Ever Onward Podcast

The Truth About AI Data Centers, Power & America's Future with Travis Hawkes & Eric Sonner | Ep. 135

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 135

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 58:22

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of Ever Onward, Tommy Ahlquist and Travis Hawkes sit down with Eric Sonner, founder and CEO of Data Airflow, to explore one of the fastest-growing industries in the world: AI data centers.

Eric shares his remarkable journey from growing up on a farm in Buhl, Idaho, to becoming an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist while building one of the nation's leading engineering firms serving AI and high-performance computing facilities. Along the way, he explains how his early work solving cooling challenges for Bitcoin mining evolved into designing next-generation infrastructure powering artificial intelligence across the United States.

The conversation tackles many of the biggest misconceptions surrounding AI data centers, including water consumption, energy demands, economic impact, and why the United States is racing to build the infrastructure needed to stay competitive.

They also discuss:

  • How AI data centers actually work
  • The truth about water usage and cooling systems
  • America's growing power generation challenge
  • Nuclear, natural gas, and the future of energy
  • Why AI infrastructure is a matter of national security
  • Idaho's role in the future of technology
  • Leadership lessons from building a company at rapid scale
  • The importance of hiring great people and casting a compelling vision

Whether you're interested in AI, entrepreneurship, energy, technology, or the future of America's economy, this episode offers an inside look at one of the most important industries shaping the next decade.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe for more conversations with the leaders shaping Idaho's future and beyond.

Follow Ahlquist on Social Media: 

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/ahlquist/⁠⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/ahlquistdev/

TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ahlquistdev

X (Twitter): ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/ahlquistdev

Meta (Facebook): ⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ahlquistdev/

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ahlquistdev?si=ejOXPKRqQjtsdVFE


Welcome And Why Data Centers

SPEAKER_03

Today on the Ever Onward Podcast, we have Eric Saunner, founder and CEO of Data Airflow. He uh began uh Data Airflow as an engineering, procurement, and commissioning firm serving AI and high-performance computing uh data centers across the United States. He was named the uh Entrepreneur of the Year in 2026 in the Mountain West and was a national finalist for that award. He has built his career solving large-scale mechanical and thermal engineering challenges, entering the data center industry through Bitcoin mining, tackling cooling problems that few engineers had encountered at the time. Today, Data Air Force works with operators building next generation AI infrastructure, helping solve some of the industry's most complex thermal and cooling challenges. We cannot wait, Travis and I to talk to Eric about data centers. There's a lot of talk about the positives, negatives, concerns, constraints on water and power and uh some of the changing technology. And Eric is the perfect local founder in Idaho uh story that's going to talk to us about his business and the future of data centers and technology in the country. Uh, for those of you who are listening to the Ever Onward Podcast, we really appreciate you for listening. Uh please give us a like, follow, or comment, and uh hope you enjoy Eric Saunner. Eric, welcome to the podcast, man. Excited to be here. I think I'm I'm excited. Travis has me so pumped up to have you on. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_00

I'm really excited because I just know at the end you're gonna be like, that was unbelievable that you got this guy to come in. And and so I'm I'm excited.

SPEAKER_03

Let's start, let's start

Buell Idaho Work Ethic

SPEAKER_03

here. Let we gotta start at Buell. Yeah. Buell, Idaho, buddy. Yeah. I mean, I would I mean, here's here, here's the guy that's done what you've done in Buell, Idaho. Yes, they gotta put a statue out front of maybe.

SPEAKER_01

I know. I'll um it it's crazy. I uh like I give you a quick story. I grew up, you know, in a double white mobile home. My dad was a farmer. Um, they came from back east and traveled and tore it out of sagebrush. So didn't go to college, you know, and uh worked at Clear Springs Foods in my dad's farm, you know.

SPEAKER_03

From what was it like growing up in Buell? By the way, Buell is beautiful for anyone out there that hasn't been to Buell, Buell's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00

It is beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's beautiful. No, we live down on the river, got to do a lot of uh outdoorsy stuff and just you know enjoyed learning all the hard, you know, hard work and everything else. So I really like Buell. It was it's great. I promise we'll move on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

But but tell like there is something, and Travis, when we talked about this before, like there's this Idaho heritage thing. Yeah, that like it is work. And when I when you say work, and everyone says, Ah, I learned how to work hard. But you you you get these farm kids, yeah, and and I think I think work is not the same to all people. When you grow up on a farm, you learn how to work. Oh, yeah. I mean, you really learn how to work.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. We are picking rocks in fields, you know, pulling weeds, feeding cows early, early in the morning, you know, doing all the working cows, doing all the things with that. And not a lot of complaining, I guess. No, no, my dad would not put out the bride. Yeah, no, we had to, we got a lot of work done. Yeah, uh running grain trucks, just you know, getting all itchy and all that, you know. So it was it was neat. I mean, it was great. Went played a lot of sports, football, track, and uh wrestling.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm sure I think back to a lot of the farm kids I've talked to. You don't even think about complaining. No, you don't because you get your butt whipped. Yeah, you do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Totally. Yeah. I love it. I love it. So, so you grow up in Buell, you have this great, great time growing up, and then and then talk, talk about your career path because this is a little crazy.

SPEAKER_01

So I, you know, I was originally I was gonna go do taxidermy, which is probably a good thing I didn't do that. You know, I was like, I did that, it was a little bit, I had a little business, you know, it was birds, right? And I was like, hey, you know what though?

SPEAKER_03

I the last birds I had done were like 900 bucks each. Yeah, I know. So you're right. So I don't know. Well, I think it's not data centers. I think it's not data centers.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So so I was gonna do that, but then I was like, you know, somebody came to me. So um ACO Engineered Systems is a company I used to work for. So they they were like, Oh, you should do air conditioning. Like, okay, I'll do that. So I went to CSI for a year, and then I went to Southern California from Peel when I was 19, moved to uh Long Beach, went to Glendale, got a hand-drawn map of where to go in Long Beach, and then I got lost, you know, going down there in East LA. So, you know, I didn't get you were very lost. Yeah, I was very lost. I I didn't go to college, um, I was dyslexic in school and stuff, so I struggled in school. Um, but I got into the union, um, went to the apprenticeship program at local 250, and then I moved back as soon as I was done, married my wife, uh, met Christina at the you know, in Twin Falls. She's from Twin. And then uh we both moved down there and then she moved back with me. So moved back to Idaho and then in 2008, perfect timing. I was like, I should start my own business or something. So I talked to uh my old boss and we decided to start ACO Engineered Systems and Boise. So I started I'm gonna stop you a whole bunch of times, dude.

SPEAKER_03

Because I know how this ends, right? When you know the end from the beginning, yeah. Hey, I just think I ought to start my business. Talk a little bit about that decision. Did you always want to be your own?

SPEAKER_01

I was kind of an entrepreneur, right? I think. And and then I I just remember the spot. I was driving and called while I was working for Johnson Controls. I was like, I should,

Bitcoin Mining And First Cooling Fixes

SPEAKER_01

I should do something. So I started ACO. We built ACO up and it is what it is, right? We built it up and I think I was there for 10 years in 20 um 15. So this is kind of the start of it, right? I uh got into one of my neighbors came to me. He's like, I got this Bitcoin mine. I didn't even know what that was, right? In uh central Washington, and they're having a hard time cooling it off, you know. So I was like, I went to go look at this thing and I went and showed my dude, we are gonna stop so so you're you're gonna be so irritated.

