Schneider Electric has announced a strategic collaboration with Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as Foxconn, to design and scale the next generation of AI data centres. The deal, announced on 15 June, pairs the French energy-management group with the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.
The division of labour follows the two companies’ respective strengths. Foxconn brings compute platforms, AI rack integration, and manufacturing reach; Schneider brings power systems, cooling, and energy management. The aim, as the companies describe it, is to offer integrated, ready-to-deploy infrastructure that customers can stand up faster and run more predictably across regions.
In practice, that means co-developing reference architectures for AI data centres and working on closed-loop energy optimisation, modular power and cooling skids, and standardised design frameworks.
The skid approach, prefabricated blocks of power and cooling that ship as units, is the part aimed squarely at speed: it lets an operator assemble a facility from repeatable components rather than engineering each site from scratch. Production is expected to begin later this year, the companies said.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!The collaboration sits in the part of the AI boom that gets less attention than the chips: the buildings, the power, and the heat. Training and serving large models needs dense racks drawing more electricity than conventional server halls were built for, and the constraint is increasingly the physical plant rather than the silicon inside it.
