France: New French operator raises €5 million for new facility

New French operator Phocea DC has raised €5 million to develop a new data center in Marseille from French venture firm Reflexion Capital. The planned facility will span 1,700 square meters and offer around 1.2MW with a PUE of 1.2. It will also feature  two meet-me rooms, will look to reuse waste heat, and reportedly seek to use hydrogen in lieu of diesel generators for backup.

Founder and CEO Damien Desanti said, “Our future customers will be local authorities, companies who want a sovereign alternative, IT service providers but also French and international operators wishing to rely on several sites. In our pool of investors, some have entered into the capital of other startups which could contribute to improving the efficiency of the site in the future and to the second tranche of equipment. For example, we are considering immersion cooling and installing hydrogen-based generators.”

Reflexion CEO Nicolas Meunier wrote on LinkedIn, “This operation will make it possible to create a new sovereign player in the data center sector by using the latest energy efficiency technologies, and by serving as a laboratory to experiment.”