Investment firm SWI Group has pulled out of a deal to invest in German AI cloud firm Polarise.

At the same time, the real estate investment company has closed on its acquisition of a US-based cryptominer and is planning its own AI cloud platform.

SWI backs out of Polarise deal

SWI first announced plans to take a majority stake in Polarise, a European AI cloud firm, in February.

This week, however, SWI said it has “determined not to pursue the originally proposed completion of this transaction.”

“Rather than purchasing a majority ownership in Polarise,” the company said, “SWI Group will provide financing to assist the Polarise founders to reorganize their corporate structure and development; the two entities will now remain separated and develop in their own distinct ways.”

Based in Germany, Polarise offers bare metal, private cloud, and GPU services. The company recently launched an AI Factory in Munich, Germany, in partnership with Deutsche Telekom and Nvidia, following its first AI factory in Oslo, Norway. Another is in development around Frankfurt.

The cloud firm was set to deploy capacity in data centers operated by AiOnX, SWI’s European data center platform.

SWI to launch cloud platform

This week also saw SWI Group announce plans to develop its own HPC and GPU-as-a-service platform.

According to the announcement, the group “will leverage its own highly experienced team and balance sheet depth to develop in-house its proprietary AI-cloud platform designed to deliver GPU-accelerated compute to enterprises, research institutions and AI developers.”

Full details haven’t been shared, but the platform will rely on capacity from AiOnX and Genesis Digital Assets.

SWI completed Genesis buy, rebrands cryptominer

Elsewhere, SWI Group has announced the completion of its acquisition of a controlling stake of more than 70 percent in Genesis Digital Assets (GDA).

GDA is now set to be renamed SWI Digital and will be the group’s US-focused digital infrastructure platform.

News that SWI was looking to acquire a data center firm surfaced in February, though few details were announced. By May, the firm had said the target company was a cryptominer based in the US. SWI announced the acquisition of GDA in June.

GDA operates 15 crypto data centers in the US and Sweden, with a footprint of 1.3GW of available power.

Amsterdam Euronext-listed SWI is an alternative investment conglomerate. Formed from the merger of Stoneweg and Icona Capital last year, the company has some €11 billion in assets under management.

SWI’s Stoneweg unit last year announced it was launching its own data center fund and platform, taking a stake in AiOnX. AiOnX is developing a data center park in Cambridge, UK, and near Dublin in Ireland. The company also lists projects in Milan, Italy; Varde, Denmark; and Madrid, Spain.

SWI’s Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust (SERT), which combines Stoneweg European Real Estate Investment Trust and Stoneweg European Business Trust, is also looking to potentially redevelop around ten industrial sites across four European countries for data center use.