By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish startup evroc, which is backed by EQT Ventures and Norrsken VC, plans to raise and invest 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) over the next couple of years to start operating two “hyperscale” data centres.
Demand for data is growing rapidly across Europe but most cloud services are offered by a handful of American companies known as hyperscalers or operators of large-scale data centres.
Led by serial entrepreneur Mattias Åström, evroc plans to keep the data within Europe. It has raised a seed round, and plans to build eight hyperscale data centres by 2028, three software development hubs and employ over 3,000 people.
“It’s a very ambitious project. We will need to sort of continuously raise funding for the next five years,” Åström told Reuters in an interview.
It will use a technique called “eco load balancer” which will move data processing between evroc’s data centres based on where renewable energy is most readily available and affordable.
“When there is sunshine in Spain, we move data processing to Spain; when there’s wind in the Netherlands, we move data processing there,” Åström said.
Sweden has seen the emergence of several green businesses such as steel venture H2 Green Steel which uses a fossil-free process, to Northvolt, which makes batteries for electric vehicles.
Evroc plans to start a pilot centre in Stockholm next year, and start scouting for a location for one data centre in northern Europe and another one in southern Europe.
($1 = 0.9335 euros)
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
