U.S. cloud company Nebius plans to build a new artificial intelligence data centre in Finland with capacity of up to 310 megawatts. Nebius said the facility would be among Europe’s largest once operational.

CNBC reported on March 31 local time that the new facility will be located in Lappeenranta, Finland. Nebius expects the data centre to begin initial supply to customers from 2027.

Nebius Chief Executive Arkady Volozh (아르카디 볼로즈) said in a statement, "We have been building in Finland for years, and we are pleased to expand our presence here." He added, "Lappeenranta is an important part of our global AI infrastructure buildout and will make a meaningful contribution to achieving our capacity targets."

In Europe’s power sector, announcements of AI infrastructure investment are continuing. French AI startup Mistral said it secured $830 million in debt financing to operate a data centre near Paris. Mistral also previously unveiled a 1.2 billion euro plan in February to build a data centre and computing capacity in Sweden.

British startup Nscale said it raised $2 billion at a valuation of $14.6 billion earlier this month and plans to develop AI data centres in Europe and the United States, including in Britain. It also said that in 2025, MGX, France's public investment bank Bpifrance, Mistral and Nvidia announced a plan to push ahead with a 1.4 gigawatt AI campus in France, while Brookfield said it would invest up to $9.9 billion in an AI data centre in Sweden.

AI computing investment is rising rapidly in Europe, but building infrastructure still faces significant hurdles. This is because energy prices in Europe are higher than in the United States, and projects are also struggling as they connect to national power grids or secure alternative energy sources.

Nebius, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and listed on U.S. stock markets, is emerging as a major AI computing neocloud company in Europe amid this trend. Nebius set a goal of securing more than 3 gigawatts of contracted computing capacity by the end of this year, and its shares rose about 2.4 percent in premarket trading.