SPEAKER_03

I'm glad that you're sitting on the other end of tough. But you're gonna reach across and just pop me at some point. Yeah, let me finish. So, first of all, for a lot of us, even though Bitcoin's been around forever, when you talk about Bitcoin mining, it's still we have a good friend, Eric Finman.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Who I remember one time sitting with him and I said, Eric, you're not leaving this room until you talk to me. I don't understand. Explain it, yeah. Explain it. And at the end of it, I'm like, I give up. I don't understand. Yeah, but Bitcoin mining, can you go into that a little bit of detail? Yeah, so because I think it ties into totally does.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it totally does. So Bitcoin mining is just, you know, everybody knows what Bitcoin is, right? Digital currency. And the Bitcoin miners validate the blockchain on the algorithm. So every miner is linked together and every miner validates every single transaction, right? So if you don't have the network up and running, it's the biggest computer network in the world. Um, it will, you know, it won't work, right? So these guys needed this help with Bitcoin mining. So that's how it's done. It validates the blockchain. Every single transaction that's ever been made is on every single server and it's validated.

SPEAKER_03

It's super computing intensive. It is.

SPEAKER_01

It's just a big server that blows hot air.

SPEAKER_03

It can suck a lot of energy. Yeah, it blows a lot of hot air. A lot of hot air, right?

SPEAKER_01

So that's the thing I didn't understand is just how intensive that was. Oh, it's so hot. Yeah. So much heat. So, anyway, if you don't cool it off, right, they don't work and then they don't make any money, right? So these guys needed help. So I went and showed my boss at the time, and they kind of laughed at me and said, Those are home, there's like Home Depot shelves with wires hanging everywhere, right? And it was just, it looked like some farmyard contraption, right? So they laughed at me. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go figure this out myself. So I kind of started helping these guys with this stuff and uh got into that, got that going, right? And then they came to me with an opportunity in Sweden. So they have this.

SPEAKER_03

So when you said you got it, you so what you did is said, okay, guys, you guys are sticking these on racks and cords everywhere. I'm gonna teach you how to cool them. Yep, help them cool it off.

SPEAKER_01

So that's what we did. So you kind of just said, hey, this is Oh, it's just like it's just it's just like air conditioning. So you start thinking about it. So I kind of helped them. I kind of can't, I didn't know what it was either. I didn't even know what Bitcoin was. So we figured out a way I looked at it and I said, Okay, we're gonna blow some nice evaporated cold air in across it, not use little mini units, air conditioned units, because it's so you gotta it's very farmer-esque cooling a bitcoin mine. So, but yeah, that that was it. So we and then I I so they could there was an opportunity, right? During night 2018, the price went up a lot, so there was this big opportunity in Sweden. They have a an old log mill. So I was like, I looked in it. A lot of it's funny because you look at like Google Earth pictures, and I'm trying to design the system off of Google Earth and some crappy pictures somebody took. But we ended up, you know, sending all these fans over on a plane and doing all the stuff helping these guys get it going. And then and then they were gonna do, and this is right when I quit my job. I I they signed up to do 10 megawatts, which is a big amount. It's not a big amount now, but it was a big amount for me, right? And then they they paid me half the money. I ordered all this stuff, and then and then all of a sudden I quit my job and I start my business up, and then they the price of Bitcoin goes uh way down.

SPEAKER_03

So so but your your stable employment, like yeah, you do life's good. Yeah, this Bitcoin thing's new. They 10 megawatts is nothing nowadays, right? Yep, no, compared to what I'm sure we'll get into here with you, right? But then you design the system for Sweden, yeah, and order the supply. Did had you seen the place or was it?

SPEAKER_01

No, I went and saw it. I gotta go see it. We did how big was it? It was what but the one I did, we did four megawatts, and then it was gonna be 10 megawatts. Okay. The four megawatt ones was great. I made sold it, made money, great, good deal, right? Yeah, the next bigger one, the 10 megawatt one, was the one that was the problem. So we got it off the ground, and then all of a sudden the price goes down, and then then they quit paying me. And then I got my vendors got these semi-truck loads of fans down in Florida, and I had to figure out what to do with it. So it was just really, it was very stressful, right? This goes back to these founder stories, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. The one, the the things you just skip over the the the nights laying in bed saying, okay, I got all these fans. What am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I just quit. Yeah, I just got all these fans, but how am I gonna get them up to Colorado?

SPEAKER_00

What what was during this time? What how what was your wife's reaction to this?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, she was just, yeah, she was like, Great, this is awesome, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Good thing she's got a job at St.

SPEAKER_01

Luke's. You quit your job, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we, you know, and it everything worked out, right? So I met this Chinese guy. There was an Intel factory in Colorado Springs, and he had a Bitcoin mine. So he needed, he was, he had this huge facility. So he let me, I got the guys to pay to ship everything up and store it there, right? In this facility, because I told him I had to do all this stuff to so they would do this. So anyway, we got all the fans up there, and then anyway, it worked out to where I helped this guy out. They almost paid me off, and then they didn't, and then they they disappeared. These guys did in Sweden, just disappeared. So then I was able to I was able to sell this Chinese guy all these fans, and he paid me in Bitcoin, so it was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04

Oh my gosh. Of course.

SPEAKER_03

No wonder they're gonna make a movie in this corner.

SPEAKER_00

Well, also, also not surprising that the Bitcoin guys in Sweden disappeared. Yeah, could have predicted that one.

SPEAKER_03

No one's ever done that, right? No, no, they don't. Yeah, this is like a Netflix. Oh, yeah, multiple times over.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm I am curious though, when they paid you in Bitcoin, did you did you sell the Bitcoin because you wanted money, or you're like, I'm gonna hang on to this?

SPEAKER_01

No, I kept it, and then I invested in the same Bitcoin mine I helped start fix. I sold 25 Bitcoin at like $10,000 to put into this thing, you know, and it was back in 2019, right? So I I still bitcoin's been great. I've made a lot of money, lost amount of money. That's you know what it is, right? So anyway, I got through all that, and then I created intelligent design, um, which is a mechanical uh business that's in Boise. I have 30 technicians, I have an office manager and three three project managers, fullback office, and I created that, but it wasn't it wasn't like that. It runs like a machine now. It's very, it's a very good business. It was not like that three years ago. It was it was hard to get it off the ground. It was it was really hard.

SPEAKER_03

So I now go

Founding Data Airflow For AI

SPEAKER_03

go back for me. So so after this time, before you grow this business, do you see the opportunity coming with the data center? When when does that come into play?

