This year, parent company Alphabet to around $200 billion as it rushes to catch up in the AI race. Wednesday's announced deal is Google's biggest single investment in the EU to date.
Since repurposing a former paper mill in the coastal city of Hamina in 2009 and transforming it into a data center, Google has steadily increased its presence in the country.
The northern location offers two advantages, cold Arctic temperatures mean it needs less energy to cool energy hungry servers and the fact that Finland only has 6 million residents would seem to provide relief from the and elsewhere.
Google is not alone in looking to chilly Finland with its cheap nuclear, wind and hydroelectric energy supply to expand its business — Microsoft and parent ByteDance have also set up shop — with dozens of data centers being built in the country over the past few years.
Attracting data center investment has been a priority for Finland's right-wing Prime Minister Petteri Orpo as the nation confronts record unemployment and slow economic growth.
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Orpo said Google is, "committed to ensuring that electricity production in Finland remains sufficient and that prices remain under control. "
The said the deal was, "a testament to Finland's leadership in responsibly building AI infrastructure. "
"Now we are building more in Hamina, expanding that site on a remarkable level, and we are opening up data center operations in three new locations in the municipalities of Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala," said Antti Jarvinen, the company's director of operations for Finland.
Resources under pressure
Fortum said the deal would allow it to "continue operating the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant until the end of its operating licenses in 2050," adding that without it, the plant, which currently supplies about 10% of Finland's electricity, would not have been able to continue operations past 2030.
Overall, Finland's data center boom is expected to create a massive spike in energy consumption, with network operator Fingrid forecasting a 40% jump over the coming years.
Beyond the raised by such deals, Finland's Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO) has also issued explicit warnings that foreign-owned data centers pose potential security risks for the Nordic nation.
SUPO is concerned that municipalities may be weighing the economic potential of data centers more heavily than the security risk associated with them, noting that despite data center investments being fundamentally good for Finland there may be concerns if their owners are linked to authoritarian countries like Russia or China.
SUPO says authoritarian states may, for instance, try to use Finland to circumvent restrictions and sanctions on technology exports. For example, for advanced chips currently banned from export to China.
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Edited by: Sean Sinico
