Start Campus seeks land for data centres after success at Sines

Start Campus has announced “the biggest data centres deal in Portugal” after it successfully completed negotiations with British company Nscale, a cloud platform with high-performance computing infrastructure specifically for AI and large-scale workloads.

The CEO of Start Campus Sines DC, Robert Dunn, who has been in the position since July 2024, said that given the success of Sines DC “it is only natural that we would want to replicate the success” of Start Campus.

This is despite Start Campus being at the centre of the last political crisis to affect Portugal resulting in the collapse of the then Socialist Party (PS) government led by António Costa in November 2023.

The government fell due to a corruption investigation, still ongoing, involving members of his government and leading to a snap general election in March, 2024.

In October, Start Campus and Nscale jointly announced that it would support Microsoft AI infrastructure for a project of Potential National Interest (PIN).

That project foresees the installation of 12,600 latest generation Nvidia processors. According to Portugal’s overseas investment and trade bureau AICEP “this project strengthens Portugal’s role as a European digital hub, integrating the country in the vanguard of technology infrastructures that support AI development, contributing to high value added foreign direct investment in line with Portugal’s digital transition strategy.”

A study by Copenhagen Economics has revealed that the data center sector could contribute up to €26 billion to Portugal’s GDP by 2030, while supporting in the creation of up to 50,000 full-time jobs, driven by the artificial intelligence, big data and digital transformation project.

In March it was announced that Start Campus would start construction on its second data centre building in Sines by the end of July in a project worth €8Bn.