European Firm Acquires NVIDIA Partner for Sovereign AI

- The acquisition involved a €100 million equity investment for operations, with Polarise's valuation set at €0.5 billion once the investment is complete. SWI Group has also committed €1.0 billion to expand Polarise's digital infrastructure strategy. - SWI Stoneweg Icona Group is an alternative investment firm listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange with approximately €11 billion in assets under management. The firm's portfolio includes data centers, real estate, and credit. - Germany-based Polarise is an NVIDIA Cloud Preferred Partner that provides high-performance computing through its own hardware and software. The company has established "AI Factories" in Germany and Norway. - The concept of "sovereign AI" aims to enable a nation or region to develop and control its own AI capabilities, ensuring technological independence and data privacy in compliance with local laws. This is a strategic priority for Europe to avoid dependency on foreign technology and bolster its economic competitiveness. - This deal integrates Polarise's GPU- and AI-as-a-Service offerings into SWI Group's AiOnX data center platform, which already includes five sites across Europe. - The European GPU-as-a-Service market is experiencing rapid growth, with one forecast projecting a market value of $1.4 billion in Germany alone by 2030. Another report projects the total European market to reach over $3.1 billion by the same year. - In January 2026, Polarise secured up to €117 million in financing from Macquarie Group to support the development of its AI data center in Munich. - Polarise focuses on sustainable AI infrastructure, utilizing renewable energy, heat reuse, and advanced cooling technologies in its data centers.