SPEAKER_01

In 2023, in October, is when I created Data Airflow. And I was sitting in my backyard, I was like, I gotta, I gotta, instead of me diving into trying to make, I saw the vision, I saw the opportunity with the data center. That's why it was like, I gotta figure out something that's I split off the Bitcoin mining stuff that I was doing and call it like a you know, created data center. I saw like AI, right? So I split it off, and then I had an opportunity for a Bitcoin mine in West Texas, um, and it was a 200 megawatts, big, big site, you know, and so I was able to get that where we sold a bunch of fans to them and stuff like that. So that was great, right? That was a huge, it was a big job. And then I went to this mining conference and met the CEO, the COO of a big publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, and met him in the back of an Uber ride share thing. And he was like, Yeah, we want to get into AI, you know, and I'm like, Well, I can help you with that, you know. So then they call me, I give him my card. My card doesn't even have my cell phone, it has a fake number that goes to my like to my office landline. So I get a call from this guy and his other guy in New York, and they're like, Yeah, we want to do this. And I'm like, Well, you can't use your fans, your Bitcoin fans, you got to do like chillers and stuff like that. So we we started out with two megawatts, and then we went to 20 megawatts, 50 megawatts, 50 megawatts, 200 megawatts, 200 megawatts, and then we got another 500 megawatts in Kentucky now, and then there's another site in Kentucky that's a gigawatt, and and so it's really gone very fast in two years.

unknown

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_01

And I've got 100, you know, like we've got 75 employees at Data Airflow now. 75. Yeah. Engineers, we're high level in Michigan, all here in Boise. No, all over the country. All over the country. Oh yeah. We travel, they travel a

Megawatts Gigawatts And PUE Basics

SPEAKER_01

lot.

SPEAKER_03

So um let's pivot a little bit. So you were throwing out some gigawatt, megawatt, yeah, quadruple lot, whatever.

SPEAKER_01

Ga gigawatt. Ga gigawatt. That's what we talk about.

SPEAKER_03

But um, but but to put in perspective, because I've I've told you that I've had a little education on this in the last year, and I'm ready to ask you so many questions.

SPEAKER_00

He's gonna have he's gonna become like a hard hitting question.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but put in perspective, the entire treasure valley from stem to stern uses about at peak capacity about 3.3 gigawatts. Yeah, right. That's kind of the whole thing. The micron fab number one is 500 megawatts for that entire fab. The metadata center 125 megawatts, 127 megawatts. Phase one, right? Yep. And I think they go up to the next phase, I think they get pretty close to 500 by the end of build-out, right? And um, and then so the second micron fab will be another 500. So you start putting in perspective some of these power numbers. Um and and most data centers, I think when it started, they were talking 200, I mean 20 to 50, then it went to 100, now 200, and now they kind of they they call these hyperscalers. So I want like just because I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot, there's a ton of and there's a lot of scare tactics, and and and frankly, one state away from us, Kevin there or whatever. Oh, I know. Yeah, I mean, that guy did not do anyone any favors because I think the way he his brashness and the way he tries to be Trump and he's not Trump, it scares the crap out of everybody. Yeah, but but there's also probably some legitimate concerns that you're really well equipped to address because of the water stuff. Oh, yeah. But but let's start with so so the these data centers just keep needing more and more and more and more. And I think that's the question is how much do we have on the grid? Where does this power come from? And then we'll probably start talking about some self-generated power that's going on. There's a lot of things going on.

SPEAKER_01

Behind the meter power.

SPEAKER_03

Behind the meter power, yeah. But just definition-wise, um, that's kind of what we're talking about, right? So a gigawatt is 3.2 of those, is the whole treasure valley. It kind of puts it in perspective how much power this is.

SPEAKER_01

It's so much power. It's so much, so much electricity, and it's just you that's one thing that you can't get away from, right? You can do a self-contained system so you don't use a lot of water, but you can't, you know, it's it's a gigawatt's a gigawatt.

SPEAKER_03

All right, let's just jump right in. So, in the early days, be in order to be most efficient, so if you have to go get this power, then then the better you cooled the system, the more output of power you would get.

SPEAKER_01

It's called the PUE, the peak a power utilization utilization efficiency. Okay. So your lower your PUE, the better, the more leasable um uh data center space you can do. And it that's a big deal. I mean, 10 megawatts over a 15-year contract is $500 million.

SPEAKER_03

Huge.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, huge amount of stuff.

SPEAKER_03

So so initially what they were doing was taking water, evaporating it, evaporating evaporation cooling, which is if if people go back to like that's funny as I've been talking to people, think about your swamp cooler.

SPEAKER_01

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

They use swamp coolers, right? Evaporated cooling, and then that was replaced by closed loop systems. And you kind of did the same thing. You are the cutting edge for data centers.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, but that's what we're doing. We're doing a closed loop system, and that's what everybody wants. Nobody's gonna go put billions of dollars worth of servers in something that's gonna suck the lake dryer. My son will come to me, my 15-year-old son, say, Look, look at this river,

Water Use Myths And Closed Loops

SPEAKER_01

it's it's dry. And it's like, that's probably a riverbed in Arizona.

SPEAKER_03

That's they're kind of over now, they're kind of done, right? So, first, let's dispel a bunch of myths today. Yeah. First myth to dispel is data centers are not using water.

SPEAKER_01

They use water. There is water in the closed loop, and we do miss some water, but like you can look at a 100 megawatt data center, let's say it's an open loop cooling tower, right? It's evaporating all this water. That could use 300 million gallons a year, right? Or we do a little bit of mist where maybe it's three million gallons a year, which isn't a lot of money over a year in an industrial application, right? Right. So there's a little bit of mist where it helps, you know, lower your P. But it's exponentially less. Exponentially less, yes. All right. So that's probably myth number one. Anything else to say on water? Yeah, there's like so in Oregon, I know there's some data centers that are being curtailed because they have open loop cooling towers, so they're containing their compute. So whoever had, you know, this thing going, so they they shut it down.

SPEAKER_00

What I I I mean, your example of how much you know power the Treasure Valley uses, put it in good context. I'm curious, similar to to water, because you you hear all these different things. So with what they're using now from a water perspective, put that in some sort of context of what normal industrial use would be or a golf course would use, or that's a really good question. Yeah. What what so I what kind of water you might have to go to AI to answer this?

SPEAKER_03

But I I think what we're most used to is acre feet.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And then acre feet translates back to how many gallons per year? Yeah. And then that goes back to gallons per day. Yeah. And the first thing he said in acre feet, it's a ton of water. Yeah. Like the acre feet that they would evaporate is a ton of ton of water. When you go back to the last thing he said, it is it is a minuscule amount of water, really, in in the grand scheme of things. Way less than farming, way less than golf coffee. Yeah, yeah. Way less than, way less than. Well, and and listen, not you know, too big of a soapbox, but if you look at the New York Canal and how much leaks out and evaporates in our valley here, I mean, it that's probably a way bigger loss of water than even things we're talking about. But I do think that that the industry has done a pretty poor job of explaining this because I think water still is the number one. Like if you went around Idaho right now and just pulled pulled people and said, why don't we want data centers? Number one thing would be it eats up all our water. Yeah. 100%.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. No, I had to send a guy from Portland um on an airplane all the way over to West Virginia to sit down and uh talk with a thousand people at a high school about water conservation for this data center that's over there that we're working on trying to get landed. Yeah, this seems to try to give some good PR.

SPEAKER_00

This seems like the big uh information battle. I mean, back to you, back to what's happened in Utah with that big data center. I mean, when you read, I mean, it's at the same time the great Salt Lake, you know, they're worried about that and like Powell and all these things. And then it's like, oh, well, now we're gonna open this big data center when we out of water. That's right. Yeah, yeah. But that's but that's not the that one. That's not the case. That's not the case.

