AI transcript
0:00:10 [Music]
0:00:15 Hello and welcome to the NVIDIA AI podcast. I’m your host, Noah Kravitz.
0:00:19 In late 2024, the Telenoar AI factory was officially launched.
0:00:24 The AI factory is Norway’s first sustainable, sovereign, and secure
0:00:28 generative AI cloud service designed to enhance AI adoption for both internal
0:00:33 operations and external customers and to provide local AI computing
0:00:36 capabilities to the Nordic region. With us to share the story behind the
0:00:41 Telenoar AI factory and to discuss the impact responsible AI is set to have on
0:00:45 the country of Norway and the Nordic region more broadly is Karin Hilson.
0:00:50 Karin is the chief innovation officer and head of the AI factory at Telenoar.
0:00:55 And she’s also set to speak at NVIDIA GTC 2025 as part of a session titled
0:01:00 Accelerating Sovereign AI Factories – Insight from Telco Case Studies.
0:01:03 Karin, welcome to the AI podcast and thank you so much for taking the time to
0:01:07 join us. Thanks, Noah. Wow, what an introduction.
0:01:10 Well, you know, it’s hard because I try to, you know, I want to give you your
0:01:14 credit, give you your flowers as they say, but our guests and your no exception
0:01:17 have done so much. It’s hard to cram it all in there, but it’s all genuine.
0:01:21 We’re delighted to have you on the podcast. It’s great to be here, Nara.
0:01:26 So before we get into the story of the AI factory, which I’m really excited to hear
0:01:30 from you, maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about your own background
0:01:33 and your journey into AI. And then we can talk about Telenoar.
0:01:36 Yeah, I mean, the journey into AI, I mean, do we all end up here?
0:01:42 It’s a bit of the question, but is that my journey is maybe being shortly.
0:01:47 But I’ve been working in the the telco industry and with Telenoar now for 25 years
0:01:51 across the globe in many different continents and sort of moving back to
0:01:55 Norway a couple of years ago. And in the last few years, I’ve been working very
0:02:01 much with innovation, with sustainability and these things. And a bit of a fun fact,
0:02:07 I was actually sort of read up the other day that in, was it 2023 that
0:02:11 emissions that data centers have actually reached the same level as emissions
0:02:16 as the global airline industry. And that was a bit of an eye opener for me.
0:02:19 I don’t know if it’s fact or fiction, but it just sort of got me thinking.
0:02:24 And and then I see with the AI now sort of driving demand and everything,
0:02:27 the data sense is going to increase. And then I was thinking, well, okay,
0:02:32 but then we need to, how can we do this responsibly? And as I said, my journey to it,
0:02:36 I was working a lot with sustainability and how we can actually use our digital
0:02:44 infrastructure in the green shift. And then the vision of sort of democratizing AI
0:02:49 and every nation is an AI sort of came in. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we
0:02:53 could build a green AI factory? And it was very much sort of the, the
0:02:57 passion I had around the sustainability, the need for AI is sort of,
0:03:02 it just beautifully came together. And I remember in the summer, sort of standing
0:03:06 on the banks of the Thames with my friends at a pub in the UK. And they said to me,
0:03:08 oh, come on, what are you doing at the moment? And I said, oh, yeah,
0:03:12 I’m building a green AI factory. And they said, is that even possible?
0:03:21 So I just love, so it’s sort of how I ended up, but I guess it’s a passion to make ideas happen.
0:03:26 Absolutely. You were working on sustainability previously in the telco industry?
0:03:30 Yeah, I’ve had various roles, but I had a sort of passion to sort of,
0:03:36 I was working with the critical infrastructure. I’ve had various CEO roles in Sweden,
0:03:41 in Montenegro, I’ve been working in Asia. And as I said, move back to Norway for
0:03:47 private reasons and looking, what can we really sort of do now? And seeing more and more that
0:03:54 the telcos critical infrastructure has such a key role in society. And I think this was one of my
0:04:00 eye knows during COVID, I think, like many of us sit and reflect. And I think all of us became so
0:04:06 dependent on the critical infrastructure that we have and the digital infrastructure.
0:04:10 So let’s talk about the factory. Should we start on the sustainability angle?
0:04:16 Should we start on sort of the commercial and sort of benefit of the factory to the
0:04:20 community? How would you like to begin? Tell us the story of building the AI factory?
0:04:25 I mean, I always like to sort of say, the story always started with a vision. And it was there
0:04:31 are sort of a top executive teleno where we’re meeting the sort of top executives in Nvidia.
0:04:35 I love this standard. There’s sort of every country must own the production of their own
0:04:42 intelligence. I sort of love that. And that sort of vision, then with the combination of teleno,
0:04:48 we’re 170 years old. We’ve not been running critical infrastructure in Norway for that time.
