Is AI & 'big' data *really* going to be gas-powered? Toddington Harper hopes to clean up...

31:07We need energy for heat pumps, for example. we need energy for all of the things that we always needed energy for in the first place that are also increasing and now on top of all of that we need country scale additional amounts of energy when i mean country scale you know the equivalent power so the uk i think is roughly consuming around 30 gigawatts of power i think roughly yeah and so so you know world data center power is three times the uk uh at the moment and we're going to get you know times five to ten within the next five to 10 years, which is pretty extraordinary. Especially when you consider that energy is basically what has limited human civilization.

31:48At any point, even in the height of the fossil fuel era, it's fundamentally energy limitation that stops you doing stuff. To talk casually about increasing civilization's energy usage by that, I still find this debate incredible. I've never heard data centers described in terms of the amount of energy they use. And I think that's the most honest way to do it, both from a physics point of view and a practical point of view. I really like that because 100 gigawatts of data center, which sounds colossal, like that makes sense to me as a fraction of the world's, you know, I think that's a sort of honest measure.

32:24So I like that. But yeah, so the energy has been this limiting thing. You know, you can, from the physics point of view, you can do anything that's not impossible if you have enough energy and time sometimes. But so, yeah, I just wanted to sort of pause on that scale okay it is extraordinary and again it's completely ludicrous sort of ask in a way yeah um so go on then how are you going to do it yeah so i mean i set out with a ludicrous ask by naming a company gigatons and so when you when you do that you need to really lean into if you want to be honest about delivering on the name um you know that that's billions of tons of emission reductions and so you know that better answers the initial question of why data centers and because of the enormity of that challenge.

33:09And so, you know, fortunately, there is plenty of energy around. It's sunshine. So more energy falls on the earth every hour than the whole of, you know, civilization uses in an entire year. So actually, it involves harvesting a fairly small proportion, pretty tiny proportion of that energy in multiple geographies. So based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which is where our headquarters is. It's a pretty incredible place to be based. It's a very ambitious place. It's known for its older energy forms, if you like, but equally, being there, it's very focused on new energy forms. It's got some of the biggest renewable energy businesses in the world.

33:50And that's a platform to then also operate in other territories. So we're also looking at other areas of the world that have large amounts of solar energy that's available. And this ultimately means deserts. And so we look to use land, which would otherwise not be utilised for a great deal, to actually use a pretty small proportion of deserts, albeit it's a very large area. proportionally it's pretty tiny. And the other benefit that you get of using deserts is you tend to not upset as many people. And one of the challenges, for example, in the US, which is where the majority of these data centers have been built so far, is that there have been enormous challenges that have created.

34:40So people have gone and built giant data centers where there was power. And what that's meant is that they've sucked the power away from whoever was using it before. And what that has translated to is more expensive power. So you've got communities whose energy prices have increased by two or three times just because somebody else has turned up next door. Traditionally, data centers have used huge amounts of water as well for cooling. These chips not just require electricity, but that electricity mostly gets turned into heat and that heating needs cooling. So let's deal with that because there's a couple of practical problems I can see with the desert thing for all the, as you point out, abundant incoming energy from the sun.

35:23One of them is presumably that solar panels are not as efficient at high temperatures and temperatures in the desert do get very, very, very high. Another is, you know, kind of, I know not all deserts are kind of like the Sahara and sand everywhere, But, you know, sand that gets blown in the wind is quite abrasive. And then the other thing is that obviously all these these colossal gigawatts of energy, you know, energy is neither created or destroyed, as we know from from science classes at school. And so it has to go somewhere. And in this case, it goes directly into heat. And so you then also got a load of extra heat that you potentially some of that could also be useful energy, but you've still got to get rid of it.

