While the European Union multiplies the speeches in particular by Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president of the European Commission responsible for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, to announce the mobilization of public funds to build a sovereign artificial intelligence infrastructure, it is in Norway, outside its institutional perimeter, that the first Gigafactory project is spear.
Baptized Stargate Norwaythe project is led by the infrastructure provider Nscalethe industrial group Aker, both Norwegians and by OPENAI, who will be the main customer. This project initiates a first rupture in the geography of European infrastructure, not that we will deepen in a future article.
Installed at Kvandalnear Narvik, Stargate Norway will be the first Data Center for Openai in Europe, as part of its program OPENAI for Countries.
The site ticks all the boxes of an AI Gigafactory on an industrial scale, Starting with direct access to a abundant hydroelectricity, decarbon and inexpensiveand this in a region at Low density of local consumptionwhich limits competition on the network. Another key point, the Land available Allows a rapid physical load, with an arrangement designed from the outset for extension phases on a very large scale. Finally the Temperate Nordic Climate naturally promotes the cooling of infrastructure, which improves global energy efficiency.
The first phase provides for a capacity of 230 MWexpandable to 520 MWwith a goal of 100,000 GPU NVIDIA H100 Installed by the end of 2026. Ultimately, the project could be multiplied by ten in capacity according to the increase in demand.
The site will be designed by Nscale and detained via a equal parts with aker. Initial investment is estimated at $ 1 billionof which 250 million in equity brought in equal parts by the two partners.
Openai will act as first customer of the site. Sam Altman, CEO of Openai, declared a few days ago on this: ” Europe Needs More Compute to Realize The Full Potential of Ai For All Europeans. We think we’ve found in narvik the right conditions: Clean Energy, Ideal Climate, and Great Partners. »»
Josh Payne, CEO of NSCALE, underlines that this project aims to combine large foundation models, sovereign infrastructure and energy efficiency in order to build a European industrial base capable of supporting long -term technological competitiveness.
Unlike labeled projects Eurohpc JuStargate Norway is not attached to any European financing. This is a project Excluding EuroHPCalthough it shares according to its founders the objectives of sovereignty, pooling of resources and sustainability. Thanks to this private funding, the project leaders guarantee rapid execution, without dependence on community systems and their complexities.
For its part, the European Union has announced thirteen factories and mobilized more than 30 billion euros to build a sovereign IA infrastructure. But none of the projects announced offer at this stage a capacity comparable to that of Stargate, neither in number of GPUs, nor in energy power, and all the less in economic model, not difficult to approach as we do not know the reality of future needs. Finally, most of the existing European sites remain focused on scientific calculation, or limited to a few thousand shared GPUs.
To conclude, Stargate Norway stands out as The first European GIGAFACTORY project IA Industrialnatively designed for the deployment of large scale AI. The project inaugurates a sovereign model based on private infrastructure, and energy efficiency. Of course the initiative questions on different levels, and today we will retain only one question, can institutional Europe remain competitive if the most ambitious projects emerge outside its own executives? Question that we will not fail to ask in a next subject.
