Verda secures $117M from Lifeline Ventures and Tesi for cleaner AI cloud to rival hyperscalers
Finnish startup Verda, an AI cloud infrastructure company headquartered in Helsinki, has secured $117 million (€100 million) in a combined equity and debt funding round to accelerate its growth. The equity portion was led by Lifeline Ventures, with participation from byFounders, Tesi, and Varma, among other investors, while Nordic financial institutions provided the debt financing. Founded in 2020 by Ruben Bryon, the company — originally known as DataCrunch — has been profitable since launch and operated as a self-financed entity until it raised a $13 million seed round in October 2024. That was followed by a $64 million Series A in September 2025, led by byFounders with participation from Skaala, Varma, Tesi, and J12 Ventures, alongside additional debt. The latest injection brings Verda’s total fundraising to more than €170 million (approximately $200 million).
Vertical integration and competitive advantages
Verda differentiates itself from rivals by managing its entire infrastructure in-house, from servers and data centres to networking and AI developer tools. This vertical integration contrasts sharply with the approach of most cloud competitors, which typically rent GPU capacity from third parties and resell it with additional software layers. By owning and operating its own stack, Verda claims greater control over performance, cost, and reliability.
The company’s infrastructure is anchored in Finland, where its data centres run on 100% renewable energy and benefit from natural cooling — a combination that significantly lowers operating costs compared to facilities in markets such as Frankfurt or northern Virginia. The name Verda, adopted in November 2025 when DataCrunch rebranded, is derived from the Spanish word for “true” and the Esperanto word for “green,” reflecting what the company describes as a commitment to technological integrity and sustainable innovation.
Verda is also one of a small number of NVIDIA Preferred Partners worldwide, a status that provides priority access to graphics processing units at a time when securing sufficient computing power remains a major challenge for enterprise AI teams. Its customer base includes Nokia, 1X, ExpressVPN, and Freepik. The company’s AI Lab team works directly with clients, using their feedback to refine products, and the business positions itself as bridging the gap between large cloud providers — where buying capacity is slow and pricing often unclear — and basic GPU rental services that offer limited support.
This strategy places Verda in direct competition with specialised cloud providers such as CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. CoreWeave has raised substantial capital, including more than $25 billion in 2024 alone through debt and equity, and has pursued aggressive data centre investments and acquisitions. Lambda Labs secured over $1.5 billion in its Series E round in November 2025, focusing on owning and operating its own GPU clusters. Verda competes by emphasising profitability, clean energy, and European data sovereignty — a factor that has become increasingly important as some European companies find it harder to work with US hyperscalers.
The broader market for GPU cloud computing is growing rapidly. Valued at approximately $5.7 billion in 2024, it is projected to exceed $90 billion by 2034, representing a compound annual growth rate of around 32%. McKinsey has estimated that global companies may need to invest an additional $5 trillion to $7 trillion over the next five years in AI infrastructure, while spending on data centre construction has tripled since late 2022. Europe, in particular, is seeking to develop its own cloud platforms to reduce reliance on American technology giants, a trend that plays directly to Verda’s strengths.
Expansion plans
The $117 million funding will support Verda’s entry into the UK and US markets this year, followed by further expansion into Asia. The company plans to hire more than 100 new employees to support this growth. Separately, Verda is working on constructing larger data centre sites in Sweden, underpinning its ambition to scale its physical infrastructure in line with demand.