36:03So how do you deal with the heat problem and then the environment? Because these are, you know, deserts are quite challenging environments. Yeah. So I guess addressing both of those kind of head on. So water is an interesting one. So, you know, we, as well as all of the other challenges facing humanity, I don't want to sound too doom and gloom, but water is a really big one that's coming. without water we don't last very long as humanity and so for the water to be you know that is available to be consumed by you know giant computers and data centers isn't really an ideal solution so we've been looking at ways to both mitigate water use but also to to work out how we can generate our own water and so there are there actually is a lot of water in the air We call it humidity.

37:02And there are incredibly efficient machines called air to water generators that can extract that humidity reasonably efficiently. And so we have been integrating into our design. So we're productizing everything. So our microgrids are called giga blocks. Our compute modules are called giga pods. And every solution, the combination of the giga block and the giga pod, we call it a giga center. So that's your fully renewable energy powered AI data center. It's going to be like Apple with its iPads and iPhones and iMacs. You're just going to have giga everything. We're just going giga everything. So this is the awesome thing, awesome, about calling a company Gigatons because you get to have a lot of fun with the word giga.

37:58And giga is a great word, isn't it? Like it's like everyone loves giga. Well, you're being very restrained in not pronouncing it in the back to the future gigatons way. I'm sure that's been pointed out to you before. 1.21 gigawatts. Don't worry, we will be having a back to the future party. Yeah, we will be. 1.21 gigawatts. Yeah, so it's quite funny. That does appear quite a lot. Actually, funnily enough, in terms of funny films, does the number 42 appear a lot as well in our mathematics? Jaikers Guide to the Galaxy. So underneath a lot of what we do, we do come back to the future and we do find ourselves looking at the number 42 a lot, which I think also reminds us that we're heading in a positive direction.

38:45Anyone who hasn't listened to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the radio version, not the TV or the film version, I promise it will keep you happy for the, whatever, 12 or 18 hours of it. No, it must be half our episodes, weren't there? There was six and six and nine, maybe. Anyway, well worth listening to. But to really understand 42, listen to the radio version. Anyway, carry on. And if you do work it out, we've been wondering whether we've worked out the question because everything seems to result in 42. And then we're like, I see how good it is. But anyway, I digress. So, yes, we have solutions that are designed to make our own water or extract water from the air.

39:27But also, you know, very exciting. We've been working on the latest NVIDIA design. So NVIDIA is this absolutely incredible company. I think it's now the biggest, highest market cap company in the world that has the best chips for AI. And so we've been designing together with our partners. We announced a major partnership with Schneider Electric recently. We've got some other extraordinary partnerships that we'll be announcing soon as well. And we're focusing on the latest NVIDIA designs for the latest chips. So the GB300 and something called the Vera Rubin. And these are liquid. Oh, right. That's nice.

40:00That's a nice nod to astronomy heritage there. Vera Rubin was a female astronomer in America. Something else to look up. We might be leaving podcast listeners with homework here. But yes, look up Vera Rubin and then go and listen to all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyway, sorry, carry on. As you mentioned, I probably should have done as well. Look up is a phrase we use a lot as well, just generally. It's time to look up. There's a lot of doom and gloom in this world. And, you know, I guess because we spend a lot of our time focused on both sunshine, but also trying to find positive solutions, you know, look up is something we talk about a lot, which you just did too.

40:39And I guess, yes, within the Vera Rubin. And so these are liquid cooled GPUs, so graphics processing units, the chips that power AI. And we're focusing on these designs. They have closed loop systems and we will be pioneering and announcing some very, very exciting innovations in terms of water that dramatically reduce the water consumption and pretty much eliminate water use in the local area, from the local area. So not entirely. And can you use the heat at all? Because that's the other thing. I mean, you know, if you have heat at high enough temperature, you can, in principle, extract extra energy from it or use it for other things.

41:24It has to be hot to do that. Is there any, is there an opportunity to do that? Or is that just too many? There definitely, definitely is. So probably not on project one, but we're actually working on an innovation center as well for the first project. And so after pioneering the blueprints, if you like, for the first gigacenter, we will be continuing to innovate and build on that. And one of the solutions we have in our program is exactly that. So it's about how we can extract the heat, actually increase the grade of that heat, make it hotter, and then extract that heat too. So you're on the money there as well.

