Crusoe and Polar DC to build 40MW second building at Norway campus

Polar DC and Crusoe will build a second data center at Polar's Tørdal campus in Norway, a 40MW building designated DRA02, Data Center Dynamics reported on Oct. 22.

DRA02 will sit beside DRA01, a 12MW facility that is now live and hosting Crusoe Cloud's AI infrastructure. The site is a 60,000 sqm (645,835 sq ft) plot in Drangedal municipality, and plans for a second building were first reported in July.

DRA02 will house Crusoe AI infrastructure including Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 systems. The coverage gives no building size or construction timeline. It does not say whether Crusoe's commitment covers all 40MW; the June 2025 agreement it extends was for 12MW.

Crusoe co-founder and president Cully Cavness said the site "runs on 100 percent renewable hydroelectric power." He described Polar as a solid partner for scaling in Europe.

In early June, Polar announced an €800 million ($932.2m) senior secured bond, according to the report. The bond will refinance existing debt on DRA01 and complete two more facilities in 2026 and 2027, one of them likely DRA02.

Both Tørdal buildings are tied to one customer: Crusoe is the anchor tenant, not the platform, at a site where Crusoe Cloud sells the compute.

DRA01's 12MW is described as IT capacity, while the report does not say whether DRA02's 40MW is IT load or total facility draw, so the two figures do not necessarily sum to 52MW of leasable IT.

Polar launched last year and describes itself as a developer of high-performance data centers optimized for AI and high-density computing workloads. It has been majority-owned by H.I.G. Capital since October last year, according to the report. It is also developing a 40MW facility called HER01 at Heroya in Telemark County, with other projects in Porsgrunn and near Oslo. Crusoe, founded in 2018, began with cryptomining facilities sited along oil and gas pipelines.