Digital infrastructure
A digital infrastructure is an industry before it is a building: a site, megawatts, a compute contract, responsibilities shared between the operator, the integrator and the user.
The data centre is currently its most demanding form, but the same logic applies to any project underpinning the digital economy: networks, connectivity, computing capacity.
We advise on these transactions at European level, alongside international industrial and financial partners, including a one-gigawatt artificial intelligence campus, one of the largest transactions of its kind advised on by an independent French firm.
Land, grid connection, firm power, compute contracts drafted by vendors, international joint ventures in which each partner brings its own law and expectations: a project of this kind always faces the same list of obstacles. Added to this are growing requirements for sovereignty and European digital regulation, which are an integral part of structuring an infrastructure project, whether a data centre or any other strategic digital asset.
Your experience
A compute contract drafted by the vendor protects the vendor’s interests first: the data centre operator often discovers this after signing, rarely before.
The entire timetable of a digital infrastructure project often depends on a single local authorisation, which does not move at the same speed as the project’s ambition.
Our expertise
We qualify the project (data centre or other strategic digital infrastructure) in light of European regulation, and anticipate its developments before they become constraints.
We secure land, planning permissions and grid connection, working directly with the host local authorities. And when several international investors form a joint venture, we structure what a transaction of this size requires: depreciation, research tax credit (crédit d’impôt recherche), risk allocation.
We negotiate dedicated energy supply contracts for the site and availability commitments (SLAs) with operators and hyperscalers, two clauses that alone determine the real profitability of a data centre. And we support the certification of the most sensitive infrastructure (SecNumCloud, health data hosting), a prerequisite for winning public contracts and regulated clients.
Artificial intelligence is becoming a network industry comparable to energy: a few immense infrastructures concentrating most of the value. A chain of liability that will be allocated through contract clauses and case law between operator, integrator and deployer. And a sovereignty requirement that will become a tender criterion.
