Nebius Announces $10 Billion, 310-Megawatt Data Center in Finland as European AI Infrastructure Race Accelerates

Amsterdam-based AI cloud company Nebius has announced a $10 billion data center project in Lappeenranta, Finland, spanning 310 megawatts of capacity, to be built by local developer Polarnode with phased operations beginning in 2027, according to a Reuters report cited by Techmeme on Tuesday. The announcement represents one of the largest single data center investment commitments in European history and signals the accelerating race to build AI compute infrastructure outside the United States. Finland has attracted multiple data center investments due to its cold climate, which reduces cooling costs, its stable electricity supply fed substantially by nuclear and hydroelectric generation, and its position on EU territory with associated legal stability. Nebius was spun out of the Russian technology company Yandex following the company's restructuring in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Amsterdam-listed entity retained Yandex's cloud and AI assets and has been aggressively building out capacity to compete in the European AI cloud market. A 310-megawatt campus would rank among the largest data center deployments in the Nordic region. For context, a single H100 GPU server rack draws approximately 10 to 40 kilowatts, meaning a gigawatt-scale campus can in theory house tens of thousands of high-density AI compute racks. The Finnish government has positioned the country as a data center hub within the EU, and Lappeenranta, near the Russian border in South Karelia, has available industrial land and grid capacity. Other major operators including Google, Microsoft, and Equinix have established data center presences in Finland. Nebius and Polarnode did not provide further details on financing or construction milestones beyond the 2027 phased operations target.