OpenAI Announces Stargate Norway, a 100,000-GPU Data Center Near Narvik

OpenAI has announced Stargate Norway, its first AI data center initiative in Europe under the OpenAI for Countries program, with plans to deliver 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026. The facility is slated to provide 230MW of capacity, with ambitions to expand by an additional 290MW.

The announcement marks one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure investments in Europe to date, according to OpenAI, and extends the Stargate platform — the company's overarching infrastructure initiative — beyond the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Stargate UAE launched earlier this year as the program's first international deployment.

The joint venture behind the build

Stargate Norway will be designed and built by Nscale, an AI infrastructure provider that OpenAI describes as having experience delivering cloud infrastructure across Europe and North America. The site is expected to be owned by a 50/50 joint venture between Nscale and Aker, the Norwegian industrial group with what OpenAI calls a "century-long legacy in energy and industry." Aker and Nscale are taking steps to mobilize resources for construction.

OpenAI will act as an initial offtaker for the facility's capacity, with the option to scale its usage over time under the OpenAI for Countries program. That structure gives OpenAI guaranteed access to compute in Europe while shifting ownership and construction risk to local partners.

Why Narvik

The site's location near Narvik, in northern Norway, is central to the project's economics and sustainability claims. OpenAI cites the region's "abundant hydropower, low-cost energy, cool climate, and mature industrial base" as the reasons it can deliver large-scale, sustainable AI capacity.

The facility will run entirely on renewable power, according to OpenAI. It is expected to use closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling for maximum cooling efficiency. Excess heat from the GPU systems will be made available to support low-carbon enterprises in the region — a model already familiar from Nordic data center deployments, where waste heat integration is a regulatory and commercial selling point.

Access for Norwegian and European users

The compute will not flow exclusively to OpenAI. Aker and Nscale will work to provide priority access to Norway's AI ecosystem, so that homegrown AI startups and scientific researchers can use the additional capacity. Surplus capacity will be made available to public and private sector users across the UK, the Nordics, and Northern Europe, serving regional demand and, in OpenAI's words, "accelerating the development of Europe's AI ecosystem."

The demand-side rationale is concrete. OpenAI says that in Norway alone, the number of weekly active ChatGPT users has quadrupled in the past year. Most of those users are under 35, and the figure includes thousands of local developers. Across Europe more broadly, millions of people and businesses use ChatGPT and OpenAI's API every day.

The company frames the investment as part of a broader argument about AI as a foundational technology — one that can boost productivity, drive economic growth, and power new industries. Large-scale compute capacity located in Europe, OpenAI argues, will help ensure that transformation benefits developers, researchers, scientists, and startups across Norway and the continent.

Sovereign AI ambitions

While in Norway, OpenAI will also engage with government officials to explore collaboration, including boosting AI adoption and, in the company's words, "helping to deliver on Norway's sovereign AI goals for the benefit of its people." That language ties Stargate Norway to the escalating European policy debate over sovereign compute — who controls the infrastructure on which the region's AI economy runs.

Stargate Norway is one of several moves OpenAI has made to position itself within that European infrastructure push. The company recently signed an MOU with the UK Government to accelerate AI adoption and explore ways to bolster the necessary infrastructure. It agreed a partnership with the Government of Estonia to deploy ChatGPT across secondary schools. And it has submitted Expressions of Interest to join consortiums under the EU's AI Gigafactories initiative, the bloc's flagship effort to build domestic AI compute at scale.

OpenAI characterizes these projects as early-stage, but says they "have the potential to power Europe's future and provide sovereign compute capacity."

The stakes

The announcement lands amid intensifying competition over where the physical infrastructure of AI gets built — and who gets to use it. For European policymakers, the question is whether the continent hosts enough capacity to serve its own researchers, startups, and public institutions, or whether it remains dependent on US-based compute. For OpenAI, Stargate Norway secures a renewable-powered European footprint at a time when its compute demands continue to grow and when governments increasingly condition market access on local investment.

If Nscale and Aker deliver the 100,000 GPUs on the end-of-2026 timeline, Stargate Norway would become one of the largest single-site AI compute deployments in Europe — and the template for how OpenAI's for-Countries program pairs American AI demand with national energy and industrial partners.