VivoPower partners with Open Innovation AI to develop sovereign AI data centres global

We think it's a 60 gigawatt opportunity and being able now to sit down in front of governments and municipalities and say we would like to deliver your AI infrastructure.

All right, welcome back inside our Proactive News room and joining me now is Alex Cuppage. He's the chief investment officer for Vivo Power International. Alex, it's great to see you again. How are you?

Good morning, Steve. Thanks so much for having me. Lovely to see you.

Yeah, lovely to see you as well. and uh really interesting news out from the company, an agreement uh with the uh UAE based Open Innovation AI. and and this is a an exciting one for the company and I'm sure one that you're pretty excited about because I know you had direct impact on this one.

Yeah, I know, incredibly excited, Steve. uh a company that probably a lot of the world does not know about, but they um, if if you take a step back and you look at sovereign cloud, Abu Dhabi is probably the leaders in the world of sovereign cloud in terms of running all their government AI infrastructure. So across government administration,

defense and national security, financial services and uh education and uh open innovationer is an Abu Dhabi company, incredibly talented team and they run the orchestration layer for most of the government contracts in Abu Dhabi. So we're incredibly excited and

you know, this is an area that Vivo Power really wants to transcend and roll out across Europe. We think it's a 60 gigawatt opportunity and being able now to sit down in front of governments and municipalities and say we would like to deliver your AI infrastructure and when they ask us, well, who's going to run the technology layer, we're able to point to open innovation. So it it's an incredibly exciting time and you know, we think it gives us a significant competitive advantage.

So how does how is this whole deal going to work? Are they going to work hand in hand with you moving forward now? because I I know there's in the news release it talks about trying to open up centers in the Nordic countries, uh and a lot of other different places as well. So, is that how this process is going to work?

Yeah, effectively, we are running our entire portfolio across them today and also our pipeline and new opportunities as well. So it it's really three layered. So they're looking at all our existing sites. They're we're walking them through each of our sites within our pipeline. and then we also plan to sit with with government departments and and the upper echelons of governments in the Nordics and other regions that we're targeting where the question will be, what are you doing with your power?

Why are you giving it to US hyper scalars or Asian hyper scalars? Why aren't you thinking about your own domestic sovereign cloud needs and let us be the solution provider for you.

Um talk to me a bit about uh Open Innovation AI and and just having the the the knowledge, the where for to to move forward this quite quickly. It sounds like it it it can really fast track things because they have such a a a strong pipeline already and also probably a pretty good roller deck as well.

They have, look, they've been incredible roller decks, um both within their existing portfolio and and more broadly across the world, but you know, this is something that I'm very personally passionate about. Um, I think the compute power equals national prosperity and national security. and when I look at the world, I think the world has already run out of power. And I think we're probably 18 months away, particularly in Europe where sovereigns are going to start to realize that they need to develop their own sovereign cloud.

And this is a evolving uh landscape, right? I think if you ask anyone, no one knows where AI is going, right? So when you sit with governments, you need as a private sector, I think we have a responsibility to help them drive a solution to have the best AI that runs their defense, their education, their um administrative uh aspects and and also their financial services. And Vivo Power has the lands. We can develop that infrastructure to the power shell. and now with open innovation,

they're able to provide the technology layer and whether they bring their own clients from Abu Dhabi, which, you know, has a phenomenal track record or they bring in European technology partners. This is something that we'll be able to fast track probably 24 months um to my own thinking into into Europe. So very, very exciting.

Yeah, huge deal for Vivo Power it sounds like.

It it's incredible, Steve. Um, you know, I was thinking we were probably 24 months away from this, but we've got to know the the leadership and open innovation. We've been incredibly impressed with the technology they've built with the existing technology that's been run in Abu Dhabi. and, you know, I guess, you know, it's a partnership made in heaven, right? They they focus on the technology and we focus on building out the infrastructure.

There you go. Uh Alex, congratulations on this. exciting times ahead and uh appreciate your time today. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Steve. appreciate. love you. see you.

Yeah, good to see you as well. There's Alex Cubbage, the chief investment officer at Vivo Power International.