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THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Nvidia JV with Schneider Electric, Meta Announces $10B Data Center, Alberta Canada enters the ring vying for a $100B stake in the Data Center Space
Dive into the energy conundrum facing our digital future, where nuclear power, particularly through Small Modular Reactors, becomes a beacon of hope for meeting the escalating demands of data centers. We unravel the complexities of regulatory landscapes and resource limitations, spotlighting Microsoft's audacious move to revive the Three Mile Island plant. Plus, discover the $100 billion blueprint Alberta has crafted to attract tech titans like NVIDIA and Apple, aiming to make the region a magnet for AI data centers.
Finally, get an insider’s look at the groundbreaking collaboration between Schneider Electric and NVIDIA. As NVIDIA pushes the envelope with power-intensive AI servers, this partnership is innovating cooling solutions that redefine efficiency and sustainability. We also peel back the layers on NVIDIA's market dominance, exploring how their strategic maneuvers and emerging competitors could reshape the tech industry's future. With these insights, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic forces steering the world of data centers and energy solutions.
and we're back.
Speaker 1:Welcome. You're listening, as you said, from the Frontier Line, hey Dave, where we explore the stories of visionaries, cutting-edge infrastructure and innovation shaping our world. How's that? For a start, that's a good one. I'll try that one.
Speaker 2:I love it, we appreciate you guys chiming in day after day, week after week, as we crank these exciting, riveting episodes out Time for some headlines. I'm thinking Absolutely. It's been a minute. We took a little break there over Thanksgiving and I'm jonesing to get to these headlines. They've been stacking up on us, covid stacking up.
Speaker 1:We've been saving them and sort of like watching, know, watching. Everything's been going on as we do, and I think the stuff that was we thought was cool last week has already been eclipsed, right, yeah, so I will kick it off with a huge announcement. Whenever you're listening to this today, uh, or in this space, so probably you know, this week you will see it in the news Meta announces the construction of its largest data center to date. That is very, very big news because obviously it's Meta and they already have sizable data centers. And so this I'm going to read you a little bit of the article from Daniela Morales-Soler out of the notebook check online. It's dropping everywhere. I mean Yahoo News, I mean everywhere, any news services. It has them. So the facility is expected to require an investment of approximately $10 billion and will become Meta's 27th data center globally. The company has not yet disclosed the anticipated completion or operational date for the center $10 for one facility.
Speaker 1:10 billion dollars. Okay, Again, as we've said, I think we need a tote board, I think we need to keep track of these things because, damn, the numbers just keep adding up and when we started this we're in. How many episodes are we in now?
Speaker 2:I think we're in episode 38 right now.
Speaker 1:I think it was really kind of clear to talk you know, it was something on episode one or two or three to talk about these data centers that were maybe considering a billion dollars, maybe, and you know, in that span of time we're already at 10X. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So the scope and scale of this entire space, that's so exciting is blowing up astounding wow um.
Speaker 1:So the company meta has unveiled plans for uh for this new data center in richland, parish, louisiana, marking a significant expansion of its global infrastructure. The 10 billion investment will be meta's largest data center to date, spanning a massive 4 million square feet. Huge, this state-of-the-art facility will be a crucial component in the company's ongoing efforts to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technologies. Meta did not disclose, as they said before, an estimated completion or operational date. It's going to be expected to create 500 full-time operational jobs, providing a substantial boost to the local economy During peak construction. The project is expected to employ more than 5,000 workers and they are going to add to the region's robust infrastructure.
Speaker 1:They picked it because the infrastructure in place already reliable, energy grid and business friendly environment. The company also cited the strong support from local community partners, which played a critical role in facilitating the development of the data center. In partnership with Entergy, the energy provider for the region, Meta is ensuring that the facility will run on 100% renewable energy. The project will add 1,500 megawatts of new renewable energy to the local grid, further supporting the company's environmental goals. Not in this article, but in another one that I read, they are also planning on building out a university campus, Wow. In conjunction with this, to support ongoing I would imagine you know training and development and everything else that would that's going to fall on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's going to follow on, there's a number of Like. If we just take and we consolidate the square footage of Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, who did I leave out of that? I mean NVIDIA, I mean those are the biggies. Opena Well, Open.
