Inside the AI Boom's Arctic Outpost

Standing atop a skeleton of reinforced steel, Torkjell Lund surveys his domain.

To the east and west, snow-covered peaks loom over this vast Norwegian valley. To the south, a fjord deposits icy water into the Atlantic Ocean. Above, the northern lights have been known to grace the Arctic sky. But Lund is pointing to the scene below: a sprawling building site of blasted black rock and half-built metal structures.

This gigantic data-center complex is being built by the British startup Nscale for use by Microsoft and its customer, OpenAI. Data centers are the engines of the AI revolution: cavernous, power-hungry buildings, filled with thousands of high-octane computer chips. The race for AI dominance has led to a stampede of data-center construction across the planet, from the plains of Texas to the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. More than 800 data centers are currently under construction worldwide, on every continent except Antarctica. Together, they will annually consume roughly the same amount of electricity as the nation of Malaysia. The world’s biggest tech companies are set to spend some $7 trillion on data centers by 2030, according to the consulting group McKinsey. It is one of the largest infrastructure build-outs in history.

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