SPEAKER_03

It's not the case. And so I think that you put that to sleep. Now

The Power Gap Nuclear And Gas

SPEAKER_03

let's talk power. Yeah, I think that is an issue. Yeah. So, so I'm gonna explain the world as I see it, and you're gonna correct me. Like, so so in a state like ours, you have Idaho Idaho Power in our region that's been generating power forever, mostly hydro, yeah. Um, still some fossil fuel generation. And then there was this time during the Obama administration where I remember when it was poo-pooed, but like there is wind and solar. Yeah, and you started seeing all these incentives of hey, all these, if you look at when you go up down I-84, you'll see solar farms and you'll see the wind generation. All those incentives went away when Trump took office. Yes. So I think a lot of the power generation went from, hey, we hate this, it's not efficient, to hey, we needed it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So there has been a kind of a double whammy. So all of those solar and wind farms that were planned prior to Trump's administration are now all either on hold or dead. So that was some of the generation. As we know, there's not going to be any more dams or hydro going in. And the small modular nuclear reactors, which we know a lot about because we're in Idaho with INL, are probably, I hear different things. I hear five years.

SPEAKER_01

I was there. I was there yesterday. I hear five weeks. What do you think? Oh, I went and saw it last week. I saw one go critical, deployable energy, right? That Trump mandated a thing before the fourth of July, right? Yeah. So deployable energy was number three being critical. Um, and they're gonna have some test modules put out by 2028.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so we're so we're probably that's what I'm hearing. Yeah. So you have these test modules, and then so you're probably best case scenario, the question's gonna be a cost, right? Because Five cents a kilowatt hour. Still five cents kilowatt hour, but it's coming. So we're kind of in this gap. Yep. But everyone believes that once that gets to a place where it's reproducible and you let the free market come in and that kilowatt hour comes down, that's going to be ultimately the solution for power.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. Right? Yep. It's going to be a big deal. Okay. What am I missing on that? No, I there's nothing. I think it's I saw it. It was really neat to see this. I mean, we went out and met the guys from deployable. I helped them. We kind of worked together on some stuff, and it's been really neat to see that go out and see the see this reactor that they brought in the back of a truck from Houston, Texas. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_03

So for people listening that may not, because I don't know how much like people are aware of this, but in Idaho, we have the Idaho National Laboratory, which is the leading research institution, probably at least in the West, but probably the United States, for uh nuclear reactors. You have the old legacy history of Arco being the first city that Atomic City, right? You have all this history, but now, and and they were the Navy. So for all of the Navy um ships that that use nuclear reactors, it was all designed here in Idaho. So now that this is re-emerging with this urgency because of the power shortage, we are leading the way because of the test facility and the ability to get it out. And so it's it's coming. It's coming. So you've got this coming. Now, here's the question, buddy. There is this gap. Yep. Because if you look in our in our state right now, and if you just said, hey, let's go put in two or three more data centers, where's that power coming from?

SPEAKER_01

It's gonna have to come from uh like gas turbines, okay. So let's oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So let's talk gas turbines. Yeah. So the irony of ironies is now we've shut down solar, we've shut down solar. Yeah. We now are saying we're gonna go back to fossil fuels to fill this gap. Yeah, but there's only so much natural gas in the Williams gas pipeline. Yeah, right? Yeah. But the whole idea is you take gas, you use it to turn turbines with steam, you then generate electricity, and then you can probably do 500 megawatts per turbine.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, on a big turbine, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

On a big turbine, and then you're only limited by your cap on your emissions. Yep. Right. So you could probably put two of those together in most areas before you hit your cap.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's what it is, but it's it's there's a lot of generation in

Latency Inference And Smaller Data Centers

SPEAKER_01

Texas. We're not, I mean, I'm looking at it in other places, obviously, a lot of stuff like that. In Texas, it's really big. There's a lot of gas down in Texas, right? Um, but a lot of what we're looking at too is you take a step back from these gigantic data centers and you do inference is a big deal. It's it's like the latency of the data center. So we're doing this. This is different than gigantic data centers, but small modular data centers you would put, like in Buell, for example, right? And it would help connect everything and bring or in a bigger city and Boise somewhere in the center, you'd put these uh inference, it's low inferency, quick, so you could use it for hospitals and and stuff like that. You need it right there and then. So we're working on some of that stuff too. So it's small.

SPEAKER_03

You've already got to my biggest question. You really have. So think about this. These these these data center companies, AI companies are coming in spending billions of dollars. Oh, yeah. Billions. Yeah. But isn't the chip technology to what you just said? Because what I've read and looked at is wait a minute, you also have this race. So you've got a race to nuclear, you've got a race to the technology behind the chips and the towers. Oh, yeah. That some point they won't be this big, right?

SPEAKER_01

What now what happens is it'll still suck a lot of power because you're still gonna learn. But it goes from back in the day it was four kilowatts per rack, right? Big. Now it's 200 kilowatts per rack. Pretty soon it's gonna be 500 kilowatts per rack or a megawatt per rack. So everything is good, the data center is gonna be in your closet over there, but you're still gonna have okay. But you're still gonna have these same things.

SPEAKER_03

So your footprint gets smaller, but you still suck even more power.

SPEAKER_01

And they're still learning. I mean, all this stuff, the good things it can do, you know, right? I mean, it it can do all these really good things. Everybody thinks it's gonna take your jobs and all this stuff, but it's you're using it on your phone, you know, you're tech, you know, you're like searching stuff, or it's helping figure out how to fix this kid that's got some kind of torable disease, and it's gonna try to like come up with something to fix that, you know, or help solve some of humanity's problems it has. That's what I think is one thing that people overlook as well on some of the stuff.

SPEAKER_03

I'm gonna stop you for a second. So going back, so the size of the chip and the efficiency of the chip and the size of the tower does not change the power. In fact, it needs it's gonna require more.

SPEAKER_01

It well, it just gets smaller. The white space gets smaller, the mechanical stuff stays the same if you're still doing the learning models and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00

But is there efficiencies that will come? I mean, uh it makes sense what you're saying that it that's still a lot of power as their space goes down, but but is that chip technology going to make it?

SPEAKER_01

Well they make it warmer so you could it's not efficient, it's still it's still like 50 megawatts. I mean, it's just you don't have to have maybe as cold a water going to it. It's not that cold, it's like 90 degrees or 85 degrees, you know, that you would send to it, which is a lot warmer than it used to be. And so that's that's the key. Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm I can can I ask a question here, Tom?

