SWI Group, the Euronext Amsterdam-listed investor formed from the merger of Stoneweg and Icona, has launched SWI Compute, a new company that will build and operate Nvidia-based AI factories, starting in Europe. The unit says it has ordered about $1bn of Nvidia systems and signed contracts with its first customers.
What was announced
In a release issued on 26 October, SWI said the new business completes a vertically integrated stack spanning powered land, data centre development and compute services. SWI Compute will draw on campuses developed by AiOnX, the group’s European platform, and on SWI Digital’s US sites, which include former cryptocurrency-mining facilities being assessed for AI conversion.
The company became a preferred Nvidia Cloud Partner in August. It is led by chief executive Halil Mirakhmedov, who said in the release that energy availability is “the primary bottleneck facing European AI infrastructure”.
The numbers
- Power: SWI Group says it has spent six years securing access to up to 3.6GW of power across 24 sites in Europe and the US.
- European campuses: five, in Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Spain and Italy; one is already leased to a hyperscaler.
- First AI factory: a 30MW initial phase in the UK with about 7,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs and 3,500 Vera CPUs in Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, expected online by the end of 2027. The campus, at Sutton-in-the-Isle in Cambridgeshire according to DatacenterDynamics, is planned to grow to 530MW.
- Long-term target: 2.3GW of Nvidia AI factory capacity by 2029.
Initial deployments will use Nvidia Blackwell Ultra systems, with Delta Computers named as systems integrator. SWI says its first customer is a US-based AI inference platform, and that it will target European AI companies, research labs, universities and enterprises wanting capacity under European jurisdiction.
Context
SWI joins a growing group of European-headquartered neoclouds and developers trying to turn secured grid connections into GPU capacity before rivals do. Grid access has become the scarce asset: in the UK, demand connection applications have surged, and Ofgem has consulted on measures to clear speculative data centre projects from the queue. SWI’s pitch rests on having land and power already in hand.
The company also said that from 2027 all new sites, starting with the UK campus, will follow Nvidia’s Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design, which co-designs compute, networking, power and cooling as a single system. Nvidia claims the approach can fit up to 40% more GPU capacity into the same power budget.
Why it matters for modular and edge in Europe
This is a hyperscale-sized plan rather than an edge one, but it reinforces two trends relevant to smaller and factory-built deployments. First, reference designs such as Nvidia’s DSX standardise the power, cooling and rack blocks that make up an AI hall, which pushes the industry towards repeatable, prefabricated building blocks rather than bespoke engineering. Suppliers of skid-mounted power and cooling modules stand to benefit.
Second, SWI frames its offer around capacity close to European users and data. Inference workloads in particular are expected to spread beyond a few large campuses, and operators that control power at multiple mid-sized sites, including converted industrial and mining locations, may find phased or modular deployments the fastest way to monetise that power before full-scale buildings are complete.
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