← The Digital Executive
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- [00:00]
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Brian (Podcast Host)
Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Tor Langoi. Tor Langoi is a Norwegian entrepreneur with experience across energy, finance and global markets. He began his career at Norway's largest industrial logistics park, later holding commercial roles at BP and Amoco before becoming a full time Entrepreneur Investor in 2004. He has founded and invested in oil, real estate and digital asset ventures. He believes that Norway and Finland are emerging as prime locations for hyperscale AI infrastructure, leveraging abundant hydropower, natural cooling and large scale land availability to support 1.8 gigawatts of sustainable compute capacity. Well, good afternoon Tor. Welcome to the show.
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Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
A pleasure being with you Brian.
- [02:06]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it and really making the time. I know a lot of calendars we have to juggle. We got PR here as well. But I'm in Kansas City, you're in Oslo, Norway. So again, I just appreciate it that's it's hard to do that sometimes with the time zone. So Tor, if you don't mind, I'm going to jump right into your first question. You've built a career spanning energy, finance and global investments across multiple contents. I'm sorry, continents. What key experience has shaped your journey from corporate roles at BP and Amoco to becoming a full time entrepreneur and investor?
- [02:41]
Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
Well, it's been a long journey. I'm getting old now, but in my early days I had a father who was pretty globally minded so I went around the world with him. First time when I was 5 years old and I kind of exposed me to the world. So I'm from a small town on the west coast of Norway and luckily had a father who was extremely globally minded. So in my subconscious I always been very intrigued by global events and the world and that made me study in the us, different universities there and end up in Dubai and I started work for Bridge Petroleum and I had a pleasure of working in the former Soviet Union and Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and crazy places in Africa, so. So I learned a lot about how the energy system of the world is actually working. And I think a lot of people are aware what you're wearing today when you because it's in the news every day about a hormone trait. Very few people know the fact that like 20% of so the global oil and gas plus of course helium and fertilizer is also a derivative of gas that's also not flowing. So having a good understanding what energy world was kind of instrumental and also building up Viking Digital because ultimately data centers is really about energy. If you don't have energy and electricity, whether it comes from gas or nuclear or hydropower, ultimately energy is a driver not only of data centers but of the world. So it was kind of good to have that background when we started Viking Digital a few years ago because it gave us a very good foundation to understand the points of energy. So that was kind of our base when we started off some years ago. And as you may know, now we're, we're building the second generation NEO cloud which essentially means that we have the full stack from electrons to the full tech stack, which means build, procure and operate and optimize plus of course a full sovereign AI and cybersecurity plus LLM stacks we have in our business model we have a full, full value stack which is very unique, which makes us pretty attractive now to many end users and also investors. There's been a quite, quite a journey but ultimately it was, it's good to have that foundation coming from any the energy background.
- [05:20]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Thank you, I appreciate that. And the backstory. You learned a very hard work ethic from your father obviously, but you were always curious about the global economy, the energy, how the world works. And you worked all over the world in this business, thought it was interesting that you listed off all those countries and continents, et cetera. But you realize the importance of providing energy to the world's largest and biggest advanced data centers and you're providing a solution for a long term plan to sustain these data centers. So I appreciate that. And tor you've raised and deployed over 6 billion across energy and infrastructure projects. What have been the most important lessons in structuring and executing large scale global deals?
- [06:02]
Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
I don't think it's necessarily one lesson, but there are many lessons on both on the, both on the financial side. But I would say it's really more on the human side because when you work cross border you have different languages, different people, different cultures. One word in one culture can be totally different in another culture. So you have to be very aware of your counterparty. And I think sometimes that's where many lose out on deals because there's a misunderstanding of the counterparts culture and the way they work. For instance, right now, I mean I'm Norwegian, but right now we're doing a big development in Finland and the Finnish culture is vastly different from the Norwegian culture, but in a very refreshing manner. Norwegians are pretty direct, but the defense are even more direct and to the point. So these. So, so for instance, if I was not aware of that, probably many people will walk away and they interface with some of our local partners. But I find it very refreshing. But you need to have a thick skin. So I think that is actually one of the key lessons is more than not necessarily numbers and sense and the spreadsheets is actually the human aspects of a deal that's very often overlooked.
- [07:25]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Thank you, I appreciate that. And as a world traveler myself, back in the day I was in the Marines and I got to experience a lot of what you're talking about and I appreciate you sharing that. But the big takeaway here, the most important piece of these deals globally is obviously people, culture and communication and, and really understanding that helps solidify a deal. Of course if you go into this not knowing some of this stuff, deals can go sideways and you need definitely have to have thick skin. So I appreciate that. Tor, you've highlighted Norway and Finland as emerging hubs for hyperscale AI infrastructure. What makes these regions uniquely positioned to support sustainable large scale compute capacity?
