UPDATED An AI cloud startup with backing from Nvidia and Michael Dell plans to open AI factories in Norway and elsewhere, targeting multiple gigawatts of capacity by 2030.

Volta describes itself as a vertically integrated AI infrastructure business set up to finance, build, and operate AI factories.

In other words, it is another rent-a-GPU "neocloud" operation like Nscale and CoreWeave, but one with some notable backers.

Emerging from stealth mode, Volta said it had raised about $300 million across its seed and Series A rounds, reaching a valuation of $2.4 billion. Andreessen Horowitz and Nvidia led the latest round, with other investors including Michael Dell's family office.

It also claims to have a $10 billion strategic partnership with an "AI lab" to build its AI factory located in Norway. This has been identified elsewhere as model developer giant Anthropic, which is said to be seeking access to Volta's compute resources over a six-year period.

The Register asked for confirmation of this, and what that partnership comprises.

Volta plans to develop the 133 MW facility with cryptocurrency miner and GPU cloud operator Bitdeer. The site is expected to use Nvidia Vera Rubin systems, presumably meaning the rack-scale infrastructure shown off by the GPU giant at the CES show earlier this year.

"AI factory" is the industry's preferred term for a datacenter dedicated to training and running AI models.

The Norway GPU barn is the first project within Volta's broader development pipeline, which it says exceeds 1 GW of capacity across North America and Europe.

Volta says it intends to construct the sites using Nvidia's DSX reference architecture and software tooling, which cover the design, simulation, construction, and operation of AI factories. The technology includes digital twins that can model a facility before it is built.

Perhaps in an effort to distinguish itself from the rest of the rent-a-GPU crowd, Volta claims rather grandiosely that it has created "the world's first fully vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform, extending beyond technology into capital formation."

By this, Volta means combining infrastructure finance, datacenters, compute, software, and operations under one roof. It claims this will accelerate deployment and reduce financing costs.

"Compute has become a new infrastructure asset class, with AI models and applications as the verticals built on top," said founder and CEO Ricard Boada.

"Our ambition is to build The Utility of Compute so that compute works as reliably and invisibly as electricity, while being priced transparently and built to endure."

Volta had not responded to our requests for further information by time of publication.  Anthropic declined to comment. ®

Updated to add at 1717 UTC, August 6:
A Volta spokesperson got in touch to say the firm can’t officially confirm the specific AI lab in question, but said the relationship is a commercial strategic partnership, not an investment, and the $10 billion is for a compute commitment over the life of the partnership.

Volta also said it is an Nvidia Cloud Partner and is currently deploying Vera Rubin VR200 NVL72 systems. On the software side, it uses Nvidia components where they're the right tool, but uses its own proprietary full-stack cloud platform covering orchestration, multi-tenancy, storage, networking, billing, and capacity management. That gives it capabilities beyond the standard Nvidia stack, Volta claims.

On the comparison with "neocloud" operators, the spokesperson told us:

“Most neoclouds finance hardware through high-yield debt and depend on third-party capital for each new project, which shapes both their pricing and their financial fragility. Volta applies an infrastructure finance model instead. That lower, more stable cost of capital is what flows into pricing, and it's also why we can be transparent about our cost structure in a way that's harder for a debt-heavy competitor to match.”