Aether Infrastructures has signed a preliminary sale agreement (promesse de vente) for the Dumarey Powerglide industrial site in Strasbourg, formerly known as Punch Powerglide and General Motors, as part of a plan to convert the roughly 90-hectare complex into what is intended to become Europe's largest industrial site dedicated to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The signing, announced by 2CRSi (ISIN: FR0013341781), designer and manufacturer of high-performance, energy-efficient servers, took place on Friday, 9 October 2026, and represents a key milestone of the ÆTHER project.

Preliminary sale agreement marks key milestone for the ÆTHER project

The site, located in the Port du Rhin district of Strasbourg and named FR-SXB2, marks the rebirth of a historic industrial location as an integrated hub bringing together an AI Factory, the manufacturing of servers and AI Factory modules, and biomass-based energy production.

Alongside the preliminary sale agreement, a lease has been signed that will allow the areas of the site already available to be occupied from 15 October 2026, enabling the first stages of the project to be prepared there.

An integrated industrial ecosystem, far beyond an AI Factory

According to the announcement, Aether Infrastructures intends to develop, across the site's footprint of around 90 hectares, an integrated industrial ecosystem covering the manufacturing of computing infrastructure, its operation, the production of the energy that powers it, and research activities. The project is organized around three entities.

Aether Utilities will produce, secure, and distribute the site's energy.

Aether Facilities will hold the campus and its buildings.

Aether Compute will operate an AI Factory making sovereign computing capacity available to businesses, public-sector bodies, and the research community for training and running artificial intelligence models.

Its offer will cover data centre services, dedicated server rental (bare metal), and cloud services offered together with the partners and members of the ÆTHER consortium.

More than one billion dollars in revenue potential for 2CRSi

As a member of the consortium and the prospective supplier of the site's servers, 2CRSi estimates that the roll-out of the AI Factory's initial computing capacity over the 2026-2027 financial year represents revenue potential for the Group of more than one billion dollars. The company notes that this outlook is subject to the usual caveats.

A delay in obtaining permits or in the availability of components could defer all or part of the deliveries beyond the close of 2CRSi's current financial year, which ends in late June 2027.

Reshoring the GODì value chain to Strasbourg

Beyond the projected business volume, the FR-SXB2 site gives 2CRSi the means to advance its industrial strategy.

In addition to the product ranges already manufactured in Strasbourg and Manchester, the Group intends to reshore to FR-SXB2 part of the value added of the production chain for its GODì server range. Initially, this reshoring will cover the integration of the main components, processors, DRAM memory, and SSD storage.

In a second phase, 2CRSi will also produce motherboards, the foundation of every computer server. According to the company, this step will enable the creation of a supply chain for the electronic components required for artificial intelligence servers.

A facility for servers and AI Factory modules

At the heart of the project, the site will host, together with 2CRSi, an industrial facility capable of designing, assembling, integrating, testing, and qualifying high-performance servers and AI Factory modules.

Pre-integrated and factory-tested before commissioning, these modules will form complete compute building blocks, ready to be deployed on the site itself or delivered to third-party customers. A mechanical and electronic prototyping and production centre will support this activity, accelerating the transition from design to series production.

With around 110,000 m² of buildings, the site aims to become, in time, Europe's largest industrial site dedicated to artificial intelligence infrastructure. The workshops are being designed according to Industry 5.0 principles.

They will be reconfigured to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies, will combine automation and collaborative robots with the know-how of the teams, and will form part of the site's energy and circular-economy approach.

This industrial capacity is intended to help bring the manufacturing of artificial intelligence infrastructure back to Europe to serve future AI Factories and European cloud providers.

Decarbonised energy produced on-site

Aether Utilities will bring together the site's energy infrastructure and networks. In addition to the 25 MW supplied by Strasbourg Électricité Réseaux, several solutions are being studied to increase the site's energy capacity and improve its overall carbon footprint.

These include secured power supply and energy storage capacity with SOCOMEC, as well as a biomass thermolysis unit generating electricity with cooling cogeneration. This solution, which Haffner Energy is studying, would enable the on-site production of renewable electricity.

Depending on the configuration selected, and thanks to the production of biochar, it could also achieve a net-negative carbon footprint. A heat network will also be created on the site to recover the heat released by the servers.

Biochar and dedicated biomass crops for long-term sustainability

The ÆTHER project also provides for the long-term development of dedicated biomass crops to ensure a sustainable supply of fuel for thermolysis.

The thermolysis process would also produce biochar, a by-product that, according to the announcement, could allow the site to achieve a net-negative carbon footprint depending on the configuration selected.

The combination of on-site renewable electricity production, heat recovery from the servers, and a circular-economy approach to energy forms a central part of the project's stated ambition to deliver sovereign, responsible, and sustainable AI infrastructure.

A historic Strasbourg site given a new purpose

The Dumarey Powerglide site, whose history includes its former identities as Punch Powerglide and General Motors, occupies around 90 hectares in the Port du Rhin district of Strasbourg.

Its acquisition by Aether Infrastructures under the ÆTHER project is positioned by the companies as the rebirth of a historic industrial complex into an integrated European hub for artificial intelligence, combining server manufacturing, AI Factory operations, energy production, and research under a single framework, with the lease already enabling preparatory work to begin on 15 October 2026.

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