#62 From Dead Crypto Mines to Tier 4 Hubs: The $3.2B Masterclass in Energy Arbitrage and Data Center Domination

Meet Benjamin Callus: Billions in Deals Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of 9X90. Today you are in for a very special treat because you are meeting one of my favorite humans on the planet, the Benjamin Callus. When he walks in rooms, men swarm women fate and here he is. Say hi. Speaker 2 He has. Speaker 1 What? Making a blush? That's a first. OK, so so he has. Last year he did more than three billion 3.5 billion. Speaker 2 Yeah, last year was was 1.5 billion. Speaker 1 Yeah, right. No, I thought this year was 1.5 billion. There's 2 million. Speaker 2 Billion, no, it's 1.5. Yeah, we got another. We got another 3.2 in the pipeline. Speaker 1 OK, 3.2 billion in the pipeline and you did 3.5 billion in deals last year? Speaker 2 2.5. Speaker 1 2.5 There's so many billions. Speaker 2 Like I might have been I it's like it's all over the place. But yeah, so. Speaker 1 A lot of lot, lots of billions. He's playing above the billion dollar level. So my godfather would be very proud of you 'cause he doesn't do anything below 3 billion. But let's dive into your favorite projects. But first, we have to say thank you. Big shout out to our sponsor, National Energy Holdings. Yeah, you have to meet them on Monday, right? Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. No, it was great. It was good to hear how they're approaching the the grid and really looking for a behind the meter solutions. So I was really impressed overall. Speaker 1 Yeah, so on Thursday or Friday of last week, there was a there was news about Texas forcing all data centers to find behind the meter solutions. And that's when National Energy Holdings swept in like the hero with the Superman Cape and said, hey, if you have a data center deal and you're 1 of Adi's friends and you guys need help with interconnection, we've got you. We've got you covered. So we hopped on with all of our data center friends on Monday, did a live Q&A and now we're we're hooking everyone up. If you need energy procurement, construction, operations, they also own and they have a revenue share options for you if you're in the data center space, pretty much anything commercial real estate stateside. They are considering some projects overseas, but mainly in the US for now. Speaker 2 Makes sense? From Software to Data Centers: Sovereign .1 So tell us what has been your favorite project that you have done in your career? Speaker 2 In my career, I think the one that I'm working on right now is probably my favorite. Yeah. So it's so we are doing an R it's an R&D data center in Miami area in Miami are now just kind of keep it low key. It's called Sovereign .1. The purpose of that facility is to be investing in early stage technology and compute solutions so we can be going to where the puck is and not where it currently is now. And so we've got a lot of brilliant individuals in there working on some pretty, pretty amazing stuff that will help us stay competitive as we go into the the years and decades forward. Speaker 1 So I feel like we should probably take people back to how this bromance started. You built a software company and you exited. And I also built a software company, but I did not exit. So both of us had the software background before we came into real estate. That's right. How did you make that transition? Speaker 2 So it, it's funny. So I I started out early, flipping houses to pay for college, you know? Speaker 1 And. Speaker 2 Yeah. So I so I had a little bit of exposure in that way, not, not to the extent, you know, not at all to the level of like commercial real estate and stuff like that. But I'd say, you know, that was a really good kind of toe dip in the water. And then in software spent you know, over a decade in software building really large enterprise apps and eventually my own start up like you mentioned. And then the transition into data centers and real estate like commercial real estate happened about 2 1/2 years ago as we were looking to do these. We've, we may still have these very large, you know, 300 megawatts to, you know, over a GW developments. We started really taking a hard look at where the excess power is. And that's what got, that's what drugged me into the commercial real estate side of things where, you know, now we're looking at a lot of repositioning projects and how we can do that. You know, so I kind of was pulled into it in a way a little bit more abstract and not predictable. Speaker 1 You were on the impact investing side though first, that's. Speaker 2 Right. Yep, yeah. So this, so this particular, well, I got pulled into data centers because of we were working on a, it's called recidivism, which is a re entry program for people that have been in prison that are coming out of prison. And so we, I met a lot of these, the folks that I'm working with now because we are working on a philanthropic project together in LA actually. And, and here we are, you know, almost three years later doing it so. De-risking Tech Investment with Data Center Anchors So with your data center repositionings that you're doing now, how many of them are like they were Bitcoin mining facilities tier one, now you're bringing them up to Tier 4? Speaker 2 Yeah, that we have a, so there is one that I'm looking at right now that is it's really large on grid power solution that was previously a Bitcoin operation. That one would be. It's when I say large, I mean it's you