Data centers have become essential, but consume enormous amounts of energy. To reduce their impact, the start-up DataGreen is developing a new generation of these infrastructures, capable of operating without air conditioning. The idea emerged in 2019 when the founders were working on their own artificial intelligence project and faced the cost and energy footprint of data centers. “We realized that it was going to become a major issue, both in terms of energy, environmental impact, and sovereignty,” recalled Julien Choukroun (26 years old), one of the co-founders of Datagreen and a graduate of Polytech Nice.
After five years of research and development, the company based in Nice launched in 2024 with three patented innovations: a cooling system directly integrated into the chips, completely airtight servers, and a heat recovery device. “We are the first to completely eliminate air conditioning in data centers,” claimed Julien Choukroun.
Thanks to its architecture, DataGreen also recovers up to 98% of the heat produced, which is reused for heating or cooling buildings. As a result, equipped infrastructures would consume about half as much energy and require up to ten times less space than a traditional data center.
The start-up generates revenue from the sale of these data centers and also receives recurring income through software licenses for its energy management and optimization platform. “We have several requests from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as they have a big dust problem, and our servers are completely airtight,” said Julien Choukroun.
After earning 300,000 euros in revenue in 2025 and winning the CES Innovation Awards, the Dassault Systèmes GreenTech Award, and the French Tech Scale Up Excellence label, Datagreen aims for 8 million euros in revenue this year with clients such as the University of Côte d’Azur or the Monegasque group Telis, known in the data center environment. The start-up is looking to raise 20 million euros to open its own factories and accelerate its international development.
Funds sought: 20 million euros
Contact: julien@datagreen.cloud
