There are developments in Norway’s AI infrastructure plans. The data center project in Norway’s Narvik that OpenAI was initially pursuing is reportedly being handed over to Microsoft.

According to an announcement from cloud infrastructure provider Nscale, Microsoft plans to lease 30,000 NVIDIA Vera Rubin chips from its campus located in Norway’s Arctic region. This is positioned as a further expansion after Microsoft pledged to invest $6.2 billion in the area.

However, the background leading up to this is a bit complex. Apparently, OpenAI originally planned to use the capacity of this Norway campus to run AI workloads. As part of the so-called “Start Gate” plan. But negotiations with Nscale apparently didn’t pan out.

A similar situation has also occurred in the UK, where OpenAI announced last week that it would temporarily pause the project it had planned in the UK. The reason given was that energy and regulatory costs were too high. This project was also being developed by Nscale.

So, as OpenAI moves forward with large-scale infrastructure plans, coordination has likely become necessary across multiple regions. OpenAI says there is still potential for capacity agreements in Norway, and that it is also moving forward with infrastructure buildouts with multiple partners. Microsoft’s move can also be seen as one option among those. Securing data centers in geographically advantageous locations like Norway is likely becoming increasingly important in the competition for AI infrastructure.