Speaker 2:OpenA yeah yeah, yeah, opena, I throw those, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, we're talking about over a hundred million square feet of space and so so when you you factor in how many jobs per square foot 500 jobs and 4 million square feet that's a lot of jobs. It's a lot of jobs when all these tech professionals come from. Well, got to manufacture them, got to get in the business of educating them. So it makes good sense that a technical college for data center operational specialties is good news, I think, for the industry. I think that's that's maybe a that's a pioneering effort.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so I and I've gone and found a little bit additional color and detail into this and because I think it's worth exploring, because we're talking about the I mean, we really we were talking about the largest data center to date. So, and since we talk a lot all the time about data centers, we should probably dive into this. So, um, the, the company picked a team of Turner construction company, dpr and MA Mortensen company to build the Northeast Louisiana campus. According to contractors, uh, get this mile long facility. Wow. So that 4 billion square feet is going to be over a mile long Former farmland. So the project team plans to source labor and materials locally. Ben Kaplan, turner Managing Director, said in a statement that Meta and the contractors will hold information fairs for interested trade contractors and workers early in 2025. Site work is starting this month and the project is expected to complete they actually have a date in this one by 2030. Wow, further going on here.
Speaker 1:This is a quote from the State Department Secretary in Louisiana.
Speaker 1:Louisiana has been actively positioning itself as a hub for AI innovation, with plans to support startups, grow a skilled workforce and shape forward thinking policy, said Susan Bourgeau, state department secretary of Louisiana. They expect Meta will take advantage of a state incentive program that offers tax rebates for data center equipment. The Louisiana community and technical College System also has committed funding to Delta Community College, located near the future Meta site, to help it develop programs and expand capacity, including for its construction trades program. To help meet the workforce needs, meta has agreed to contribute more than $200 million for local road and water infrastructure improvements and Electric Utility. Entropy Louisiana LLC has applied to the Louisiana Public Service Commission to build a generating plant with three gas-fired turbines with a combined capacity of 2,260 megawatts, that'd be 2.26 gigawatts of which would be located beside the Metacampus in Holly Ridge, louisiana. The generators would be able to have about 30% hydrogen initial co-f, would be able to have about 30% hydrogen initial co-firing and capability to support 100% hydrogen, as well as incorporated carbon capture and sequestration in future upgrades.
Speaker 2:That's a great idea, meta, by the way. Yeah, good idea. Have we heard that before? Are you reading our notes? Yeah, are you listening? And you know what I love about that, dave? I love that the headline states you know, 10 billion dollar facility, four million square feet, run on all renewable energy. Yes, why? Why do they say, well, not initially, not initially, just you know, when hydrogen, when hydrogen catches up, right, that's a great concept.
Speaker 1:Yes, a goal now, goal Now, you know, maybe they will. I'm really curious. You're right, it's pragmatic. It's pragmatic. That is the approach. It's pragmatic, we agree. I'm certainly certainly we've heard that somewhere as well. So Energy's plan also calls for construction of eight substations and a KV, a 500 KV transmission line plus equipment upgrades. At a substation near Sterlington, louisiana Company rep could not immediately share details about contracting for the project, but Energy expects the new generators will come online between 2028 and 2029. Wow, meta and Energy are also looking into the possibility of nuclear as future supply option. According to utility, that could include small modular reactors or upgrades to expand the output of existing nuclear plants. Again, are you listening? Good, glad, thank you for listening. I'm glad you're listening to us, uh, because, uh, you know from episode one, we have been, uh, talking about this kind of modality of approach from the get-go yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that leads right into the one of the one of the headlines I've had read this morning, which is also meta. This is reuters reporting today that uh, meta said tuesday is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its artificial intelligence environmental goals, becoming the latest big tech company to take interest in atomic power. The company wants to add one to four gigawatts of new US nuclear generation capacity, starting in the early 2030s. I also love that when you're saying, when it's nuanced and the range is a decade. Yes, that's, that's wise. Yes, to publish it that way, uh-huh, because it's, it's probably.
Speaker 2:You know, we, we have our own opinions about how long that could take. Um states here that a typical us nuclear plant has a capacity of about a gigawatt. There aren't many, I mean, there's a like a handful of nuclear utility scale nuclear power plants. They're huge and and so. But that that's a really interesting perspective, that these massive, with the massive stacks and the things you see in the news, average capacity of about a gigawatt. Yet we're designing power plants that could do double that. And we're talking about smrs that can, that can do hundreds of megawatts right and stack those up, you know, stack them up to a gigawatt. I mean a gigawatt is that's a lot of energy, but that's it's not in today's, not in today's conversation. A lot of energy Goes on really interesting statistics here in this article by Reuters. They're also claiming that data center power use is expected to triple between 2023 and 2030. Okay, we've been talking about that. Quite sure that's a number we've talked about. Yeah, they say that it will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 1:Wow, that number's up from, I think, some of the numbers we've seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it says here that will be tough to swiftly meet soaring power demand with nuclear reactors as companies face an overburdened US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, absolutely Potential uranium fuel supply obstacles and local opposition. Lots of up, not just regulatory, lots of opposition committing this nuclear initiative online.
