Microsoft plans to rent computing power from Nscale at its Start Campus data center in Sines, Portugal. The new facility will be part of a strategy to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and will be operational in early 2026.
The project will use the latest Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GB300 GPU. It is expected to install 12.6 thousand such chips in the center. According to Start Campus and Nscale, these systems will provide high performance for machine learning and general AI tasks.
The new project will be part of a larger campus in Sines, where six buildings are planned to house data centers. Total investment capital is estimated at 8.5 billion euros.
The complex will operate mainly on renewable energy sources. Seawater is used to cool the servers, reducing strain on local freshwater supplies. Backup generators operate on biofuel produced from vegetable oils.
