About this episode

The episode features a discussion with Michel Boutouil about Polarise's innovative approach to AI infrastructure and the implications of digital sovereignty in Europe.

Gerard and Laurent welcome Michel Boutouil, co-founder and CEO of Polarise, a leading European AI infrastructure provider and NVIDIA Cloud Partner based in Berlin. After discussing about what happens outside of a datacenter, it is time to dive inside one. Polarise is one of the few genuinely European NeoCloud companies — essentially a European counterpart to CoreWeave — specializing in GPU infrastructure for AI inference. Through its partnership with NVIDIA, Polarise designs its datacenters around the GPU rack itself, using liquid cooling from the outset rather than starting with a traditional real estate-first approach. The company has already developed AI factories in Germany, Norway and the UK. In the conversation, we explore the growing commoditization of large language models and why the real long-term value may lie in AI factories — facilities that are fundamentally different from conventional datacenters. Given Europe’s notoriously long grid-connection timelines, Polarise focuses on refurbishing brownfield sites with under 50MW of grid access instead of pursuing massive gigawatt-scale campuses. It’s a pragmatic “pod” strategy: adapt to the grid’s constraints rather than…

People in this episode

Hosts: Gerard Reid, Laurent Segalen

Guest: Michel Boutouil

Topics covered

• AI infrastructure
• GPU technology
• digital sovereignty
• data centers
• energy strategy
• European tech

Keywords

• AI factories
• GPU infrastructure
• liquid cooling
• data centers
• digital sovereignty
• CLOUD Act
• energy system
• European tech

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Polarise, NVIDIA

Places: Berlin, Germany, Norway, UK, Europe

More episodes of Redefining Energy

• 238. Revealed: CIP’s Playbook (Live from DLA Piper) - Jul26 · July 19, 2026 · 36 min
• 237. Datacenters: "Let’s get Physical" with Quinbrook - Jul26 · July 12, 2026 · 31 min
• 236. The Bankability of Energy Storage (Solar Power Summit) - Jul26 · July 5, 2026 · 26 min
• 234. Engie, the remarkable turn around (live from Eurelectric Power Summit) - Jun26 · June 21, 2026 · 27 min
• 233. To predict the future, “In BNEF we Trust” - Jun26 · June 14, 2026 · 29 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Redefining Energy podcast page.