Dutch AI data center company Volt has announced the development of an “AI Gigafactory” in Rotterdam.
Details of the project are sparse, but the company said it will offer “compute at industrial scale and strengthen Europe’s position in the global AI economy.”
Volt launched last year and is leading the Dutch bid to host one of the European Union’s 300MW AI gigafactories, five supercomputing clusters that will be built across the continent to boost European compute power. It is unclear if the Rotterdam facility is intended to fall under this program, which would see it receive support from European Union organizations such as the European Investment Bank.
“AI is no longer just a technology trend, it is becoming a foundational layer of our economy,” said Han de Groot, CEO of Volt. “And like any industrial revolution, it depends on infrastructure. In the case of AI, that infrastructure is compute.”
According to Volt, the AI Gigafactory will run on “North Sea wind energy,” though it does not elaborate on where this will come from. The firm’s website says it has a partnership with energy company Eneco, which operates wind and solar farms, as well as supplying natural gas power.
Details on construction timelines and the projected capacity of the data center have not been disclosed. DCD has contacted the company for more information.
“Today, most of Europe’s AI runs on infrastructure built and operated outside of Europe,” added de Groot. “That is not just a technology gap, it is a strategic vulnerability. With the Rotterdam AI Gigafactory, we are building the foundation for Europe to become an AI maker, not just an AI taker.”
Volt launched with an initial 14MW of capacity to its customers from Switch Datacenters’ AMS4 facility in Amsterdam, and has identified five other projects it hopes to pursue, including the Rotterdam site.
It plans to take 42MW space in a new Switch data center, likely the company’s AMS5 facility that is currently under construction at a site four miles outside Amsterdam.
Meanwhile, Volt is embarking on a joint venture with Switch in Poland, to take between 30-100MW of space at a data center Switch is planning near Warsaw. This was announced in 2025, with a targeted capacity of 90MW, and building work is due to commence this year.
Further afield, it said it plans to take 400MW of space at a data center currently under development in Dallas, Texas, but did not name the site in question. It said it is also in discussions about a 129MW project in the UAE, but again did not go into specifics.
De Groot was a co-founder of Switch, and is head of the De Groot Family Office wealth management firm.
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