By Theo Bertram - Vice President, Public Policy & Government Relations - Europe

Over 150m people across Europe come to TikTok every month to express their creativity, learn a new skill, promote and grow their business or just enjoy entertaining content. We know that with this scale comes responsibility and we want people on TikTok to be confident that they can trust us with their data.

Investing in Project Clover

We are today announcing an investment of more than €12bn in Europe over the next ten years to deliver Project Clover, our industry-leading security programme that aims to provide industry-leading protection for European* user data.

Our investment announcement comes as we officially take possession of the first phase of our data centre operations in the Hamar region of Norway. The first of three separate buildings at the site was handed over this week; each of these buildings will ultimately store European TikTok user data.

We will now begin installing and testing servers in this first building, with the goal of commencing user data migration by next summer. The other two buildings at the Hamar site are expected to be handed over during the second half of next year, with data migration to these scheduled to commence towards the end of 2024. When complete, this will be the largest data centre in Europe.

This €12bn figure includes our combined investment in:

  • the operations of the Norway data centre and our two other data centres in Ireland, which will collectively be home to European user data; one of the data centres in Ireland is operational already and began storing user data earlier this year
  • our work with the NCC Group, an independent third party security company providing external oversight of our approach, including auditing and verifying our data controls and protections, monitoring data flows, and reporting any incidents;
  • the implementation of privacy enhancing technologies to further strengthen our already robust processes to protect user data


Aligning with our Climate Commitments

The Norway data centre not only supports the new standards we are setting in data security, but also aligns with our goal to become operationally carbon neutral by 2030.

Reducing our emissions and sourcing 100% renewable electricity are among the key commitments for this target. Once fully completed, the Norway data centre will be the largest colocation facility in Europe to run on 100% renewable energy, be our most energy efficient data centre with a PUE of less than 1.2, and provide enormous potential for heat re-use.

Most of the energy generated will be transformed to low temperature heat (25℃), effectively enabling the energy to be used twice. Our third party provider, Green Mountain, is actively engaging with multiple industries and research institutions to identify potential projects and initiatives that can benefit from this level of heat re-use.

As a country, Norway has long set a high standard for sustainability and in turn, the Hamar site sets a new standard for how we approach our future data centre operations globally to meet our carbon neutrality target.

Committing to Europe

With such a thriving user base and over 5,000 people working on TikTok across the region, Europe is of critical importance to our platform. Our long-term investment in advanced technologies, industry-leading partnerships and people will continue as part of our ongoing focus on protecting the security of our community and their data.

For more information about Project Clover, visit our new dedicated European Data Security microsite.

* Refers to UK & EEA user data