Microsoft and Google Raise Efforts for AI Infrastructure in Portugal and Germany

Two U.S. tech companies, Microsoft and Google, have announced large new investments in European data centers to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence work.

Microsoft said it will begin a $10 billion project early next year to build a major AI data center near Sines, Portugal. The work is in partnership with British firm Nscale and Start Campus, which is already building the site. Microsoft plans to install 12,600 of Nvidia’s newest chips at the facility. The company called the plan “one of the largest investments in AI computing capacity in Europe.”

Portugal’s Sines location offers renewable power and a connection point for key submarine cables that link the Americas and Europe, a factor Microsoft highlighted as important for the project.

Nscale’s product director, Daniel Bathurst, told AFP that “demand in the AI field, particularly over the last five months, has become quite crazy,” and added that for a firm like Microsoft, “it’s a race against time.”

On the same day, Google revealed its largest investment in Germany to date. The company said it will spend 5.5 billion euros by 2029 on a new data center, expansions in Hesse, office growth in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, and other projects. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the news and said, “We are driving growth in Germany.”

Google also said it will back efforts to cut emissions. Plans include buying wind and solar power and a “heat recovery project” to reuse excess heat from a data center for local homes. The company expects the work to support about 9,000 jobs per year in Germany.

Both announcements show how major cloud and software providers are moving quickly to build the computing power that AI systems need, while highlighting ties to local energy sources, jobs and infrastructure.