Start Campus “welcomes” the grid bottleneck as it begins scaling-up its data centre facility SIN02, located at its 1.3 GW campus in the Setúbal District of Portugal’s Alentejo region, said COO Luis Rodrigues.

Although the grid bottleneck continues to create delays for developers in Portugal, inevitably impacting Start Campus’ progress, Rodrigues welcomes this as a sign of healthy competition.

“The fact that multiple global players are looking to invest in Portugal confirms what we’ve believed from the start: the country has the fundamentals to become one of Europe’s most important digital and AI hubs,” he said.

Rodrigues cited Portugal’s strong renewable resources, its availability of power, favourable and geo-strategic location, and its large talent pool as specific reasons for its rising activity.

Start Campus is not alone in its thinking. An entire fleet of data centres is springing up across Portugal, particularly around the Lisbon cluster, with AtlasEdge launching its first facility in October, Equinix in the midst of expanding a second site, and Digital Realty launching a data centre campus.

The coastal city of Sines is particularly attractive to Start Campus due to its location, at the intersection of strong renewable-energy options, industrial infrastructure and subsea connectivity, the COO explained.

SINES Data Campus development plans

With the ambitious IT capacity goals, an over USD 10bn Microsoft investment, and a partnership with Nscale to deploy NVIDIA GPUs, the developer continues to push ahead with its expansion plans.

Rodrigues confirmed that optimism was in the air at the SINES Data Campus.

The first building (SIN01) has been live since Q4 2024 and currently delivers a capacity of 31 MW, while the second building, SIN02, has been “fully de-risked and is ready for construction”.

These two facilities are just the first phase of a much bigger project, comprising six data centre buildings, which will eventually deliver up to 1.2 GW.

The COO said that the infrastructure can be built in a staggered period of 9-12 months and will become one of Europe’s largest data and AI infrastructure hubs.

Equally, while SIN01 remains at full tenant capacity, the developer is now advancing commercialisation for SIN02, which will deliver 180-200 MW of next-generation AI and cloud capacity.

Rodrigues said that engagement with major international cloud and AI players “has been very strong and is progressing well”, with expectations of a looming announcement due soon.

SINES’ campus represents a projected total investment of approximately EUR 8.5bn, which would make it the largest single foreign direct investment ever made in Portugal.

Capex for the site is being “deployed progressively rather than in a single tranche”, the COO said, noting that the EUR 8.5bn relates exclusively to the data centre build.

Start Campus is participating in ongoing discussions with financing partners to support both the current buildout and future phases of the campus, refusing to disclose specifics on a fundraising target.

On supply chain issues, Rodrigues said Start Campus continues to grapple with long lead times, evolving technology roadmaps, and timeline issues “just like everyone else”.

Overall, the company remained firmly tight-lipped regarding numbers on the build, but emphasised that “more investment means more connectivity, more renewable generation, more talent, and more global visibility for Portugal”.