Data centre financing: debt, equity and structures for a €20m to €200m project

A 500 MW campus let to a cloud giant finds its debt without trouble. A 10 MW regional project led by an independent developer struggles to raise its own. The market has money, but it has sized that money for very large projects.

France has 943 MW installed, 361 MW under construction and 914 MW planned, and Paris was Europe's largest market by investment in 2025 (Cushman & Wakefield, Q3 2025 data). The projects tracked by the French state are seeking 28.6 GW of grid connection across 63 sites, of which only 5.8 GW is secured, and the grid operator RTE calls their completion rate "low" (Banque des Territoires, January 2026). Between the announcement and the building site, a financing plan still has to close. This guide is for anyone carrying a 5 to 50 MW project in France, with €20m to €200m to raise.

How much does a data centre cost per MW?

Cost is counted per megawatt (MW) of installed IT power. There are two items, often paid by two different parties: the equipped building and the servers.

A made-up example with round numbers: a first phase of 10 MW at €11m per MW means €110m to find before the first rent comes in. A 50 MW site is built in phases.

AI shifts the budget. It accounts for around 25% of data centre workloads in 2025, with around 50% expected in 2030 (JLL, Outlook 2026). On an AI site, the equipment can cost more than twice the building, and it ages fast. So you have two assets to finance, with two lifespans and two kinds of debt.

Which financing structures, and at what stage of the project?

Each stage of the project has its own money, and that money gets cheaper as the risks fall away. The structures below are the ones listed by the Loan Market Association (LMA, July 2026).

• Pre-development equity. Land, studies, the grid connection application, permits: everything before the first customer contract is paid for with equity. No bank lends at this stage.
• Real estate financing. A loan secured on the land and the building, sized on their value. It is used early on, while the lender still sees a property.
• Limited-recourse project finance. The debt sits in a company set up for the project and is repaid only from the site's revenues. "Limited recourse" means the lender cannot go after your other assets, apart from the guarantees written into the contract. This is the target structure once a long customer contract is signed.
• Equipment-backed debt. When the site is fitted out, the loan pays for servers and GPUs, with the hardware as security. It runs for up to 5 years, amortises, and follows the hardware refresh cycle.
• Private debt. Debt funds lend where banks hesitate: small projects, portfolios of sites, subordinated debt (repaid after the bank debt, so more expensive).
• Minority public equity. Banque des Territoires, the regional investment arm of France's Caisse des Dépôts, takes minority stakes in local data centres (Banque des Territoires).
• The DevCo / YieldCo model. The DevCo carries development and its risk, the YieldCo owns the operating sites and their rents. Each attracts different investors. Useful once you have several sites.

Debt comes with covenants: financial commitments to be kept for the whole life of the loan. The most common are the DSCR (the cash the site generates, divided by the debt payments due over the period) and the LTC, or loan-to-cost (the share of total project cost funded by debt). On top of these come a reserve account holding 6 to 12 months of debt service and drawdowns tied to leasing milestones, as the law firm BCLP notes (November 2025).

In the US market, debt covers 60% to 80% of the cost of pre-let projects (let before they are delivered) and construction loans run for 12 to 36 months (LMA, July 2026). No gearing or margin levels are published for French transactions: be wary of anyone who quotes you one without having read your file.

Neoclouds and GPUs

A neocloud rents out computing power for AI, often without owning the building. Its debt is secured on its GPUs. A public example in France is Mistral AI: $830m of debt in March 2026 for 13,800 GPUs and 44 MW at Bruyères-le-Châtel, provided by seven lenders including Bpifrance (DatacenterDynamics). The lender looks at the capacity sales contracts and at how fast the hardware loses its value.

What does a lender check before committing?

• Signed customer contracts. Their length and the customer's financial strength. Lenders prefer 15 to 20-year leases; short leases or a speculative project call for more equity and higher margins (BCLP, November 2025). Across the five main European markets, 74% of projects under construction are already pre-let (JLL, H1 2026).
• Secured power. No firm grid connection date, no financing.
• Permits and authorisations. Granted, and past the period for legal challenge.
• The construction contract. Fixed price, fixed date, backed by a report from an independent technical adviser.
• Obsolescence. A GPU lasts 3 to 7 years depending on the source; the debt on the building runs far longer. Who pays for the refresh?
• Concentration. What happens to the site if its only customer leaves?

Why are 5 to 50 MW projects the hardest to finance?

Because the market has organised itself around very large deals. The standard campus has grown from 20-50 MW to 500 MW and more, the law firm Freshfields observes (May 2026). The public transactions are on that scale: €3.3bn for Data4 in January 2025, €650m of senior debt for OpCore (Iliad and InfraVia) in May 2025. Yet a €40m deal takes a bank almost as much work as a €400m one.

The mid-sized project then runs into a chicken-and-egg problem. No project finance without a signed customer. No customer without secured land and power. Pre-development therefore rests on equity, which an independent developer rarely has enough of.

