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A Swedish startup aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe has raised 50.6 million ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc, as its called, says its laying the foundations for a secure, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to reimagine the digital future of Europe.The announcement comes amid growing calls to create a European tech stack, one independent of U.S. tech firms and the shifting political landscape. Just this week, a coalition from across Europes tech industry called for radical action from lawmakers to reduce the regions reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure, pushing for homegrown alternatives to apps, AI models, chips and the full gamut of cloud services.Evroc aims to capitalize on this momentum. The three-year-old company plans to build data centers and an array of cloud services. At its launch in 2023, Evroc outlined plans to establish eight data centers by 2028. Today, it says it has two co-location facilities in Stockholm and another two in Paris.By the end of second quarter of this year, the company expects to have two additional facilities operational in Frankfurt, with work already underway on its first flagship data centers in Sweden and France, scheduled for completion in 2026 with AI workloads as a primary focus.They [.] are designed for the energy density required for AI, where racks can consume 20 times what a traditional server rack can, Evroc CEO and founder Mattias strm (pictured above) told TechCrunch. Both will be equipped with liquid cooling but will also host compute and storage servers.Evrocs formal launch is slated for later this year, with strm adding that it is already working with early beta customers in industries requiring a high need for sovereignty, including defense, public sector, health care and financial services. He also hinted at additional data centers coming next year, though the company isnt ready to confirm specifics.Digital sovereigntyEuropes digital sovereignty agenda is nothing new. In fact, most U.S. tech giantsare already investinginlocal infrastructureto ensure compliance with EU data residency regulations. AI darlingOpenAI also recently unveileda new offering that allows customers to process and store data in Europe.But with geopolitical tensions on the rise, strm argues that control over Europes infrastructure matters more than just server locations.For example, Donald Trump last month signed an executive order authorizing economic sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands, accusing it of illegitimate and baseless actions against the U.S. and Israel. These sanctions affect how tech companies can serve organizations, with a Guardian report indicating that the ICC relies heavily on Microsofts Azure cloud for storing data.Elsewhere, Elon Musk now a central figure in U.S. governmental operations has previously admitted to throttling Ukrainian access to Starlink satellites, operated by his company SpaceX. More recently, he claimed that Ukraines entire frontline would collapse if he chose to turn it off. Although Musk later backtracked, the incident served as yet another reminder of the importance of infrastructure independence. And its also why the EU is forging ahead with plans for a own sovereign satellite constellation to rival Starlink.I simply want Europe to control its own destiny, strm said. And while were at it, try to build something that is better.Geopolitical turmoil aside, the AI revolution means that organizations previously reliant on on-premises infrastructure must now consider the cloud to fully leverage AI.Several European startups are already building cloud infrastructure in Europe, including Frances FlexAI, Finlands DataCrunch, and Nebius in the Netherlands an entity that emerged from the ashes of Yandex last year.However, while many of these players focus on AI computing, Evroc aims to build an extensive, developer-friendly hyperscale cloud thats more akin to AWS and its ilk.The bulk of Evrocs 60-plus employees are focused on software development, spread across Sweden, France, and the U.K. strm noted the London hub wasnt originally planned but became necessary to attract top talent from major tech firms.Im actually very excited about our London office that wasnt part of the initial plan, but in order to get extremely smart people that are working for the hyperscalers, it was the right decision, strm said.Show me the moneyWhen Evroc launched out of stealth two years ago with 13 million in funding, strm told TechCrunch he planned to raise as much as 3 billion in capital within a couple of years. By August of last year, news broke that Evroc had raised 42 million as part of its Series A, and now the round has closed at 50.6 million with investments from U.S.-European venture firm Blisce, EQT Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Giant Ventures.There is no escaping the elephant in the room, though. Building anything close to what the hyperscalers have built requires a near-bottomless pit of cash so does Evroc still plan to raise billions?Thats still the case, but the key here is [first] getting that software stack, strm continued. Europe has a lot of data centers, but we dont really have that cloud. This equity round is really helping us build the software stack.The company plans to raise significantly more capital later in 2025, following a funding model similar to other cloud infrastructure players such as CoreWeave, which has grown its footprint by borrowing against collateral such as Nvidia chips.Building out data centers will require a lot of additional investment, but the good news is that you can finance that with debt, strm said.
