OpenAI Launches Stargate In Europe With Norwegian Deal

OpenAI has agreed to be an anchor customer for a new data center in Norway, the first European site for the artificial intelligence company’s Stargate infrastructure effort.

Data center company Nscale Global Holdings will build the facility with funding from Norwegian investor Aker ASA, the companies said in a statement on Thursday. The site, which will be jointly owned by the two European companies, has the initial goal of delivering 230 megawatts of capacity with plans to add additional 290 megawatts.

European officials and business leaders have been calling for the continent to invest more in facilities to support generative AI, citing fears of declining growth and ceding the technology to the US and China. The European Union announced a €20 billion ($22.9 billion) program to subsidize large AI “gigafactories,” and the UK and France have announced similar effort.

OpenAI, meanwhile, is looking to expand its commercial operations in Europe, where it faces far stricter regulations and more skepticism of Silicon Valley tech. In May, the private company announced OpenAI for Countries, a plan to expand its signature Stargate data center project abroad.

The release on Thursday said the Norwegian project will be “among the most significant” AI infrastructure investments in Europe. The UK announced plans earlier this year for “AI Growth Zones” with 500 megawatts of capacity each. The French government vowed in May to build a 1.4-gigawatt AI campus near Paris.

The initial European Stargate is dwarfed by OpenAI’s efforts elsewhere, including a 5-gigawatt pledge from the first international outpost in the United Arab Emirates. The US Stargate project is targeting 4.5 gigawatts of capacity, Bloomberg News reported earlier. For that effort, OpenAI and its partners, including SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp., pledged to spend as much as $500 billion. OpenAI did not share any investment plans for the Norwegian project.

“Europe needs more compute to realize the full potential of AI for all Europeans — from developers and researchers to startups and scientists — and we want to help make that happen,” OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said in the statement. “I’ve always said we’d love to bring Stargate to Europe if the conditions are right, and we think we’ve found that.”

The companies aim to deliver 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units in the data center by the end of 2026 and add more chips later. The companies did not give a time line for construction. Aker and Nscale, a British startup formed last year, each pledged about $1 billion to fund the initial 20 megawatt phase of the project.

The site will be built in Kvandal, located along one of Norway’s fjords, and powered by renewable energy.