Verda, a Helsinki company running a full-stack artificial intelligence cloud, has raised 164.8 million euros ($189 million) in an oversubscribed Series B, crossing the billion-dollar mark to become Europe’s latest unicorn. The round, announced on 22 September, was led by Emergence Capital. The business, formerly known as DataCrunch, was founded in 2020 and is led by chief executive Ruben Bryon, and its rise adds Finland to the short list of European countries with large privately held cloud providers.
The company manages data centers, hardware, cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence research, and runs its Finnish facilities entirely on renewable energy. The round drew a broad investor group including MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Lifeline Ventures, 6 Degrees Capital, byFounders and Tesi, along with angels such as Ola Torudbakken and Mark Saroufim. That mix of strategic backers and financial investors reflects how much capital is now chasing compute capacity.
Bryon framed the raise around a narrow opening for European suppliers. “AI is becoming critical infrastructure across industries, and the next few years are a pivotal window for Europe,” he said. The company is positioning itself as a regional alternative to the large American cloud providers that dominate the market for computing power, an argument that has gained traction as governments push for more homegrown infrastructure.
Joe Floyd, a general partner at Emergence Capital, pointed to the imbalance the company is trying to exploit. “Demand for AI compute is insatiable, and the gap between demand and supply is growing,” he said. That shortage has turned access to graphics processors and the power to run them into one of the defining constraints of the current technology cycle, with buyers competing for capacity months in advance.
Verda’s rise reflects a wider Nordic push into artificial intelligence infrastructure, helped by cold climates and cheap renewable power that make the region attractive for data centers. The company now has capital to expand capacity as customers compete for compute, and its unicorn status marks another milestone for Helsinki’s technology scene. The funding is expected to go toward more hardware and additional data center capacity as the company scales to meet demand.
