The data centre industry is being squeezed from multiple directions right now, with a balance needing to be sought for customers between optimal performance, driven by AI, and sustainability commitments.
Hyperscalers are feeling the AI pinch too. A recent report from Moody’s warned of the risks of overbuilding to support AI demand. The rise of neoclouds, offering GPUs as a service, feed into this potential need.
Yet the most forward-thinking data centre providers have got a couple of aces up their sleeve to ensure that neither scale nor sustainability is compromised.
Verne, with a footprint in Finland, Iceland, and the UK, was built on the principle of developing data centres in optimised geographic locations, with the lowest total cost of ownership, and 100% renewable power. Sam Wicks, Verne head of design and product development, describes the ethos as ‘moving data, not power’. He notes that, whether it’s a hyperscaler, neocloud, or enterprise customer, the squeeze is being put on – yet Verne is prepared.
“The key takeaway for me is that we are already AI-scale,” explains Wicks. “We skipped net-scale, we skipped cloud-scale, we jumped straight to AI-scale, back when it was called HPC [high performance computing]. So we’re used to these massively dense workloads, and we know that these demands from GPUs, TPUs draw huge amounts of power… and you can’t just roll them into a traditional data centre and hope for the best.
“The great thing about Verne is that we do this in a very sustainable way,” Wicks adds. “All of that power comes from a clean source, and we’re using the cool Nordic climate to cool it, and we’re doing it all while consuming zero water. So you’re winning on all fronts.”
The mission for Verne, as Wicks puts it, is to align the demand signal from AI development with the physical infrastructure of space, power, and cooling. Yet the former has a timescale of weeks where the latter works in years; so Verne aims to build the infrastructure in parallel with the chip and platform roadmaps. “The goal is to build the future, not wait for it,” says Wicks.
The regulatory wind is also blowing in this direction. The European Union is committing to a €200bn (£173.7bn) AI investment, of which part is the proposal of the Cloud and AI Development Act, which aims to ‘at least triple the EU’s data centre capacity within… seven years, prioritising sustainable data centres.’
With digital sovereignty becoming increasingly important, Verne, as a wholly European-owned business, is seeing the potential here as well. “Europe has got two great advantages; massive amounts of clean power, and a serious vision for ethical AI. And that’s something that really aligns with what Verne are doing,” says Wicks.
“Companies can put their most critical AI workloads in a place protected by European law, powered by 100% clean energy,” adds Wicks. “And so that allows us to build a better, more secure future – not just a faster one with better AI models.
“We’re solving for scale, sustainability, and sovereignty all at once.”
Watch the full video at below. Sam Wicks is speaking at Data Centre Expo Europe, in Amsterdam on September 24-25. Find out more about his speaking session here.
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