Why TensorX believes Europe's AI race will be decided by who owns the GPUs

For the past two years, Europe's AI debate has centred on foundation models, more recently expanding to questions of data ownership and intelligence

But for Dublin-based TensorX, the next competitive battleground lies further down the stack: securing the GPUs, financing, and data centre capacity needed to enable organisations to deploy AI without their data ever leaving European jurisdiction.

TensorX buys and operates AI hardware and data centre capacity across Europe, providing private AI inference on dedicated Nvidia GPUs. The company keeps prompts and data on European infrastructure with full data residency and zero retention, 

I spoke to Tim Grant, Executive Chairman of TensorX to learn more.

From fintech frustration to sovereign AI 

TensorX was born from a practical problem. TensorX CEO Shane Morton built and sold financial trading software before acquiring ICT Services, one of Ireland's leading data centre infrastructure companies. 

Through his portfolio of fintech companies, Morton kept hearing the same thing: they wanted to adopt AI but needed certainty that their data would stay within European jurisdiction. 

Grant explained: 

“We realised there was no viable way for many enterprises to adopt AI without a sovereign, zero-data-retention solution."

TensorX combines software, hardware and infrastructure expertise to deploy GPU clusters that provide secure AI inference.

Grant explains:

“We buy the GPUs, optimise them for today's leading AI models, and sell that capability to customers who need complete control over their data.”

The TensorX platform supports more than 33 models via an OpenAI-compatible API, enabling businesses to adopt generative AI without sending sensitive information outside the European jurisdiction or retaining customer data for training. 

The company is already generating revenue across three customer groups: 

• Large regulated enterprises in sectors such as finance, healthcare and legal services, where GDPR, the EU AI Act and data residency requirements increasingly shape AI adoption;
• AI marketplaces, including OpenRouter, which route developer demand to sovereign GPU compute; and
• Software companies building their own AI products on TensorX's infrastructure, including APEX:E3, TradeLocker and Cor Prime.

The three bottlenecks holding back European AI

Grant contends that ultimately, there are three major bottlenecks in this industry: access to GPUs, financing those GPUs and securing enough power. TensorX also owns a Dublin-based company called ICT, which has worked with hardware and data centres for over 20 years, providing deep knowledge of infrastructure, supply chains and GPU procurement. 

Thanks to ICT's long-standing relationship with Dell as a Titanium Partner, alongside TensorX's status as an NVIDIA Inception partner, the company secured its first allocation of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in a market where supply remains constrained.

But obtaining hardware is only half the problem. You also need the financing to buy it.

While companies like Anthropic are raising extraordinary amounts of capital and working directly with NVIDIA, “the rest of us have to navigate traditional supply chains,” explained Grant.

“That's why we're focused not only on sourcing GPUs but also on developing new financing models for AI infrastructure.

Traditional infrastructure financing already exists, but AI hardware is still so new that lenders don't yet understand depreciation cycles or long-term asset values. That's an important problem we're trying to solve.”

Building Europe's GPU infrastructure

According to Grant, “one of our biggest advantages is that we have our own capital. That allows us to move quickly."

The company has already committed €8 million to deploy NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, including the latest B300 chips, and its  targeting around €100 million in GPU infrastructure over time because “we believe that's the scale required to become a meaningful European player.”

Power is the next constraint

Access to power is rapidly becoming one of the biggest constraints on Europe's AI infrastructure build-out. And in terms of sustainability, Grant admits that everything in AI infrastructure is moving incredibly quickly, making it difficult to predict what the landscape will look like even one or two years from now. 

“We don't yet know how supply chains will evolve or how much new capacity will come online. There is significant effort across the industry to build more sustainable infrastructure, but it's still early.”

In the short term, TensorX secured enough capacity to support planned growth to around €50-100 million of deployed infrastructure. Longer term, it's actively exploring partnerships — and potentially even building its own data centres — to ensure access to sufficient power.

Beyond Europe: sovereign AI everywhere

In terms of data sovereignty, TensorX’s long-term vision isn't simply to operate within Europe. It wants to become a specialist in sovereign AI infrastructure across multiple jurisdictions, helping multinational organisations manage data residency and compliance globally.

Interestingly, Germany has become one of TensorX's strongest markets, alongside growing demand from France, Denmark and the Netherlands as organisations prepare for the EU AI Act's compliance requirements.

“We've seen a cluster of independent enquiries from German businesses looking specifically for sovereign AI infrastructure. That wasn't something we expected, but it reflects the strong focus Germany places on regulation, compliance and data sovereignty,” shared Grant. 

TensorX's immediate priority is deploying the GPU infrastructure it has already ordered. Some systems are already live, with more arriving over the coming months. In addition to its dedicated infrastructure in Dublin and Helsinki, the company has additional capacity planned across Germany, France, the Nordics, and the UK.

At the same time, it's growing the team and preparing for commercial expansion. The company recently announced a partnership with Solstice — a blockchain-based infrastructure company focused on financing real-world assets — to create a facility with up to $1 billion in capacity to finance AI hardware and data-centre build-out to meet rising demand for sovereign compute across the EU. Solstice will provide the onchain financing for that buildout and will launch aiUSX, a yield asset that opens the same infrastructure lending to companies holding capital for AI.