Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Talking about the use of AI for that you need infrastructure.
Speaker 2: We can talk about that now. Nscale, UK, developer for
Speaker 2: AI data centers, is now one of your's most valuable
Speaker 2: startups after raising two billion dollars in a recent round
Speaker 2: which now values the company and a call fourteen point
Speaker 2: six billion dollars. Now the AI hyperscalers are also looking
Speaker 2: to this particular company because they want to be looking
Speaker 2: for more compute. But also they've got some significant leaders
Speaker 2: coming in directors including former British politician Nick Clegg Showl
Speaker 2: Samburg as well longtime chief operating officer of Facebook and
Speaker 2: its parent Meta. And I'm very realased to say we
Speaker 2: can welcome the leadership now n Scale CEO Josh Payin
Speaker 2: along with Cheryl Samburg, and is a joy to have
Speaker 2: you both on the show. And Josh, some huge ambitions
Speaker 2: from n Scale and just the computing power that you
Speaker 2: can bring online, the revenues you're going to be generating
Speaker 2: in the next few years, just talk to us about
Speaker 2: how you achieve that that necessary infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Josh, Well, thank you, Carolina, it's great to be here.
Speaker 3: You know, firstly, what I'll say is this is the
Speaker 3: fourth Industrial Revolution. This market is moving so fast and
Speaker 3: we're still at the beginning. We're talking about a technology
Speaker 3: that is going to lead to atomized automated drug discovery,
Speaker 3: the extension of human life, truly autonomous agents, and that
Speaker 3: the only thing that prevents that future is access to
Speaker 3: the scarce resource, which is the compute. And so n
Speaker 3: scale solves this problem. We buy and build and deploy
Speaker 3: all of that infrastructure to allow for these products to
Speaker 3: be built and operated. And so not only is there
Speaker 3: just huge demand for the sector, but we're capturing it.
Speaker 2: And that's huge demand for your expertise, Sheryl, and to
Speaker 2: join boards. Why did you choose Josh? Why did you
Speaker 2: back end scale? Why on the board?
Speaker 1: Well, the funny part of the story starts with his part, which.
Speaker 3: Is, well, so thinking about how I build the next
Speaker 3: great AI platform, what was most important to me is
Speaker 3: speaking to executive. It was that have built great platforms
Speaker 3: before of global scale, and so certainly none better than
Speaker 3: Cheryl Sandberg. And so I tried for it some time
Speaker 3: to get an introduction to Cheryl, and upon finally doing so,
Speaker 3: we scheduled a thirty minute call and the first thing
Speaker 3: that she said to me was I don't do boards,
Speaker 3: and I don't do these calls. Right, So it was
Speaker 3: an inauspicious beginning.
Speaker 1: But I didn't do boards and I didn't do these calls.
Speaker 1: But what I saw in Josh ninety minutes into our
Speaker 1: thirty minute phone call was what I considered real visionary leadership.
Speaker 1: Over the next few weeks, as he was trying to
Speaker 1: get me to consider joining the board, he went away
Speaker 1: and he wrote a letter to his management team. And
Speaker 1: the only person I'd ever seen right like that was
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. This combination of a relentless, relentless desire for
Speaker 1: a great, relentless desire for execution, you know. And from
Speaker 1: my point of view, I joined Google when it was
Speaker 1: at two hundred and fifty people left at twenty thousand.
Speaker 1: I joined Facebook when it was five hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people left, you know, almost one hundred thousand. So the
Speaker 1: opportunity to work with a founder I believe in, I
Speaker 1: joined right as the company was about three hundred and
Speaker 1: four hundred people, so that same spot, and try to
Speaker 1: take some of the lessons we've learned and help a
Speaker 1: company I believe in this much scale really matters. I
Speaker 1: also really believe in the power of AI. I think
Speaker 1: we're at the very beginning I started my career in
Speaker 1: global health. AI is going to mean that anyone in
Speaker 1: a remote village anywhere in the world could get skin
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosed at the same efficacy rate as someone in
Speaker 1: the Mayo clinic. But that is going to take a
Speaker 1: buildout and a buildout of infrastructure and compute, and I
Speaker 1: really believe in Josh and N Scale's ability to do that.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to.
Speaker 3: Be here, Josh.
Speaker 4: The term neo cloud has actually also become quite broad.
Speaker 4: When I talk to people about nscale, they say, well,
Speaker 4: nscale is modular. How do you set yourselves apart from
Speaker 4: the other neoclouds out there, many many of whom come
Speaker 4: on this program and make quite similar pitches.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think the key distinction with n scale is
Speaker 3: we are fully vertically integrated. Again, if you think about
Speaker 3: the challenge for the sector, it's actually landing the infrastructure
Speaker 3: on the ground and getting it plugged in. And the
Speaker 3: true scarcity given that the demand in the sector is
Speaker 3: the land, the power, and then the chips and so
Speaker 3: by and large, the neocloud sector is not really vertically
Speaker 3: integrated in that they don't own their own land and power.
Speaker 3: N scale does. We own the land and power, We
Speaker 3: own the chips, and we own the software delivering an
Speaker 3: end to end service to the counterparty. In addition, we
Speaker 3: recently acquired a company called American Intelligence Corporation in West Virginia,
Speaker 3: which adds an even further segment to that, which is
Speaker 3: the ownership of the power. This is a behind the
Speaker 3: meter site, which means that we're effectively taking natural gas
Speaker 3: and producing our own energy, which means it's not connected
Speaker 3: to the local grid and therefore subject to any kind
Speaker 3: of price increases for consumers.
