AI infrastructure company Nebius Group announced plans on March 31, 2026 to develop a 310-megawatt data center in Lappeenranta, Finland — a city close to the Russian border — in a project valued at over $10 billion. The announcement was reported by Maximilian Schreiner at The Decoder on March 31, 2026, citing Reuters as the underlying source.
- Nebius Group is building a 310-megawatt AI data center in Lappeenranta, Finland, valued at over $10 billion
- Finnish developer Polarnode is already constructing the facility; a phased launch is planned from 2027
- CEO Arkady Volozh said the site would cover roughly 10% of Nebius’s total planned global capacity
- Finland was selected for low electricity prices, renewable energy, and a cold climate that reduces cooling costs
What Happened
On March 31, 2026, Nebius Group confirmed it is developing a 310-megawatt AI data center in Lappeenranta, Finland — a site near the Russian border — through a project valued at over $10 billion, with Finnish developer Polarnode already constructing the facility and a phased launch scheduled to begin in 2027. The report by Maximilian Schreiner at The Decoder draws on a Reuters source report published the same day.
At full buildout, the Lappeenranta site would rank among the largest AI data centers in Europe. The facility is not contracted to a single tenant — Nebius intends it to both train AI models and serve inference workloads across multiple customers.
Why It Matters
The Lappeenranta project arrives as Nebius has rapidly expanded its commercial position, having signed contracts totaling more than $40 billion with Microsoft and Meta, and as European demand for large-scale, independent AI compute capacity continues to grow outside the major US hyperscaler platforms. The scale of those contracts — announced prior to the Finland announcement — illustrates the depth of third-party demand for Nebius’s infrastructure.
Nebius Group traces its origins to the international assets of Russian technology company Yandex and operates independently of its former parent. Its decision to build in Finland — a NATO member sharing a long land border with Russia — has drawn attention to the project’s geopolitical context alongside its commercial significance.
Technical Details
The Lappeenranta facility is designed for a total capacity of 310 megawatts, positioning it among the highest-powered AI data centers in Europe, and CEO Arkady Volozh stated the site is expected to account for roughly 10 percent of Nebius’s total planned global compute capacity, implying the company’s full infrastructure buildout would exceed three gigawatts. That figure has not been independently confirmed in the published report.
A phased launch beginning in 2027 means the full 310-megawatt capacity will come online incrementally. Nebius identified three specific site selection factors: low electricity prices, access to renewable power, and Finland’s cold ambient climate — all of which directly reduce the energy cost of cooling high-density compute infrastructure. No specific power purchase agreements or detailed phase milestones were disclosed in the source report.
The facility is designed to handle both AI model training workloads — which are compute-intensive and typically run as long continuous jobs — and AI inference workloads that serve live applications. The multi-tenant model gives Nebius flexibility to allocate capacity across clients rather than committing it to a single operator.
Who’s Affected
The facility’s multi-tenant structure means its 310 megawatts of capacity will be available to a range of AI developers and enterprises rather than a single contracted operator, with Finnish developer Polarnode serving as the primary construction partner and Microsoft and Meta among Nebius’s largest known customers globally. Neither Microsoft nor Meta has been identified as a contracted tenant for the Lappeenranta facility specifically.
European AI developers and enterprises currently reliant on US-headquartered hyperscalers for high-volume compute will have an additional sourcing option when the facility begins phased operations in 2027.
What’s Next
Construction through Polarnode is already in progress, with a phased operational launch confirmed to begin in 2027, though Nebius has not disclosed specific phase milestones, power purchase agreements, or a timeline for when the facility will reach its full 310-megawatt capacity. The pace of the buildout will likely depend on Nebius’s ability to secure long-term compute contracts to fill the new capacity.
No direct quote from CEO Arkady Volozh or any other Nebius executive was available in the published source at time of writing — the CEO’s 10 percent figure was reported as indirect attribution by Reuters. The full Reuters source report was not separately accessible for additional detail.
