AIBRIEF
Power purchase agreement with Fortum secures up to half the Loviisa plant's output for new data centers in Kajaani, Muhos, Vaala, and an expanded Hamina site.
Google has signed a 22-year corporate power-purchase agreement with Finnish utility Fortum to take up to half the output of the Loviisa nuclear plant, anchoring a €13bn (£11bn; about $15bn) package Google calls its largest single investment in Europe. Three new data centers will go up in Kajaani, Muhos, and Vaala between 2027 and 2028, alongside an expansion of the existing Hamina site, a paper-mill conversion Google has run since 2009.
The deal's structure is the news. Google is not buying the Loviisa plant; Fortum keeps ownership and operations, and Google locks in long-dated low-carbon megawatts to run Gemini, Search, Maps, and YouTube. Google says the build will support more than 37,000 construction jobs and add about €3.6bn a year (roughly $3.8bn) to Finland's GDP, figures the company itself supplied, not independent estimates.
The same week, TikTok announced a separate $1bn data-centre investment in Kouvola, citing Finland's clean mix and grid headroom. Two hyperscaler commitments in one country in one week point to a template: AI infrastructure is now a power-locking story, and the number worth tracking on the next deal is the contract length, not the capex.
Open questions remain: whether the Loviisa slice displaces other clean offtakers or unlocks net new build, and what the PPA's price terms look like. Neither has been reported beyond Google's announcement.