Kangerlussuaq, Greenland – July 9: A local Air Greenland passenger plane stands on the airport tarmac with signs indicating flight times to different destinations around the world on July 9, 2024 in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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As hyperscalers rush to ramp up capacity around the world to keep up with AI deployments, a former official from President Donald Trump’s first administration is planning a multibillion-dollar data center project in a remote corner of Greenland.
The data center aims to operate at 300 megawatts (MW) by mid-2027, with further expansion to reach 1.5 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2028.
This is several times the power capacity of data centers currently in operation around the world, and as the race to develop AI infrastructure continues to accelerate, there are plans to build multiple facilities around the world in excess of 1 GW over the next two years.
The Greenland data center project will cost billions of dollars to complete and has binding commitments with investors to fund half of the early stages and half of the final stages of development, Drew Horn, a senior aide to Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, and CEO of GreenMet, which is providing strategic support for the project, told CNBC.
The venture aims to build an airport in the Kangerlussuaq area, a small hamlet on the edge of a deep fjord on the southwestern coast of the Arctic island, he added.
Horn said technical partners are working together to assist with physical construction, but the project has not yet secured approvals from land or local authorities. He declined to name other companies involved in the venture because the information has not yet been made public.
Greenland’s commercial opportunities have been in the spotlight in recent weeks as the Arctic island becomes the center of a geopolitical battle after US President Donald Trump stepped up takeover negotiations.
Significant mineral extraction and freshwater reserves are touted as potential, but skeptics point to the logistical challenges of exploiting them with Greenland’s limited infrastructure.
Multi-billion dollar data center
Data center transactions hit an all-time high of $61 billion in 2025 as companies rush to build out the infrastructure needed for energy-intensive AI workloads. Including major technology companies metaopen AI, oracle, AWS, microsoft and google invests millions of dollars in facility development around the world.
Work on planning the Greenland data center project began a year ago, and Horn told CNBC that the company has secured technology partners to help with construction, operations and energy supply.
Committed financing in the form of debt and equity is conditional on the project achieving key milestones, such as securing permits from local governments, Horn said. Mr. Horn also served as a senior adviser to the Departments of Energy and Intelligence toward the end of the Trump administration’s first term.
Other former Trump executives also own stock in GreenMet, which says on its website that it supports companies with government and private funding and strategic partnerships.
George Sorial, who served as executive vice president and chief compliance advisor for the Trump Organization until 2019, and Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime bodyguard and chief of Oval Office operations during the president’s first term, helped establish the company in 2021 and remain shareholders.
“We are not actively involved with Greenmet or Greenland,” Sorial told CNBC. “We are a passive minority shareholder in GreenMet and have no management role within the company.” Schiller did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment at the time of publication.
GreenMet’s CEO has been building relationships with Greenlandic and Danish government officials to advance the project. Horn said he met with Danish Ambassador to the United States Jesper Moller Sorensen on Wednesday as part of an “ongoing dialogue” to discuss data centers. CNBC has reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Denmark for comment.
Officials from all walks of life support the plan, but “the issue is more diplomatic than civilian,” Horn said, pointing to geopolitical tensions surrounding the United States’ bid to acquire Denmark’s semi-autonomous territory of Greenland.
Tensions have subsided since President Trump withdrew plans to impose tariffs on several European countries over the issue, but negotiations over U.S. military and economic involvement in Greenland remain ongoing and questions remain.
“Our efforts are entirely private and will only succeed if we have the buy-in of relevant stakeholders and the state,” Horn said.
Securing electricity
A “large company” will lead the construction and development of the data center, but Greenmet will remain involved as an advisor as the project aims to secure government investment from countries including the United States, Greenland, Denmark and other NATO countries, Horn told CNBC.
“We spent about a year putting everything together, from the power supply to the technology components, (and) we also have a Greenlandic partner on the ground,” Horn said. “We are currently waiting for approval from the Greenlandic side.”
A major challenge for a project of this size in Greenland is access to electricity. Horn said the first phase of the project, which aims to generate 300MW of electricity, will use specialized barges to transport liquefied natural gas to the fjord.
The venture plans to build a hydroelectric facility where 70% of the island’s energy will come from such a facility, and the second phase will see the data center capacity reach 1.5 GW. Permits and approvals from the Greenlandic government are still pending for both the barge and the facility. Greenland’s Ministry of Commerce has been contacted for comment.
Kangerlussuaq fjord. A large iceberg lies in a scenic fjord surrounded by snow-capped mountains on the southeast coast of Greenland.
Volkswagen Photo | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
Horn argues that if local governments give the green light to large-scale hydropower facilities, rising energy prices will make the projects commercially viable in the long term.
Analysts told CNBC there are some big benefits to building data centers in cold environments.
Noah Ramos, a strategist at investment research firm Alpine Macro, told CNBC: “The biggest value lies in its resource profile, particularly its hydropower for power generation and its ‘free cooling’ proposition given the low ambient temperatures.”
But the project has hurdles to overcome. “Building in the Arctic is capital intensive, construction times are short, and the heat from the servers can melt the very ground the building is built on…it requires specialized engineering,” Ramos said.
Nvidia is also touting a new generation of chips that require less cooling. “It’s still early days, but if future generations of chips are even more efficient in this respect, it could eliminate the need to build expensive data centers in places like Greenland,” Michael Field, chief equity strategist at Morningstar, told CNBC.
