The Swedish startup, which is aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe, has raised 50.6 million euros ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc says it lays the foundation for a “safe, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to rethink Europe's digital future,” as it is called.
The announcement comes amid an increase in calls to create a European tech stack independent of the US tech companies and the changing political landscape. Just this week, a coalition from across the European tech industry sought “radical action” from lawmakers to reduce local reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure, pushing for homemade alternatives to the full scope of apps, AI models, chips and cloud services.
Evroc aims to capitalize on this momentum. The company three years ago plans to build a data center and various cloud services. At its launch in 2023, EVROC outlined plans to set up eight data centers by 2028. Today, it states that there are two colocation facilities in Stockholm and two colocation facilities in Paris.
By the end of the second quarter of this year, the company expects two additional facilities to operate in Frankfurt, with work already in progress at Sweden and France's first flagship data centres expected to complete AI workloads as the main focus in 2026.
“They are [….] It is designed for the energy density required for AI. Racks can consume 20 times more than traditional server racks,” Evroc CEO and founder Mattias Åström (pictured above) told TechCrunch.
The official launch of EVROC is scheduled for later this year, adding that ÅStröm is already working with early beta customers in industries that need “highly sovereign needs” such as defense, the public sector, healthcare and financial services. He also hinted at additional data centers coming next year, but the company is not ready to check the details.
Digital Rights
The European digital sovereignty agenda is nothing new. In fact, most US tech giants have already invested in their local infrastructure to ensure compliance with EU data residency regulations. Ai Darling Openai recently announced a new product that allows customers to process and store data in Europe.
However, with increasing geopolitical tensions, ÅStröm argues that control of European infrastructure is important, not just a server location.
For example, Donald Trump last month signed an executive order recognizing economic sanctions against the Dutch International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing them of “illegal and unfounded behaviour” against the United States and Israel. These sanctions affect the way tech companies provide services to their organizations. The Guardian Report shows that ICC relies heavily on Microsoft's Azure cloud to store data.
Elsewhere, Elon Musk, now a central figure in the US government's business, has previously allowed Ukraine to coordinate access to Starlink satellites run by his company SpaceX. Recently, he claimed that if the entire Ukraine frontline chooses to turn it off, it would collapse. Musk later retreated, but the incident further reminded us of the importance of infrastructure independence. It is also why the EU is moving forward with its own plans for its sovereign satellite constellations comparable to Starlink.
“I simply want Europe to control its own destiny,” Åström said. “And try and make something better while we work on it.”
Geopolitical disruption aside, the AI revolution means that organizations that previously relied on on-premises infrastructure should consider the cloud taking full advantage of AI.
Several European startups have already built cloud infrastructure in Europe. These include French Flex, Finnish Data Ranch, and Nebius in the Netherlands. This is an entity that was born from the ashes of Yandex last year.
However, while many of these players focus on AI computing, EVROC aims to build a wide range of developer-friendly hyperscale clouds that resemble AWS and its likes.
The majority of EVROC's 60+ employees focus on software development, spreading across France's Sweden, and the UK hub noted that the London hub was originally not planned, but was needed to attract top talent from major technology companies.
“I'm actually very excited about the London office. It wasn't part of the original plan, but it was the right decision to get very smart people working for hyperschools,” Åström said.
Show me the money
When EVROC was launched by Stealth two years ago with 13 million euros of funds, ÅStröm told TechCrunch it plans to raise as much as 3 billion euros within a few years. By August last year, news had been broken that EVROC had raised 42 million euros as part of Series A, and now the round has ended 50.6 million euros with investments from US-European ventures Blisce, EQT Ventures, Norrsken VC and Giant Ventures.
However, they do not escape the elephant in their rooms. To build something close to what Hyperscalar has built, you need a near-bottomed cash hole.
“Even so, the key here is [first] Get that software stack,” continued ÅStröm. “There are many data centers in Europe, but there is no cloud in reality. This equity round really helps you build a software stack.”
The company plans to raise significantly more capital in the second half of 2025 following a similar funding model to other cloud infrastructure players such as CoreWeave, which grew its footprint by borrowing collateral such as Nvidia chips.
“Building a data center requires a lot of additional investment, but the good news is that you can raise funds from debt,” Åström said.