Design Procurement And Commissioning Reality

SPEAKER_00

So I'm I'm like blown away. It's it's amazing. So I would love to dive into understanding more about what you're uh explain what you're doing with with data airflow to help the efficiency. Like what role are you playing? You're you're getting hired by these data center builders all over the country. And what specific role are you playing and how does that play into what we're talking about here with power usage, water usage, et cetera?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we're trying to we kind of come up and help like the owner design something, and we're not the EOR, the engineer of record. So we'll come in and help come up with a design that helps hit their PUEs they want and all those things, get it efficient, save them money on the build, and then make sure that the end user is happy. Because my thing with it, going back to Bitcoin mining, let's take a step back. These guys may not know a lot about data centers. They're not they're crypto mining people. So trying to help get them pointed in the right direction, and they're all it's moving so fast. I mean, we were Bitcoin mining two years ago, now we're full on with this, and they've hired enough people now for it's a lot different, right? You should see this place I was at yesterday. We was sit standing on Lake Ontario. We also looking at this massive thing. I'll show you when we get done some pictures. It's pretty impressive. But it's just helping those guys get through that. And then the procurement part side of it, we help. We've got really good relationships, MSAs with big manufacturers to get these production slots guaranteed to be able to get the equipment. Cause that's like the constraint is power generation. Yeah, I was gonna ask you. All the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna ask you that. That's it. So, how how do you how are you dealing with procurement of equipment? Because just like you think about like a switch gear for some of this stuff, is two, three years out of it. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's a lot of it's the ours is the the the chillers, right? Or like dry coolers or something like that. Coils, we're having to have them made in Belgium, and then they put them together over here, the coils with my manufacturer, the chillers. We have guaranteed production slots. So we've you know, or when you order, you know, 500 megawatts worth of chillers, you know, the thing runs on 13,800 volts, um, 3,000 ton medium voltage chiller, you know, it's pretty crazy. It weighs 100,000 pounds, has to have a special permit to drive on the freeway on the highway. That's unbelievable. Yeah, massive stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'm I'm curious about the the competitive landscape, like other people doing what you're doing, because one of the things you know, Tommy and I were talking about before we started, before you got here, was this is you're you're in Boise, Idaho. You're you are this this solution for data centers being built all over the country based in Boise. Uh so uh you know, love love to hear more about uh obviously we know your Idaho roots, but how how how did what does the competitive landscape work? And does anyone, you know, when you're flying to New York to work on this huge data center, does anyone say, What why are you in Boise?

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, no, I mean it they do, but it's I like but you know, we love Idaho, right? It's Idaho's awesome. Um, but no, you can be places very fast if you need to be, but we have people all over. So we send people. The other thing we do is we do commissioning. So I have a 50 commissioning agents that are so commissioning is testing it, you know, making it break, validating everything, and that's why we're not the EOR. It's because we need to be like that third party that comes in and validates the the engineer drawings, the way it was installed, test it, try to break it by a whole bunch of electric boilers to simulate the GPE load and heat everything up and shut it off, simulate a trapid transition. How long is the commissioning process on that? Oh, it takes a while. It's it's months and months and months. We're doing 24-7 commissioning. I mean, it's just I got guys rotating every uh two weeks on, two weeks off, you know. So it's it's it's crazy. I

Jobs Taxes And Community Pushback

SPEAKER_01

can't even imagine.

SPEAKER_03

What what do you think is gonna happen? Like like you said, two years ago you're you're managing Bitcoin mining facilities and now you're here. Yeah. Where do you see this going in the next 12 to 20 years?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I just I think we're still gonna keep just building right now, and it's fun. I like we're having a great time. I you know, we've changed so many so many people's lives that work for me, and then just seeing we interviewed people over there. We're trying to get this stuff, some content put together on like it's more than just the data center and the compute, right? It's it's the guy that worked, his dad worked at this coal plant. So this coal plant in New York, like it was the last one in New York State that was operating. And his dad worked there, and now they shut this thing down. It was the only job, it's this little dinky town, right? There's nothing going on. So they start this thing back up. Now there's 1,500 people working on this facility. There's all this stuff, and there's all these new jobs, and just watching the revitalization of that poor, depressed area and changing all these people's lives there, too. It's really neat. So I I the constraint right now is power generation. Any infrastructure stuff, like you said, switch gear, um, you know, cooling equipment, all these things. That's your constraint right now. And I feel like power generation is the biggest one. I feel what's your take?

SPEAKER_03

So let's talk about power generation, right? So I know down in Utah there's a couple, there's some crazy stuff going on in Utah. Yeah. There's there's uh down in Fillmore, they're they're putting in 2.5 megawatt generators and they're putting 10 to 20 of them in each building. Yeah, and they're each run off natural gas, and then they all all the power goes together. I mean, that's that's how so think about that. You've got just 20, 40 buildings full of 2.5 megawatt generators, all trying to get to 50 or 100 megawatts just to power all this stuff. But that's all using natural gas. Have you heard much about geothermal?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, no, I've heard of that. I know people drill for it. It's just the CapEx and trying to get the drill down. I mean, it's probably comparable with that, but I just don't know how much. I know I know they got one down in uh Malta.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That they're doing. I think it's like 20 megawatts. It's not that big. But I mean so the whole idea there is you go down really, really deep.

SPEAKER_03

Same tactic, same technologies like fracking, but you're basically getting steam so hot. Steam so hot that it comes up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and the water may not be boiling down below, but when it comes up, it flashes off to steam, and then you can turn a turbine and generate electricity.

SPEAKER_03

What what are the other temporary or or short-term? I I do appreciate what you just said, is we we may be thinking Idaho, but in places like Texas.

SPEAKER_01

Texas has got a lot of gas, obviously, right? So there's a lot. I've just talked to everybody. I talked to somebody just a little bit ago about power generation down there, and that's what that is down there. It's a lot of there's a lot of wind. There's a lot of there's a the grid is very strained down there too, so it's hard to transport it all over the place. So that's why you get a data center somewhere out there, you can feed it with, you know, you maybe have some transmission lines coming to it.

SPEAKER_03

Talk a little bit about that. So I didn't you don't realize just how important the grid is. Yeah. So once you do find a place that can generate, then then you have to be attached to the right lines and grid to get it where you need to go. It is. And then I didn't realize all the interstate commerce that happens between power. Yeah. So you may be in there are states that are selling power and buying power and all back and forth. There's just a whole bunch of things. And then talk a little bit about the latency or or the downtime.

SPEAKER_01

It's you have to have it somewhere where it's on a fiber line. Yeah, um, so many uh megabytes per second or whatever, right? So you have to be somewhat close to that. If you're doing learning models, it's not as critical. But if you're doing some real, that's why the infinite the low latency stuff that you would put inside like Boise or some big city, and you could do that, that's why that's so important for that. But it doesn't have to be that big. You could get a lot done or streaming services on like Netflix and stuff. You know, they were interested in that. This one thing we were looking at. But um down there, yeah, you can't send they're generating power and it's nice because you could use it at a data center and there's some fiber there, they can tie into that fiber and then they can, you know, do a learning model and you know, do the AI learning model down there in that particular spot.

SPEAKER_03

Amazing. Can I ask you one more controversial question?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So I've heard a lot of horror stories about like meta that's here, right? For what they're sucking, and that I think people thought that those data that that data center was for their own use, but they're renting out that space.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I've heard the number from an insider that they're gonna make like nine billion dollars a year off that facility.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Because of and so then you look back and say, okay, when they came to town and what they're paying for their electricity and what they what they did to get here, right? Um they're gonna make nine billion dollars a year.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's crazy. That is that that's no, it's crazy. I don't know. It seems pretty nice.