know, almost 2 gigawatts. It's very, very, very big and it that's a little bit outside where I like to focus. I love the 50 megawatts and under personally. Speaker 1 Why? Speaker 2 Because I, I feel like with the mathematics solutions that we've got software solutions that we're working on right now could take that 50 megawatts, you know, and turn it to 500 megawatts, you know, with the same energy input. So it's, it's all about, you know, what it comes down to really, if you want to think about and, and the simplest way to think about it is that we've hit, we've hit a wall essentially on how much silicon can do, how much it can process, you know, and really the only way to get past that to, to achieve more compute is going to be through mathematics, right? And know that you know what I'm talking about. Probably if you thought really hard, there's several people in the WhatsApp group that are working on this that we're big fans of and have been, you know, really championing them. What's? Speaker 1 That Yeah, yeah, yeah. They solved the math on that. Let's dive down that rabbit hole for a second. I was gonna keep it high level with commercial real estate, but let's dive down that rabbit hole. So they said they solved the math on it, but they also pitched me what was it like a year ago? They pitched me November of last year and I had a lot of faith in this 'cause they had found a way to use a virtual box to do quantum computing, right. So that was super cool. And then, like, go jumping between my real estate brain and my software brain. I was like, that's amazing if they can do that much compute and not have to change, like the square footage of the space they need. But then when I spoke to them in April or May, they hadn't really made any progress on it. What do you think? Yeah. Speaker 2 No, it's so it's not only is it really challenging what they've done, you've really got to look at it like Adam has and that team has from everything from you've got the, the hardware itself like H100, let's say that's doing all of its computation. But then you also have the racking, you've got the communication in between the systems and memory and all the other things. And So what what they've done, and I'm a big believer in is that they've actually been able to curate out lots of different, let's call them companies or collectives, right? Brilliant minds that are working on say, hey, if it's low latency, com, it's great, or if it's going to be, you know, really high levels of compression on memory. And they've done that. And so that's really where they've been spending most of their time. But to your point, like, you know, you know, Adam and the DTR team, we've got several other like brilliant collectives that they hit a wall because they've got to go deploy these things in, on the, in the commercial environment. That's a really big challenge when a rack is going to cost me 44,000,000 bucks right now I've got to go, you know, pull the facility together, get the power, etcetera. If I wanted to do that and which we are, which we, that's what we're doing with Sovereign .1. Because we, we realized that the, the DTR team plus others needed the opportunity to really go and to test this stuff in a commercial environment, which is really challenging to find. You can't go knock on Oracle's door and say, hey, I've got some cool math. Now you use four $4 million worth of racks. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. So they have to have a big believers in them like we are. And the Weister team is another one with their room temperature quantum stuff and we're pushing away over here. Speaker 1 Yeah, although you don't just need believers like with with software, you have too many blind believers that jump in and then they lose all their money like a Russian roulette in Las Vegas. Like you, you have to understand the math behind it to appreciate the math and to be able to know when you can push the the the software engineers forward because they would love to spend forever debugging code. And you have to know when it's OK to just launch the like push the software to production and have some bugs that you're going to fix along the way. So that is something where they do need Someone Like You in their corner. Speaker 2 Yeah, I've made that mistake as a software engineer trying to make, make it perfect before deploying it, you know, and it and it, it you, you mentioned something right there in that statement, though that brings us back to the commercial real estate. I'll bring it all the way back around, which is if we've got you inherently in the, in the world of investing V CS PE, however you want to say it that the category I just spoke on that you were mentioning as well is high risk. That we, it's just seen as pre Rev high risk. It's gonna be difficult to invest in with without being in extractive terms. Let's just say, well, what we've done is said you wanna, what if we took a commercial property like the one we're working on in near Miami, It's 275,000 square feet. We got 8 megawatts today. We can take it to 15 no problem. Drop a substation, we're at 500 over the course of a few years. Well, the financial model because it it that in itself, if we just went bare bones data center as usual is a multi billion dollar asset, right? We know that we can get it there as we're starting to produce revenue over time, which is great. But so because of that, we can backstop the investment into risky or quote UN quote risky tech, right? So using an anchor with the data center