• Start Campus lists 37.5MW live at SIN01 and plans to bring the 200MW SIN02 building online in the second half of 2027
  • Nscale plans to invest €695 million in shared infrastructure and SIN02 before deploying more than 66,000 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs for Microsoft

The fact

Start Campus currently lists SIN01, the first building at its SINES Data Campus in Portugal, as live with 37.5MW of capacity. It plans to bring the 200MW SIN02 building online in the second half of 2027. The six-building campus is planned to reach 1.2GW.

Nscale said it will invest €230 million in shared infrastructure and €465 million in SIN02 as part of an expanded arrangement with Microsoft and Start Campus. It plans to begin deploying more than 66,000 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs at Sines from late 2027. The agreement builds on the deployment of more than 12,600 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs at SIN01 for Microsoft.  Start Campus says the campus uses renewable electricity and seawater cooling, with design targets of 1.1 PUE and zero water usage effectiveness. These remain company claims. The 1.2GW figure includes buildings that have not yet been delivered.

The assessment

The Nscale agreement ties SIN02’s construction programme to a specific compute deployment. Start Campus must finish and energise enough of the building for Nscale to install, connect, and commission the Rubin systems. Both schedules must be completed before Microsoft can use the capacity.

SIN02 is more than five times the current live capacity listed for SIN01. Public material does not show how the 200MW will be energised in stages, how much capacity Microsoft will take first or whether all 66,000-plus GPUs will arrive in one phase. Start Campus has published design targets for energy and water use, but SIN02 has no operating results because it has not opened. For BTW readers, SIN02 is where Sines begins scaling beyond one operating building. The relevant 2027 result will be the megawatts energised and the GPU clusters available for service. The remaining capacity in the 1.2GW plan will still need to be built.

What to watch

Watch for Start Campus to disclose SIN02’s construction and phased energisation schedule. Nscale’s first Rubin installations and the start of service for Microsoft will show whether the building and hardware programmes remain aligned. Operating data on power use and seawater cooling would show how the larger facility performs against Start Campus’s design targets.