Pure Data Centres executive chair on AI, microgrids and EU growth

Gary Wojtaszek believes he’s joined Pure Data Centres Group at the right time.

Taking the helm as executive chairman in March this year, he sees Pure as an opportunity to leap into the European data centre industry. Having previously worked as President and CEO at CyrusOne, he has also sat on several boards of directors to shape industry vision. He now looks forward to helping Pure scale as the company commits to significant growth across Europe.

“What we’re about to do is really exciting – what you’ve seen in technology rollouts over the years is that Europe is always several years behind the US,” Wojtaszek shared with Capacity. “By positioning this company ahead of what I’ve seen work well there, we can build what I think is going to be the most exciting platform in Europe.”

First 100 days: Charting the course for platform growth

Finding 2026 the right time to jump back into the data centre sector, Wojtaszek explained how he was eager to take the reins of a company of Pure’s size and turn it into a relatively big company within a couple of years.

“What sold it for me was meeting the team and understanding how strong they are,” he explained. “I didn’t want to have to rebuild a whole team, and luckily, I didn’t have to – the team at Pure is incredibly solid, some of the best design, delivery and build people I’ve seen in the industry.”

During his first few months, Wojtaszek’s key focus is to set a strategy and create clear guidelines, so the team can scale further and faster. He explained how he’s hired two people, Jeff Harrison as chief commercial officer and Mike Schwartz as chief financial officer, with a strong track record in the industry, to support this trajectory.

“I’ve hired [Jeff] to be on the ground, who will be supported by new salespeople we’re hiring,” he added. “On the finance side, we hired [Schwartz], whom I’ve worked with for 25-30 years within multiple companies. I’m really excited about what they’re going to add to the team.”

To scale even further, Wojtaszek said Pure will continue to focus predominantly on the FLAP-D data centre markets and accelerate growth in these regions through inorganic partnerships. These will be like Pure’s joint venture with SEGRO to unlock a significant AI infrastructure development in London, combining the assets of both parties.

Pure sees an opportunity within this to develop a strong digital infrastructure pipeline across critical European markets where hyperscale customers are facing power, land and planning challenges. The development, according to Wojtaszek, will support bringing forward digital infrastructure in markets that have historically been difficult to build in.

“We have a couple more in the pipeline that will give us more capacity to accelerate our growth in areas like London, Paris and Amsterdam,” he said. “We’re going to supplement that with much larger AI-type campus developments in other countries to catch the wave that’s been building there.”

He gives Finland as an example, where Pure is actively developing.

“We have a few hundred megawatts of capacity there,” he added. “We’re going to supplement that with several other expansion opportunities in Spain, Portugal and Eastern Europe, to be able to provide data solutions across all customer needs.”

Creating a blueprint for scale

As FLAP-D markets move at a pace, Wojtaszek sees the primary challenges as being site selection and power. To confront this, he said Pure is partnering with organisations with plenty of real estate assets – like SEGRO – who just need a data centre developer to work alongside them to scale.

“That lets us go a lot further, while sharing some of the economics with the partner. You will see us do a lot more of that,” he said. “I give the team tremendous credit for their ability to identify these assets and match them with the right power in those locations.”

Pure was successful in doing this with its project in Amsterdam, investing over €1 billion to build the largest data centre in the region. Additionally, the company partnered with fellow data centre company AVK to deploy the first microgrid in Europe, a self-powered data centre in Dublin that has its own power plant built on site.

“It’s one of the biggest growth areas in the US, but we’re the first ones to do it in Europe,” Wojtaszek explained. “Our Dublin facility is not only the first self-powered data centre in the continent, but also net zero carbon – the team went the extra mile to source the biomethane to run it.”

Wojtaszek sees this type of solution as a blueprint for the future of data centre design, as it demonstrates to him how large-scale microgrids can be replicated across Europe. Already, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK have been identified as key target markets for the technology.

“This solution addresses current energy and power constraints. If a data centre can make its own power on-site, that’s an advantage,” he said. “I think it’s going to be the future.”

He added that microgrid solutions could also solve political challenges, particularly given ongoing resistance to data centres. Public perception of these facilities is that they are power-hungry and put overwhelming pressures on the grid, but Wojtaszek argued that microgrids could stop those concerns.

“This type of solution works because it doesn’t put pressure on the grid,” he explained. “We’re generating our own electricity, it’s net zero carbon, so there’s no environmental pollution, and the data centre has closed loop water cooling so doesn’t use any water in its operations.”

Making the most of the ‘AI wave’

For Wojtaszek, the AI wave is on its way, just like the way cloud boomed in the US before coming to Europe, he said.

“We’re trying to take advantage of that wave hitting Europe,” he said. “We’re going to try and position here to catch all of that demand and win an outsized share.”

Within its appetite for growth, Pure’s commitment to sustainability is a standout priority, particularly through its Healthier Earth subsidiary. Wojtaszek explained how the organisation is entirely focused on environmental responsibility efforts, with Pure spending millions of dollars every year to “do the things most companies just talk about”.

He explained: “There’s a whole team focused on this – including biomethane sourcing, for instance, specifically how you source biomethane gas all around the continent and into Ireland to generate net zero-carbon power.”

Healthier Earth also recently launched a marketplace to deliver biochar based carbon credits, providing the customer with carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint from data centres.

“Healthier Earth aims to problem-solve concerns about data centres,” Wojtaszek added.

Looking ahead, Wojtaszek is optimistic about Pure’s potential and how it can scale – but a significant part of that is de-risking capital to make progress a reality.

“If you have a high-performing team that executes well and thinks carefully through capital allocation issues and engages well with customers, that’s how you pull it together,” he said. “Ideally, you want to sign everything together so you’re not putting a lot of capital in the ground before you have a customer signed up and the land acquired.

He added: “If you’re a CEO, you basically have two jobs; how do you allocate capital in a risk-free way and how do you hire the best people?

“If you do those jobs well, everything else follows.”

This feature forms part of Capacity Magazine’s special edition for Datacloud Global Congress. To read the full edition, click HERE.

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