inside of it as the backstop for investors pull down extra capital, which we've done. And and that was really what changed all the tech down. None of it works. You're still going to get a 2X return on your money, you know, So that took some, it was challenging. Speaker 1 Yeah, I, I think that's where that's where innovators actually get to play is you, you see these kids come out of college and they're like, oh, I want to build this and I want to build that. And no one will fund my dreams. And it's like, no, you have to go learn the finance. You have to go learn how to run a business. You have to make something so freaking profitable that you can afford to fund your own R&D department. And then once you once you've figured that out, then you can start playing around and innovating. But until you figure out how to capitalize and protect investors money and get them a return, you're not going to have the budget to just play around and test if things work. So how many of these data center projects do you do you come across where the energy infrastructure is not exactly what you need and you have to add more? Why Energy Expertise is Crucial for Data Centers Every one of them. Speaker 1 Good, so we will spend this next year with bonding on every one of your sites. Speaker 2 It's one of those things where you know it and you and you are, and you like we both are familiar with this. We've been in the data center space for a while. There's a lot of people say, hey, I've, I've got a, you know, a GW behind the fence power ready to go. And you actually get out there and it's well, no, you've got big gas lines running through the property. But you know, it's, that's a totally different thing, right? And so I think the world of this, because it is, in my opinion, where you see the most amount of money on the sidelines, there's, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars that's not moving as quick as what you would expect from the outside, right? But once you really kind of peel it back, you recognize that this that capital's looking to your point, they're looking for, they're looking for clarity and they're looking for confidence, right? The clarity. And what are you guys spending my money on? And why am I gonna, should I be confident in your team to be able to execute on on your road map, right? Do you guys understand the business model, the financial models of these data centers and what could go wrong? As software people, we understand that, you know, eventually you've got this bell curve, right? That's gonna happen in the industry and eventually a lot of these things are gonna start being commoditized essentially. And we have to be prepared for that. You know, if these are, these are billion dollar bills. And so we need to be work making sure they're backwards compatible if possible. Definitely should be a discussion point. Certainly, you know, as we don't want them to be disrupted in the future and that brings in a lot to complexity. And so you, I think it's kind of calmed down a little bit. But I'd say almost every single project I looked at earlier this year, Q1 and last year, we're we're certainly going to to need a lot of work. I've looked at one project that did have truly 800 megawatts behind the fence that we just needed to start dropping modules and on, but that's been really rare. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. In the data center space, I think the, the bubble that we're going to see burst isn't going to be because of like the Tier 3, Tier 4 that have like government contracts or they're with a bank, a University Hospital. It the ones we're going to see bursts are the ones where like it was all these AI software companies that people were trying to spin up and then they were the off taker and those companies go under and then they have no off taker for these buildings. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't disagree with. Speaker 1 That like, do you agree? Speaker 2 That partner is going to be a big part of it as you go to look at any kind of bank financing or traditional financing. I mean, these things are bankable once you once you get all the way to an off taker agreement and you've got the power secured, they're easy, pretty easy to finance, but they're going to be looking at the credit worthiness of those off takers certainly. Speaker 1 That's that's the biggest thing. You just hit the nail on the head. It's the creditworthiness of the off taker. It's is that business actually going to stay in business for the next 20 years? Because I know a bank is, I know a hospital is. I also know that their CT OS aren't looking for the latest tech. They're looking for the greatest reliability. So they're not going to need me to be updating and buying the latest GP us every single second. So there, it's just more stability there. You're, you and I were speaking off the off offline off the show about that one data center startup that had zero track record. They wanted me to bring in 55,000,000 per MW for them to develop. And they were like, oh, we're going to get 17,000,000 per MW for per year from our off takers. And I was like, wow, who are your off takers? And they were like, oh, you have to get them for us. I was like then you can't put in the pro forma that you're getting way above market value for your your off taker if you don't have one. Speaker 2 Right. Yeah. I mean that's and that's really the hard part I think about anybody getting into the space is recognizing it. It's a long tail deal, right. You, you're