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Six weeks before Donald Trump publicly revived his push for the United States to seize control of Greenland, two pro-Trump US tech giants had begun operating advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure on the island, Byline Times can reveal.
In mid-December 2025, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources announced the launch of a new AI server system in Nuuk developed in partnership with Dell Technologies and Nvidia — two of the most influential firms underpinning the global AI boom. The facility runs on hydroelectric power supplied by Greenland’s publicly owned energy system.
Trump’s renewed Greenland demands followed within weeks, amid mounting pressure from US technology companies over electricity shortages, grid constraints and environmental regulations that are increasingly limiting the expansion of energy-hungry AI data centres inside the United States.
The Greenland deployment provides a working proof-of-concept: high-performance AI computing powered by abundant hydroelectric power, operating beyond the reach of US environmental law and domestic grid bottlenecks. It also reframes Trump’s Greenland fixation – long dismissed as erratic or rhetorical – as potentially rooted in a structural crisis facing America’s AI industry.
Greenland’s vast untapped hydroelectric potential offers a solution that could bypass America’s stringent environmental regulations.
The US President’s insistence on full ownership, rather than a lease arrangement, would potentially allow American technology companies to exploit Greenland’s hydroelectric power without the environmental oversight that has blocked similar projects on US soil.
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The Environmental Roadblock
The connection between Trump’s territorial ambitions and America’s AI energy crisis became apparent during the World Economic Forum in Davos, where both the President and major technology investors emphasised the scale of the electricity shortage facing the US.
Trump told delegates that the US needed “more than double the energy currently in the country just to take care of the AI” and admitted “we can’t do that. We have an old grid system.”
The urgency of the energy crisis was underscored by a ruling from the US federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) less than a week before Trump’s Davos appearance. The EPA announced that 12 methane gas turbines installed by Elon Musk at his Colossus 1 xAI data centre in Memphis, Tennessee – by far the largest donor to Trump’s campaign – were required to have air quality permits under the 1970 federal Clean Air Act.
The turbines, which can generate nearly 200 megawatts of electricity, had been installed to power Musk’s xAI Colossus 1 facility after Trump declared a “national energy emergency” at the start of his second term in January 2025. The electricity generated is sufficient to power more than 120,000 Tennessee homes, but residents have raised concerns about the tonnes of emissions being released into the atmosphere.
Abre’ Conner, director of environmental and climate justice for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said: “Our communities, air, water and land are not playgrounds for billionaires chasing another buck.”
Trump’s administration has not yet confirmed whether it will enforce the EPA ruling. However, the President appeared to acknowledge the pressure he is under from technology entrepreneurs during his Davos speech.
Greenland’s Hydroelectric Advantage
Days before Davos, the US Department of the Interior announced a $15 billion upgrade to the grid system in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states where the largest number of AI data centres are located. The funding for this project, however, will be provided by technology firms themselves rather than taxpayers.
AI computing is emerging as one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand in the United States, outstripping the capacity of existing grids and regulatory frameworks. The search for stable, large-scale energy supplies has therefore pushed technology companies to look offshore – including to Greenland’s hydro-powered system.
The autonomous Danish territory has five hydroelectric plants that already generate around 87% of Greenland’s electricity needs. Construction is underway to double the output of the Buksefjord plant – Greenland’s largest – from 45 megawatts to 90 megawatts by 2029.
The potential for expansion is vast. The Greenland Government has identified a further 17 sites suitable for large-scale hydroelectric plants and is actively seeking investors.
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The Dell Technologies Proof of Concept
As Trump family members and administration officials have made private visits to Greenland, US tech giants close to Trump have also been quietly establishing AI operations on the island.
During 2025, Michael Dell’s Dell Technologies partnered with the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Nvidia, and local firm Comby A/S to create an AI hub that analyses the huge volumes of data gathered in climate research. Funded by the Danish not-for-profit Carlsberg Foundation, the new data centre became fully operational in December 2025 after a year of planning and procurement. The setup will offer unmatched speed and capability for AI, data processing and modelling according to observers.
The newly unveiled centre runs on electricity generated by the Buksefjord hydroelectric plant in the capital Nuuk. Although small compared with facilities such as Musk’s Colossus 1, the project proves that AI data centres can operate successfully in Greenland using hydroelectric power and taking advantage of the ‘free cooling’ due to lower ambient temperatures.
The same month that Dell and Nvdia launched their AI data centre in Greenland, Dell and his wife Susan announced that they would contribute $6.25 billion to the Trump Accounts saving scheme for children. Nvidia, already a Trump donor having given $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and previously committed to investing $500 billion in US manufacturing, also pledged to contribute to the Trump Accounts scheme.
The China Factor
During a question-and-answer session at Davos with Fink, Musk emphasised that China is winning the energy race to power AI development through its investment in solar power. China solar with batteries is now producing “around 250 gigawatts of steady state power paired with batteries. That’s half of the average power usage in the entire US”, he said.
Musk’s preferred solution would be “large-scale solar” but, he acknowledged, “unfortunately in the US the tariff barriers for solar panels are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar so artificially high because China makes almost all the solar.”
China’s energy lead could be decisive in the global AI race. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has stated that the US leads China in AI development by what could be as little as “nanoseconds” – contradicting Trump’s claim at Davos that America is ahead “by a lot.”
Trump’s conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte after his Davos speech provided what observers described as an “off-ramp” – the opportunity to announce a “framework of a future deal” – following a series of U-turns on Greenland made within a single day.
However, Trump is still pursuing the idea that the US will have total control of Greenland, and seems unwilling to enter into a deal that recognises Greenland’s exclusive right to exploit the island’s natural resources. High-level negotiations are now underway – with one idea on the table, proposed by the Atlantic Council, being for Greenland and Denmark to agree to “shared sovereignty” with the US.
Dell Technologies and Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment.
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