42:05But the good news is that if you do that, then you can dramatically change the amount of water that you use. And so we will be drastically reducing less water. We're not going to be impacting energy use in the local area because we're generating our own energy. We won't be producing emissions. So if you look at some of the biggest data centers that are being built at the moment, they are basically running on gas turbines or gas engines. and communities are pretty unhappy about those generally because all of a sudden what was quiet and clean air, people are finding replaced with pretty noisy, pretty polluting gas engines, gas turbines 24-7 on a massive scale.

42:52That must be pretty intimidating and daunting to live next to. So again, part of what we're doing as well is going to be pioneering solutions where communities don't need to be impacted because A, they might not even be in the vicinity, but certainly we'll only be using generators as a backup. If they are used, we'll be running them off clean fuels. But most of the time, certainly how we size the systems, they'll be running off virtually silent solar energy and battery solutions that consume the very water that's generated. Let's have a think about locations then, because I can see that, you know, like the world is quite full of humans.

43:34One of the few areas that generally has a lower density of native people, although fewer, is, you know, the great deserts and sort of across the middle of the country, if you like, the middle of the globe around the belt. But in principle, is the idea here that all every, you know, data centre like this would be in something that we would now conventionally think of as a desert? Or is there potential to put these, I mean, perhaps they couldn't be as big, and perhaps their energy output wouldn't be as great, but could they go in other countries? I mean, if there was a bit of spare land somewhere in the UK, is this the kind of thing that might ever come to the UK?

44:18Or is the entire point of this, that you go to the places which increasingly, in the future will be uninhabitable by humans and you put your data centers there and then the querying for the data centers all comes from 2 000 miles away but the data centers themselves are definitely not where the people are what's your what's your view for the future of that kind of thing where are these where where might it be feasible to put these in the future and i i think that there's going to be um a bit like you know energy there will be a combination of solutions that's required. And that's certainly also the case for data centers.

44:55There will be large data centers, there will be small data centers, there will be, in fact, you'll also need another, you know, there's another type of data center you need, like much smaller ones that are called edge data centers, or edge AI, because, you know, not only, you know, at the moment, I guess we, a lot of us think of AI as chat GPT and doing queries, but the next kind of, you know, iterations that are coming pretty quickly is physical AI. uh and so humanoid robots you know it's like uh when someone first mentioned humanoid robots a couple of years ago in abu dhabi i was like are you serious and like it's i've gone from are you serious to you know oh my goodness like these things are almost mainstream we're going to be mainstream pretty quickly in fact i don't get why they have to be humans yet given that you know the whole fully charged everything electric thing was founded by a guy who became famous for playing humanoid robot but i i i do think that why would they why do they have to be human sex i have met a few i've done a few years ago i was um hosting at the global robotics research conference and you know you do get a few there was there was one that a robot a guy had made a robot of himself and the robot gave the talk it was very disconcerting copied all his facial expressions he sat next to it and the robot did the talking um obviously pre-planned it wasn't thinking about itself but it did i mean i'm not convinced as convinced that they need to be human shaped um as everyone else like i i think you know if it's going to do a job then it could be any shape doesn't necessarily have to be a human shape so i'm kind of interested by this fascination with human shapes but anyway robots of one kind or another sorry not to interrupt your previous question as well i didn't quite get around to as well on that so again i would agree all shapes and sizes for humanoid robots.

46:40I'm quite fascinated with them myself. I have on X, you know, one of my searches is for humanoid robots. And so, you know, I'm seeing them doing extraordinary things, you know, playing tennis, playing goal. I mean, they're quite remarkable, but equally, they will be robots in all forms. And so as another answer to your question of how do you operate these desert, these solar farms and deserts with robots as well, and they will mostly not be, you know, humanoid shaped. And so robots for cleaning solar panels, as an example, robots to help install solar panels, solutions and infrastructure, robots to survey, robots to, you know, it's just a whole range of different solutions.

