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