SPEAKER_03

That seems nice. I I interviewed a guy that had the numbers and he said if you look at their rack space and what they're able to lease a rack for, and because they're on a line and he went through all the math on what their what their rates can be, that I'm like, are you kidding me? So I guess that I guess one of the I wanted to address it because I think that's that idea is out there too, which is not just water use, not just power use, but then coming in and taking advantage of it. Coming in and taking advantage of an area, and then having all these dollars, you know, relatively low number of employees, but all of these dollars that kind of go through, and then the what does the community kind of get out of it for for a resource that of power? So I wanted you to be able to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01

No, I mean it's that's a tricky one. I don't know. That seems awfully high to personally. I mean, I know what I know what it costs per kilowatt.

SPEAKER_03

Could be complete BS too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I know what it costs per kilowatt hour um to lease out space, you know, and stuff. So, but that's that's there's all this really bad misconception out there, and that's what we're trying to help like come up. We want I want to do a documentary on uh on the positive things about it instead of all the negative stuff.

SPEAKER_00

One one idea that that I've heard out there, I don't know if if you guys have heard this, but people have talked about if you look at what they've done in Alaska, where you know, everyone that lives in Alaska gets this check based on the energy production that's happening there, right? And so some people have talked about, well, if this big data center is coming in, kind of take taking advantage of the community, maybe, you know, with number of jobs and taxes and everything. Is there some sort of distribution that goes out to the community of saying if if they're really making all this money, does some of that get returned to the citizens of the R.

SPEAKER_01

I see a lot. I see people doing that. I could see the data center people doing that trying to, because they're they're they're getting a black eye, right? Right. So they need to do that kind of stuff. And I think I could see them doing that, or somebody coming in and and one of the big players like Meta or something like that, saying, okay, here's the Well, I one one thing I did hear that was positive this last week.

SPEAKER_03

I was talking to a guy that did some stuff in Utah. And be if if they if they are transparent on the revenue they generate and what it means to a county, it can like 10x, 20x the county revenue on taxes, which in which then comes back to hey, then we can afford roads and all the other stuff. So I think there are some definite positives.

SPEAKER_01

There's definitely positives like that. Yes. Because there's a lot of tax revenue that comes in. And there's jobs. I think it's like 7.4 jobs per data center employee that's there, or something like that. There was some number that I just looked at. I don't have the exact number, but it was something like that. It was really good information.

SPEAKER_00

It does seem though, in this environment where it's it's a battle to get these um, you know, approved and people the the protesters come out and everything like um we're we're seeing this all over. It does seem that that's but there's so many dollars at stake that some of these companies will say, okay, here's what we'll do, here's what we'll give back to

National Security And Wild Energy Ideas

SPEAKER_00

the community or to the residents of the city or or whatever, some sort of you know, profit sharing.

SPEAKER_01

There's also it's like a national security thing, too. Like 100%. They want it, it's a sp it's an arms race of data that's needs to be in the United States, not in China. So we are losing the battle in generation in China, obviously, right? But we need to keep winning this, and that's what the isn't that the most scary thing though?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, because it because they're ahead of us in almost every way, right? Yeah, generation, because it they're communists, they can't tell you this is what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00

And they don't have protesters protesting the data center construction in China. No, they're called deaths.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, they're called unrecorded deaths. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't want to talk about China and get in trouble.

SPEAKER_01

Me either. Strike that. But no, I'm just saying, like the yeah, there's there's a lot of that this, there's an it's a race, right? So we gotta just we gotta keep they gotta keep charging forward, and you know what? And then another thing I thought about, right? I went to this data center conference, and this is one of the things, right? When you're talking about generation, there's all kinds of crazy things that get thrown out there. So I was in at this conference in Honolulu, PTC last year, and there was a state, there was a like a one uh five-minute deal where this guy gets on from Alaska and he's on this, he has an island, and it's a volcanic island. The volcano only erupts about once every 30 years. But if you drill down deep enough, you could get this really, really hot water and create geothermal steam. And you could build the data center on the opposite end of the island where the volcano doesn't blow lava everywhere, right? So it was just like that kind of crazy stuff like that. You know, it's just, man, I couldn't imagine putting a big, gigantic data center on an island in Alaska where they have all volcano erupts every 30 years.

SPEAKER_03

You hear a lot of people that are into this and they're thinking that they're gonna be in space here relatively soon. How real? How real is that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, so we were talking with somebody in France uh a month ago at Data Cloud, and they were saying it's like five square miles of solar panels for one megawatt or something like that, some ridiculous amounts. I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. You know, it's definitely good to think about and probably the future, right? But not not right now.

SPEAKER_03

Do you you're sneer into the science? Did you do you get closer? I mean, it that is it is it five square miles because you're on Earth?

SPEAKER_01

Is that better once you get five kilometers or something? I can't remember when he was telling it was maybe in Europe. Is it better when you're in space or it is? I think you get a better reaction and the sun's always on it, right? So you're just like it's always shining on it, so you don't have any like night time, yeah, because it's in the sun the whole time. Did you ever think we'd be here?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, you gotta like like give us your take on all this stuff.

SPEAKER_01

No, it's crazy, and it's moving so fast. You should see this just the way they're building it, and then the way everything is moving so fast, and now everybody's on their phone all the time, everybody's looking at it, everybody's utilizing it, and everybody complains about it. So it's like, well, you gotta understand that this is how it gets done, and it's just and it's gonna help make things better, right? It can feel like that.

SPEAKER_03

That seems like development. Yeah, because you just didn't welcome my world. Yeah, everyone uses the target, everyone just hates the target. Yeah, yeah. Everyone eats that the fast food drive-thru, but they everyone

Entrepreneur Of The Year Story

SPEAKER_03

hates the target.

SPEAKER_01

Everybody complains about it. Why am I so fat?

SPEAKER_00

I think um I'm just so amazed and fascinated by this, and that you've you've built this in Boise and you know, as is a lifelong Idahoan, so proud that you're doing this from Boise. But one thing um I know that recently happened for you that love for you to share more about is uh Entrepreneur of the Year and Ernst and Young and traveling around. So tell us about that because I think that's really meaningful that this is happening in Boise.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I got nominated by I gotta give a shout out to Ethan Ellensburg from Moonshot. He got nominated last year and he nominated me for it because we kind of he does electrical in Texas and does a lot of a big electrical projects, and then we do the, we kind of have a good synergy of what we do together, right, to help some of these guys out. So he nominated me and then went through this campaign and went down to Utah, got interviewed, and got to tell my story. And it was just it was really grateful. Shout out to Ernst Young, too, for the opportunity to be nominated and then win the Pacific Northwest with some other people. And now I get to go to Palm Springs to the uh national competition, you know, and I'm gonna go hard for that because I'm I'm it's exciting what we're doing, and uh it's it was really fun to do that.

SPEAKER_00

And what happens if you win? Then I get to go to Monaco. Monaco. Yeah for the international entrepreneur. Where do we go for us? Where do we vote? Yeah, yeah. Well, and how do we get invited to Monaco is the bigger question.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's it's can you um I'm just sitting here listening to your story. It's happened over a really short period of time, both in technology, ideas, you know, you you've got to be cutting edge to do what you're doing. And then at the same time, you got to be good with people. Yeah, because you're growing a team. At the same time, you got to understand growth. Well, the hardest thing for business is

Hiring Trust And Goal Driven Leadership

SPEAKER_03

growth. Oh, it is, yeah. It it when you once you stabilize your profitability and you're clipping along and life's good, that's fine. But now all of a sudden you gotta deal with growth. You're dealing with all of that simultaneously. Have you always been good at right? Uh, we talked, Travis and I on our prior podcast, about this idea with founders and how you do have some weaknesses, so you try to pair that up with others. But what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What's been hard for you? Uh, what would you tell our listeners of of what you've learned through this just rocket ship that you're no?

