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Microsoft revealed its $10bn AI infrastructure plans in Portugal, while Google said it will invest $6.3bn in Germany.
Tech giants globally are ramping up data centre investments to fuel their growing AI needs, with a McKinsey report estimating that data centres worldwide need around $6.7trn by 2030 to keep up with the pace and growing compute power needed for the technology.
Yesterday (11 November), tech giants Microsoft and Google made in total more than $16bn in data centre commitments in Europe.
Microsoft’s president and vice-chair Brad Smith told the audience at the annual Web Summit in Lisbon that the company plans to invest $10bn over a number of years for AI infrastructure at a data centre in Portugal’s port city Sines. Reports suggest that this is one of the largest AI investments on the continent.
The project, in partnership with UK AI infrastructure provider Nscale and Start Campus, the developer behind the Sines data centre, will see 12,600 Nvidia GB300 GPUs installed at the Portuguese campus. Microsoft, in addition, has a number of other deals with Nscale for Nvidia GPUs in Europe and the US.
“By strengthening the national AI infrastructure through collaboration with Nscale, Nvidia and Start Campus, we are helping to position Portugal as a benchmark for the responsible and scalable development of AI in Europe,” Smith said.
Start Campus said that the 1.2GW Sines data centre is powered by 100pc renewable and “competitively priced” energy, with a seawater cooling system to tackle heating.
Also yesterday, Google announced a €5.5bn ($6.3bn) investment in Germany, which includes a new data centre in Dietzenbach and continued investments into the existing Hanau data centre campus. The company is also expanding office locations in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich.
According to Google, these investments will be made by 2029, and will contribute on average more than €1bn to local GDP and support around 9000 jobs annually.
The Dietzenbach data centre is set to strengthen the company’s cloud regions in Germany, which are used by its clients to build and scale their own AI offerings, Google said. Meanwhile, the Hanau data centre offers AI services including Vertex AI with Gemini models.
In addition, Google also announced that it is expanding its Carbon-Free Energy partnership with energy services group Engie in the country until 2030.
“Google’s multibillion-euro investments are genuine future-proof investments; in innovation, in artificial intelligence and in the climate-neutral transformation,” said Lars Klingbeil, Germany’s federal minister of finance.
Philipp Justus, the country manager for Germany and VP for central Europe at Google said, “We are pleased to announce Google’s largest investment program to date in Germany.
“By 2029, we will invest €5.5bn in state-of-the-art data centres, carbon-free energy, training of digital skills and the expansion of our offices. This will give businesses, public institutions and people throughout Germany even better access to our technology, thus supporting the digital transformation.”
Source: Silicon Valley Republic, WSJ