Nebius furthers European expansion with $10 billion AI data centre in Finland

By Anne Kauranen and Toby Sterling

HELSINKI, March 31 (Reuters) - AI infrastructure firm Nebius Group NBIS.O on Tuesday said it was continuing its rapid European expansion with a 310-megawatt data centre in Finland, which would be one of the continent's largest with an estimated value of more than $10 billion as demand for AI computing grows.

The Amsterdam-based company said capacity at its 10th site, which Finnish developer Polarnode is already building in Lappeenranta near Finland's eastern border with Russia, is due to come online in phases from 2027.

Nebius has recently won supply contracts worth more than $40 billion in total with U.S. software giants Microsoft and Meta. It said the new site would be used to train AI models and run AI applications, and would not be tied to any one client.

The data centre is one of Finland's largest infrastructure projects to date, Polarnode CEO Mikko Toivanen said in a statement, adding that it would support European data sovereignty.

LOWER COOLING COSTS

Finland is considered an attractive location for data centres because its low energy prices, renewable electricity supply and cold climate reduce cooling costs.

Lappeenranta ticked all the boxes, such as quick land availability and grid capacity, Nebius found.

"We think that the broader ecosystem environment is also very favourable here," Chief Communications Officer Tom Blackwell told Reuters.

The Lappeenranta facility would be Nebius' largest outside the United States, surpassing the 240 MW project it announced near Lille, France, in February. Its largest operational European facility is also in Finland, a 75 MW site in Mantsala.

Lappeenranta will make a "significant contribution" to achieving Nebius' capacity goals, which include securing more than 3 gigawatts of contracted capacity by the end of this year, Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said in a statement.

The site will use enough electricity to power up to half a million Finnish households and eventually cover roughly 10% of Nebius' contracted capacity.

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