TikTok has confirmed a €1 billion ($1.14 billion) investment to build its first data centre in Finland, aiming to localize data storage for European users and strengthen compliance with regional privacy regulations.
The spokesman declined to give further details as he confirmed the plan revealed to Reuters by two sources familiar with the matter.
Finland’s Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
TikTok, owned by China-headquartered Bytedance, has been trying to address concerns over whether the Chinese government could access the data of European citizens who use TikTok.
In 2023, it launched a new data security regime, nicknamed “Project Clover,” with plans to invest 12 billion euros over 10 years amid growing pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.
TikTok challenges Trump’s divestiture order
Several countries, the European Parliament, European Commission and others have banned TikTok from staff phones due to privacy concerns, while the U.S. government has threatened to ban the app in the U.S. on national security grounds unless the company’s U.S. assets are divested.
TikTok has called the bans misguided, based on fundamental misconceptions. On its website TikTok says European user data is stored in a dedicated European data enclave, hosted across data centres in Norway, Ireland, and the U.S.
Under Project Clover, TikTok’s first data centre in Norway went fully online this month after work started in 2023.
TikTok, which has over 175 million users in Europe, plans to announce more data centres in the coming years, sources said.
EU Cracks Down on Apple and Meta with Fines Under Digital Markets Act
Nordic countries have become attractive destinations for data centres for technology companies ranging from Microsoft to Meta as the colder temperatures reduce energy costs, alongside availability of cheap, emission-free electricity.
“Finland is definitely one of the places where we’re continuing to build out our infrastructure,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in Brussels.
“First we have a lot of access to carbon free energy, and second, it’s got good connectivity, so we are able to serve much of Europe from Finland,” he said.
More than 20 new data centres are being planned in Finland, amounting to some 13 billion euros in value and 1.3 gigawatts in capacity, Veijo Terho, chairman of the Finnish Data Centre Association said.
