Published 2026-09-12 · Event 2025-07-31

Nscale, Aker and OpenAI announce Stargate Norway; 230 MW is planned capacity, not a live hall

On 31 July 2025 Aker and Nscale said they would launch Stargate Norway at Kvandal, outside Narvik, with OpenAI as an intended initial offtaker. The facility is planned to deliver 230 MW, with an ambition to expand by a further 290 MW, and to target 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026. Planned and target are not energised megawatts, and Kvandal is not a Swedish campus.

Aker’s 31 July 2025 stock-exchange notice, paired with Nscale’s same-day release, is the dated primary source used here. It announces Stargate Norway in Narvik, Northern Norway, led by Nscale in partnership with Aker and OpenAI. The facility will be located in Kvandal, just outside Narvik. The site is to be designed and built by Nscale and owned by a 50/50 joint venture between Nscale and Aker, to be formed through wholly owned subsidiaries. Completion of the joint venture is subject to agreed closing conditions. A planned JV is not a commissioned hall.

Capacity wording is layered and must not be added. The facility is planned to deliver 230 MW of capacity, with ambitions to expand by an additional 290 MW. It will target 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs by the end of 2026. Both parties have committed approximately USD 1 billion to the initial 20 MW phase, including upwards of USD 250 million in equity on a 100 percent basis. The Kvandal site is described as having the potential to scale tenfold in future phases as customer contracts are secured. 20, 230, 290 and 100,000 are different objects. Summing them invents a campus the notices do not calculate.

OpenAI’s role is offtake, not ownership, in the cited papers. OpenAI welcomes the opportunity to be an initial offtaker with the option to scale over time under its OpenAI for Countries programme. Surplus capacity is expected to be made available to public and private users across the UK, Nordics and Northern Europe. Those are commercial-intention sentences. They are not a Norwegian grid reservation and not a Swedish colocation contract.

Power and heat stay in the design band. The facility will run entirely on renewable power and is expected to incorporate closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Excess heat from the GPU systems will be made available to support low-carbon enterprises in the region. Made available is not a named municipal offtaker. The same notices also describe the region as having abundant hydropower, low local electricity demand and limited transmission capacity. Limited transmission is the issuers’ own clause. It is not rewritten here as a Statnett reservation, and it is not the April 2026 Svartisen hold stored on a later row.

DataCenterSweden records 31 July 2025 as a Norwegian AI-campus announcement. No Swedish project identifier is attached. The 230 MW planned-capacity sentence is not written into any Swedish cell. The next update would need a later primary source that names a closed JV, a construction start, a connection paper or an energization — not another GPU headline.

Why it matters

A 100,000-GPU Nordic headline is easy to relocate onto a Swedish map. The July notices are usable only if 20, 230 and 290 MW stay unadded, OpenAI stays an offtaker, and Kvandal stays Norwegian.

What remains unknown

The notices do not publish a closed joint-venture filing, a Norwegian connection agreement, an energization date or a named heat offtaker.

Sources