Regional operator NorthC has broken ground on a modular data centre in Meyrin, on the outskirts of Geneva, extending its Swiss footprint into the French-speaking part of the country. The 4.5MW facility will be delivered in three 1.5MW steps, with the first phase expected to go live in 2028.
What happened
NorthC marked the start of construction with a ceremony in Meyrin, attended by Urs Bürgisser, its managing director for Switzerland, and announced the milestone on LinkedIn, according to DatacenterDynamics. The company thanked landlord HIAG and local authorities.
The project dates back to January 2026, when listed property company HIAG said it had signed a lease of more than 30 years with NorthC Schweiz for a new data centre building on its “The Hive” campus in Meyrin. HIAG said at the time that it had obtained a binding building permit in late 2025 and planned to hand the building over at the end of 2027. NorthC now expects construction to be complete by the second quarter of 2028.
Key details
- Capacity: 4.5MW of IT load, added in 1.5MW increments.
- Cooling: a waterless cooling system with support for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
- Backup power: generators fuelled with hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) rather than diesel.
- Heat reuse: waste heat is to be supplied to local heating networks.
- Energy: HIAG says the facility will run entirely on renewable power.
Context: NorthC’s Swiss build-out
NorthC was formed in 2019 through the merger of Dutch operators TDCG and NLDC, and was acquired by Antin Infrastructure Partners in December 2025. It operates more than a dozen data centres in the Netherlands, eight in Germany and four in Switzerland.
The company entered Switzerland in 2022 by buying Netrics, which brought sites in Münchenstein near Basel and in Biel, and later added a 1.8MW facility near Zurich through a sale-and-leaseback with Kyndryl. Alongside Geneva, it is developing a new Basel site with a 5.5MW first phase due in mid-2027 and adding 2MW at Biel.
Why it matters for modular and edge in Europe
Geneva is not a hyperscale market, and that is the point. A site of this size serves regional demand for capacity close to where data is created and used, rather than large AI training clusters. Building in 1.5MW blocks lets the operator match capital spending to take-up rather than committing to a full hall on day one — the core economic argument for modular design.
The specification also reflects the conditions now attached to new capacity in many European cities: no water use for cooling, a non-diesel backup fuel and heat export to district networks. For sub-10MW regional sites, meeting those expectations from the outset is becoming a condition of planning approval and customer acceptance rather than an optional extra. Support for direct-to-chip cooling also signals that even modest regional facilities are being prepared for denser AI hardware.
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