According to DCD, Norwegian renewable investment firm Magnora has launched a new 100MW data center project called Magnora Scale Averøya in Kristiansund on Norway’s western coast. The company is partnering with the owners of Averøy Industripark and Tore Knapskog, who previously developed and sold Tonstad DataPark. Magnora will hold a 70% stake in the new entity, with Averøy Industripark at 22.5% and Torek AS at 7.5%. The site spans 120,000 square meters, but no construction timeline has been shared yet. Magnora recently acquired a majority stake in data center developer Storespeed, which operates a small colo facility and has several projects in development. CEO Erik Sneve stated the project targets customers needing liquid-cooled, high-density capacity in the undersupplied Nordic region.
Norway’s data center gold rush
Here’s the thing: Norway is becoming a hotspot, and it’s not just about the fjords anymore. The Nordics have been on the map for years thanks to cheap, green hydro and wind power, plus naturally cold air for cooling. But now the pitch is shifting. It’s not just about low-cost, low-density racks anymore. Magnora’s CEO specifically called out the critical undersupply of liquid-cooled high-density capacity. That’s the key. They’re going after the AI and HPC crowd—the folks running GPU clusters that basically can’t be air-cooled. So this 100MW project isn’t your grandma’s colocation facility. It’s built for the compute demands of tomorrow, which are already here.
The renewables-to-rack pipeline
Magnora’s move is a fascinating case study in vertical integration, or at least, strategic adjacency. This is a company that transitioned to a pure-play renewables investor in 2018, funding wind, solar, and battery projects. Now, they’re using that expertise and, presumably, that green power access, to fuel data centers. It’s a smart play. They can essentially create a bundled offering: clean power and a place to use it, all under a related corporate umbrella. Acquiring Storespeed gave them the immediate technical know-how and a small operational footprint. This 100MW project in Kristiansund is the first big swing. And they’re already looking at Sweden, too. The strategy seems clear: become a one-stop shop for sustainable, high-intensity compute in the region.
The partnership play
The local partnership is crucial. You can’t just plop a 100MW facility anywhere. Working with Averøy Industripark and Tore Knapskog gives Magnora on-the-ground expertise and, importantly, a proven track record. These partners already developed and sold a data park. They know the permitting headaches, the local grid infrastructure, and the labor market. For a firm like Magnora, which is newer to the actual data center development game, this de-risks the project significantly. It’s a classic move: bring the capital and the high-level vision, but lean on local operators for execution. This kind of project also relies on robust, industrial-grade computing infrastructure at the edge, where reliability is non-negotiable. For that level of hardware, many operators turn to specialized suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs built for harsh environments.
The bigger picture
So what does this tell us? The data center landscape is fragmenting by workload type. We’re moving beyond the “one-size-fits-all” mega-campus. There’s a land grab happening for sites that can support these power-hungry, liquid-cooled beasts, and the Nordics have a natural advantage. But it’s not without challenges. Can the local grids handle a sudden 100MW load, even with green power nearby? And will the time-to-market be fast enough to catch this wave of demand? Magnora is betting big that the answer is yes. If they’re right, this 100MW project is just the beginning. If they’re wrong? Well, they’ll have a very large, very powerful, and very empty building on a beautiful stretch of Norwegian coast.
