AI cloud provider SMC plans global rollout, CEO says
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FILE PHOTO: People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo
Singapore - Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.
"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said.
The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.
It operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips in Singapore that are used to run open source models, such as Meta's Llama 2.
While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.
The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.
Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.
SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.
(This story has been corrected to say that Meta is not an SMC client in paragraph 4)
(Reporting by Fanny Potkin in Singapore; editing by Jason Neely)
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