News.

LUXEMBOURG, TALLINN AND HELSINKI, 1 October 2026 – Finest Bay Area Development Oy (“FEBAY”), the initiator and lead developer of the Finest Tunnel, and Finna Family Office (“Finna”) today announced a partnership to bring family-office capital to the project: a planned 103-kilometre rail link beneath the Gulf of Finland that would join Helsinki and Tallinn and turn today’s two-hour ferry crossing into a short train journey.

FEBAY, founded by Peter Vesterbacka and Kustaa Valtonen, initiated the privately led project and will continue to own and lead it, from technical development and permitting through to delivery.

Under the partnership, Finna plans to establish the Finna Finest Infrastructure Fund, a regulated Luxembourg vehicle that will invest in FEBAY and provide long-term capital for the project’s development. Finna is backed by European family offices and asset managers, alongside backers in the United States.

The partnership rests on a simple idea that infrastructure built to serve generations should be financed by investors who think in generations. Family offices typically invest on behalf of families across generations, can hold assets for the long term, think of legacy and are rarely bound to a fixed exit date. That patience is what a project on this scale requires.

“A tunnel under the sea is not a five-year investment. It is an asset that will serve generations, and that is exactly how family offices think,” said Christian Lindekilde, Founder of Finna. “They invest for the next generation, not the next quarter, and they understand what strategic infrastructure means for the regions their families live and work in. The Finna Finest Infrastructure Fund is being designed to give them a clear, regulated route into one of Northern Europe’s defining infrastructure projects. And as our family office platform opens, we want long-term investing of this kind to come within reach of many more families.”

The tunnel first, then the programme around it

The tunnel is the core of the programme and its first step. It is planned as an approximately 103-kilometre connection, including an approximately 78-kilometre subsea section, with two large railway bores and four European standard-gauge tracks. The route connects Tuusula (depot and cargo terminal) and Helsinki-Vantaa Airport with Otaniemi and Keilaniemi in Espoo, the planned artificial island about 15 km south of Helsinki shoreline and Ülemiste in Tallinn next to the Tallinn airport, with onward access to Rail Baltica. It is intended to carry passengers and freight between two capitals that are already closely tied: more than 7.5 million passengers travelled between Helsinki and Tallinn by sea in 2025.

Around the tunnel, FEBAY is planning a set of associated projects, each to be developed, permitted and financed in its own right:

• Artificial island. A planned island in the Gulf of Finland on the tunnel route, supporting the construction and technical operation of the tunnel with emergency exits, ventilation etc., and designed to act as an urban hub.
• Data centre. A secure, gigawatt-scale data centre built into the tunnel system deep beneath the seabed. Shielded by rock and sea and self-sufficient in power, it is designed to run on the programme’s own SMR energy and to serve fast-growing Nordic and European demand for computing capacity.
• SMR energy. Small modular reactors (SMRs), a new generation of compact nuclear reactors, provide dedicated low-carbon power for the data centre and the wider programme.
• Offshore wind. An offshore wind farm project, adding renewable generation to the programme.
• Grid capacity. High-voltage transmission through the tunnel, adding capacity between the Nordic and Continental European power grids, protected deep below the seabed and out of reach of the ship anchors that have damaged subsea cables in the gulf.

The current target is to begin tunnel operations in 2035, subject to environmental assessment, planning, permitting, technical development, financing and governmental processes.

“Helsinki and Tallinn are two capitals with a stretch of sea between them. The Finest Tunnel will make them one region,” said Kustaa Valtonen, co-founder of Finest Bay Area Development. “The tunnel comes first, and everything else builds on it, the island, a data centre secured deep beneath the seabed, the energy to run it, and a power connection that is far better protected than any cable on the seafloor. In Finna we have a partner that brings the patient, long-term investors a programme like this needs.”

“Europe has never been short of big ideas. What it often lacks is capital willing to take the risk and stay with them long enough to get them built,” said Peter Vesterbacka, founder of FEBAY. “Europe’s family offices, together with partners around the world, can be that capital. Random Ventures, the investment company Kustaa Valtonen and I jointly own, has invested in Finna because we believe in what it is building. That investment reflects our commitment to this partnership and to delivering the Finest Tunnel.”