Microsoft takes over Norway Stargate site

Microsoft has taken over data-center capacity in northern Norway that OpenAI had discussed using for its Stargate build-out. (cnbc.com) The site is a planned 230-megawatt campus in Narvik, above the Arctic Circle, developed by United Kingdom cloud company Nscale. Microsoft said it will add more than 30,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin graphics processing units there, expanding a prior $6.2 billion commitment at the same location. (cnbc.com, mobileworldlive.com, datacenterdynamics.com) OpenAI had been in talks to rent roughly half the facility’s capacity as an initial customer, but it did not finalize an offtake agreement with Nscale. OpenAI told CNBC it is now discussing renting the Norway compute from Microsoft instead. (cnbc.com) The Norway project was introduced on July 31, 2025 by Nscale, Aker, and OpenAI as “Stargate Norway,” with a target of 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units by the end of 2026. The partners said the campus would run on renewable power and could expand beyond the initial 230 megawatts by another 290 megawatts. (nscale.com) Narvik was pitched as a low-cost power location because of hydropower, cool weather, and limited local electricity demand. Those features matter for artificial-intelligence data centers, which turn electricity into computing power and heat at industrial scale. (nscale.com) The switch in Norway came six days after OpenAI said it had paused Stargate United Kingdom, another Nscale-linked project, citing energy costs and regulation. CNBC reported OpenAI is also tempering spending plans ahead of a potential initial public offering this year. (cnbc.com, cnbc.com) Microsoft and OpenAI also rewrote their commercial relationship in October 2025. Microsoft said then that OpenAI committed to buy an incremental $250 billion of Azure cloud services, while Microsoft gave up its previous right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider. (blogs.microsoft.com) Nscale said Tuesday that Microsoft’s Narvik expansion follows a consolidation of the Norway venture, with Nscale now solely managing the project. Microsoft’s Jon Tinter said the added Narvik capacity is aimed at meeting growing customer demand for advanced artificial-intelligence infrastructure across Europe. (mobileworldlive.com, cnbc.com) The result is that the same Norway campus once marketed as OpenAI’s European Stargate site is, for now, becoming more deeply tied to Microsoft’s cloud build-out instead. (cnbc.com, nscale.com)