Speaker 2:It's it's kind of the triple threat I mean it is really a threat and and it's a billion dollar triple threat. That's not a, that's not an easy solve. No, um, I like that. They're also kind of throwing in some big names. Here we've we've kind of been reporting on microsoft and constellation energy announced a deal in september to restart the three mile island plant in pennsylvania. That's the first ever restart for a data center. And then in march we saw who purchased the Nuclear Power Data Center from Talon Energy Again, big names. And so Meta's just joining the fleet of, you know, us nuclear plants and nuclear-powered AI data centers Really exciting. So they're taking RFPs up through the end of february. So this is happening right now.
Speaker 1:This is literally like unfolding, like every week is significant yes, well, and to, because apparently we're just talking about big numbers. This, this, uh, on this episode, um, this one even caught me off guard, um, as I had to die to do a double take to make sure I wasn't reading it the wrong way. Uh, this is out of the financial post, again dropped, uh, today, uh, alberta, as in canada, as in our neighbors, yeah, they're chasing a shout out to ryan miller, a buddy who live in Alberta.
Speaker 2:Partner up there, hello.
Speaker 1:Ryan, Brian, did you have anything to do with this? Alberta is chasing $100 billion AI data center opportunity Again $100 billion. We just talked about Meta building the largest plant to date, or largest center to date, at $10 billion. So this is 10x that. This is Alberta saying we see an opportunity here in the world and we want to capitalize on it. So I'll I mean I'll read, because I think this is worth absolutely reading a little bit of this one.
Speaker 1:The government's planning to introduce legislation to encourage tech companies to build data centers in the province. The province of Alberta, home to the world's third largest crude reserves, is making a push to become a hub for artificial intelligence data centers and sees the potential to attract $100 billion in investments. The government is planning to introduce legislation, make regulatory changes and roll out new services to encourage technology companies to build data centers in the province. The strategy seeks to take advantage of Alberta's abundance of natural gas for power generation, low taxes and cold climate, which could reduce firms' cooling costs, which is absolutely a thing. Alberta Technology Innovation Minister, nate Glubbish, said he's already made four trips to Silicon Valley to meet with NVIDIA's core NVIDIA, jensen Huang, and pitch Apple Inc, google Parent Alphabet and Facebook Parent Meta platforms on building data centers in the province. A major component of Alberta's push will focus on making sure the government offers better service to companies and allows them to get centers up and running quickly. He said Quote. Time is money and if we can give people the gift of time, we know that that's going to have a meaningful impact on their investment decisions and on their return on investment. End quote. Glover said, quote so if we can move fast and give people certainty and eliminate risk in the process. Folks are going to love doing business in Alberta. End quote Utah.
Speaker 1:Take note, yes, west, anybody take note on what Alberta is doing. This is exactly the kind of strategy that and it takes. It can't be just individuals. It has to be at least here in the US. It has to be from a state level you have to think about this in terms of a state or regional and even on the federal level, of saying what do we want to be from a state level.
Speaker 1:You have to think about this in terms of a state or regional and even on the federal level, of saying what do we want to be and where we want to be and what's our best opportunity to go after this? Because you now have, you have this power. And they're talking to all the bigs and they're saying come, come, do business. Now we can look at this and say, even if every, even if every one of those companies went there, there's still lots and lots and lots and lots of need out there. That this is only. It's not a drop in the bucket. It's more than a drop in the bucket, but nonetheless the bucket's still pretty big.
Speaker 2:It compels so many thoughts.
Speaker 1:I hope you have them. That's why I stopped. I was hoping you would go.
Speaker 2:I mean, my mind is just smoking, thinking of the implications. I mean, my first thought is I wonder what kind of a footprint we're talking about. Are we talking about province-wide? And how many square miles or how many acres are we talking about for one square miles, or how many acres are we talking about for one? And, and you know, then I can remember, you know, just a few weeks ago we were putting together a revision on our our valley forge impact parks uh, introduction, you know proposal for our constituents, and we were making a statement in there that the global market trending for energy and data center construction nearing $960 billion, and that's not including this. So now this pushes it over the trillion dollar mark of dollars that are going to be spent in the next decade. And then my mind just races to networking capacity, natural pipeline capacity. What's going to be required to support a hundred billion dollar? Uh, cluster of campuses right spread out over what amount of territory? Like?
