Cerebras Systems and Compute Nordic Finland have started construction on the first 50 MW phase of a new AI data center in Mikkeli, Finland, under a phased project that is designed to reach 165 MW of contracted IT capacity.
Cerebras announced the project on September 1, saying its agreement with Compute Nordic is structured through a series of service orders carrying seven-year contract terms. The initial 50 MW is already under construction, with the campus planned to expand first to 80 MW and ultimately to 165 MW as additional capacity is delivered.
The project gives Cerebras a substantial new block of purpose-built European infrastructure for its wafer-scale AI systems. It also turns the company’s previously announced Nordic expansion into a specific construction project with contracted capacity rather than an undeveloped pipeline.
Capacity Will Scale From 50 MW to 165 MW
Compute Nordic Finland is developing and operating the Mikkeli site, while Cerebras will use the infrastructure to support its AI compute platform. Neither company disclosed a completion date for the full 165 MW campus in the September 1 announcement, so the later phases should be treated as contracted development capacity rather than operating capacity today.
The companies said the facility is being designed with closed-loop cooling, which recirculates water instead of relying on continuous withdrawals from the municipal supply. The campus is also designed to support waste-heat recovery, creating the option to reuse thermal output from the computing infrastructure elsewhere in the local energy system.
Those design choices are relevant at the proposed scale. High-density AI deployments increasingly make power delivery, heat removal and access to suitable sites as important to expansion plans as the compute systems themselves. In Mikkeli, the disclosed 165 MW figure refers specifically to contracted IT capacity, giving the project a clearer measure of planned compute load than a broader campus or utility-capacity figure would.
Investment Figures Are Estimates, Not Announced Cerebras Capex
Cerebras cited a Finnish data-center market and impact assessment by Ramboll that estimates the fully developed 165 MW project could represent approximately €1.0 billion to €1.7 billion of regional investment. The same analysis estimated 80 to 250 direct permanent jobs and annual property-tax revenue of roughly €0.8 million to €2.5 million.
Mikkeli Adds a Concrete Site to Cerebras’ European Expansion
The Finland project follows a broader European capacity plan Cerebras disclosed in July. At that time, the company said it intended to bring its first European data-center capacity online by the end of 2026 and scale its European footprint to 200 MW by the end of 2027, including deployments in Finland and Norway.
Cerebras subsequently reported in August that its global data-center capacity, including infrastructure already live and capacity under contract for delivery by the end of 2027, had risen above 600 MW. The 165 MW Mikkeli agreement therefore represents a significant individual component of a substantially larger contracted infrastructure build-out.
The immediate milestone is the 50 MW first phase now under construction. The next points to watch are when that capacity becomes operational, when the expansion to 80 MW begins, and whether Cerebras and Compute Nordic provide a delivery schedule for the full 165 MW. Until those milestones are disclosed, 165 MW describes the contracted end-state of the Mikkeli project, not capacity currently available for AI workloads.
