Spanish energy firm Solaria is reportedly in talks to acquire a stake in a data center joint venture led by Telefónica and ACS, valued at around €4 billion ($4.71bn).

First reported by Bloomberg, the deal is said to be still in the negotiation phase.

The firms are reportedly aiming to develop a 150MW data center project in Spain, with the potential to reach 1GW in the future. Full details of the planned development haven’t been shared.

The project was one of the dozens that applied for funding from the European Union under its AI gigafactories program. Four to five projects will gain funding, each hosting more than 100,000 of the latest generation of GPUs. No decisions have yet been made on funding allocation.

State-owned digital investment holding company SETT has reportedly already joined Telefónica and ACS in the consortium.

Solaria was founded in 2002 and operates dozens of solar installations across Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Uruguay. The company has signed various energy deals with data center companies to offset their operations with renewable power via Solaria’s various projects.

In recent years, however, Solaria has looked to move into developing data centers itself and utilizing its grid connections. In 2024, the company formed Solaria Data Center and secured grid connection authorizations across Spain totaling hundreds of megawatts.

The company is reportedly seeking an outside investor for its data center platform.

Construction firm ACS has long been a major contractor in the data center sector, but in recent years has also looked to move further up the chain into developing its own facilities to lease or sell to operators. BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners has taken a stake in ACS’s data center business, which reportedly has a portfolio of 1.7GW of capacity under development.

Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica has sold off many of its data centers in recent years. Today, many of its Spanish sites are operated by Nabiax, recently acquired by Keppel subsidiary Aermont. The company is, however, repurposing many of its legacy telephone exchanges (aka central offices) for Edge use cases after shutting down its copper network.

This piece was automatically translated from DCD’s Spanish site and edited by a member of DCD’s editorial staff.