Four answers can be seen in the market:

• The bank club deal. Several banks share one loan. Etix (13 local data centres in France) secured a €120m refinancing in September 2025, plus an optional €50m, from five European banks (Next, September 2025).
• A debt fund lending against a portfolio. In the UK, nLighten raised £85m in March 2026 against 9 edge data centres, in a deal led by the debt fund Rivage Investment.
• Minority public equity. Banque des Territoires invests in the equity of local data centres, which reduces what you have to put in.
• The switch from real estate to infrastructure. The project starts with real estate financing, then refinances on infrastructure terms as soon as a customer contract is signed.

Our view: group your sites. Three 10 MW sites presented together interest lenders that none of them would interest alone.

Why does grid connection come before everything else?

Because it sets the date of the first rent, and so of the first repayment. In France, connection lead times have gone from 2 or 3 years to more than 5, sometimes 7, according to the chief executive of Data4 (Techniques de l'Ingénieur, March 2026). RTE's "fast track" procedure aims for 3 to 4 years, but it is reserved for very large sites designated by the state (decision 2025-120 of the CRE, the French energy regulator).

Your equity stays tied up for the whole wait, and no lender commits until the date is firm. Electricity also makes up 40% to 60% of operating costs, according to the law firm Ashurst (September 2026). An average plot with power available beats an ideal plot with no date.

Waste heat, PUE and the EU label: why is an efficient project easier to finance?

Waste heat is the heat given off by the servers, which is lost if nobody recovers it. PUE (power usage effectiveness) divides the total energy used by the site by the energy used by the IT equipment alone: the closer it gets to 1, the less the site wastes.

In France, data centres of 1 MW and above must reuse their waste heat (law of 30 April 2025 and decree of 29 December 2025, which transpose EU Directive 2023/1791). A reuse factor of 0.20 counts as reuse (Jones Day, June 2026). Today, around 0.1% of waste heat is reused in France and 1.9% in the European Union (Next, April 2026). On 21 September 2026 the EU also adopted an A to G energy label. The first labels will arrive by 15 August 2027 at the latest.

An efficient project is easier to finance for three reasons. It can use green loans and loans tied to PUE or to the share of renewable electricity, two structures listed by the LMA. It speaks to public investors, who look at what the site brings to its area. And it protects its value: a data centre with a poor label in 2027 may well refinance on worse terms.

In what order should you do things?

1. Secure the land through an option conditional on grid connection and the permit.
2. File the grid connection application and obtain a capacity and a date.
3. Fund pre-development with equity: your own, an investor's or a minority public investor's.
4. Obtain the permits, heat reuse included.
5. Sign a first customer, for the longest term you can get.
6. Lock in the construction contract at a fixed price and date, signed off by a technical adviser.
7. Approach lenders in parallel: banks, debt funds, public investors. Competition sets the price.
8. Negotiate the terms, then sign: closing is the signing of the loan documentation, followed by the first drawdown.

Steps 2 to 5 overlap. Strategic work upstream is there to choose the structure before you talk to lenders.

What does Prouesse do on these projects?

We advise data centre developers and operators, and computing providers (neoclouds), on the financing of €20m to €200m projects: structuring, sourcing debt and equity, and negotiating with banks, infrastructure funds and public investors.

Our ground: regional and mid-sized projects that are energy-efficient and reuse their heat, too small for the big project finance banks and too technical for a generalist banker. Adrien Pannetier, the founder, spent 7 years at Caisse des Dépôts / Banque des Territoires as an investment director. For equity, the method is the one we use in our fundraising mandates.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a data centre cost per MW?

Around $10.7m per MW on average worldwide in 2025 for the shell and technical works (JLL, Outlook 2026). In France, the operator Etix estimates €10m to €12m to create 1 MW of local capacity (Next, September 2025). On an AI site, the IT fit-out can add up to $25m per MW.

How much equity do you need to put in?

All of pre-development, then a share of the construction cost that depends on how much of the site is pre-let. No gearing levels are published for French transactions. In the US market, debt covers 60% to 80% of the cost of pre-let projects (LMA, July 2026). A speculative project, or one on short leases, needs more equity.

Can you raise debt before a customer has signed?

Not in project finance. Without a customer contract, lenders treat the project as real estate: a loan secured on the land and the building, more equity, and drawdowns tied to leasing milestones. The route seen in the market: start with real estate financing, then switch to infrastructure terms once the first contract is signed.

Who finances data centres in France?

Banks, debt funds, infrastructure funds and public investors. The Mistral AI debt ($830m, March 2026) brings together Bpifrance, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, HSBC, La Banque Postale, MUFG and Natixis CIB (DatacenterDynamics). For local data centres, Banque des Territoires invests minority equity.

How long does it take to close a financing?

As long as it takes to gather three documents: the customer contract, the grid connection date and the construction contract. While one is missing, lenders study the file without committing. So the timetable depends on your file more than on the lenders. The construction loan itself runs for 12 to 36 months, an order of magnitude from the US market (LMA, July 2026).

Adrien PannetierFounder of Prouesse. 15 years in private equity and impact investing, formerly at Caisse des Dépôts.