investments announced in Finland and a major redevelopment of the former Kaipola industrial site.