- [08:07]
Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
Well, it's an excellent question because energy is kind of the number one topic globally now with the lack of supply of energy coming from the Middle East. So we think now, I mean it's pretty clear that data, no one is going to will take the risk of investing further in the Middle east, at least for quite a while, even though they have energy down there in principle. But it's very difficult to ensure data centers for bombs and missiles and drones. So being in a stable part of the world, which Norway, Finland, Sweden arguably is, I think the security wise is Pretty good. But the most important is arguably the power. And in Norway the electricity is 100% hydropower, a little bit of wind, maybe 1%, but for the most part it's hydropower and it's getting scarcer and scarcer. But luckily we have some really amazing plots of land with power. And also we have quite a few partners that is rolling into Viking Digital because they're excited to be part of the second generation NEO cloud buildup which we represent. As with Finland, it's a bit more mixed picture. As for our site, we are in close proximity to the massive 3.4 gigawatt nuclear power station that's just south from us. In fact, we have the industrial park closest to that nuclear power station. So we have the fortunate position to have direct access via grid to to the nuclear power station. But in Finland is you have a lot of nuclear and a little bit of hydropower, also loads of wind. And that has attracted. Google made a big announcement two weeks ago. They're moving big into Finland and a site there in kind of in the middle of of Finland. And then Nibius did a 300 megawatt announcement as well. They're like two, three hours north of Helsinki. While we are actually closer to Helsinki than any of them because the airport. So we are very bullish on Finland and Finland is similar mix to Sweden in terms of the power source. But ultimately I think the Nordics offer a very unique platform because it is super secure, stable nations and still with excess electrons or electricity. While if you look at Europe right now, it's the opposite UK if you take that case in point, OpenAI pulled out of the Stargate project here in the UK because the UK simply doesn't have electricity and has 7 to 10 year waiting list for grid connection. If you take Germany, similar situation. Germany was totally reliant on cheap Russian gas. And then of course the Ukraine war happened and they cut themselves off from Russian gas essentially and they were now reliant on imports from Qatar and the US and the exports from Qatar has stopped as a result. They were more reliant on the us but the US gas is five times more expensive than Russian gas. To give you case in point, Russia Russian gas was importing reliably into Germany via direct pipelines to factories and gas turbines at $2 per MMBTU. While now the importing gas from the US from on 9 to $10 per MMBTU. So you have the gas price is roughly $3 in the US but then the transportation cost from Houston to Hamburg is 6 $7 per mme tu. So on a good day you are at 9 $10 landed per mmbtu. Plus of course local grid, local pipeline cost as well. So Germany Germany electricity is never going to be cheap and a similar thing with the UK in fact UK import daily 4 or 5 gigawatts from France, 2, 3 gigawatts of electricity from Norway and then half of the UK's gas comes from Norway as well. So you might as well go to the source which is Norway and the Nordics. So if you want to build a data center with reliable energy for the next few years, I think the Nordics and Norway will be a a good place to be.
- [12:57]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Thank you. Appreciate that you unpacked a lot there. But bottom line is energy is obviously the number one thing being talked about right now, especially with the Mideast conflict. But the nor nations are definitely secure, stable area part of the world. And you kind of highlighted Norway's big on the hydropower, Finland as well with some nuclear power there's which is certainly attracting large customers like Meta. But the also there's a lot of energy challenges in the UK and Europe as you highlighted and obviously getting that from the US is much more expensive than the the proposition that they had coming from Russia with that pipeline. So again appreciate highlighting some of the geopolitical things that are involved in providing energy in that region of the world. And toward the last question of the day, as we look ahead to the future, how do you see the convergence of energy, finance and AI infrastructure shaping the global economy over the next decade and where are the biggest opportunities as
- [13:57]
Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
a billion trillion dollar question. But I think we kind of if you look in the rearview mirror, the first part of this revolutionary revolution was building the models. So you have of course the famous ones like Anthropic and OpenAI and many others who've been scooping up the world's data into their models. So that was kind of the first stage. Now the next stage is utilization of all this data. So inference and the fuel for this compute will be tokens. And Jensen Huang at this keynote at the GTC the GTC Nvidia conference in San Jose a good month ago spend quite a lot of time on talking about tokens that he for instance gives his some key Key Tech employees $250,000 worth of tokens so they can play around with with different models. So that is the next commodity. So for us and Viking Digital we're very much aware of that fact or at least that we see as a fact that the World will require enormous amount of compute capacity in the form of of tokens. So the ones that can deliver the cheapest and highest markup in our case tokens will be the winner. And that's also kind of why we're presenting ourselves as a second generation new cloud because we will have the cheapest tokens and many of the players out there today, they will probably not be able to compete with us because a token, what is it? It is a combination of electricity. So you need to have the cheapest electricity, the cheapest cost of capital and the most efficient compute. By dominating those three pillars you will have the cheapest and highest margin tokens. And I think that's is something that's kind of been overlooked by many but that's kind of. We have a laser focus on these three pillars to have the cheapest electricity, cheapest cost of capital and the most efficient compute. And this is something I, I realized last year and I realized well we have good control of the capital cost and and we have arguably the cheapest electrons definitely very competitive prices. And so that's why I went to the US last year to find a brain trust for to create efficient compute. And that's where I had an amazing meeting of mines with a former head of Infrastructure and OpenAI Banker Tamisi and luckily he and his team joined us in Viking Digital because he also see eye to eye about our vision and creating the second generation, second generation near cloud which can give the market the cheapest tokens. So that's where I think that's going to be a trillion dollar economy according to the latest McKinsey reports.
- [17:09]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Thank you, really appreciate that. This is great, really like how you kind of delve into this tokenization. Obviously Viking Digital looking to move towards this tokenization in this compute market you're considered OR Viking Digital 2nd Generation Neo Cloud having the most inexpensive token and just to break that down again was you mentioned cheapest electricity, cheapest cost cap capital and most efficient compute. And I like that bringing this tokenization into it and having especially in the Nordic countries and what you're doing, providing the most inexpensive token is going to be great, very competitive of course and I really appreciate, appreciate your insights and tor it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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Tor Langoi (Guest Entrepreneur)
Well, thank you for your time today Brian. It was fantastic chat today and appreciate it.
- [18:02]
Brian (Podcast Host)
Bye for now.