U.S. retail giant Amazon has established a subsidiary, Amazon Data Services Estonia OÜ, fueling speculation that the company is seeking to establish a data center or start providing cloud services in Estonia, daily Postimees reports.
While the online retail operator is currently keeping its activities in Estonia confidential, the subsidiary, which was founded on July 11, has registered data processing and web hosting services as its primary areas of activity.
Latvian news agency LETA reported on Monday that a company by the same name had been founded in Latvia on Aug. 2. Both companies were founded by A100 Row Inc., a company registered in the U.S. Martin Casey Malachy, an Irish national, has been appointed to the boards of both companies.
Citing LETA, online news portal Data Economy reported that Amazon may be launching a new web services business to serve the cloud needs of all three Baltic countries. According to information available to Postimees, however, the creation of a new data center is not currently on the agenda.
Amazon currently has five data centers in Europe, the newest of which opened in Sweden last year. The other four are located in Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France; a sixth is planned to open in Milan.
Raido Lember, an investing consultant at Enterprise Estonia, told Postimees that Estonia has hosted Amazon representatives on several occasions, as well as introduced them to local investment opportunities, including the creation of a center for service, development or data storage.
“According to the information we have, none of these activities are linked to the legal entity recently established in Estonia,” Lember said. “It has likely been created in relation to European digital taxation, and activities such as this are not regarded as investments in Estonia.”
According to the commercial register, the ultimate beneficiary of Amazon Data Services Estonia OÜ is Jeffrey Preston Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com, Inc.
