Google to invest €13bn in Finland over two years, betting on nuclear power for AI growth
The tech giant’s spending plan for 2027 and 2028 will expand data centre capacity across four Finnish municipalities and is tied to a 22-year nuclear power agreement, as the company frames the deal as a model for how AI infrastructure can be built responsibly.
Text by Martti Asikainen, 16.9.2026 | Photo by JHVEPHOTO
Google will invest at least €13 billion in digital infrastructure, clean energy projects and community programmes in Finland over the next two years. The company announced the plan on 9 September. It is Google’s largest single investment anywhere in Europe.
The spending will fund data centres and supporting infrastructure across four locations: Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala. Bikash Koley, vice president of Google Global Infrastructure, confirmed the details in a statement on the company’s corporate blog. Construction is expected to run through 2027 and 2028.
Google estimates the build phase will support more than 37,000 jobs nationwide, roughly 16,000 of them in construction. The company projects the project will contribute €3.6 billion annually to Finland’s gross domestic product during that period. Once the sites are operational, Google expects them to sustain around 7,000 permanent jobs, at wages it says average 24% above Finland’s median.
Four sites, one expansion
The investment extends Google’s existing data centre in Hamina, a coastal city. Google converted a disused paper mill there into its first Finnish facility in 2009.
The new money also confirms infrastructure in Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala, on land the company had already acquired. Those three projects had faced uncertainty over the past two years before Wednesday’s announcement.
Google will also invest €31 million in local communities across the four municipalities over four years. The company says this will fund AI training for more than 4,400 workers and create data-centre career pathways for 100 Finnish students.
Nuclear, wind and batteries
The plan is built around new energy agreements. Google signed a 22-year power purchase agreement with Finnish energy company Fortum. It covers up to half the output of the Loviisa nuclear plant. Fortum said the deal would support the plant’s continued operation through 2050. Shares in Fortum rose 11% following the announcement.
“We call this BYOP, bring your own power,” said Ruth Porat, Google’s president and chief investment officer, speaking to reporters in Helsinki. She described the arrangement as the company’s first nuclear energy deal outside the United States.
Google also signed new onshore wind agreements with two Finnish suppliers, Valorem and Suomen Hyötytuuli. Together, these bring the company’s total contracted wind capacity in the country to 629 megawatts. Separately, Google is contracting for a 94-megawatt battery storage system near Kajaani, expected online in late 2027. The battery system is intended to help stabilise prices during cold, low-wind periods.
Political stakes are high
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo welcomed the announcement. He said it reflected “a clear testament to our strengths” and that the value of the data economy “extends far beyond direct investment into spurring innovation, research and development.”
Orpo also pushed back on scepticism about the sector’s employment impact. “In public debate in Finland, the impact of data centres on employment is often underestimated,” he said, describing the expansion as bringing “jobs, many jobs for Finns all over Finland.”
The investment lands at a difficult moment for his government. Finland is facing record unemployment and weak economic growth, and elections are scheduled for April 2027. Large-scale, job-creating investment is therefore politically valuable as well as economically welcome.
Scepticism over the jobs figures
The headline jobs numbers have drawn scrutiny of their own. The widely reported figure of 7,000 permanent jobs is not a count of direct Google employees. It spans engineers, technicians, security and catering staff, equipment suppliers, and businesses serving those workers, according to reporting that examined the underlying figures.
Orpo’s own defence of the numbers, noted above, suggests the scale of the employment impact is contested in Finnish public debate rather than universally accepted.
Some independent analysis has tried to stress-test the figures by expressing them per job. Measured against the projected 7,000 permanent positions, the €13 billion investment works out to roughly €1.9 million in capital for every ongoing job. Measured against the 37,000 construction-phase jobs, it comes to around €350,000 per job.
This framing makes the headline totals look considerably smaller once divided by the sums actually being spent. The calculation could not be independently verified against a well-established news source and should be treated as illustrative rather than confirmed.
Separately, Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service has reportedly raised concerns that foreign-owned data centres could pose broader security risks. This is a different line of criticism from the jobs debate, but it complicates a straightforwardly positive economic narrative.
What Google hasn't disclosed
Data centres have drawn criticism in Finland more broadly. Critics point to their potential strain on local resources, and to concerns that rapid expansion of computing infrastructure worsens the sector’s overall climate impact — even where individual facilities run on low-carbon power.
One gap stands out. Google’s own published materials do not specify how much total electricity the new Finnish sites will require. Without that figure, it is difficult to assess whether the contracted nuclear, wind and battery capacity is proportionate to actual demand.