Speaker 1:I'm dying to dig deeper into this me too, when I'm you and referencing the met, the, you know the meta, the article on meta in louisiana. I mean you're talking about them, them putting in a 500 kb line, which there aren't many that size anyway. No, I think that's the largest. I think that might be the largest. Yeah, yeah, I think that might. I. I wanted to go I saw that I'm like I don't, I think that might be the largest. I think you're right. Um, you know we've been, you take that and you're going to need an area that you, you've got to have a lot of that. And then, and then just kind of kind of who we are and what we've done and we know. Then you start thinking about okay, well, you ideate this, then it's a cool. Where do you go get the materials?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know this is commodities level yeah, the material, and where do you and where, and you know, even if you jump to the front of the line, well, how long is that line right? Uh, how do you get those? And how long? How long is it going to take? Is it going to take? Uh, you know, I don't know what it's like to run. You know high voltage lines in in canada, I don't know if it's easier or harder, the same, but in the us, uh, so far it's proved quite difficult yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2:it could be movements like this by countries that usher in these expanded capacities, like, for example, we know that China has 1,000 kV transmission lines, double the capacity of what the US has. They've got the largest on earth capacity transmission lines.
Speaker 1:Maybe this kind of demand ushers that type of capacity into the US and Canada, into North America at least at a minimum force of conversation, yeah, and says, okay, we have to address this, and how are we solving this? And it becomes a I mean it's as we've talked about here a lot. I mean it's a patchwork of different utilities and all kinds of things and and you know it's it's not an easy overnight solve at all Um, but how do you solve that? From a country point of view, I mean, if you're saying, okay, as a country, we need to expand our, you know, our, our ability to, to transfer power, which also brings up an interesting issue, because if you ask, if you talk to people in the energy industry, they'll say also, if you can put where your, your consumption is, you know, close to your production, well then you don't lose, you know, so much energy.
Speaker 1:Because that's another thing that happens when you, when you transfer over these long distances, if you don't already know this, you lose a lot of power in that transition process, and so the closer you can be to your source of power, the more efficient, the less waste and, frankly, the more green ultimately it is. If you were transferring power from, say, utah to California, perhaps yeah, just pulling that one out of my hat, since it's never been done. It's never been done. You know there's a lot of power loss just getting to the stations down in California, and so there are all these things to take into consideration about how you solve this, and you know it's an intriguing thing. And to your point, Wayne, yeah, at what point do you get the federal government involved in some of these decisions?
Speaker 2:It's so interesting because it seems to me that this is probably just the building of a bonfire that will burn for 20 or 30 years. They're igniting a bonfire, they're just starting. This is the spark of the bonfire that will grow and burn for the next few decades. So one of the big questions that comes up in my mind is there's no way we can project this, but there has to be a ceiling somewhere. How many trillions of dollars of power and data do we build before we reach adequate, before supply and demand find equilibrium? Yeah, don't know.
Speaker 2:That is the question of the day, isn't it? It creates a lot of urgency in my mind. It's like oh my gosh, we've got to get our parks built out as fast as we can. Everything we can do to reduce supply chain issues timelines huge, huge, huge. Time to market is huge. Having capital backing huge, ready to deploy now huge. Having capital backing huge, ready to deploy now capital, not next year, not in five years. It's market readiness and meeting demands, and they said that in the article, so they get it. So that also makes it so interesting to think about, because we still are hearing these murmurings about utility companies feeling like data centers are the bad guy. These big high power consumers are the bad guys, right, and that's a total. That's a total misunderstanding. We'd like to take issues without categorization of the circumstances, if I've ever heard one one. But you know, it's so interesting to unpack all of the levels, all the moving parts on that, dave.
Speaker 1:It is. I'm just, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what it's going to take and and and I don't really have a clear answer when you start to talk about, you know, just caps and this, and I, you know, I think, you know, I think about, we've got FERC and we've got NERC. These are the regulatory agencies, you know, and they're playing a role. But beyond that, I don't you know, are they going to? I mean, are they really right now addressing and saying, oh my gosh, we've got to deal with triple capacity, that on the federal level, how do we encourage or incentivize or work with states? This whole thing? It's evolving so quickly.