Speaker 4: Soyl, it's great to have you back on Bloomberg Television
Speaker 4: and on Woomberg Tech. You said I don't do boards
Speaker 4: historically with this role with end Scale, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people are really interested if you go back
Speaker 4: to being an operator. You know, with time, if you
Speaker 4: would join the executive ranks at Ndscale, and whether you
Speaker 4: do or don't kind of operationally, how you think you
Speaker 4: can help the company grow.
Speaker 1: So I've joined as both a board member as an advisor.
Speaker 1: I'm spending real time with Josh and his team. I
Speaker 1: have no plans to go on board full time. They
Speaker 1: have an incredible exec team, and my goal is to
Speaker 1: help them scale, help figure out how we structure, how
Speaker 1: we do corporate governance. I've helped recruit some other great
Speaker 1: board members Nick Clagge you mentioned joined the board with me,
Speaker 1: Sue Decker, who has decades of experience cheering audit committees
Speaker 1: and in the financial world, and work with them to
Speaker 1: really scale their company. What I see in Josh is
Speaker 1: two things is really ambition, like real ambition to make
Speaker 1: a difference in how the AI build out happens, make
Speaker 1: it sustainable, make it clean, commitment to local jobs as
Speaker 1: we scale and build, but also a commitment to excellence,
Speaker 1: to hiring the best people, to getting people into the
Speaker 1: right jobs, to structuring so that we can really execute.
Speaker 1: And it's been it already. Has been a great pleasure
Speaker 1: to work this closely with someone I believe in and
Speaker 1: also Caroline, I know you always care about this. A
Speaker 1: really strong team of senior women. Head of AI Infrastructure, CFO,
Speaker 1: head of security. Josh before me hired what he considers
Speaker 1: who he considers the best people, and a lot of
Speaker 1: great women in those jobs.
Speaker 2: I love that because it's something I'm passionate about it.
Speaker 2: Something that you spend your career advocating for Cheryl is
Speaker 2: diversity within the ranks of talent. But also you're advocating
Speaker 2: as well for clean energy. And I notice what one
Speaker 2: other board seeing with terror dot and that is about
Speaker 2: carbon neutrality. So Josh, I ask you, what about carbon
Speaker 2: neutrality for West Virginia, because that's about actual gas. Do
Speaker 2: you think about that in the longer term?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, so broadly, the company thesis is to take
Speaker 3: sustainable energy and convert it into intelligence. So we first
Speaker 3: do this in the North of Norway. So we operate
Speaker 3: in the North of Norway using only hydropower. The North
Speaker 3: of Norway has such a large oversupply of energy due
Speaker 3: to basically the seasons. Effectively, during the winter all of
Speaker 3: the glaciers melt over and then in the summer they
Speaker 3: all melt and create enormous waterfalls. And the Norwegian government
Speaker 3: has built large hydropower dams to capture that energy. But
Speaker 3: the challenge is it can't be exported and so it's
Speaker 3: got to be consumed in region. So m Scale is
Speaker 3: building some of the largest AI infrastructure projects on the
Speaker 3: European continent in the North of Norway, taking otherwise stranded
Speaker 3: energy and converting it to intelligence. The same goes for
Speaker 3: our projects in Texas as an example. In Texas, you've
Speaker 3: got a similar oversupply of renewables and other energy, but
Speaker 3: it's in remote location. So we're building some of the
Speaker 3: largest infrastructure projects in North America in this location in
Speaker 3: order to convert that to intelligence. Now in West Virginia,
Speaker 3: we're doing the same thing, but slightly different. In West Virginia,
Speaker 3: we're producing our own energy. One of the challenges with
Speaker 3: the North American grid is constrained, and so we felt
Speaker 3: that producing our own energy with natural gas generators behind
Speaker 3: the media was the best way to scale sustainably but
Speaker 3: also not impact local prices and the grid.
Speaker 4: Cheryl, you're very used to being inside companies that are
Speaker 4: just truly global, right listening to what Josh is saying.
Speaker 4: N Scale gets a lot of credit because it's a
Speaker 4: kind of a leader in Europe, it is a footprint
Speaker 4: in the United Kingdom. But we've just been talking about America.
Speaker 4: How much do you want Josh, I know he's sitting
Speaker 4: next to you, to shift gears a little bit and
Speaker 4: move this company in himself to the US. Do you
Speaker 4: want him to focus on the Middle East, where there
Speaker 4: is the capital, there is the will, there is energy
Speaker 4: supply for example.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll let him answer that. But certainly this is global, right,
Speaker 1: This is a global company started in London and continuing
Speaker 1: to expand all over the world. Yeah, I mean today.
Speaker 3: Today we're operating in five countries. We have plans for fifteen. Naturally,
Speaker 3: North America is the center of the universe for artificial intelligence,
Speaker 3: both with startups, with larger customers, with access to capital,
Speaker 3: and so naturally I spent a lot of my time here,
Speaker 3: but as Cheryl said, this is a global market, and
Speaker 3: I'm spending most of my time on a plane as
Speaker 3: a result.
Speaker 4: That's a very familiar tale that you appears have told
Speaker 4: us on this program. To n Scale CEO Josh pay
Speaker 4: and Scale board member and advisor Cheryl Sandberg, it's great
Speaker 4: to have you both on the program.