Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) shares climbed 3.5% on Tuesday after the company revealed plans for a 310 MW AI factory to be built on a 100-acre industrial site in Lappeenranta, Finland. The firm expects the first tranche of capacity from the site to be available to customers in 2027.
The Lappeenranta project, when fully deployed, will rank among Europe’s largest dedicated AI factories and will contribute to Nebius’s stated goal of securing more than 3 GW of contracted power by the end of 2026. The announcement follows the company’s earlier expansion of its initial Finnish data center in Mäntsälä to 75 MW, completed earlier this year.
Nebius says it has already secured in excess of 750 MW of contracted power across its owned facilities and colocations in the EMEA region. The company is simultaneously developing additional AI factories in other locations, including a 240 MW site near Lille, France, and it has obtained approval for a gigawatt-scale AI factory in Independence, Missouri.
The planned AI factories will be equipped to serve AI builders using recent generations of NVIDIA accelerated compute, specifically the Blackwell and Rubin lines. Nebius notes that its Mäntsälä facility currently hosts Europe’s first operational deployment of the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 platform, and the company intends to offer the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 platform beginning later this year.
On technical design, the Lappeenranta facility will employ a closed-loop liquid cooling system. That cooling approach eliminates the need to draw water from local supplies. It is being designed to integrate a heat recovery system so that excess server heat could potentially be redirected to the local district heating network.
The company projects the Lappeenranta build will generate up to 700 skilled construction jobs during the construction phase, with most hires expected to come from the Lappeenranta area. Once the facility reaches operational status, Nebius anticipates the site will support around 100 permanent positions.
For investors and regional stakeholders, the announcement ties together multiple operational pillars Nebius has emphasized: accelerated capacity additions, targeted contractual power commitments, deployment of NVIDIA’s latest accelerated compute platforms, and cooling and heat recovery approaches designed to limit local water use and capture waste heat for community heating systems.
Sector impacts
- Data center and cloud infrastructure demand for advanced accelerated compute platforms.
- Power and energy markets as Nebius scales contracted capacity toward multi-gigawatt targets.
- Regional construction and labor markets in Lappeenranta during the build phase.