getting in, especially if you're doing site selection early on and then getting the site prepped and ready to go with Ppas and all your different licenses and agreements you have to have. And then you go and find some off takers for this. Once it's ready to go, then you gotta go find off takers. And that's a lot, you know, that's a multi year process. And a lot of people don't realize that when they're getting in the space that you're really gonna have to learn it. Well, it's not just about getting off projects. You know, you've got to get in it and, and figure it out. And I think that's where we'll see the most success on the, on those that are putting projects together. It's just being willing to say, Hey, I'm gonna invest, you know, years of my life into building these things and really understand the space. Speaker 1 Yeah. And that, that's, that takes us back to the energy infrastructure part. There have been so many data center pitches where I asked them, they're like, oh, yeah, we're gonna be Tier 4. And it's like, OK, where, where are your two energy points coming in from? Cause and they're like, oh, we need 2 separate ones from separate sides. And it was like, yes, yes, you do. Like who on your team knows what a Tier 4 data center is in the requirements? Like that's where you have to pull, pull Energy Partners in like National Energy Holdings where they've been in for 20 years and they can look at your site map and in four seconds say we'll do this, this, this, now you're done. You can go do your part. Speaker 2 Yeah, that's really a a critical part. I learned the hard way to be honest. So NEH is a bit is a great example of that. They've got guys on their team that they have been doing it. I haven't met them, but it sounds like they've been doing it for over 20 years, which similar on our side, you know, it was, I didn't realize how much I didn't know about electricity. And so I got guys that, you know, had been doing it for 35 years and, and they're the, I was able to pull them from going and recommissioning 3 mile Island to come work with me. And I realized how much, I mean, how much I just didn't know about the switch gear and electrical distribution, all these things that need to happen for these really significated sites. And so to echo your point, you really got to get guys that know what they're doing when it comes to the just, you know, power in general. Speaker 1 The energy side of things. Speaker 2 Yeah, because there's lots there. Even if you did have redundancy, you know, what's the latency, what's the switch? But how long is it going to take between switching from this substation to that substation? Let's say you got dual feats. That's great. Love that this one goes down. How fast can you switch over? I mean, that thing cannot, the delay can. It needs to be almost instantaneous, you know, those things like I learned, I just didn't know before. And so they would geek out all the different types of switch gear and stuff like that. And, and so I've been drinking from the fire hose a lot in that regard. Definitely not a a power professional, you know, like they are, but it's good to have them on your team if you're going to be in the space. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's like a requirement, you know? Speaker 1 Yeah, who, who else have you seen have been like key, key strategic partners for you 'cause like there's that whole like cancer concern now, but then there's data showing that it's actually data centers aren't causing cancer. It's it's one of the types of energy sources that's used. Like who else would you say do you rely on to have your data center projects come? Like just be All Star winners? Driving Revenue and Optimizing Data Center Locations Yeah. So a big part of it we, we always lead with the economic development and community development within that municipality. So we're usually in early conversations with them because of the way that we do the, the revenue share and the profit modeling we want to. This is, this is really the impact side for me. The part I get excited about is how can we be driving revenue back to underfunded programs within a community? You know, let's say we're working within a county, how do we work with the county, with the mayor, etcetera, So we can be pushing that additional revenue stream to them 'cause we'll always do this. Take a look a percentage of the revenue, push it into that, into the county's for under underfunded programs and for economic development opportunities. And so that that's me there. That's a really big partner right away, you know, letting you know that you're coming in, you want to create jobs. These things don't really create jobs. They don't you know, they I mean, sure, you've got, you know, you got your smart hands that are on site, people that do the construction and other aspects of it. But once they're running, you know, relative to manufacturing and other jobs, it's not, it's not going to be the same. So we've really leaned in hard with the county to figure out, OK, well, if this isn't gonna be creating jobs, then can it create a revenue stream that you can rely on? And how do we go identify the other economic development opportunities for your, for your county? Right. And so I'd say that's, that's certainly up there 'cause it makes it easier to work with the power company, it makes it easier to work for permitting and all these other things. And you're really going forward and trying to to help be a solution in the community, even