Microsoft takes over Stargate Norway data centre as OpenAI stalls investments

The technology giant is reportedly renting 30,000 additional Nvidia Vera Rubin chips from Nscale at a campus in Narvik, Norway, Bloomberg reports. This builds on an existing commitment from Microsoft which pledged US$6.2 billion at the same data centre site.

OpenAI had been in talks for capacity to run AI workloads at this campus, but people familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg that the company didn’t reach an agreement with Nscale. The ChatGPT-maker had marketed the site as ‘Stargate Norway’ last year in a statement and referred to a planned $500 billion joint venture investment in US infrastructure to fuel AI development.

This news comes as OpenAI announced its intention to pause Stargate UK, citing the high cost of energy and regulatory concerns. A statement by OpenAI explained the company will continue to explore Stargate UK and “will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

Speaking on Norway, an OpenAI spokesperson reportedly said the company is continuing to explore an agreement for Norway and is working with a series of partners to build up infrastructure.

Bloomberg also reported that Google will rent capacity from a separate Nscale data centre in West London, but the agreement hasn’t yet been made public. The deal will reportedly see Google renting capacity at the facility running Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips.

It certainly speaks to a more careful approach to infrastructure investments from OpenAI, although it is unclear if the company is actively scaling back its data centre efforts. The organisation also told investors in February it would be spending $600 billion on infrastructure by 2030, a lower figure than was expected.

This is also happening at the same time as OpenAI prepares for public listing as soon as this year and amid a reported feud with Microsoft over an Amazon AI agent deal.

Microsoft has been actively forging partnerships with neocloud providers like Nscale as it looks to scale up its AI data centre efforts worldwide. Both companies recently partnered with Nvidia and Caterpillar to deliver 1.35GW of Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 GPUs at an AI Factory in West Virginia.

Likewise, Microsoft recently announced a new data centre region in Denmark to advance cloud and AI services by strengthening digital resilience, innovation and economic growth.

According to Wall Street, Microsoft is expected to spend $143 billion this year on capital expenditures, largely tied to data centre development.

The news also comes as Microsoft announces its intent to expand data centre operations in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to accelerate innovation and economic growth in the region.

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