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Polarise and Macquarie secure € 117m to power European AI data centre expansion
Polarise GmbH and Macquarie Group have unveiled a strategic financing partnership worth up to € 117 million to accelerate European artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The funding will be provided by Macquarie’ s Specialised and Asset Finance division within its Commodities and Global Markets business and will support the fit out of Polarise’ s AI data centre in Munich, Germany, alongside additional AI data centre and GPU development projects across Germany and Europe.
Polarise, a leading NVIDIA Cloud Partner, specialises in designing and building AI Factories for high performance computing workloads. The Munich AI Factory is positioned as the core of a new industrial cloud platform in Germany intended to serve manufacturers researchers and public sector users with scalable secure compute capacity.
The financing package enables Polarise to proceed with construction and equipment installation as planned, keeping the project on track for an early 2026 launch. The partners said the structure was tailored to the specific demands of AI infrastructure – including rapid deployment cycles high power density and long term asset performance.
Michel Boutouil, CEO, Polarise, said the deal underpins Germany’ s AI driven industrial transformation and strengthens Europe’ s competitiveness in advanced computing. He highlighted Macquarie’ s ability to execute on a compressed timetable and its understanding of data centre economics.
Tom McDonell, Associate Director in Macquarie’ s Specialised and Asset Finance division, said the group was proud to support a project that advances transformative AI technologies. He said that Polarise’ s deep HPC expertise aligned with Macquarie’ s global experience in bespoke infrastructure financing for Europe’ s digital future.
Equal1 raises $ 60m to scale silicon-based quantum computing
Equal1, a quantum semiconductor company spun out of University College Dublin, has raised $ 60 million(€ 51.5 million) to accelerate development of scalable silicon-based quantum computers and deployment of its datacenter-ready Bell-1 quantum server.
Total funding to date now exceeds $ 85 million(€ 73 million). The round was led by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund with participation from Atlantic Bridge, the European Innovation Council Fund, Matterwave Ventures, Enterprise Ireland, Elkstone and TNO Ventures.
“ This funding marks the transition from development to deployment,” said Jason Lynch, CEO, Equal1.
“ As AI pushes classical computing toward power and cost limits, quantum becomes essential but only if it can be manufactured and deployed like the rest of the compute stack. By building processors on standard silicon, we are turning quantum into deployable infrastructure for high performance computing.”
With AI driving exponential growth in compute demand, power and cost are becoming major constraints worldwide. Quantum computing promises breakthroughs across material discovery, energy optimization and financial modeling. At scale, quantum can place AI infrastructure on a more sustainable energy trajectory by operating as a tightly integrated accelerator rather than a replacement.
Today’ s quantum challenge is production, not physics. Conventional quantum systems require custom fabrication, exotic cooling and specialist teams. Equal1 instead leverages existing semiconductor manufacturing, unlocking falling costs, improving yields and rapid iteration using proven industry processes.
The result is Bell-1, a rack-mounted quantum server designed for standard datacenters. No dilution refrigerators, no dedicated facilities.
Systems are already shipping, including to ESA’ s Space HPC Centre in Italy.
The funding will support global Bell-1 deployments, real workload integration, progress toward millions of on-chip qubits, scaled manufacturing through foundry partners and team growth to deliver production quantum systems worldwide.
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