if it's not one to one jobs, there's other things that can create jobs. Now that's different in Florida. What we're doing there is a full blown, you know, take it from idea to proof of concept, commercialization and manufacturing all within that same county. That's a totally different story. But generally speaking, getting working with the county and and recognizing, you know, trying to build those relationships and that's a great way to do it, is looking at how you can help support the community through, you know, revenue or other aspects. I'd say that's probably up there as like the number one. Yeah. Speaker 1 Do you, how many of your data center projects out of the billions that you've worked on last year, this year are in states where you're noticing the price per kWh is above 11:50 cents versus below? Speaker 2 So I say we've had a few states, Florida's a good is a good example of that. If you're under the 50 MW threshold, you're gonna hit that 11 to 12 cent mark. You're not getting the wholesale pricing on that. So we've done that quite a bit in Florida. California is also very similar. But that that's a the deal we're working on out there is a it's an old Kaiser mine. So it comes with federal licensing pre World War 2 permitting on our power. So that's a totally different thing. If we didn't have that then we would certainly be tapping into higher prices there. Once again, you're not gonna hit that wholesale pricing New York with their EOI think it's EO 62 stuff they've had released out there recently. We I haven't done, I haven't commissioned 1 yet in New York. So I can't really speak to that where the how it actually would pencil out. Although we are consulting with a few, you know, but I'd say Florida's the one that we've, you know, we're in that 11 to 12 range depending on what county you're in. And, and you're gonna have to be over the 50 megawatts, which in, in most states, if you're 25 and under, they'll pretty much connect you right away. Surprisingly, as I'm giving your, I'm giving all listeners a nugget right now, which is if you are 25 megawatts and under on a power company, they'll pretty much connect you almost instantly. Speaker 1 And then if you're 26 megawatts or above, you have to bring your own power. Speaker 2 No, you well, so in like places like Texas, I, I'd be curious to know. I don't know how this I haven't pressure tested that in Texas itself. So I would like to know where they're out there. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I know if you're, if you can bring your own power, great. That's hard to do. You know, you can, you can integrate I think with any age what they're doing, which I like. They've got the best systems which are important. Obviously you gotta have those solar plus they're able to do your microgrid concept and then really bringing in grid where there is grid availability, but bringing it in at a lower rate, right. So that way you're, you're not tapping into that threshold where you're, you're paying more because you, you were at peak utilization times, right? That's gonna be tricky. That's, that's like kind of how you gotta navigate that, which NEH does pretty well. I'm from looking at the. Speaker 1 Badass, right? Speaker 2 Yeah, it's important. It's important to keep that, to keep that price down. Speaker 1 And then I was speaking with someone earlier today who was talking about how in Kentucky, the price per kWh is like 3 to 4 cents. Why don't we see more data centers popping up there? Speaker 2 I don't know. I'll find out though. I'd like to know more. I know I'm about to call them right now. Speaker 1 Pause the podcast. Go make your phone laugh. Speaker 2 I don't, I don't know, I, I haven't done any work with them, you know, so I, I would assume that that will be the case or it already is. You know, they might already have a bunch of people that have submitted deals and projects to them. I know Pennsylvania, that's where I'm at right now. It's, it's a really booming place as well. Although the power was out at my house last night for most of the night. So I, my generator was running. So I don't know. That happens all the time here on this part of the town. Speaker 1 One of my friends who is on the show right right before your episode, he is doing, he's doing an oil and gas deal in Pennsylvania with a really, really competitive rate for the fuel source. So I could hook you up. If you're doing the data center in in Pennsylvania, you have a good a good energy source there, really cheap. Speaker 2 Yeah, I'll take it. Speaker 1 'Cause I also heard that I was wondering why people were like obsessed with Tennessee and apparently they have the same thing. It's like obscenely cheap. And then we have people who are saying, oh, you have to build data centers outside of the US because we can get it below $0.08 per kWh. And I'm like but in Kentucky and Tennessee, not Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina is it third state where you you can get energy at 2:00 to 3:00 cents per kWh? Speaker 2 So you're, you're, you're tapping into a really important point, which it kind of brings me back to the math, right? If we're able to, I can say one kilowatt in worth of compute equals 100 kilowatts of compute capacity going out. Then I'm, I'm less concerned about the price per kilowatt and I'm more concerned about what we can be doing on the hardware itself. Is it a big bet? I think at this point, you know, we're feeling really confident in what's in what we can do on the hardware itself, because now we can say great. If we do know that most states are willing to or most municipalities are willing to say, hey, you know, here's 25 megawatts under and you know, just as well as I do how many commercial properties are out there that have an excess of 10 megawatts. 