OpenAI has announced the opening of its first European data center, which will be located in northern Norway, in the Kvandal region, not far from Narvik. The project is called Stargate, and it will be implemented by the British company Nscale in cooperation with the Norwegian partner Aker, specialized in energy infrastructure. Both companies are investing equally in the project, which will use exclusively renewable energy sources.
The new center will be one of the largest in Europe, with an initial capacity of 230 megawatts. Already in the first phase, it is expected to use 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs, which are crucial for the development of artificial intelligence. In the first phase, a power of 20 megawatts is planned, with an investment of two billion dollars – one billion from each investor.
The region where the center is being built was chosen for its natural resources and stable conditions – it has abundant hydropower, low consumption and limited transmission capacity, which enables efficient infrastructure management. OpenAI will take over processing capacities from this facility, while technical performance will be managed by Nscale and Aker.
The Stargate project was already launched at the beginning of the year in the USA, where it was conceived as a global AI initiative with the support of partners such as Oracle, SoftBank and MGX from the UAE. The plan is to invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in a global network of advanced AI infrastructure.
The new initiative comes at a time when the European Union is strongly promoting the concept of sovereign artificial intelligence, which encourages local data processing and the placement of AI systems within European borders. Nvidia and OpenAI have already adapted their strategies to align with these guidelines, and are supported by European leaders in the AI sector such as the French company Mistral.