Cloud startup Volta claims $10B AI lab deal for Norway bit barn
Norwegian AI infrastructure startup Volta has emerged from stealth with plans to build "AI factories" in Norway and elsewhere, targeting multiple gigawatts of capacity by 2030. The company, backed by Nvidia and Michael Dell's family office, positions itself as a "vertically integrated" rent-a-GPU operator similar to rivals such as Nscale and CoreWeave, and says it has secured a $10 billion strategic partnership with an unnamed "AI lab" widely reported to be Anthropic, which is said to want access to Volta's compute over six years.
Volta has raised around $300 million across seed and Series A funding, valuing it at $2.4 billion, with the latest round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia. Its first project is a 133 MW facility in Norway, developed with crypto miner and GPU cloud firm Bitdeer using Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems and DSX reference architecture, forming part of a wider pipeline exceeding 1 GW across North America and Europe. Neither Volta nor Anthropic, which declined to comment, has confirmed further details of the partnership to The Register.
- Volta emerges from stealth with Nvidia and Michael Dell backing
- Claims $10bn deal with AI lab reported to be Anthropic
- First project: 133MW Norway facility built with Bitdeer
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Volta is a Norwegian startup that has just gone public with plans to build and rent out large data centres packed with Nvidia chips for training and running AI systems, sometimes described as "AI factories." It joins a growing group of companies, including Nscale and CoreWeave, that build and operate this specialist computing infrastructure and then sell access to it, typically to AI developers who need vast amounts of processing power.
The company is backed by Nvidia itself and by Michael Dell's family investment office, and has raised roughly $300 million so far. Its first facility, being built in Norway with partner Bitdeer, is part of a wider plan to expand across North America and Europe as demand for AI computing capacity continues to grow.
This matters because building AI systems requires enormous amounts of specialised computing power, and firms that can supply it at scale are becoming key players in the AI industry, attracting billions of dollars in investment and striking major supply deals with AI developers.
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