8, you know, that could that wouldn't mind a little bit of a revenue uplift. You know, that's, that becomes a really compelling narrative as you're going and trying to do, you know, truly edge compute brings a lot of complexity, obviously on the orchestration of those and how they can work together. But you know, that's, that's our that's our goal. There is really take whatever, if we can get 8 to 15 megawatts perfect, you know, and really hone in on what the what's going on, on the hardware itself. But you know, that's really kind of where our position is. That's where it is. Navigating Latency and Scalability in Edge Compute What do you see as the risk with edge compute? Because you don't like when you have a huge data center, you're going to have like the best security detail that's walking around there at all times. But when you're taking these micro data centers and you're doing this micro decentralized data center play where you're only putting like a few, a few GP us in tucked into a building, how are you protecting the data that's on those without attracting attention to it? Speaker 2 Right. So it, it, there's a that's certainly a lot of complexity around just the comms. So you've got latency. If I'm, let's say you and I are you, you're, you're processing whatever you're doing, I'm over there down the street a few miles. That latency needs to be taken into consideration certainly. But then you got scalability issues like does it get to a point of diminishing returns where if it's like I've got, you know, 100 kilowatt compute over here potentially and, and it's decentralized all over the city. Well, how often is that hardware failing? Are we rolling trucks out? You know, how vulnerable it is it to the comms aspect of it? You know, do have we really thought through the, the packet transfer within the, within the low level IT itself? So you got, you got to start considering a lot of those things. And I, I do think it, there is a point of diminishing returns in my opinion. I mean, I haven't ever really sat down with a group of experts to talk about it. But just on the sheer, you know, it would get to a point where if you're rolling out the human element to replace hardware or try to figure out, you know, just like Comcast or any other providers. And that presents a lot of challenges that I wonder, you know, at what point is it not? Does it become just too decentralized right? Speaker 1 Yes, there were some data centers that were blown up in February and I had to put together the business plan in May for them to have three gigawatts of decentralized data centers. We're not gonna say which country it was for you and I were talking about that offline, but that the latency thing was their biggest. That was the biggest thing we were having to calculate for is like how how many GPUs do we have to put in a specific location and have dedicated just to these purposes so that we don't have this latency issue. Because yes, we want to have everything decentralized so that if something's blown up, there's there are duplicates in other places. But at the same time, we can't have it so decentralized that it takes 45 minutes to render information because it's having to ping across the entire nation. Speaker 2 Yeah, Yep, there's that. And then there's, you know, if I'm, if you're doing large language model training, you know, on big, you know, let's say, let's just say we're gonna go with the status quo, right, as it stands right now and not what other people are working on. Then you've got the latency between as you're, as you're processing that big model, right. So you want to keep everything on, on the same, as close or really as reduce the latency as much as possible. And that's why you see these big facilities that are operating like that. But then also to your point, it's easier to just do one big site Co locate, you know, or if you're going to do a hybrid model, you're going to, you know, you're going to own or operate and you're going to bring in triple N lease and Co locate. There's all kinds of different ways you can do it. But having one facility with one switch gear, with one Power Distribution system with one best, all those things becomes really that that at the moment is just been the easiest way to do it. Then trying to replicate that over, you know, all over the country. Then you've got the orchestration layer on top of that. So imagine if you got a bunch of nodes in a city and you're trying to orchestrate all these little things to happen. It becomes challenging, right? It's like doing heart surgery on a plane. Speaker 1 It's that's when you have the software engineers wanting to kill the real estate people who are like, look, it's decentralized. We're like. Speaker 2 Revenue uplift. Come on. Like, you know, yeah, it's, you know, but it's, it's, you know, a lot of smart people working on it. I'm, I'm obviously the dumbest person in the room on most of those conversations, but I'm just trying to hit one thing. Just keep nodding my head, agreeing with what they're saying. Speaker 1 Yeah, just have to sometimes I just have to say I'm like, just remember I'm the real estate kid and I happened to build an international software company, but I am not like your software engineer that should be making your your decisions here on that front. Speaker 2 That's OK, You got your gap. Fill your gaps. