SINES, Portugal (Reuters) - U.S. investment fund Davidson Kempner and Britain's Pioneer Point Partners plan to invest 8.5 billion euros ($9.35 billion) by 2030 in a data centre hub in Portugal to serve a growing demand from major tech and artificial intelligence companies.

They said on Friday their joint project, Start Campus, in the city of Sines, 150 km (93 miles) south of Lisbon, already has one of the planned six buildings in operation.

Investments in data centres, which help provide computing power for AI, have surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, as companies across sectors increasingly shift their operations to the cloud and integrate AI into their offerings.

Portugal's caretaker Economy Minister Pedro Reis said the project is a "structuring investment for the Portuguese economy, which helps to place Portugal in a strategic position in the data economy, taking advantage of Sines' privileged geographical location".

($1 = 0.9087 euros)