Speaker 1:And this goes to some of the investment thesis debate stuff that's going on in the investment in AI. There's been so much money put into generative AI and there's a lot of argument right now, a lot of institutions saying we're not seeing the return yet, you know, and a lot of people say wait, we'll build it and they will come. We'll build it and they will come. This is just like this they will come. We're we just got to grow into this and it's going to take time to grow into it, you know. I think you can say the same thing for capacity Are. Is this enough? Is 3X enough? Yeah, I mean what is?
Speaker 2:3X is only only. It's already not enough just because we have to ask the question. It's already. Yeah, I mean that's what's crazy?
Speaker 1:yeah, and so, and so this is just the first, you know, blush into that and then that's, that's where this, this then becomes a real problem and a real challenge, meaning the conversations that we have and the things that I think have frustrated us is, everything is a five to ten year solution. Yeah, and that's not okay.
Speaker 1:It's not okay for us. It's not okay for a lot of groups saying wait a minute, yeah, sometime in the 2030s, yeah, we'll solve this. And some of it is because supply chains or availability is like wait a minute. Really, that's the only answer you have, that's we can only get it through this one store. There's a lot of stuff that's changing quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for Alberta to put this out there and publicize, publicly, announce this. Yeah, it means that they are prepared or poised to expand power capacity and transmission to that extent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's dozens of gigawatts. Yeah, that is. That's a lot of gigawatts. That's a lot.
Speaker 1:No, that's a lot of gigawatts they want to bring online. And if you're talking about natural gas and you're looking at it and you're sitting on reserves, okay, and maybe you're able to pull in some power from other sources, some line power, but if you're looking at creating it again, nuclear, yes, all of the above, all of the above is going to be probably looked at up there. I don't know off the top of my head what the regulatory situation is in Canada as far as that is concerned.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's harder or easier or the same as the US Maybe something we'll dig into and find out that will affect what the choices they make, the, the, you know alberta, appears to be very friendly on the on the gas side of things. Yeah, so you could see those things happening and coming online fairly quickly. But the amount, yeah, I mean, and granted you know, 100 billion dollars. This could be like yeah, we want 100 billion dollar investment over the next 15 years. That I could you know, but it's, it's still substantial.
Speaker 2:It'll change the entire region well, and it also just just as my mind continues to smoke and spin over the whole notion, I think, of labor. We've made this analogy a few times. Traditionally we've got population growth and it trends 1.5%, 2.5% annual growth. Traditionally, energy expansion has kind of paced with that population. Now that's not the case. Now you know we're saying gonna triple, triple our capacity in five years. So so population growth's doing this and now energy's doing this huge divergence.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny because we need population growth and skilled tradesmen and trained people to develop that much support of this growth. Right, so that could be a huge choke point in my mind. I mean, you talked about the college, facebook and the college and training data center professionals. But what about training up all of those highly skilled networking guys, construction guys in the networking, electrical space, building these facilities? And then is it all Canadians that are going to do this or are we going to see major US companies going up to Canada to take on this work? I mean, these are all implications. They are on my mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, they are, and it's going to be fascinating to watch. I just it, just it's. It's going to be fascinating to watch, um, I just it, just it's kind of uh to, to circle back it's. Isn't it kind of interesting to think about how much money we just brought up like is being invested just on a couple of different projects?
Speaker 1:yeah talking you know at least 110 billion dollars on a couple of things just today and and this is and, and, and, if, if history is any teacher on this, this is just the beginning. We're going to start seeing, I think, announcements. You're going to start seeing alphabet come into the way into this, amazon open ai way into this, and we're going to start seeing them going. Oh well, we want our own 10 billion dollar facility and I'm sure they're working on it too, absolutely, um.
Speaker 1:So we see. We'll see where this goes. One of our group we're a big fan of is also in the news today. Yeah, cooling, the AI fire is the headline. This is out of Wall Street Pit, it's an com. Schneider Electric and NVIDIA's data center breakthrough. Reuters yeah, reuters is reporting that Schneider Electric, a prominent French electrical equipment manufacturer, a group who we've spoken about, we've featured on here has partnered with NVIDIA to invade cooling systems for data centers specifically tailored for new artificial intelligence infrastructures. This collaboration aims to address the immense cooling demands introduced by NVIDIA's latest servers, which incorporate 72 of their most advanced AI chips and are slated for rollout early this next year. These servers are designed to consume up to 132 kilowatts per rack, with the highest performance models necessitating liquid cooling to function efficiently. Now, it's okay if you don't know a lot about this. We've actually spent a little bit of time in this space. So 132 kilowatts per rack, that means in a data center modeling and stuff has been done at 20. Yes, you know if you're talking about like, hey, how big, how much power, and it's started to creep up. So this is substantially more. Oh yeah, so this is substantially more. Oh yeah, so this is a big, big leap forward.