47:19And these robots also require power and they will require, you know, very quick connections often, particularly if they're in vehicles. And so, you know, that requires inference. so that's when you're talking to AI and need a very quick response. And so you'll have edge data centers, going back to your previous question, in more built-up areas. You'll have very large data centers for your longer queries if you're going to ask a really complicated question to Anthropic, Claude, or whatever it might be. You don't really mind if it takes a second or two longer to give you that answer. You're really more interested in the answer.

47:58There'll be a combination of those. You know, the reason that we are focusing on solar-powered data centers and the reason we are focusing on desert locations is because of speed and scale. So, you know, as I mentioned, like, unless we get on with this now and deliver really quickly and at massive scale, then the compute capacity will be delivered by other solutions. And those other solutions are very likely to be what's currently the case, which is basically running now on natural gas as a primary solution. And so the advantage of the locations that we focus on is that you've got very good radiation throughout summer and winter.

48:44And another point you raised is, don't you get less, are your solar panels less efficient when it's hot? Yes, is the answer to your question. but actually when you look at it as a 24 7 365 perspective then we're looking to balance energy in the winter and as we are in the summer and so that's actually not not a terrible thing and actually the the cooling you get in the in the winter boosts and the sun you know the the heat in the summer reduces slightly but what's more important to us is you know is reliable energy 24 7 uh 365 so um you know and we want that's interesting so just just to just to unpack that point a bit.

49:21You're saying that in the winter, because it's cooler, even though there's fewer hours of sunlight, the solar panels are more efficient. So the reduced number of hours compensates for their efficiency over the course of a year. That's quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, it's actually for us, it's a pretty good solution. But the other one is that, as I mentioned, like, you know, the demand for this compute capacity, it's like now, it's measured in I've never never seen anything quite like it so with electric vehicles you know we would build this you know these amazing you know this amazing infrastructure and then like fingers crossed people would turn up you know that was in the early days now it's not the case because you know lots and lots of people drive electric vehicles and it's you know but when we built our first you know first when we were planning Braintree the first electric forecourt we had to you know we were fielding questions from investors of what if nobody turns up.

50:20And there was this like, you know, gradual kind of increase, which we're modeling. And fortunately, you know, the stats are following that and often outdoing that. But when it comes to data centers, it's the, you know, it's kind of like the opposite. The demand is here now, available, like now, now, now, now, now. And you want to deliver it in, you know, days, weeks, small numbers of months. And if you don't, it will be served by another source, another form. And so, you know, for us, it means if we're building a microgrid in locations that have got good seasonal generation, then we don't therefore need to rely on a conventional grid connection.

50:59Now, answer your question, could we do this in the UK? We definitely could, but we would in the UK need a grid connection for sure, because actually about eight months of the year, the irradiation levels in the UK are pretty good. You know, six months of the year extremely good but um but four months of the year you know not at all viable and two months of the year forget it uh and so you would need a grid connection um you know so so yeah i do expect and hope and anticipate that people will be building you know directly you know uh directly connected um you know renewable solar you know and wind uh projects that are directly connected to data centers in the UK.

