The Finnish government has only very recently become aware of plans to build a data centre in south-eastern Finland that will mainly serve social media site TikTok.
The project appears to have gone unnoticed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and other government members for more than six months before the matter became public.
Yle reported about the project in the small city of Kouvola on Wednesday, in an article that examined the effort's foreign financial backers — as well as news that TikTok would be the centre's main tenant.
TikTok's Finnish data centre effort is part of the company's goal to move user data storage of its European users to Europe, the Chinese social media behemoth told Reuters last month.
"We were also surprised by this," economic affairs minister Wille Rydman (Finns) said on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Rydman said that he hopes the company behind the project would reconsider whether they want to have TikTok as a customer.
"There's demand for data centres in Finland anyway, and the customer does not necessarily need to be that particular company," Rydman said on Thursday.
The previous day, Rydman characterised the matter as an atypical one, "that has put us in a bit of a difficult situation".
Ministry now looking into matter
According to Rydman, the ministry is now examining the project. The company leading the data centre project has already purchased two parcels of land from the city and acquired building permits. The next step in the process is to start constructing the facility — an effort expected to be complete by the end of 2026.
The ministry is also looking into how it was possible it was never informed about the estimated billion-euro project.
"The fact that the ministry had no prior knowledge of an investment of this scale is a very atypical approach. The [company's] ownership and other arrangements of the project also seem somewhat atypical," Rydman said.
When he mentioned issues about ownership, Rydman was referring to Yle's reporting that the company is owned by a major Chinese IT services company — and financially backed by a Dubai billionaire with a questionable business history.
Many countries around the world have been critical of TikTok, particularly how the Chinese company handles its user data. Last week, the EU ordered the social media giant to pay a fine of about 530 million euros over data security issues.
Rydman has not yet taken a position on the data centre project itself. However, the minister said he has discussed TikTok-related matters with the Finns Party's ministerial working group, but did not elaborate on the specifics of those discussions.
Under the radar?
It remains unclear whether government leaders knew about the data centre plans. Yle asked for comment from Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) about the matter, but the PM's office did not immediately respond to the request on Wednesday.
Due to the apparent lack of knowledge among government officials about the project, it could be presumed that the data centre arrangements were carried out quietly.
However, Finnish media has closely followed the progress of the data centre plans since February 2024, after the company behind the project, Hyperco, made a deal to buy a 12.5-hectare parcel of land in Kouvola.
Then, in June 2024, it was reported Hyperco had written a letter of intent to expand the site by more than 11 hectares. At the time, the Kouvola data centre plan was just one of dozens of similar projects around the country.
However, the project garnered many headlines in Finland on Wednesday, after Hyperco revealed the data centre in Kouvola would primarily be serving TikTok.
According to Veijo Terho, chair of the Finnish Data Centre Association, the final agreement between Hyperco and TikTok may only have been signed very recently.
"It may well be that Hyperco simply thought that this type of data centre would be of some kind of use, started developing it, and then found a customer," Terho said, adding that such an approach is becoming increasingly common in the data centre business.
Mayor found out a few weeks ago
Kouvola Mayor Marita Toikka (NCP) said she learned about TikTok's involvement in the project a few weeks ago.
"It didn't really come as a surprise, but of course it was great to have it confirmed," she said.
The mayor did not take a position about TikTok's possible data security threats, saying that such issues should be addressed by leaders in Helsinki or Brussels. Additionally, she did not take a position about the project's financial backers.
When asked about how the city might benefit from the data centre, Mayor Toikka initially suggested it could generate three million euros in city property taxes. However, she later corrected the estimate, saying that the figure would be closer to 300,000 euros.
Meanwhile, TikTok did not respond to Yle for a request for comment. In an email, the company said that the billion-euro investment would help improve data security across Europe.
Similarly, Hyperco did not respond to an interview request. After Yle published its first story about the project, in an email, the company stated that it had signed a lease agreement with TikTok in late April. Hyperco said that it had held negotiations with several companies about leasing data centre space before the lease agreement was signed.
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