Start Campus plans €10B data center build at Sines in Portugal

In short: Start Campus says it will invest €10 billion to build a major data center campus in Sines, Portugal, with a goal of finishing the full site by 2030.

What happened

Start Campus, a European data center startup, is building a large data center campus in Sines, Portugal. A data center is like a giant warehouse for computers that store data and run online services.

The company says it will spend about €10 billion on the physical site, which used to be a coal power plant. The full project is expected to be much larger when customers add their own computer equipment, which Start Campus estimates could total about €40 billion.

The site is planned to reach 1.2 gigawatts of capacity when complete. That number is a way to describe how much electricity the campus can use, similar to how you might compare the power needs of a small town versus a single building. Start Campus says the first building is already operating at 29 megawatts, and it plans five buildings in total, with each new build starting about 6 to 9 months after the last.

Start Campus also has a partnership with Portugal’s energy company EDP focused on using renewable energy for data centers. The companies say the agreement could support more work in Sines and in other markets.

Why it matters

More data centers are being built because many services people use every day, like streaming, online shopping, and AI tools, need a lot of computing power. Projects like this can bring construction work and long term technical jobs, but they also raise local questions about electricity use and where the power will come from.

Source: Financial Times