Data center consultancy Zeus Data Center is opening its first self-operated facility in Saumur, France.

The company was founded last year and specializes in engineering, technical studies, and project management for data center companies.

Now it is undertaking a project of its own, having secured a site for a data center in Saumur, in the Loire Valley, near its headquarters in Doué-en-Anjou.

The precise location of the data center, and an opening date for the facility, have not been revealed, but according to a report from Les Journals des Enterprises, it will open later this year.

Zeus does not intend to provide hosting services itself, though it could run its own servers for clients in the future.

The company, not to be confused with APAC operator SC Zeus Data Centers, was founded in January 2025 by local businessman Nicolas Joncheray, who has previously worked for some of France’s largest building firms on data center construction projects. Since then, it has made a niche for itself in sourcing and installing racks at data centers in France, mainly in the Paris region.

It has dubbed its first data center Big Nuage (Big Cloud) and, according to its website, says it will achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) score of 1.0, a theoretically perfect efficiency score where all power goes directly to IT equipment with zero overhead for cooling, lighting, or power distribution - something that is likely impossible.

The company also plans to cut the amount of construction materials used by 20 percent, and the amount of concrete required by 30 percent compared to a standard data center build-out.

“Starting from a simple idea, we [will] demonstrate the feasibility of designing environmentally friendly and economically viable digital data centers,” the company said. Construction work on the project was due to begin in June 2025, according to the site.

The Loire Valley, best known for its chateaus and wine, is not currently a data center hotspot. However, last year it was reported that Google was looking to buy a 195-hectare site near Châteauroux for a data center campus. It would be the cloud and search giant’s first self-built data center in France.