SPEAKER_01

I think the biggest thing for me is getting hiring good people and finding good people and then taking care of them. Like, I care so much about everybody that works for me that I wouldn't be where I'm at. We wouldn't be sitting here. You wouldn't see Eric sitting here if it wasn't for everybody that works for me. So, shout out to everybody that works for me and you know, trusting them, right? Not being a micromanager, it's really important to me. And then just getting the best people and then hiring, like instead of hiring. You know, you want to be here, you know, I want to be over there, so I gotta hire for over there and get the guy over there, the bigger guy that thinks bigger, you know, instead of getting the guy that's gonna get me to this spot where I'm at right now. That's hard though. It is, yeah, it's hard. But when you get gravity too, it gets so much easier, right? When you get we got something, and you know what's funny is 80% of my people that work for me are all internal like referrals from everybody else. So that tells you something right there. What's what's kind of your superpower as a leader? Um try to like not micromanage and and give them a vision or like a goals. Like, I really want I like goals, it's a big important thing for me, is like you know, believing something, or you know, and that's one thing nobody ever taught me in school is like visualizing yourself or planning something and having these goals that are way higher than what you could even think you could get. So if you teach somebody that you can get whatever you want, you can do whatever you want if you believe in it because you're the only thing that's holding yourself back from getting whatever you want.

SPEAKER_03

Oh Travis, I'm sorry, I gotta get I gotta get into this guy's work in here over. Yeah, I so so so I get that. And and then what I was gonna say, just listening to you today, I think vision's gotta be like vision's a thing. But but talk to our listeners about this. Sometimes you can have vision, and then you you want to delegate and you want to give people the ability to go do their thing and chase the vision you've set for them. Talk to me about shadow leadership or leadership because because not everyone is built to chase a vision. No, and I think one of the things that a lot of people struggle with that have growing businesses is okay, I told you where I wanted to go. I'm setting the example and I'm firing you up and I'm trying to set the pathway there. And now you got to kind of help them get there. How do you best do that?

SPEAKER_01

You do it by not telling them how to do it. Oh, you got to let them kind of lead into, kind of guide them a little bit of how you, you know, kind of how would you do this, you know, and kind of steer them a little bit. And that's a good way to do it, I think, is just to be able to let them come up with the idea themselves, you know. It's it's a good way to do it. That's so smart.

SPEAKER_00

I'm curious. You said uh no one, you know, you didn't learn in school this kind of big vision, and the only thing holding you back is yourself. Where did you learn that? Was that self-taught? Did you have a mentor that, or or did you just wake up one day and say, you know what, I I can, you know, I'm I didn't go to college, I grew up in Buell, Idaho, but I can become I got to a point where I was like, it was really hard.

SPEAKER_01

Like it was hard. It was just a struggle. I mean, I had lots of gray hair from this, and I was like, I gotta, I gotta, I started watching some YouTube videos and stuff. YouTube's an awesome thing to learn. You can learn anything you want on YouTube. And uh I started like doing this and I just setting goals, man. It's like if you know the ship, if you got a big ship and it's in the harbor, it's trying to get to Hawaii, if you don't know where it's going or it's gonna go to Hawaii, but you don't have a plan to get there, or you don't know what you want, you're never, it's never gonna get out of the harbor. You may have the baddest ship and the biggest yacht in the whole world, but if you don't have a plan to get it there, it's never gonna get there.

SPEAKER_03

You know what I love about doing this stinking podcast that I almost stop doing every year just because it's another thing, is you hear these stories from people, right? And then when you meet them, you're like, you hear what you've done. Because you know, you're being very modest today about what this company is and how much money you're making and what you're what's going on. But then when you spend time with the individual, by the end of an hour, you're like, oh, I get it. This guy is wicked smart and he works his ass off and he knows how to lead people. And so then at the end of it, you're like, okay, there's no mistakes in life. And that isn't that what makes America great. Yeah, yeah. You can be a freaking kid from Buell, Idaho. You can say, I'm gonna go work my tail off, I'm gonna listen to YouTube, I'm gonna learn how to be a leader, I'm gonna treat like I love what you said about your employees. Yeah, I'm gonna treat them like family, I'm gonna take care of them. I mean, all of these things are very common. They're common things amongst people that hit it out of the park.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and it's I think it speaks to Idaho, right? I mean, that that grit and that perseverance of Idaho, the culture of Idaho. I mean, this is this is this the story like we're trying to tell all the time. There's incredible founders building incredible things in Idaho, and you are, you know, such an example of that. It's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01

It's exciting, it's fun, and um, I love love what I do, and I love everybody I work with, and just yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_03

Where where uh where do how old are you? Uh 46. Man, 46. To be 46 again, Travis. Right? Uh so where do you see like if you had to, and then oh this is impossible. Oh, yeah, no, I know I'm gonna get this question. But if you had to see this industry

AI Speed Of Change And Staying Ahead

SPEAKER_03

and the life and technology, you know, you're sitting here in the middle of it, you're you're right in the middle of it. Yeah. You're you're you're tip of the spear.

SPEAKER_01

Tip of the spear.

SPEAKER_03

Who where are we in three years, five years, 10 years as it relates to kind of this environment around data centers, AI, world, world economics.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's the next industrial revolution where it's not gonna stop. I mean, they're signing 20-year leases worth $19 billion for 450 megawatts. And it's on the computer, you can look on LinkedIn, right? For then, so they're believing in it, and that's the big boys, you know, that are signing the big, you know, nobody's gonna drop that much money unless you're one of the four, right? So it that's what it is. I I feel like it's gonna be slow because of the generation thing. You can't, like, there's only so many volcanoes in Alaska we can tap into. You know, but I'm just saying, like there's there's this constraint with that. And then just making things too, like making all these things all very fast, and it needs to happen right now. It's like it's so fast. I mean, it's it's mayhem.

SPEAKER_03

Have you been shocked with the you Travis and I were talking about this too? Like a year ago, if you would have come into me and said, How are you using AI in your company? I would have said, Oh, we're gonna try to learn how to use it. You've got to, or you're gonna get left. And then a year, but a year later, I look at every single one of my departments in a development company, and they're all using AI for lots of different things. Oh, yeah. So the adaptation of this technology has, I think, blown everyone away.

SPEAKER_01

It is, and it's just gonna keep getting it's just gonna get better, it's just gonna get more and more and more of it, right?

SPEAKER_03

So I had a meeting yesterday with uh a new business idea we had, and I had a really, really, really smart person in here. And she said to me, She's like, she's like, I would if I had another hour of your time, I would blow you away with coding. Yeah, with what a year ago I would have told you it would have taken me to build something. Yeah, I would sit down with you, we'd whiteboard it out, and I would shock the heck out of you with what how quickly I could build it. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, really? She's like, Oh, you can't even imagine what's going on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, it's it's nuts. And that's why it's like so important that we spin this in a positive way. Yes, right, and try to help not get these guys held back and everything else.

