French firm plans €10 billion AI data centre in Jämsä

French technology company Sesterce plans to invest more than €10 billion in an artificial intelligence data centre at the former Kaipola paper mill in Jämsä, Yle reports. The company says it has made the investment decision and signed an agreement with a future customer, but has not identified the customer or the project’s financiers.

Sesterce chief executive Youssef El Manssouri told Yle the customer is one of two leading AI labs. The proposed investment would be €3 billion smaller than the €13 billion Google announced in September for projects in several locations.

The first construction phase is due to begin in 2026. It would include a 200-megawatt, liquid-cooled AI data centre. Sesterce says work to clean the site and early work inside its buildings is already under way. The company aims eventually to build more than one gigawatt of AI capacity in Finland.

The project is expected to create about 2,000 jobs during construction and employ around 300 people once complete.

The Kaipola industrial property is owned by real estate investment company Kaipola Green Port. Its board chair, Martti Inkovaara, told Yle that negotiations with Sesterce to sell the entire site are well advanced. He declined to discuss the price and said he would be surprised if the sale did not go ahead. Several companies currently rent industrial premises there; whether they can remain would be up to Sesterce if ownership changes.

The former paper mill site covers 80 hectares and has more than 200,000 square metres of industrial premises. Its existing infrastructure includes electricity and water systems, buildings and transport connections. UPM announced in 2020 that it would close the mill. A battery storage facility is now being built at the site, and Corsair operates a plastic-to-oil plant there under a trial permit.

Sesterce says it chose Kaipola partly because reusing an existing industrial site would limit environmental impacts. The company says it will enable an equal amount of new renewable electricity generation in Finland’s grid for every megawatt used by the data centre. It also plans to establish a €10 million fund for local projects in cooperation with Jämsä and its residents. An independent third party will audit the commitments, with results to be published each year.

Jämsä is responding cautiously to the proposed investment. Mayor Jori Reijula told Yle he learned of Sesterce’s plans only a few weeks ago and considers the project significant for the city.