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. ®