FORNEBU: Aker ASA has completed its subscription to shares in Nscale Global Holdings Ltd. as part of the company’s Series B financing round, securing a 9.3% stake on a fully diluted basis.
In tandem, Aker and Nscale have closed a 50/50 joint venture to establish Aker Nscale, a new company focused on delivering secure, scalable and energy-efficient infrastructure for sovereign artificial intelligence workloads across Europe.
The venture, headquartered at Fornebu with operations in Narvik, Northern Norway, is backed by a five-year, multi-billion dollar off-take agreement with Microsoft and the Stargate Norway initiative with OpenAI. These partnerships underscore growing demand for sovereign AI compute capacity and reinforce the strategic importance of the Narvik-based infrastructure.
“Aker Nscale gives us a strong position in a fast-moving market,” said Øyvind Eriksen, president and CEO of Aker ASA. “We are realizing Narvik’s potential and placing Norway at the center of a new industrial era.”
Kristian Røkke has been named CEO of Aker Nscale. He praised the support of local partners and municipalities in Northern Norway, calling the venture “a real, operational foundation for sovereign AI infrastructure.”
Aker’s 50% stake in Aker Nscale is convertible into additional Nscale shares at a future IPO, positioning the company for long-term value creation and public market upside.