SoleCrypt Expands Planned Tunisia AI Data Center Campus to 40MW, First Phase Slated for Early 2028

SoleCrypt has significantly scaled up its planned data center development in Tunisia, unveiling a 40MW AI campus in Bizerte that underscores the North African country's ambitions to establish itself as a regional digital infrastructure hub. The project represents a notable expansion from the company's previously outlined 20MW facility in the same city, reflecting growing demand for AI-capable computing capacity across the Mediterranean region.

The first phase of the campus will deliver 7MW of IT capacity designed to host Nvidia's HGX Rubin NVL8 hardware, with plans to deploy 1,728 Nvidia Rubin GPUs. According to the company, this initial phase could go live in early 2028. The campus will be situated approximately 3.6 kilometers (2.23 miles) from the Medusa subsea cable landing site in Bizerte via a routed fiber path, providing direct access to international connectivity linking Tunisia with Marseille, France. The first phase of the Medusa cable went live earlier this year.

Powering the development is a dedicated 60MW solar and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project spanning 100 hectares in Tozeur, located roughly 525 kilometers (326 miles) from the campus site. SoleCrypt, which launched in 2022 with a focus on developing data centers powered by solar assets, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisian cloud and data infrastructure provider Safozi late last year. The company said the project's full details have not yet been disclosed.

The expansion signals a broader trend of AI infrastructure investment spreading into emerging markets, where abundant renewable energy resources and improving subsea connectivity are increasingly attracting data center developers. Tunisia's proximity to European markets via the Medusa cable, combined with its solar potential, positions the country as a compelling location for sustainable AI compute capacity. For SoleCrypt, the Bizerte campus represents a significant scale-up of its original vision and could serve as a template for solar-powered data center developments elsewhere in Africa and the Mediterranean basin.