Leader of the Sines data center – an investment of 10 billion – reveals that there is a great demand for Portugal from American technology companies. With the agreement closed with Nvidia and Microsoft, Sines DC will begin construction of the second building at the end of this year, leaving the door open to partnerships with major technology companies. The demand is so great that new clients are already “knocking on the door” so that the new building can be ready in 2 years.
When someone in California uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) application, the data is being processed in Portugal. The information reaches the other side of the world in milliseconds, despite the 9 thousand km that separate Lisbon from Los Angeles. This scenario will become reality from the first quarter of 2026.
Starting next year, more than 12,000 top chips from one of the world’s largest manufacturers will begin to be deployed in the Sines data center. The small coastal city in the district of Setúbal will host a project that brings together the two most valuable companies in the world at the moment – Nvidia and Microsoft – which will converge at the Sines DC data center.
“This is the reward for five years of hard work. We now see these large international companies recognizing the qualities of this project and of Portugal”, said Robert Dunn, executive president of Start Campus.
The Sines data center will receive Nvidia chips for a Microsoft project, the two Wall Street-listed companies have a combined value of 8.3 billion dollars (that’s right, billions).
This is the biggest installation of Nvidia’s new generation of AI chips in Portugal: there are 12,600 graphics processing units – Blackwell Ultra GB300. These chips are intended to accelerate the use of AI applications, but they are still used for video games, video production or virtual reality.
“Everyone is talking about Portugal, from what I’ve been hearing from American customers and even from our US competitors. Last year, there was a huge demand to build all these big AI data centers in the US because it was fast, relatively cheap and there was power. Now we see that there is no longer any power available. They are having a lot of restrictions and they looked for temporary measures like big gas turbines to solve the problem in the short term, but they became very expensive”, added the manager.
“Now there are many projects and they are thinking ‘we can’t do it’ and they are looking for other countries and they are all looking at Europe and Portugal because of the low prices, because we were able to develop this campus quickly, because everything they had planned for the USA they can do here. There is a lot of interest in Portugal at the moment. It helps a lot that Portugal has submarine cables that connect directly to the USA”, added the manager in an interview with Jornal Económico at the company’s headquarters in Lisbon.
“The AI craze is taking place. We are part of this wave. Our clients are knocking on the door trying to get the building completed within 24 months. It’s a challenge given the size of the project. We already have all the contractors hired and the equipment”, he explains.
The next step is to start construction on the second building by the end of the year, which will be twice as large in area as the first, but “six times more powerful” in technological capacity “this one has 30 MW of load, the next one will have 180 MW. We are installing infrastructures (‘racks’, which house the chips and servers) with 130 kilowatts, 10 times more powerful than 5 years ago. In the next building, we hope to have ‘racks’ with 200 or even 300 kW. This means we can add more capacity in the same space.”
The Australian manager says that Start Campus is “cplanned by many investors who want to be involved in our project. But at this point, we have support from our lead investor, Davidson Kempner. We are rejecting many investors at this point while we continue our project”, he stated about the North American fund, the company’s shareholder.
“We foresee around 10 billion euros in construction activities. And customers must bring investment 4 times higher than this value in terms of chips and technological infrastructure”, in the region of 40 billion euros.
The company plans to begin construction of the second building at the end of this year, after the capacity of the first building has been exhausted. “Customers are already lining up, it’s excellent.”
Asked whether the agreement with Nscale/Nvidia/Microsoft implies exclusivity, the manager responds that the doors are open to the entire sector. “The contracts for the first building are already underway. On the new buildings we are talking to all the global technology companies. We like them as partners and we can continue to work with them, but there is a lot of appetite for the new phases. We are in discussions right now with many of them to see who wants to be in the new building.”
A study carried out by Copenhagen Economics concluded that the data center sector could contribute up to 26 billion euros to the national GDP and support around 50 thousand jobs by 2030.
Of the total value, around 9.2 billion are direct effects and 8.6 billion are indirect, with 8.4 billion being induced through the development of the sector, according to the study carried out for Start Campus and released this year.
In terms of jobs, it could reach 50 thousand new full-time jobs, including direct, indirect and induced jobs.
Regarding the restrictions on purchases of Nvidia chips that the USA wanted to impose, the measure was canceled with no impact on Portugal. “Customers will not suffer restrictions, the chips are arriving”.
In relation to geopolitical tensions, Robert Dunn considers that the company has been ignoring them. “We are not feeling the tensions. The US-Portugal relationship remains strong. When American clients look outside the country, Portugal comes naturally.”
The data center sector “is very strong in Portugal”, he argues. The deal with Nvidia and Microsoft “proves that Portugal is a good home for AI investments in Europe and the EU. When we talk about data sovereignty, Portugal seems like the perfect place to be, not only because of low prices and renewable energy, but also because of its geographic location in the Atlantic with all the submarine cables coming from other continents. It is well located to be a large data center in the EU and Europe.”
With tensions between the West and major powers like China, will the issue of data sovereignty be important? “It already is. It’s been a topic of conversation for the last year, but now we’re seeing real decisions to help companies and governments to help make decisions to protect their sovereignty. Investments are happening. People are waking up to this.”
Is Start Campus involved in the consortium for the AI gigafactory? “We know that Sines is being advanced as a potential location. We hope that the consortium will speak to us at some point, but there is no direct relationship yet.”
In terms of electricity supply, he said he had worked out a deal with the transport network manager, REN, to have access to energy. And it has already signed the first agreements to purchase renewable electricity, which it will continue to do in future buildings, with the possibility of agreements with renewable plants in the area. Regarding a possible agreement with the Fernando Pessoa giga-solar plant in Santiago do Cacém, he said that “potentially” it could become one of the suppliers, but that there are no closed agreements.
Regarding water consumption, used to cool the buildings given the intense heat emanating from the servers, the first building is consuming 40% sea water, which is then thrown back into the sea, but the objective is to reach 100% use of sea water for cooling. “We are preparing to have more seawater in the rest of the campus in the next phase. In the second building and the rest of the campus, all cooling will be done with seawater. We are using the cooling power of the sea to cool the data center.”
“Water recycling makes the data center an example. We have an efficient cooling system, we don’t use water”, as it is recycled, pointing out that the energy use to pump the water is “incredibly low compared to cooling units from air conditioning”. We consider that there is zero effective use of water. Others use cooling towers and have to use industrial water to cool the air, but we don’t use any of that. We try to be an example for other projects.”
There has been recent news of several large companies investing in data centers, such as Blackrock, Microsoft, Nvidia, Macquarie. Could they become Start Campus partners? “We are not looking for direct investment at the moment. There will be a lot of capital requirements in the future expansion of the campus. But we already have some partners that allow us to start with the next building. And the future investment will come later, as soon as we have the customers.”
