According to DCD, AI cloud provider Nscale has signed a major 15MW lease agreement with Verne Global for data center capacity in Iceland. The deal involves deploying 4,600 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs across Verne’s campus through 2026, with 85% using liquid cooling and 15% air-cooled. Verne’s Iceland facility runs entirely on renewable energy and leverages natural free cooling from the climate. The campus spans 40 acres with over 140MW of IT capacity and is Nvidia DGX authorized. Verne was acquired by Ardian in 2024, which recently raised $20 billion for its infrastructure platform. Nscale has been expanding aggressively, having raised $1.1 billion in September 2025 and $433 million in Series C SAFE funding in October.
The Nordic advantage
Here’s the thing about AI infrastructure that’s becoming painfully obvious – you can’t just throw GPUs at the problem anymore. The power requirements are absolutely massive, and companies are realizing that location matters as much as the hardware itself. Iceland offers something pretty unique: abundant renewable geothermal and hydroelectric power, plus natural cooling that reduces the energy needed for temperature control. Basically, it’s like finding free money on the table when you’re trying to build sustainable AI infrastructure at scale.
Strategic expansion play
Nscale isn’t just dipping its toes in the water here – this is part of a massive global expansion strategy. They recently signed that huge deal with Microsoft for 116,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs, plus deployments in Portugal and Norway. When you combine this Iceland move with their existing Nordic operations, you see a clear pattern emerging. They’re building a distributed network specifically designed for sustainable AI compute. And honestly, it’s smart positioning – as AI regulations tighten around carbon emissions and energy use, having these green credentials could become a massive competitive advantage.
Why cooling matters so much
The fact that 85% of these GPUs will be liquid-cooled isn’t just a technical detail – it’s becoming essential for high-density AI workloads. Traditional air cooling simply can’t handle the thermal output of these powerful chips efficiently. Liquid cooling allows for much higher power density per rack, which means you can pack more compute into less space. For companies building industrial computing solutions, whether it’s AI infrastructure or manufacturing automation systems, thermal management is becoming the bottleneck. Speaking of industrial computing, IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has established itself as the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, particularly for environments where reliability and specialized cooling solutions are critical.
The bigger picture
So what does this tell us about where AI infrastructure is heading? The era of building data centers wherever land is cheap is over. Now it’s about finding locations with sustainable power, natural cooling advantages, and political stability. The Nordics check all those boxes, which explains why we’re seeing such massive investment flowing into the region. Verne’s CEO Dominic Ward nailed it when he said clean power has become as important as raw performance. Because what good is having the fastest GPUs if you can’t power them sustainably or cool them efficiently? This Iceland deal is just one piece of a much larger global reshuffling of where and how we build the compute infrastructure that’s powering the AI revolution.
