Orange and Morrison Team Up for €3 Billion Data Centre Push Targeting 400 MW of Sovereign Cloud Capacity in France
Paris, July 27, 2026 — French telecom giant Orange and global infrastructure manager Morrison announced plans Monday to form a data centre joint venture that will pump €3 billion into building 400 megawatts of hosting capacity across France. The deal is the latest and largest bet yet on sovereign cloud infrastructure inside Europe, as demand for AI training clusters, enterprise cloud workloads, and data residency compliance keeps outstripping supply.
Under the proposed structure, Orange will contribute five existing data centres spread across four French campuses — Chevilly-Larue, Aubervilliers, Chartres, and Val-de-Reuil — along with its operational expertise, commercial reach, and connections to its enterprise customer base. Morrison, which manages over US$30 billion in infrastructure assets, will provide equity through its global value-add strategy to help fund the expansion. The combined platform targets 400 MW of total capacity, backed by the 3 billion investment programme that builds on Orange's existing assets, Morrison's equity contribution, and debt financing.
"The development represents a major strategic investment to create a sovereign offering capable of meeting the rapidly growing cloud- and AI-related demand, while serving the needs of Orange and Orange Business customers, the two companies said in a joint statement.
Why Sovereign Data Centres Matter Right Now
The timing is no accident. Global spending on cloud infrastructure services hit $129 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, pushing the market's annualized run rate past half a trillion dollars for the first time, according to Synergy Research Group. Hyperscalers — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — collectively control 63 per cent of that market, and their capital spending is accelerating in lockstep. Alphabet's 2026 capex is expected to reach $187 billion, Microsoft is guiding toward roughly $190 billion, and Amazon has committed billions to AI partnerships alongside its own custom Trainium chip infrastructure.
That hyperscaler dominance is precisely what makes the Orange-Morrison joint venture strategically important for Europe. European enterprises and public-sector bodies are increasingly required to keep sensitive data within national or regional borders, under rules such as France's SecNumCloud certification and the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. US-headquartered hyperscalers can and do offer sovereign cloud products, but a French-operated, French-regulated data centre platform controlled by Orange gives government customers and regulated industries an alternative that sits entirely inside the country's legal framework.
Orange Business would act as the exclusive distribution partner for colocation and hosting services targeting large enterprises, SMEs, and public-sector entities. The company's existing carrier and enterprise relationships — Orange connects 340 million customers across 26 countries — give it immediate demand channels that a greenfield project would spend years building.
Christel Heydemann, Chief Executive Officer of the Orange group, framed the partnership as a strategic necessity. "We are absolutely convinced that France will need sovereign, trusted digital infrastructure if it is to rise to the challenge of surging demand driven by cloud and artificial intelligence," she said. "This contemplated joint venture with Morrison will allow us to realise the full value of our existing assets and strengthen our position in data centres. Together with a partner recognised for its expertise and investment capacity, we will accelerate the deployment of the capacity that the market needs."
Morrison Brings Global Infrastructure Firepower
Morrison is no newcomer to large-scale infrastructure. Established in 1988, the firm has over US$30 billion of assets under management as of March 2026 and invests across both private and listed markets in energy, transport, digital infrastructure, and utilities. For this deal, Morrison is committing equity through its global value-add strategy, which targets assets with strong fundamentals and clear growth trajectories — exactly what a data centre platform with captive demand and pre-existing infrastructure offers.
William Smales, Chief Investment Officer at Morrison, said Europe's digital future demands investments of this scale. "Europe's digital future will require large new investment in trusted infrastructure capable of supporting the growth of cloud services, artificial intelligence and data-intensive applications," Smales said. "Together with Orange, we are contemplating the creation of a platform that combines strategic infrastructure assets, operational expertise and long-term capital to meet that challenge."
Morrison's involvement also signals something about the asset class. Institutional investors have been pouring money into data centre assets over the past three years, drawn by the sector's long-term demand visibility and the structural tailwind from AI. A Morrison-backed platform with Orange's operational control combines the kind of risk-return profile — contracted revenue, captive demand, physically scarce real estate with power — that infrastructure funds typically prize.
The two companies said the platform would benefit from some of the most decarbonised electricity in France, thanks to the country's heavy reliance on nuclear power, and would pursue the highest standards of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. That nuclear advantage matters more than ever in 2026, as hyperscalers and data centre operators globally scramble to secure power capacity and face growing scrutiny over the carbon footprint of AI compute clusters.
What the Joint Venture Means for the Cloud Market
The Orange-Morrison venture lands at a moment when the European data centre market is consolidating fast. Smaller operators are being absorbed by larger players, real estate investment trusts are piling into digital infrastructure, and the big three US hyperscalers are building their own campuses across the continent — AWS in Spain and Sweden, Google in France and the Netherlands, Azure in Poland and Italy. A French-controlled platform with 400 MW of target capacity and a dedicated enterprise distribution channel gives Orange a seat at a table that has been mostly occupied by US-based players and specialised REITs.
Orange's contribution of five existing data centres across four campuses accelerates the timeline significantly. The sites are already operational, with power, cooling, fibre connectivity, and security in place. Expansion happens by adding new halls and increasing power density on existing footprints, not by buying land and negotiating grid connections from scratch, which in France can take five to seven years for a 100 MW-plus campus.
The transaction is expected to be signed by the end of 2026, subject to consultations with employee representative bodies and regulatory approvals, with closing targeted for the first quarter of 2027. If it closes on schedule, the platform would start adding new capacity in late 2027 or early 2028 — fast by data centre standards, and well timed to capture the next wave of AI infrastructure demand that hyperscaler capex projections suggest is coming.
Orange's existing enterprise services will continue to run inside the joint venture's data centres, with Orange retaining operational control over the areas dedicated to its own operations. That split — shared infrastructure with separated operational control — mirrors the structure that several European telcos have used for their infrastructure spin-offs and joint ventures over the past five years, and it gives both sides the governance clarity that large institutional investors typically require.
For Cloud & Edge Computing coverage, this deal is one of the biggest European infrastructure stories of the year so far. It directly addresses the two constraints that have limited sovereign cloud adoption in Europe: access to capital at the scale needed to compete with hyperscaler spending, and the operational expertise to run enterprise-grade data centre services. Orange provides the second. Morrison provides the first. Whether the combined platform can actually challenge AWS and Azure for sovereign workloads depends on execution — how fast the 400 MW gets built, how competitive the pricing is, and whether Orange Business's distribution engine can convert enterprise interest into signed contracts.
The broader context is that Europe's cloud infrastructure gap with the US is widening, not narrowing. Synergy Research data shows that North America accounts for roughly half of global cloud spending, with Europe trailing well behind. Sovereign data centre platforms like the Orange-Morrison venture aim to close part of that gap for the workloads that matter most to governments and regulated industries — but they remain a fraction of the scale that hyperscalers bring to the table. Even at full 400 MW buildout, the joint venture's capacity would be a rounding error compared with AWS's global footprint of dozens of gigawatts.
Still, the venture is part of a pattern. Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Telecom Italia, and other European operators have all explored or executed data centre partnerships over the past two years. Orange's move with Morrison is the largest by target capacity so far, and it comes with a distribution channel that none of the hyperscalers can replicate inside France — a telecom operator that already sells cloud and connectivity services to most of the country's largest enterprises and public-sector bodies.
Smales put the investment thesis succinctly: "We believe France is exceptionally well positioned to play a leading role in Europe's digital economy, and this partnership represents an important step towards building the sovereign infrastructure needed to support future growth and competitiveness."