Speaker 1:The move by NVIDIA towards liquid cooling for a significant portion of its chip offerings has catalyzed a wave of data center development and refurbishment across the industry, adapting to the intensive power and cooling requirements of modern AI hardware. Schneider Electric's involvement focuses on creating versatile cooling solutions that can be adjusted based on the number of NVIDIA servers deployed and their power consumption, providing flexibility to data center operators. Eparna Probaker, senior vice president of Schneider Electric's secure power division, emphasized the complexity of the project, highlighting that Schneider is responsible for the external cooling infrastructure, while NVIDIA focuses on the server internals. This division of labor underscores a collaborative approach to meet the unique challenges posed by AI data centers, where traditional cooling methods fall short. Wow.
Speaker 1:The resulting cooling designs are intended for sale to cloud computing providers and other data center clients, offering them a solution to manage the thermal output of high-density AI computing environments. This partnership not only signifies a strategic expansion for Schneider Electric in the AI data center market, but also reflects the company's commitment to innovation in energy management, especially after recent leadership change and a substantial contract with Compass Data Centers for $3 billion worth of electrical equipment. By integrating Schneider's expertise in energy management with NVIDIA's advancements in AI technology, this collaboration is poised to set new standards for data center efficiency and sustainability, catering to the escalating needs of AI-driven computations. However, while the technical synergy between the two companies is clear, specific financial details of this agreement still remain as undisclosed, keeping the focus on technological innovation and potential scalability in the rapidly evolving ai data center landscape so exciting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely feels like. Smells like tier five. Smells on the horizon, smells like it's coming folks.
Speaker 1:we've talked about it. You heard it here first. Probably Maybe we're saying it might not be true, but it might be true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, look man, when you have these juggernauts in the industry doing these joint ventures, schneider Electric joining forces with NVIDIA, I mean these are the two authorities in the world joining forces to break all the molds To go to 132 kilowatt racks. In the world joining forces to break all the molds Absolutely To, to, to, turn to, to go to 132 kilowatt racks. I mean increasing compute power, increasing heat, increasing all the things. Yeah, uh, it's, it's really fun to be a part of this and it's so exciting to be working with Schneider Electric. Yes, well, I mean this underscores for the listeners the importance and value of why we have sought out the specific consultancies that are part of our team Right On our impact parks, schneider being one of the key players of our team.
Speaker 1:If I may be a dork, this is what it's like to be on the frontier line.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is mean, yes, you know, we, we feel good about this and we, we knew this, we know that we are intentionally reaching out the people who are making the big strides and and living on the bleeding edge of this, because that's the place to be. Yeah, um and and and they're there not because for some haphazard reason. They're there because and schneider's case they've been around for over 100 years. They've been doing this a long, long time. They are one of the best, I mean you get one of the best companies, period. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And you know, you have an opportunity, like we have, to talk to them and to hear how they think and how they engage. It's fantastic, I mean, it is fantastic to be around, uh, that that kind of caliber to understand where this is going, and so obvious. And also, they didn't they acquire a particular company recently, wasn't schneider acquired?
Speaker 2:I can hardly keep up. I mean they, they acquired motive air that like a month ago I'm kind of thinking that maybe this, that that played, oh, probably. Yeah, the Motive Air acquisition was a liquid cooling advancement, and so I wouldn't be shocked to have NVIDIA. You know Jensen Huang calling up our guys at Schneider saying, hey, congratulations on the Motive Air acquisition, we'd like to collaborate with you and help you really be the cutting edge of liquid immersion cooling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and Schneider brought in a lot of horsepower, you know, a capital, expertise, breadth of experience, not that Motivera was teeny, but Motivera in comparison not really. And so you know, you take Motivera, what Motivera had done and accomplished, which was impressive, and you you know that in and of itself was a beautiful combination. Now and now you start seeing how this is going to ferret out and work out in the real world, in the world of how you deploy this yeah, oh yeah, yeah, they're just getting going.
Speaker 1:We also have to revise our models, by the way. Yeah, yeah, so like our model is, or how big how much power.
Speaker 2:We were actually talking about modeling, like two weeks ago before thanksgiving, and we were talking about, like, pushing the envelope of 100 kilowatt racks.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that might be a bit of a stretch. Well, apparently we're good, yeah, yeah, right, we're good to tell our modelers, yeah, we got to change the predictions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I feel like we have to up until the moment of no return.
