The spokesman confirms

Of Supantha Mukherjee and Anne Kauranen

Stockholm/Helsinki (Reuters) -IKTOK plans to invest € 1 billion ($ 1.14 billion) to build its first data center in Finland, as it transfers data storage for European users on the continent, a Tiktok spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

The spokesman refused to give more details, as he confirmed the plan revealed to Reuters by two sources familiar with this topic.

Finland’s Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to a comment request. Tiktok, owned by Bytedance based in China, has sought to address concern about whether the Chinese government could access the data of European citizens using Tiktok. In 2023, he launched a new data security regime, the “Project Clover”, with plans to invest 12 billion euros for 10 years in the midst of the increasing pressure of legislators on both sides of the Atlantic. Several countries, the European Parliament, the European Commission and others have banned Tiktok on staff phones due to privacy concerns, while the United States government has threatened to ban the application in the United States for national security reasons, unless the company’s assets -Americans of the company are loaned.

Tiktok has called prohibitions, based on fundamental misconceptions. On its website, Tiktok says that the data of European users are stored in a dedicated European data enclave, hosted between Norway, Ireland and the United States.

Under the project project, Tiktok’s first data center in Norway was completely online this month after starting work by 2023.

Tiktok, which has more than 175 million users in Europe, plans to announce more data centers in the coming years, according to sources. Nordic countries have become attractive destinations for data centers for technology companies ranging from Microsoft to finish, as colder temperatures reduce energy costs, as well as the availability of cheap electricity and without emissions. “Finland is definitely one of the places where we continue to build our infrastructure,” Brad Smith, Microsoft President Brad Smith, told Brussels on Wednesday. “First we have a lot of access to free carbon energy and secondly, it has a good connectivity, so we can serve much of Europe from Finland,” he said.

In Finland, more than 20 new data centers are being planned, representing about 13 billion euros and 1.3 Gigawatts, Veijo Terho, president of the Finnish date center association ($ 1 = 0.8801 euros).

(Report by Suppantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, Anne Kauranen in Helsinki and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Elaine Hardcastle edition)