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