51:36I certainly hope so. So just give us a sense then. Yeah, that is, I think, and that is currently very much proving the block, I think, on the system. So give us a sense then of, I mean, Gigaton's the company is what, sort of barely two years old now? It's still a young company by the scale, the normal sort of company time scales, right? How, if you were to get out your crystal ball a little bit, and let's since the world is changing very very quickly so let's say five four or five years into the future is it possible to i mean in that just i mean that used to be a short period i normally i used to ask people for forecasts for like you know 10 or 20 years ahead on most subjects i would but on this one it feels like four or five years is is already looking you know that that's kind of the limit of what anyone can foresee so how quickly reasonably given that you know things are complicated and supply chains still work in the physical world and all that kind of stuff in four or five years you know where do you think you're going to be how do you think this will this solution has a a chance of being up there with all the the current grid powered ones or you know gas generated gas powered ones like where where how quickly is this going to scale up i guess is what i'm asking how quickly can you see this scaling up it's funny um like when you mentioned five years I was like oh wow you know that's a long time that's a very long time I'll be like oh anything beyond about two or three years in the world of data centers is a very very long time and in fact we we look on months you know so we've designed our gigacenters to be deliverable within less than 12 months that's what we're focusing on so someone says I want one then they could have it fully functional 12 months operating from yeah yeah but actually much faster than that as well because the individual um uh it's a modular system and so you know the sort of you know on a gigablock level a gigablock is designed to produce five megawatts of continuous power 24 7 365 and uh and gigablocks you know which you know they contain huge amounts of solar energy batteries you know lots of very clever stuff um and uh and they should be able to be delivered well will be delivered you know within months uh and so even if you even though we're building you know we're building like 100 megawatt you know multi-hundred megawatt ultimately you know ambition for the gigawatt scale um uh projects um we'll be building them in a modular form and turning capacity on you know on a very you know on an ongoing basis and so um you know i guess the short answer to your question is we're building for scale again i come back to this game question of you know we called the company gigatons you know and if i want to be honest and we want to be authentic about that, then we need to have targets that, you know, that, you know, that aim for the stars.

54:30And we're certainly powering it, powering it from the stars. And, you know, and we've designed a solution. I'm so excited when we will be announcing some of the new partnerships as well. We were so excited to announce Schneider, what an amazing partner they are. And we've got, you know, a similar caliber of additional complimentary, so different, but, you know, complimentary partners to announce as well. And so, you know, our view is that we won't be able to do this by ourselves. We need great people. And unfortunately, I'm blessed to have an amazing, amazing team, great investors. And you've got, you know, really solid support there too.

55:07And, you know, we'll be, you know, have announced one partnership and we'll be announcing more soon as well. And, you know, by having, you know, really, really great partnerships, by having a standardized, we've learned a lot. In the last 25 years of building businesses, I've learned a huge amount. And so when we build the first project, it won't just be the first gigacenter, it will be the first blueprint, which can be replicated at massive speed and scale and in parallel. And so if we haven't achieved something pretty remarkable within the next two years, I will be feeling I haven't achieved enough.

55:43I haven't achieved enough. You dismissed my five-year time scale as well. Yeah, we've got lots to do. By five years, my goodness, you know, if we've not achieved a remarkable speed and scale. Okay, so one final question then, because we're coming to the end here. So obviously all of this depends on solar technologies and integrating other battery technologies and things like that. Do you, and the rest of the world, I mean, it would be kind of crazy if the data centers were all off being powered by renewables very quickly and the rest of the world sort of hadn't caught up. So is this going to feed back into the rest of the world's energy supply?

56:22I mean, if you're making these solar panels, does that compete with other people or does it just make the economies of scale even bigger? Does any of this feed back into the rest of the world's energy problem, I guess is what I'm asking.

56:39Well, I think it will just take away the strain.

56:47We already have enough challenges as it is anyway, getting to what we need to get to. I appreciate that the phrase net zero isn't as on market or whatever as it was a few years ago. But as I said, it doesn't mean the problem has gone away. And you know, transitioning our economies from, you know, ones that are producing, you know, huge amounts of carbon as a byproduct to ones that aren't. That challenge hasn't gone away. And, you know, most countries have got that now ingrained in law in one form or other. But it was already very difficult to achieve, as we know. It was already really hard. And then you add, you know, hundreds of gigawatts of additional power to that problem.

