France's Sesterce Plans €10 Billion AI Campus at Former Finnish Paper Mill
The first phase is scheduled to break ground before the end of this year at the Kaipola site, where a 200-megawatt liquid-cooled facility will begin taking shape on industrial land that has sat largely dormant since UPM shut down its paper operations in 2021.
OSLO: French AI infrastructure company Sesterce said on Thursday it plans to invest more than €10 billion in a data centre campus at the site of the former Kaipola paper mill in Jämsä, central Finland. If realised, the project would rank among the largest AI infrastructure commitments in the Nordic country, trailing only Google's €13 billion investment across multiple Finnish locations announced in September.
The first phase, with construction planned to start before the end of this year, will have a capacity of 200 megawatts and use liquid cooling. Capacity is expected to increase to 600 megawatts in a second phase. Over the longer term, Sesterce aims to build more than one gigawatt of AI capacity in Finland, developed on existing industrial sites and paced to actual market demand for computing capacity.
CEO Youssef El Manssouri confirmed to Yle that the investment decision has already been made and a contract has been signed with the future client, though he declined to identify which of two leading AI laboratories it is or to reveal the project's financial backers. The former mill site is currently owned by real estate company Kaipola Green Port, and its board chair, Martti Inkovaara, told Yle that negotiations to sell the entire property are at an advanced stage. "I'd be surprised if the deal didn't go through," he said.
Sesterce has committed to a set of measurable obligations that will be audited by an independent third party and publicly reported annually. For every megawatt the campus consumes, the company pledges to enable one megawatt of new renewable generation capacity within Finland's grid, with only newly built capacity qualifying. Cooling will rely on a closed-loop liquid system supplemented with harvested rainwater and recycled water, with no drinking water used. A €10 million community fund will be established to finance local projects selected with the town of Jämsä. And the campus will include public-facing facilities such as restaurants and learning spaces, with the secure AI infrastructure kept separate.
BuiltWorld AI Operational Take: The Kaipola project is a test of whether a company with €12 million in reported revenue can credibly execute a €10 billion buildout. The site's existing grid, water systems, and industrial footprint reduce civil works complexity, but Sesterce still needs to secure power purchase agreements, supply chain contracts for liquid cooling systems, and construction labour in a Finnish market that is simultaneously absorbing Google's €13 billion programme. The company's commitment to enable one megawatt of new renewable generation for every megawatt consumed is a meaningful pledge, but it depends on Finland's onshore wind pipeline continuing to attract investment at a pace that matches the campus's power draw. Project teams tracking Nordic expansion should watch whether Sesterce can close the land acquisition with Kaipola Green Port and lock in its first-phase equipment orders before the end of the year, because the 2026 construction start is the first real signal of execution capability.