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, there's critical gaps. Invest in Innovation: Lessons for Data Center Builders OK, cool. So if you had any ask or offer for the audience, what would it be? Speaker 2 Ask or offer, I would. So the so my biggest thing right now is we're is focusing on the R&D side of things. You know, we've we'll continue to invest in that. I, I think that that's a really good place to, if so, a couple of things. Then one is do I do, I personally feel like that's a great place for our dollars to be spent? We do, I do, we do as a team because we're really trying to make sure that our facilities are the best for our clients, right, going forward. Now, I could say that I could say best we could all like that's the subjective term, but knowing that we did the best thinking and the best innovation we could within, within our own area of influence, right? And then fostering the next level of innovation. So that's a really big deal for me, you know, as as being able to get these kids out coming out of college or maybe coming straight off of, you know, out of a big institution or enterprise, having a place for them to facilitate that those solutions is going to be important as we evolve because we otherwise it just the consolidation power really comes down to a handful. You can see NVIDIA this week, you know, Palantir, that deal we got also NVIDIA announcing $500 billion backed by your largest institutions, which we would do work with handful of those as well, right. It's like, OK, well, that's a consolidation of of power that's happening. And so I think we really need to invest in facilities that can help, you know, these smaller companies thrive as we've got great thinking and other other things around it. So that would be my ask the audience to keep an eye out for that and you know, keep an eye out for just these innovation, innovative solutions and how do we support them as like as a group and a collective. Speaker 1 And aside from telling them that they need my energy partner for building their energy infrastructure, what other advice would you give to data center young, young data center developers who are coming into the sector? Speaker 2 You gotta find like, yeah, like we mentioned earlier, you go find someone that understands power and utility and all that stuff really, really well. It'll change everything for you when you go and raise capital. If I, if I bring my guys on to have, they're responsible for 80% of the nuclear facilities around the world. These guys work so they know their stuff. So when I go to a capital team and say, hey, we're going to get power to a site, they, they have trust and confidence that we can do that and we can give them the clarity in how we're going to do it. Now that's a really unique thing. I, you know, we, I'm, I'm grateful to have those guys and honored to be working with them. If you don't have individuals like that, then you got to go find guys that do. That's where NEA and others come in 'cause they can help draw out that the, the blueprint on how to get power to your site that makes sense for your institutional investors or your family offices. Not saying they're not institutions, but you know what I mean. And or you're, you know, just getting capital to move, giving them confidence and clarity. They're gonna do it. And that's gonna come down to your team. If you're new, then go get, go find the best partners you can and knock down, you know, get the first one under your belt. Go small if you can. You know, you'll learn a bunch in that instead of trying to, you know, go buy it off 500 megawatts, maybe, you know, start with 25. When you look at a 500 MW facility that's fully like commissioned, they they're big. It's a lot of power. Speaker 1 OK, so for everyone that just missed what he was cringing about and I was laughing about, in February of this year there was a brand new data center developer group who had never done a data center before running around saying they were building. How big was it? Like 4 GW? There's a. Speaker 2 Lot. There's a lot. There's a lot in their pipeline. Speaker 1 They they were gonna build a four GW or something data center and they'd never built a single data center before. So everyone's like, wow, this is amazing. And Ben is just in the corner like this cringing. And he's like, do you? Why do you like this project? This is literally like me buying you like the best purebred poodle and you bringing home a dumpster stray cat and saying look I found the best pet ever and just like what are you doing? Speaker 2 You don't know what you don't know until you get into it, you know, and it's like where and and then we saw this early on in this space. I mean, last year was a big year. Lots of people hitting the drum on they've got power And this not because there was a lot of money in this space, right? Anytime there's lots of money in noise, you got to look for like, OK, well, everybody's gathering over here where is no one. What are people not focused on? And, and that's kind of what ourselves is like really focusing on not, not the noise and the, and all the, the, the hype that's going on in the space. We're really focusing on how do you do the build these things in a responsible way. And that's worked out so far really great. You know, we've learned a lot. We're still learning a ton. You know, I've probably even messed up things on this