Microsoft announced today a new agreement valued at over $6 billion with AI hyperscaler Nscale and industrial investment company Aker, providing Microsoft with computing power from a new large-scale AI infrastructure project in Northern Norway, to be powered entirely by renewable energy.
According to Microsoft, the new 5 year agreement “will deliver sustainable AI infrastructure for all of Europe,” to help meet “the exponentially growing demand for efficient, scalable and sustainable AI compute power.”
Microsoft launched a series of “moonshot” sustainability goals in 2020, including commitments to become carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030, as well as to protect more land than it uses by that date. The company’s carbon footprint has grown since 2020, however, driven largely by significant growth in data centers to meet increasing demand for AI computing power, and earlier this year, Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa acknowledged that the rapid growth of AI has created challenges for the company’s sustainability goals.
In addition to investing heavily in carbon removal solutions, Microsoft has unveiled a series of measures to help address its value chain emissions footprint, including introducing a policy for some of its key suppliers to use 100% carbon-free electricity, and launching a new supplier decarbonization team focused on tackling emissions from cloud and AI operations.
Jon Tinter, President of Business Development and Ventures for Microsoft, said:
“We are incredibly excited for what this means for our customers, in Norway and across Europe, providing the latest and most advanced AI services from Microsoft. It is inspiring to see how Nscale and Aker are building cutting edge, sustainable AI infrastructure, and adding this facility to our comprehensive Microsoft cloud offering in Europe demonstrates our unwavering commitment to customers on the continent.”
The new agreement follows the establishment in July 2025 of a new joint venture between Nscale and Aker to launch “Stargate Norway,” a major AI infrastructure project in Norway, targeting a 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026, to be powered by renewable energy, and designed to provide secure, scalable, and energy-efficient infrastructure for AI workloads across Europe.
According to the companies, the location of the project was chosen for its abundant hydropower and low local electricity demand, in addition to attributes including the cool climate, and the area’s established industrial infrastructure.
The contract, valued at approximately $6.2 billion, will be delivered in staged deployments beginning in 2026.
Øyvind Eriksen, President & CEO of Aker said:
“This agreement with Microsoft – a long-standing partner to Aker – is a milestone for the joint venture with Nscale and for Norway’s role in enabling sovereign AI infrastructure. It underscores our ambition of converting clean hydropower into strategic digital capacity, and positions Narvik as a launchpad for Europe’s sovereign cloud. With trusted infrastructure, renewable power, and industrial readiness, Norway is stepping into a new era of value creation – one that is digital, secure, and globally relevant.”