SPEAKER_00

So I was, you know, you talked about the industrial revolution. And when you think about these these things that have happened over our history with railroads, with you know, manufacturing, with cloud, internet, all of these things, and you say, Oh, well, now AI is this new thing, this new kind of super cycle. The difference with this is the speed. Yeah, right. And those other things when with the railroad and with cloud and with those other things, like those took a long time. They didn't impact everybody quickly.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, and and Travis, go one more step. Like, think about think about light, yeah. Like the light bulb. Think about refrigeration, yeah. How we went from a farming community and oh, now you can refrigerate. But how long does that take forever, right? And then you have iPhone, right? And that was we thought that was fast. Yeah, then we had cloud, we thought that was fast. I think that the problem we have, and this is why I'd love to get a philosophical discussion with the two of you, is I I think that the speed of change threatens the very fabric and foundation of how we're built sometimes. Yeah, like just institutions are not they're not built for change that happens this quickly. No, and so I think no matter no matter what you're in, I don't care what industry or what organization, whether you're a church or a school or a business, the the adaptation of this to this time, it if you're not if you're not out there in front of this, you are going to get blown away.

SPEAKER_01

You'll get left behind. No, and that's what's gonna happen. That's why you got to get on it, you gotta embrace it, it is what it is, right?

SPEAKER_00

And utilize it and you know and and back to the point we touched on earlier, I mean, with with China, I mean, because we know China is not slowing down and and we are in a race, and um this is the really because of the speed and the impact of this, the most critical race we've ever been in. I mean, you look at the the race in in the 60s to the moon or you know different things, yeah, the Cold War, like these different things. This is on such a higher scale because it's so fast and so impactful. And and we're ultimately talking about you know, AI that can, you know, break break into government uh computers. All right. I mean, we're we're just talking about the stakes or we felt the stakes were high back then, but the stakes are so much higher.

SPEAKER_03

It's so much higher, yeah. No, that's doesn't it freak you out that uh in the time in the world this for my grandkids, at the time in world history where we're facing uh uh what did you just call it, super super cycle? Super cycle of AI, yeah. We are we are from a leadership perspective the most divided and dysfunctional, backassword thinking country in in the history right now. Like no one's on the same page on anything. That freaks me out.

SPEAKER_01

That does, yeah. Now it's scary because there's a lot, it's coming and it's not stopping.

SPEAKER_00

But the but the positive counter to that would be where we do excel is with the innovation and entrepreneurship. And I mean, I just saw the other day that 70% of the you know economic value of of you know equities is American companies, right? And then Mark Andreessen tweeted that it's gonna be 90%, you know, in a couple of years, unless we really screw it up, is basically what he said from a policy perspective.

SPEAKER_03

So at least the dollars stay here.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and the innovators, right? I mean, that's the thing at the end of the day is yes, we're in this race with China and the data centers and all this matters, but also, you know, when you look at the big four, the big four in the United States, right? And the innovation, all of this that's happening when you look at um anthropic and chat GPT and all these, like they're like we're still winning from an innovation and entrepreneur standpoint. And that's the saving grace when we are dealing with this you know politically divided landscape.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks, Travis. I love I love ending these on on instead of wanting to go get a Prozac enema, like leaving and with a smile on our face. So that was good. Hey, so so then let

Where To Follow Data Airflow

SPEAKER_03

me ask you one more hard question. Yeah. So I when I think about this, at what point does this AI thing become sentient and like doing its own thing? And I know, like we joke about that all the time. I know we joke, but like like two years ago it was like haha, fun. I know now I watched Westworld and it was great. Yeah. To now I'm like, it's probably gonna happen in my lifetime. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No, and I I you know, I know it's a little scary, but I I know how to shut it off. Shut off the cooling.

SPEAKER_00

That's why I'm always I'm always I love this is the guy.

SPEAKER_03

This is the this is the guy right here. You are the solution to the whole thing. It's not gonna be legislation, it's gonna be you'll shut her down and then it'll never, it won't work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we know how to shut it down. I have I have one last question that I'm curious, um, just because I I love just your big picture of thinking. Is there anything from a podcast standpoint or a book standpoint, like anything you would recommend or anything that's been impactful, or maybe maybe you're just two heads down to to listen to podcasts?

SPEAKER_01

No, no, I mean there's not a you know, I'd I'm I'd I'd have to get I'll have to get to you on that. Let me think about that. I can't think of something right now that it's moved so fast. It's like, you know, to try to come up with something.

SPEAKER_03

Put differently, if if you were us, which are mere mortals trying to survive all this, is there somewhere you would pay attention to? Who would you, who would you be watching, who would you be listening to? Where's your source of truth? Because I think that's a great question in today's world. Where's your source of truth?

SPEAKER_01

It's a lot of trying to get on, you know, LinkedIn's great to try to get on there and find reputable people. Like we're gonna really start to spin a positive spin if you follow our LinkedIn Data Airflow.

SPEAKER_03

Uh, can we before we go, uh can you go to so your website is data airflow dataairflow.com. Dataairflow.com. So people wanting to get more information, and then your socials are data airflow.

SPEAKER_01

It's yeah, data LinkedIn. Everything's data airflow, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so data airflow, all one word for everybody listening that's not on YouTube. Okay, because I think that's great. So you're on LinkedIn, you're pretty active. Oh, yeah, no, you're pointing people in the right direction. Yeah, you're gonna do a documentary, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, well, yeah, we'll see. I'm pretty sure we're gonna be able to get on. I think I was really excited, the producer. So I'm excited. I'm excited to do it. It'd be because I we were just talking about it on the flight back from Buffalo, you know.

SPEAKER_00

I can just picture the sequence of you walking through a farm in Buell and talking about then then the the big data center, right? I just I think that'd be a great visual. I like it.

SPEAKER_01

You can kind of see. I mean, it's it's it's you see what we're what we're building, it's and then what we're involved with, and just it's it's a really neat, neat thing. It's incredible. Boise, Idaho.

SPEAKER_03

Buddy, are you just blown away by the stuff?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, I'm but yeah, I do. Yeah, it's it's crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Congratulations. This is like so cool to talk to people like you. It's so inspiring to have uh these stories. And uh I know that you know, on all these interviews, you talk about all the good things, and we don't know the dark days, the quiet. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No, there's plenty of that. Yeah, we don't we don't have time for that.

SPEAKER_03

Travis, any closing thoughts?

SPEAKER_00

No, just really so so impressive and just so grateful that you're building in Idaho. And yeah, I I know from reputation, um you know, you you are treat people well and take care of your people. I know that's important to you. And we we got introduced through a mutual friend, and I just remember him telling me what you were doing, and I was like, what? Like he's doing this, he's here in like he's here in Boise and he's doing this. And so it's it's been such a pleasure to get to know you and hear this story today. It's it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01

No, I I really appreciate you guys having me on, and I I'm grateful and thank you very much. Will you come back in a oh, I would come back whenever you want. Yeah, because I think I can't wait.

SPEAKER_00

It's gonna be totally different in a few months.

SPEAKER_03

No, yeah, let's I was just I was just in my mind, I was thinking, can you imagine 12 months from now saying, Yeah, okay, what just happened? And oh, I can't wait. Hey, this was awesome. Thank you for the time. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.