Speaker 2:Up until the point of no return, we've got to be willing to revise our plans, revise the the drawings, revise the programming to stay ahead of this. And that's a serious challenge, man, because once you lock in a construction budget, once the consultants have provided their, their scope of work, and you've locked in the design, you've got your power plant, you've got your micro good, you got your data center, it's all done and you go break ground, unless you want to incur these dramatic change orders that we keep talking about, that, yeah, what you don't and the time delays and everything else you don't, right, then then it's almost like it's really, I mean, it's just astounding to see how fast it's all moving. Because I think we're always going to be looking over our shoulder when we, when we break ground on each facility, like are we on the bleeding edge of technology right now? How and, and if they are, how, how long will it take until this current plant, are we going to be obsolete before we get built?
Speaker 1:that's a really, that's a really. I hadn't considered that, but that's a really, given how fast things are changing it's totally possible.
Speaker 2:It is totally possible. I mean, we just were talking about elon connecting a hundred thousand nvidia chips, chips like a month ago breaking all the. This is a world record. That's the first time. Now we're talking about NVIDIA pioneering the new chips 132 kilowatt rack, I mean that's problematic, but that's problematic for everyone. Yeah, that's problematic for Google just as much as problematic for us yeah.
Speaker 2:Everyone's going to be dealing with those, those problems, and so I'm sure, as we get deeper into this with Nider and Gensler and Burns McDonald and all of our, our professional you know consultancy, I'm sure we're going to experience a certain degree of engineering foresight In land development. Traditionally, we're always trying to project 10 to 20 years out. We need to engineer the sewer system to be able to handle the growth that we project 20 years from now. We'll never be able to do that in this technology field project 20 years out but to try and engineer and design buildings that could be relevant for five years, that might be a big feat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it might be Based on what's happening.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's a fair comparableness, but I can't help but think about just our typical technology purchases like a phone or a computer or laptop. You know, I, I, whenever I've purchased something, I've always tried to get, you know, the fastest, the fastest, not, not, not as a oh, I've got this, and not that I actually use that amount of computing power or anything else, I just want it to last as long as possible so that as the systems become more complex, as it requires more processing power, that I can keep that going as long as possible before, you know, I start to experience slowdowns or whatever. Or like, okay, now, now, now I might need to replace. But well, personally it's helped me increase the longevity of what I've had to always go in, and I think that's going to be kind of similar and that might not be a good comparison. I just compared a phone to a data center and I know that's not the right comparison, but no, but the analogy is relevant.
Speaker 2:I was just going to make it show. You know, it's like three years ago when you're saving, you know, your cute kitten meme videos on your phone.
Speaker 1:You only needed a certain number of gig or not gigawatts, but gigabytes or yeah or yeah, processing or even the, even the processing yeah, exactly. And now and now, with now the new iphone, yeah, ai storage.
Speaker 2:Like you, you know, if you, if you open up your iphone and you look at how much storage, you're like, oh my god, that amount of storage didn't even exist five years ago. No, and I'm, and I'm using it all, yeah and I'm half, I already.
Speaker 1:yeah, and that's exactly the point. That's a great analogy, and I do think that I mean there's a technology curve there, and I think that's probably true.
Speaker 2:So you go in, you try to do the best you can, knowing full well that it's going to have a you know it is going to come to bear, I think, because having the foresight to engineer for adaptability and being able to swap chips out, for example, it's like a plug and play kind of yeah, building racks, building systems that can be easily upgraded, and then, hopefully, nvidia doesn't decide in five years they're just going to totally reconfigure, so they're not like Apple. Does you know when they change the charger that you need or the headphone plug-in? Yeah, so you'll never have that app. A whole new system? Yeah, never had that happen ever. So I mean, that's a huge concern it is.
Speaker 1:That's a huge concern, it is, and so we'll see. That's a huge concern, it is, and so we'll see. And now there's a competitive business side of it, like, okay, we want to continue innovating and getting people to buy our stuff and do all that. I don't think NVIDIA has that problem right now. No, they don't. They have like a long line of everyone trying to say you know, build faster, faster, faster, more, more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know what else I see, and that is. I see other. I will guarantee there are 10 other companies who have their eyes on that. We target on NVIDIA, saying we are going to knock NVIDIA off the top, yep, and they're going to easily be capitalized because there's going to be a plan, there's demands there, NVIDIA is going to run into some, some, some fulfillment issues.
