Start Campus raises €90M to fund Sines data centre buildout
What's the deal? Start CampusDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised €90 million through a private bond issue to fund its data centre campus in Sines, Portugal. The transaction, run through subsidiary Sines Campus DC01Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, was approved on August 26 and published in the commercial registry on September 14.
Why now? The raise caps a 12-month stretch in which the subsidiary placed more than €301 million in similar offerings. It issued over €171 million in September 2025, a further €40 million in March 2026, and now €90 million — a marked step-up from earlier rounds.
What's the endgame? The company is building one of Europe's largest computing hubs, an €8.5 billion project targeting 1.2GW of capacity focused on sustainability and artificial intelligence. Start Campus says the issue "fits the financing strategy for developing the Start Campus site in Sines" (translated from Portuguese).
The campus, near an old EDPDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → coal plant on Portugal's Alentejo coast, is backed by US fund Davidson KempnerDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and UK fund Pioneer Point PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. It ranks among the largest foreign private investments underway in Portugal.
What's the state of play? The first building, SIN 01, is complete and operating at 37.5MW. A second, the 200MW SIN 02, is under construction and due from the third quarter of 2027.
The demand side: Client Nscale said in May it will install 66,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs at the site from next year to serve Microsoft. That follows an earlier announcement of 12,600 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra processors in Sines for the same customer — a shipment large enough to register in Portugal's first-quarter GDP figures.
The signal: After a turbulent 2023 tied to the Operação Influencer investigation, the project has stabilised and keeps drawing capital. Repeated debt raises, backed by named hyperscaler demand, show how AI infrastructure is pulling major private investment into southern Europe.
Read more: eco.sapo.pt
Image credit: GBPublic_PR
