Microsoft invests ten billion dollars in Sines. Portugal could “lead the next wave” of AI

Microsoft plans to invest “more than ten billion dollars from the beginning of 2026″ to bring 12,600 ‘’next generation” NVidia Blackwell Ultra GB30 graphics cards to Sines, which will be installed in the Start Campus data centre. The US technology company says this is “one of the largest investments in AI [artificial intelligence] computing capacity in Europe”, positioning Portugal “as a leader in the development of scalable, secure and sustainable AI”, describing it as “historic”.

“The infrastructure will support advanced AI workloads across multiple industries and is in line with Microsoft’s Digital Commitment to Europe, which plans to double the capacity of data centres in 16 European countries by 2027”, Microsoft confirmed in a statement released on Tuesday, after the information was reported early in the morning by Jornal de Negócios.

Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, who is in Lisbon to attend the Web Summit, says that the partnership with Nscale, the company with which it will install the processors in the SIN01 building, reflects Microsoft’s confidence “in the potential” of the country “to lead the next wave of innovation in AI”. “By strengthening the national AI infrastructure through collaboration with Nscale, Nvidia and Start Campus, we are helping to position Portugal as a benchmark for responsible and scalable AI development in Europe”, adds the manager, quoted in the same note.

“There is a way of thinking about what we are doing in Portugal. Countries are competing in Europe for public funding from the European Union to build a gigafactory, and there is intense competition. Portugal has already won the bid with Microsoft because we decided that we are going to build this AI factory in Sines”, the manager explained in the interview with the newspaper, emphasising that the investment also reflects “the energy policy followed in Portugal, where energy is cheaper and there is a good climate”.

In October, ECO reported that Nvidia will install 12,600 graphics cards in Start Campus’s mega data centre in Sines, in what is the first and largest ever installation of the US technology company’s new graphics processors in Europe. As Start Campus announced on 18 October, the order for thousands of Blackwell Ultra GB300 GPUs – Nvidia’s latest model, unveiled in March – will arrive during the first quarter of 2026 and will be used to support Microsoft.