Infomaniak’s new D4 data center to change future data centers’ design from Geneva’s Underground

By Oscar Tornare

On January 22, 2025, Donald Trump announced following his re-election the establishment of Project Stargate, a joint venture aimed at developing the infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence, funded with $500 billion by four technology majors, among them Open AI, the American giant behind ChatGPT. Following on from this announcement, French President Emmanuel Macron also declared at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Action Summit held in February, that a €109 billion private investment plan was underway to promote artificial intelligence in France. These investments are specifically designed to help construct new data centers, i.e. the facilities in which all of the Internet’s data is stored, shared and produced.

The rise of artificial intelligence, a technology that is extremely demanding in terms of computing power, calls for the construction of new data centers. In an October 2024 memo, McKinsey estimated that the demand for new data centers would increase annually between 19% and 22% until 2030, the majority of which would be used for AI. This growth poses considerable environmental challenges. Indeed, the servers – which form the backbone of all digital services from streaming, AI, to the cloud – consume vast quantities of electricity to operate. In 2022, data centers already accounted for almost 2% of the world’s electricity consumption, a share that could double by 2026. On top of this, servers generate heat that has to be evacuated, which is at the moment done through hydraulic cooling. This requires significant amounts of water resources, raising energy, environmental and social concerns in regions already affected by global warming and drought.

With a view to offering an alternative to the dominant data center model, Infomaniak, a Swiss company specializing in cloud hosting, officially inaugurated its D4 data center in Geneva on 28 January 2025. Located under the eco-responsible Bistoquette cooperative in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, this data center, which runs on renewable energy, is the first in the world to fully recycle its electricity consumption. To achieve this, the data center uses a cooling system that requires no water, evacuating the heat emitted by the servers via a heat pump system connected to the district heating network. At full capacity, this installation will be supplying heat to up to 6 ‘000 Geneva households in winter, and even more in summer. The recycled energy is sold back to SIG at cost price, ensuring that the process is both environmentally and economically viable.

In addition to being energy efficient, D4 stands out for its local integration: invisible from the surface, it preserves the landscape while enhancing the region’s energetic autonomy. Infomaniak is also sensitive to Switzerland’s participation in European initiatives for technology development, and has therefore chosen European-produced components as the basis for the data center’s infrastructure. Only the servers, which will gradually be installed up to 2028, are made by Nvidia, the American computer chip giant caught up in the ongoing technology competition between the United States and China.

This data center design, documented by students from EPFL, IMD and UNIL, has been made available open source so that it can be replicated. D4 thus could very well pave the way for a transition towards eco-responsible data center models. Far from being a simple technological feat, the D4 illustrates how a sustainable, local approach can meet the global challenges of digital technologies. Having emerged from under the streets of Geneva, Infomaniak, in partnership with SIG and the Canton of Geneva, is leading by example towards a sustainable data center solution that could well redefine the global internet industry. Awarded the Prix Suisse de l’Éthique and the Prix du développement durable du canton de Genève in 2023, this initiative redefines Geneva as a center of innovation and international cooperation for a more sustainable future.