Microsoft has agreed to rent data center capacity at a site in Norway that was initially intended for OpenAI and marketed as part of the AI company’s Stargate initiative.
Nscale says that Microsoft will rent 30,000 additional Nvidia Corp. Vera Rubin chips from neocloud provider Nscale at the data center campus inside the arctic circle in Narvik, Norway, which builds on a prior $6.2 billion commitment Microsoft made at the same site.
OpenAI had initially been in talks for capacity to run its AI workloads at the Stargate Norway campus, but didn’t conclude an agreement with Nscale, according to people familiar with the discussions, Bloomberg reported. Last week, OpenAI said it was pausing its Stargate effort in the UK, another Nscale-developed site, citing the country’s high cost of energy and regulation. OpenAI’s plan to pause the UK project, and its failure to strike a deal with Nscale in Norway, mark a contrast from the AI giant’s previously signaled infrastructure plans. After a series of splashy announcements in recent years, OpenAI appears to be taking a more cautious approach to its rising server farm costs.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company continues to explore an agreement for capacity in Norway and the company is working with a number of partners to build up its infrastructure. “I’ve always said we’d love to bring Stargate to Europe if the conditions are right, and we think we’ve found that in Narvik,” OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said in a statement in July.
