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(Bloomberg) — Macquarie Group Ltd. is lending as much as €117 million ($136 million) to German data center infrastructure startup Polarise GmbH, as a debt-fueled boom in the sector continues into 2026.
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The loan will fund Polarise’s fit-out of a Deutsche Telekom AG data center as well as further projects in Europe, a spokeswoman for Macquarie told Bloomberg News.
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Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia Corp. will invest €1 billion in the new Munich AI data center, Bloomberg earlier reported. Polarise will also host Deutsche Telekom’s cloud for industrial AI applications.
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Europe is striving to keep pace with the US and China in the global race to build data centers to host the compute that powers AI applications. Providers are striking debt and equity funding deals to fuel the development frenzy, and at least $178.5 billion in data-center credit deals were struck in the US in 2025, Bloomberg News earlier reported. Significant deals in Europe remain rare, partly due to stricter regulation and concerns about energy and water consumption.
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Macquarie will provide the senior secured loan through its commodities and global markets unit. The facility will be drawn in tranches, with funds released in line with project milestones and capital expenditure requirements.
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Polarise was formed in 2024 by former executives from data center company Northern Data AG, and refits existing infrastructure for AI data centers. In addition to the new Munich center, the startup is working on projects in Oslo and Frankfurt. It raised €10 million in seed funding in 2024, mostly from private individuals, and is an Nvidia partner.
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The build-outs add to the handful of AI data center projects announced in Europe. Microsoft Corp. said in November that it would invest $10 billion in Portugal to build an AI data center. Earlier in 2025, the firm agreed to spend $30 billion over four years on AI infrastructure and existing business in the UK.
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In Germany, Schwarz Digits, a subsidiary of supermarket giant Lidl, hopes to lead a tender to build a large, European Union-subsidized AI data center. Alphabet Inc.’s Google also announced investments of €5.5 billion into computing resources and operations in Germany over the next four years.
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