In collaboration with Norwegian energy infrastructure company Aker and British AI cloud infrastructure supplier Nscale, OpenAI said on Thursday that it will open Stargate Norway, its first AI data center in Europe.
The data center of OpenAI in Norway will be designed and constructed by Nscale, and the two businesses will share 50/50 ownership. As a “off-taker” in the project, OpenAI will purchase data center capacity.
The declaration comes as Europe invests in data centers and compute capacity in a race to become an AI-sovereign nation. The union revealed earlier this week the specifics of its multibillion-dollar investment in AI infrastructure, which includes €20 billion as an initial investment in the factories and €10 billion ($11.8 billion) to establish 13 AI factories.
Considering the sensitive nature of government as well as private data, data sovereignty is crucial to achieving this objective.
Stargate Norway has not been included in the plans of European Union to scale AI within its borders, Nscale along with OpenAI told TechCrunch.
CEO of Nscale, Josh Payne, told CNBC that “leveraging European sovereign compute” for the benefit of the continent is one of the objectives of this project. Priority access to the establishment will be given to members of AI ecosystem of Norway, such as scientific academics as well as companies.
Nscale and Aker have each contributed about $1 billion to the project’s first 20 megawatt (MW) phase, according to CNBC. According to OpenAI, Stargate Norway would use 100,000 Nvidia GPUs by the end of 2026 and initially deliver 230 MW of capacity with ambitions to increase to 290 MW.
The location will be close to the northern Norwegian town of Narvik. According to a blog post by OpenAI, the area is noteworthy for its “mature industrial base,” cool climate, and hydropower availability.
Open AI said:
“The facility will run entirely on renewable power and is expected to incorporate closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling to ensure maximum cooling efficiency. Additionally, excess heat from the GPU systems will be made available to support low-carbon enterprises in the region.”
Companies constructing data centers are required to apply environmental protection measures and disclose the energy consumption of AI models in accordance with the EU AI Act, which went into force in August 2024 and prohibits systems with “unacceptable risk.”
Furthermore, the bloc’s Energy Efficiency Directive places a strong emphasis on data centers and the ICT sector’s energy efficiency. Additionally, data centers that surpass specific energy intake thresholds are instructed to recover waste heat under the order.
Seven months prior to the Stargate Norway announcement, OpenAI declared that it would collaborate with Oracle and SoftBank to invest $500 billion over the next four years in 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure in the US. The agreement comes after the launch of Stargate UAE earlier this year and a recent agreement with the UK government to improve infrastructure and hasten the use of AI.
To make it clear that Stargate Norway is distinct from the EU’s investment in AI infrastructure, this article was amended.