Speaker 1:I can almost guarantee it, although I'm, I'm, I'm not going to bet against Jensen because I'm telling you that guy I mean I always say that because he astounds me Okay, and they and I agree, I just just how they've been able to kind of like go through all of these different iterations and needs from, you know, using their chips really on in the mining and just and.
Speaker 1:I, and I'll say this the way they, the way he manages that company, is entirely different than most companies. Yeah, which maybe that's the secret sauce, yeah, I don't know if, again, it's one of those things you ought to go look up if you want to know how Jensen kind of organized it. He has 51 direct reports. They never have a singular meeting. There's never a meeting with just two people in it. It was always this combined thing, because his philosophy is I want everybody hearing all the things all at once. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, efficiency and sufficiency, so that, so that we're all, we're all hearing these things and we can react accordingly and immediately, and that we're also openly across things, holding people to account. So so far it seems to be working.
Speaker 1:But, but, but history would, if history is an indicator, you're going to have some competition. That's the free market. Yeah, when you have a leader, you're going to have some competition. That's the free market. Yeah, when you have a leader, you're going to have somebody wanting to knock them off and saying we can do it better, we can do it less expensively or something, or whatever it is faster. Yeah. And I know there's one company I can't remember it off the top of my head, but I know it's one that's. I've some articles on it and this it's one of the era. Parents are the one that they're saying, yeah, they've got some really interesting technological solutions and it's the first real, not threat, but it's the first kind of real significant competition that they might be facing.
Speaker 2:Well, just just try, and you would know better than I would. But think of when did you first, first hear of?
Speaker 1:nvidia me personally. Well, I've known about him for a while because I was paying attention back in the bitcoin days and so can we talk about the year and then way back, probably, who was before that?
Speaker 2:Micron.
Speaker 1:I think it was for me NVIDIA, just because I knew some of their, you know the gaming, probably early 2000s or like 2000. Yeah, 2000. 20 years, 20 years, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But who were the big players before NVIDIA came online? Well, is it Texas Instruments. Is it L oh Intel?
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I mean Intel. Yeah, who's struggling currently? I think they just nuked their CEO. I think just recently, I think they just fired their CEO. Yeah, intel, texas Instruments, yeah, you know, and others I mean, but yeah, I mean Intel's the one that I think has really taken it on the chin in the last decade, because Intel, obviously Intel inside or 20, I mean Intel was everywhere. Intel really owned the market.
Speaker 2:You would think, with Microsoft integration, you would think, with integration, that a company like Intel wouldn't be in the circumstances they find it. So I'm just saying, you know, as you, as you astutely said, history would dictate that that an open market breeds competition and extreme, extreme demand, coupled with any scarcity of a thing, creates big openings. It's going to be very interesting to watch, I'm.
Speaker 1:I'm, I'm, yes, I'm. It's been fun to watch it, I mean, and to see how this is all evolving and we'll see. I obviously they're leading the world across the board on all kinds of things right now and so, but they're the, they're the guys to catch. So I was just pulling up their numbers, just the revenue, this expected revenue this year, um, geez man, um. So revenue, uh, fiscal year, let's see, is this by quarter? It's astounding how much. I mean. You know they're a trillion dollar company now.
Speaker 1:Uh, this is I think this is in. This might just be by quarter, like $65 billion. This is, this is a video. I mean they're just, it's like $65 billion. This is this is a video. I mean they're just it's, it's, it's, it's. I just they're an astounding company. Again, you know, we'll see. The whole point of it is they are a big player in this space. Yeah, there are others that are going to be out there. There are. If I'm a data center operator and I want to get something online and I got to get in line with NVIDIA because everybody in the world wants NVIDIA.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Am I going to consider the competitor if the competitor can do statistically?
Speaker 2:what's going to happen? Backsheet yeah, similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's going to be interesting. So, yeah, that's what I saw. So, again, those are news. You know, news-wise, we've seen a lot of stuff in the last 48 hours.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I was going to bring on this other, really riveting one, but we're out of time.
Speaker 1:Are we out of time? We're going to wrap. I was wondering. It felt like we were kind of coming to the end, but I can't see the clock. Wayne, did you do a lot of health of?
Speaker 2:no, that was the perfect ending to end on nvidia, because that that whole like start to finish. That was a riveting episode. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that. Stay tuned, stick with us.
Speaker 1:This is moving fast yes we're learning, you're learning hopefully uh, and you know, until next time, of course. And then please follow us at the frontier line and send us a note email. If we need to talk about something or if you have a correction or an addition or whatever, we'd love to hear from you. So thank you everybody for listening and until next time on the Frontier Line, wayne.