call, I'm sure. But it's OK, right? People that are willing to help you out. Yeah. Building Vegas's Tallest: Future Projects & Events Yeah. All right. So are you going to come to our, what is it called? It's the data center. Let me read this off the future of eco conscious community conscious data centers talk. It's on October 1st. Are you coming to that for people to ask you questions? Speaker 2 Happy to come to it. Where is it gonna be? Speaker 1 It's online, so you could be anywhere. Yeah, that's why. Or walking through TSA like you were doing the meeting on Monday. Speaker 2 It happens, it happens. I'll be there. Speaker 1 I was like, Ben, why don't we see your face on camera and you're like, airport? It's like, OK, I got it. Speaker 2 A hat on. I was like, man. Speaker 1 That's right. Yeah. Because, OK, ladies and gents, he has five children. Believe it or not. He looks like he has, like, none, but he has five children. So he could balance, like, a zoo full of monkeys. And it was like, why is his camera off? Like, he literally could just be walking through a hurricane and act like he's like, I don't know, standing in like a Zen Buddhist center. So. And then you're like, airport. I was like, OK, that makes more sense. Speaker 2 That gets a way of refining you down, grinding you down. It's good for. Speaker 1 Us, you're just like so calm in any situation. People are like how? And I'm like, oh, you had five children worth of training. Speaker 2 He's got it, He's burning down, he's got it. Speaker 1 Yeah, I had a few heiresses were like killing each other the other day and I walked in and I was like, everyone is in time out until you had a full night of sleep. And one, one of the like, one of the people there who like runs this international organization with all these prime ministers, he's like, how did you do that? And I was like, oh, mom mode. Speaker 2 Right, Activate. Calm down. Speaker 1 You're you're not allowed to crash an economy because you guys are sleep deprived and drunk. Speaker 2 Yeah, please no. Speaker 1 Yeah. Anyways, OK, so we will see you October 1st at the Eco Conscious Community Conscious Data Center event online. Are we also going to see you at Tilton Capital? Speaker 2 Possibly I wasn't at the one in Atlanta. I'd have to miss that one because I was travelling in New York. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, we almost. Speaker 2 Yeah. So hopefully I'll be there this on this next one that's in Vegas, right? Or is that where it is? Speaker 1 It's in Vegas. We're gonna have fun. You have to go. Bromance of the century. Speaker 2 All right, not opposed to it. What? So not opposed to it. Yeah, cool. That's a project there, so. Speaker 1 What? Speaker 2 I still have a few projects in Vegas we're doing, we're doing a a we're doing, it's large. It's it's Las Vegas's largest, it'll be their largest building right over the Casino Royale, so. Speaker 1 I I was looking at. Speaker 2 There's a commercial, there's a commercial real estate player right there. Speaker 1 Yeah, when I was more full time in the real estate and less less in the energy space, I was looking at a really nice deal in in Vegas and then eight different people reached out claiming that it was their deal. And I was like, which one of you ate actually have direct contact to the principal? None of them did. Speaker 2 And I was like, that got circulated around. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. It was one of those things. And they had like all gotten it from each other. And I was like, then this isn't your deal. If you don't even know who the builder is and you can't get me directly on the phone with the person who accepts the money to build this, it's not your deal. That was such, that was such a mess. But yeah, Vegas last year was beautiful. It was incredible. The the architecture there is just amazing. It's it's like nothing else on the planet. It's wild. It's large. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Could I tell you like I'd never been before before? Speaker 2 That's right. You hadn't gone. You hadn't gone West of Dallas, you said. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I, I'm Jewish. We don't leave New York. When I was a child, I remember like seeing something about Vegas. And I asked my mother and she was like, you have everything in New York, why would you need to go to Vegas? Like? And that was the end of it. Like so. So the first time I went was when I had to speak on five panels at the family office real estate events last year. And I was shocked that these hotels are literally the size of like Italian villages. Like you could fit an entire village or small town in Europe into one of these hotels. Speaker 2 Yeah, very large. Speaker 1 And that's one of your projects. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, we've got right over the Casino Royale, The old Casino Royale, we'll be doing the tallest. It'll be the tallest building in Vegas. Speaker 1 Oh my God, Yeah. Oh my God. So you're gonna come back on the show? Talk about that. Speaker 2 Yeah, at some point I'm, I'm, I'm learning a lot. Speaker 1 Bro call me when you have questions. Speaker 2 I will, I will I? I have them all the time. Speaker 1 What? Speaker 2 I have them all the time, so yeah, I will. Speaker 1 Yeah, text me instead of ChatGPT. I don't hallucinate, I will. All right, love you, man. I'll talk to you later. Speaker 2 All right. Sounds good. Yes, please. Speaker 1 Thanks guys for joining us. Hope you enjoyed it. Bye.