57:34you just make the whole thing a lot more challenging. And so if we're able to address that, you know, hundreds of gigawatts or, you know, show a path towards that and make a material contribution ourselves, you know, no doubt people will look to replicate what we're doing. You know, one of the, I guess the, you know, honors or whatever, however you look at it is that, you know, in GridServe, we pioneered a lot of firsts and we saw people replicate and copy them. So no doubt that will happen as well, you know, the more successful that we are. But let's face it, humanity requires it. And we need to, you know, throw a hammer and tongs at this.

58:12You know, we need to go all in if we're going to, you know, if we're going to achieve what we need to achieve. And so I think by doing what we are doing, you know, in combination with other solutions. And so, you know, the other thing is, you know, there will be data centers. we talked about data centers in other locations. There will also be data centers in space. There will also be data that is transmitted through space to get to people. There's a combination of solution that's required. But I think what we will certainly be doing is alleviating a lot of the challenges that would otherwise have added to what's already on people's plates.

58:51And we'll be doing it in a way that benefits communities, causes less friction, doesn't eat into people's water supply, doesn't increase people's power, doesn't increase pollution, in fact, the reverse of it. And so people can use AI guilt-free because let's face it, it's awesome. Like, wow, the amount of things you can do with it. But wouldn't it be great to go, you know, that, that, that, that, you know, whatever Claude query, that website that I just built using Claude, you know, not only did I, did I do it and it was great, but I feel great about it as well because I know it wasn't adding to some of the world's challenges.

59:26And, you know, by us being successful, that's certainly what we will hope to, you know, hope to proliferate as well. Amazing. Well, I love your optimism. I'm really glad that somebody is working on this problem and taking all of these challenges seriously. And it's great to hear that there might be a way to do this. So, again, normally I would say we'll come back in a couple of years and talk to us again. But, you know, maybe it'll have to be a year for you because you're moving so quickly. and there'll be lots of updates in a year. But anyway, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Good luck with all of it.

59:58Thank you very much for joining me. Thank you very much too. Maybe less than a year. I'll leave you with that. Less than a year.

1:00:11Well, that was Toddington Harper, now CEO of Gigatons, not Jigatons. I'm going to find it hard to say that always now. but it was such an interesting discussion it's very rarely that I've heard any discussion about data centers and the resources they might use without it being kind of negative and sliding a lot of stuff under the carpet and I found it really I found it really refreshing that he was actually prepared to address the challenges come up you know be in the process of coming up with solutions and actually make the whole thing sound as though it could be positive. And that endless enthusiasm clearly carries him a long way.

1:00:55But actually, he did it with GridServe. So maybe he can do it with the data centers as well. And that would be an amazing thing for the world if it's possible. So I guess watch this space, not only in the next two years, but perhaps in the next six months. He's set his stall out for doing this very quickly. So we'll see what happens next. but that is all we've got time for on this week's podcast so if you have been thank you for listening discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas endless sunshine and the cool bahamian breeze bahamar located in nassau bahamas offers your choice of three luxury hotels over 45 fine dining and nightlife venues john batiste's all-new jazz club the caribbean's most luxurious casino and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family like our 15 acre tropical water Park, wildlife sanctuary, world-class golf course, and so much more.

1:01:46Visit Bahamar.com today. If you're ready to refresh your wardrobe for spring, Boehm is one of my go-to spots. They have the best everyday pieces. Think really good denim, easy dresses, and outfits you can actually wear on repeat. Everything feels current without being over the top, and you get great quality without the high price tag. Whether you're getting dressed for work, errands, or weekend and plans. Boam makes spring outfits feel simple. Shop Boam's new arrivals at boam.com. That's B-O-H-M-E.com. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still, not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far.

1:02:26Now we're here to help you keep going further. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more. PetSmart makes online shopping easy, right from your phone. But pets don't live on their phones. That's why we have a place to touch grass, sniff out new toys, get a fresh cut, and celebrate their birthday. We call it Store! From URL to IRL, PetSmart does it all. Shop in-store or online at PetSmart.com. PetSmart. Anything for pet. listening