Google has broken ground on a data center in Horndal, Sweden.

Located in the Avesta Municipality in Dalarna County, the Horndal data center will be Google’s first self-developed, owned, and operated facility in the country.

Details about the data center are sparse, but Google has said that it has been designed with “sustainability in mind,” and will be air-cooled so as to limit water use, and will be ready for off-site heat recovery to provide waste heat to local homes and businesses.

In addition, Google says it has helped bring 700MW of renewable energy to the Swedish grid since 2013 through PPAs.

An estimated 100 full-time jobs will be generated by the data center once completed, and thousands during the construction process.

Blerta Krenzi, chair of the Municipal Board of Avesta, said: “This historic groundbreaking marks the beginning of a new chapter that will strengthen Avesta. Welcoming the digital core industry of the future demonstrates the strength and expertise present in our region. Avesta Municipality looks forward to building a strong partnership with Google to drive growth and create new opportunities for all our residents.”

Anna Wikland, managing director of Google Nordics, added: “I’m excited about today’s news and what it means for Sweden. This will give businesses, public institutions, and people even better and faster access to our technology, thus supporting the digital transformation of Sweden. It also underscores our long-term vision for Sweden and Europe, demonstrating a deep commitment to accelerating regional innovation through strategic investment.”

Google originally purchased 109 hectares of land for the data center in Horndal back in 2017, though at the time noted it wasn’t immediately looking to develop the site, saying that the firm wanted to “ensure that we have options to expand our data center presence in Europe if our business demands it.”

The company was granted permission by Sweden’s Land and Environment Court at Nacka District Court for the data center in Dalarna’s Avesta municipality in 2021.

The company launched a cloud region in March 2025, likely housed in leased data center space, given that the Horndal data center is described as its first.

A metal band from and named after the region, Horndal, released an album about the Google data center project in 2021 called “Lake Drinker,” with the band saying in an interview the same year with BandCamp that the Google facility “wanted to use our lake, Rossen, to cool the servers with. That’s why [the new album is] called Lake Drinker — it’s a new devil in town, you know?”

The lyrics to the song, Rossen, read: “The digital devil shivers of thirst / We bow our heads / You want, we’ll make / First you took our trees / Now you drink our lake / Hail to the Lake Drinker.”