Google’s €13B Finland AI buildout locks in nuclear power
What’s the deal? Google has committed at least €13 billion to AI infrastructure in Finland, to be invested during 2027 and 2028. Reuters and Google describe the programme as the company’s largest single investment in Europe. The build-out will expand the data-centre infrastructure used to run Google’s AI services, including Gemini, across Finland.
The power agreement: Alongside the infrastructure spend, Google has signed a 22-year electricity offtake agreement with Finnish energy company FortumDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → covering up to half of the output of the Loviisa nuclear power plant. It is Google’s first nuclear-power agreement outside the United States. Loviisa already supplies roughly 10% of Finland’s electricity, making the contract a long-term commitment to firm, low-carbon power for data-centre operations.
Why it matters: The agreement links AI infrastructure investment to power-market strategy. A 22-year offtake contract is designed to secure baseload electricity well beyond the end of the 2020s, helping support the continued operation of Loviisa into the 2040s rather than allowing supply to fall away after 2030. For hyperscalers, access to dependable electricity is becoming as important as access to chips, land and network capacity.
Why Finland? Google has operated in Finland since 2009, when it acquired a former paper mill in Hamina and converted it into a data centre. The country offers a cool climate and a power mix that includes nuclear, wind and hydroelectric generation. The latest investment is expected to support construction and related activity in Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala, while also funding clean-energy projects and local biodiversity, education, research and workforce-development initiatives.
Economic impact: Google estimates that the investment could add about €3.6 billion to Finland’s annual GDP and support more than 37,000 jobs during construction, including roughly 16,000 in the construction sector. Once the infrastructure is operating, it is expected to support approximately 7,000 jobs each year. The announcement comes as Finland seeks new investment amid weak growth and elevated unemployment.
The signal: AI infrastructure is becoming an energy-security and permitting story, not only a computing story. Countries that keep nuclear capacity online and can approve large data-centre projects may attract more of the next wave of hyperscale investment. The long-term Fortum agreement shows that the competitive bottleneck is increasingly who can secure reliable electrons for decades, not simply who can buy the newest accelerators.
Read more: Martin Varsavsky on X · Malay Mail
