Start Campus is scaling its 1.2GW campus in Sines, Portugal, even further with SIN02, its planned 180-200MW hyperscale data centre.

SIN02 is being designed specifically for high-density AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. Project developers say it will operate on 100% renewable energy and use the seawater cooling system that SIN01, the initial data centre on the site, harnesses to have a zero-freshwater footprint.

Omer Wilson, CMO at Start Campus, shares with Capacity some of the specifications for the upcoming data centre and how it plans to scale the next phase of the project.

“We continue to build out the Sines campus, which is still on track to be 1.2GW once completed,” Wilson explained. “As of today, it remains one of – if not the largest – AI campuses of this size at this advanced stage.”

From “build of faith” to advancing the AI ecosystem

The site is located at the Sines Data Campus in the Setúbal District in Portugal, which is roughly 50 miles south of Lisbon. It is expected to deliver 180MW to 240MW of IT capacity, supporting ultra-high densities up to 700kW per rack.

Its first building, SIN01, went operational at the end of 2024 and is now full at 37.5MW. SIN02 marks the second out of the proposed six facilities on the Sines site and construction, which has already commenced, is expected to be completed by the end of 2027.

“The first suite will be delivered to the customer, Nscale, at the end of next year, which will be 200MW,” Wilson explained. “Power of this size in one location is valuable, especially in Europe, as a lot of large technology providers are looking outside of the US to see what’s around. It’s a different scale of build now.”

A large proportion of Start Campus’ SIN01 site was also built for Nscale, which is delivering the data centre to Microsoft with Nvidia GB300 chips – the first in the European Union. SIN02, Wilson said, will host 66,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin chips to ensure it holds next-generation technology by the time it’s completed.

To that end, Start Campus expanded its collaboration with Nscale and Microsoft to deploy the same strategy from SIN01 at SIN02.

“The slight difference is that SIN01 was built speculatively, so when our investors acquired the land and started construction, there was no lease – it was a bit of a build of faith,” Wilson explained. “With SIN02, it’s a huge finance structure and one that’s unique to Europe – to do that, you need a partnership with a provider like Nscale, who is our direct customer and build partner.”

Nscale is expected to be the full tenant of the SIN02 building, but Wilson added that Microsoft will be needed at the back end to support the project financially. Nvidia is also part of the Nscale infrastructure provision for Microsoft.

“Microsoft is planning to provision Copilot to EU enterprises from this campus,” Wilson said. “That’s a good insight into what the facility will be used for.”

Future planning for sustainability

Start Campus is future planning for sustainability as it scales up to 1.2GW at Sines, particularly as it views the Southern Europe region as becoming more of a strategic hub for hyperscale data centres. In recent years, significant data centre investments have been announced in Spain and the wider Iberia region as it gains interest from big tech.

“We’ll continue to look at growth within Portugal,” Wilson noted. “The whole region is becoming what we envisioned: the alternative, alongside Scandinavia, for Europe, as Tier I locations like London, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam (FLAP-D) get more squeezed.”

He added: “I think Iberia is now really making its statement as the other option. Now the conversation is about gigafactories, with Iberia providing strong renewable power access and network connectivity to make it very competitive.”

Where SIN02 is concerned, Start Campus is targeting an industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.1 and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of 0 through its direct ocean-water cooling strategy. The seawater infrastructure in particular has been a significant motivator for Sines investors, alongside the infrastructure availability of the decommissioned power plant that sits on the site.

The plan is still to develop the seawater system in full at SIN02, which requires a lot of pipework. In the meantime, traditional cooling will be in place to support some of the workloads.

“It’s very attractive to our customers, as they look at how to power their workloads with renewable energy. This is the messaging they want,” Wilson noted. “It helps that we’re an AI-native operator, designing the facility with AI workloads in mind from the ground up.”

With conversations across Europe intensifying about the rising power demand from AI data centres, public resistance to new sites is growing. Start Campus remains conscious of these conversations, Wilson shared and is taking actions to prioritise sustainability.

“We’ve signed an MoU with EDP [an electric utilities company] in Portugal to jointly develop additional renewable capacity in the country,” he said. “We’re working with them on our plans for Sines and they’ll be working with the Portuguese government.

“We want to get to a stage where we’re using additional renewable capacity in Portugal, rather than drawing from the country’s existing renewable supply. This will allow us to make sure our campus doesn’t have a local or national impact on energy prices.”

The net zero equation

When it comes to the wider industry, plenty of operators are having to balance digital progress and innovation with sustainability and net zero targets. The conversation is having to evolve to consider efficiency and water usage, but there is no ‘one’ approach to progress.

“Some geographies are better placed than others – some locations are going with more ‘old-school’ powering just to get workloads going,” Wilson said. “I think the industry is very conscious of this, given how topical it is.”

As public distaste for data centres scales worldwide, Wilson made a case for how there are still plenty of misconceptions about the direct impact of data centres on energy prices and water usage.

“I think communities sometimes react when projects have only just started – there isn’t always direct collaboration at that stage, though there may be in the future,” he added. “This forms part of a much wider topic – if you take this infrastructure away, you can’t run a digital economy.”

This comes as AI demand continues to boom, with eagerness to keep investing in the technology to fuel enterprise growth. For Wilson, this means AI provisioning will become a differentiator for countries and economies.

“It’s becoming a commodity,” he added. “It really comes down to how sustainably you can develop it and what industry standards will be brought to it.”

Recognised for its commitment to sustainable data centre progress, Start Campus’ SIN01 site was named Best Data Centre in Europe at the Datacloud Awards in June 2026. As it looks to its next chapter scaling SIN02, Wilson is optimistic for growth.

“The award has come at a time where people were starting to learn more about us, as we moved onto SIN02, so it was great to be recognised by the industry – it made a statement to the market,” he said. “We’re very happy with our approach, given our location, and this is what we’ll try to recreate in other places we go.”

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