Norwegian industrial investment firm Aker has announced plans to build an AI “factory” in the Arctic. It’s the latest company heading to the far north to tap into abundant green energy and natural cooling for power-hungry data centres.
The facility will be located in the Norwegian coastal town of Narvik, which lies 220km within the Arctic Circle. Aker’s president and CEO, Øyvind Eriksen said that the site already had access to 230MW of power and was ready for construction to commence. He added that discussions with potential tech firms and partners for the project were ongoing.
However, Eriksen provided limited details on the facility’s purpose, stating it will “serve as a catalyst for industrial development, job creation, and export revenues.”
“AI and data centres are becoming foundational to global business, and northern Norway is uniquely positioned to benefit,” said Eriksen. “The region offers abundant, affordable hydropower and clean energy, along with the conditions needed to attract investment and foster innovation.”
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Aker, which is majority-owned by Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Rokke, has a number of AI and software investments under its belt, including in Bitcoin investment firm Seetee and industrial data company Cognite. Eriksen said the AI facility in Narvik would represent an opportunity to “enter a new value chain early.”
Bits meet blizzards
The Nordic region is fast becoming a global hotspot for AI data infrastructure. Last year, Google committed another €1bn to its Hamina campus in southern Finland, marking its seventh expansion. The data centre upgrade aims to support surging demand for AI compute while tapping into the region’s large supplies of renewable energy.
Not far away, Amsterdam-based Nebius announced in October that it’s tripling GPU capacity at its Mäntsälä site in Sweden, where it aims to run 60,000 GPUs for AI applications.
Also in Sweden, Microsoft bet $3.2bn (€2.7bn) to boost its cloud and AI capacity across its three data centres in the country last year. The tech giant is also reportedly developing a dozen new sites in Finland under its “power-first” strategy, aimed at meeting massive AI compute demands while pushing toward its carbon-negative goals.
Big Tech aside, the Nordics are also sprouting their own homegrown AI players, including the likes of Finland’s Silo AI, which was bought by chipmaker AMD in a $665mn (571mn) deal in October.
With Aker now hopping on the AI bandwagon, the region’s remote edges could be turning into ground zero for Europe’s next tech race.
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