Verda secures $117 million to grow its GPU cloud platform.

      The Helsinki-based company, which was previously known as DataCrunch, has secured funding of $117 million. This financing round consists of equity led by Lifeline Ventures, with contributions from byFounders, Tesi, and Varma, as well as debt financing from several Nordic financial institutions. Verda is already cash-flow positive and has achieved Nvidia Preferred Partner status, with plans to hire over 100 employees this year.

      The capital raised will be used to enhance product development, expand into the UK, US, and Asia, and hire more staff by year-end. CEO and founder Ruben Bryon noted that the company is “experiencing significant momentum” and aims to “intensify development and speed up expansion.”

      This funding round is significant not only for its amount but also for what it indicates about Verda’s financial health. The company is already cash-flow positive, with an annual revenue run rate that increased to over $60 million in the first quarter of 2026. For a six-year-old startup in a capital-heavy infrastructure market where many competitors rely on venture capital for GPU leases and data center construction, achieving operational profitability at this stage is atypical.

      The $117 million funding serves as a means for expansion rather than survival capital, which is an important distinction when assessing the company’s competitive standing against rivals that may have more funding but are less profitable.

      Verda offers vertically integrated AI cloud infrastructure, managing everything from physical servers and data centers to the tools and services developers need to create and deploy AI solutions. Its data centers in Finland operate on 100% renewable energy, leveraging the Nordic region's advantages in affordable hydroelectric and wind power as well as efficient natural cooling.

      This positions Verda at the crossroads of two increasing enterprise demands: AI compute capacity and decarbonized infrastructure. Its client base includes well-known companies such as Nokia, 1X, ExpressVPN, and Freepik.

      Holding Nvidia Preferred Partner status, Verda is among a select group of cloud providers with privileged access to Nvidia’s latest GPU technology. The company has experienced rapid growth through successive funding rounds, beginning with a $13 million seed round and followed by a $64 million Series A in January 2026, led by byFounders with additional participation from Skaala, Varma, and Tesi, along with debt financing from Nordea, Armada Credit Partners, Danske Bank, Norion Bank, and LocalTapiola.

      The latest $117 million round nearly doubles the total capital raised in one leap. Lifeline Ventures, a leading early-stage fund in Finland that has backed companies like Supercell, has taken the lead in this round, replacing byFounders, although byFounders continues to participate.

      The company changed its name from DataCrunch to Verda in November 2025, marking a transition from being a GPU compute provider to a comprehensive AI cloud platform. This rebranding accompanied the Series A announcement and a clearer narrative for a European sovereign cloud, positioning itself as an alternative to US hyperscalers for GDPR-compliant AI tasks, unhindered by the US Cloud Act.

      This positioning continues, but the Verda brand signals broader ambitions, including direct competition in the US market with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, moving beyond merely offering European data residency as a unique selling point.

      Verda’s embedded AI Lab team, which collaborates directly with customers and provides insights for product development, sets the company apart from pure infrastructure providers. In an increasingly commoditized GPU cloud market, helping customers derive value from their compute resources through model optimization, inference tuning, and direct engineering assistance presents a meaningful competitive edge.

      Whether Verda can maintain this advantage at the scale it seeks in the US market will depend on the ability of its Helsinki-based team to match the responsiveness and proximity that US competitors provide to enterprise clients on the ground.