0:04:55 That’s amazing. It’s just such a beautiful fit. And I just love this vision that we had, okay,
0:05:00 that every country needs to sort of own his own intelligence and produce it. We need to do this
0:05:06 in a responsible, sustainable way. And we need critical infrastructure to do this. So this was
0:05:11 sort of the idea was then born. And I remember executives sort of coming back to Norway and
0:05:16 sort of said to me, current, can you make this happen? And he’s like, okay, do I have any funding?
0:05:22 Do I have no, no, just make it happen. And it was like, okay, where do we start sort of thing?
0:05:28 And every, you know, and everybody said, just believe, believe. And this is where our journey
0:05:34 started. There’s sort of which angle do you sort of tackle it? And if anything, I was overwhelmed.
0:05:39 And I think the only thing was certain is there was so much uncertainty, so many unknowns.
0:05:45 And we very much then started the journey exploring, okay, is there a need for it in
0:05:52 Norway? What’s the level of maturity? How can we build on this? And we started then working in
0:05:58 sprints. Forgive me for interrupting Karen, but when was this? How long ago? So this was, we started
0:06:02 the journey in February last less than a year ago. Less than a year ago. It’s amazing how fast
0:06:07 things are moving. Yeah, it was, even when I say, do you know, I feel like I’ve been working on a
0:06:15 lifetime, but it’s just just the sort of a year ago. And we started looking up the market, we
0:06:20 started looking, okay, what is our go to market proposition? You know, what equipment do we need
0:06:27 and what data center do we do it in? And all these sort of questions were coming up. And this is
0:06:34 quite early on we said, okay, you know, telcos are fantastic, but they maybe haven’t got the best
0:06:39 reputation for moving fast. So it’s like, how could we do it? And this is where we said, okay,
0:06:45 let’s take a bit of a different approach. And even the basic thing I faced with like, okay,
0:06:50 I want to order our first sort of cluster to put in a data center. And I didn’t have a legal entity
0:06:56 to do this with. I mean, a very silly sort of internal governance. So we decided, okay, let’s
0:07:02 think like a setting up like a startup, we’re going to set up a new company. So we set up a new
0:07:07 legal entity. And we said, okay, we’re going to be a startup. I said, I don’t want a huge team,
0:07:12 I don’t want a huge program, which is going to sort of drag us down in corporate governance,
0:07:18 slow decision making. So we said, okay, we’re going to think like a startup, we set up then our
0:07:26 first cluster, we caught together our go to market proposition. And then in August, we started to go
0:07:32 talk to some customers out in the market and said, this is our proposition, we’re going to have,
0:07:37 we’ve got an offering where we can offer a sovereign, secure and sustainable effectively.
0:07:43 What do you think? And this is sort of them where I think the fun really, really started.
0:07:49 And I always say, I said to the organization as well, the decision makers, the next talk I’m
0:07:55 going to come is when we’ve signed two customers. And I even remember standing on stage at an
0:08:00 internal town hall. And one of the leaders said to me, Karm, what does success look like? At the
0:08:05 end of the year, what does success look like? And I spontaneously said, yeah, we have two customers
0:08:11 in our AI factory. And there was, okay, that is Ray. And I said, yeah, we’re going to have two
0:08:16 customers, one internal and one external. And I was like, okay, so that became our goal. And this
0:08:22 is where the team then were fully focused that this is what we would then work towards.
0:08:24 Was that high autonomy, the first external customer?
0:08:31 So high, actually, we actually started off saying we wanted to tell another as our own
0:08:38 internal customer. Because we said it was very good to sort of start with that, to learn, build
0:08:43 confidence, you know, make sure we’re there before we dare go out and talk to other customers.
0:08:44 Right, right.
0:08:49 And this is where we pivoted quite early is then we need more intel if we just focus on one
0:08:54 customer. And again, we did a lot of this in building the AI factory for our own needs.
0:09:01 We saw this capability being fundamental for Teleno to accelerate his own AI journey.
0:09:07 Right, as well. I mean, Teleno sits on a lot of critical information and data,
0:09:13 which we need to secure that is sort of stays within in Norway and is operated very, very
0:09:19 securely. So we actually built the AI factory originally for our own needs. But we saw that
0:09:25 there was also a demand outside Teleno. So we pivoted quite quickly saying we can do this in
0:09:32 parallel, get one internal customer and one external customer. So we’re working sort of with
0:09:38 the Teleno operations to say, okay, they come on board. And then as you mentioned,
0:09:41 Hive Autonomy were then the actual first external customer.
0:09:41 Right, okay.
0:09:46 We got a board. And I think from both, you know, we’re learning a lot from both our customers.
0:09:52 And we have an MVP product. It’s not perfect. We’ve set some design principles that the whole
0:09:59 team, whereas where we say speedover perfection, we always like to say that roughly right is
0:10:05 better than precisely wrong. And again, in a Telco, we are so, for years, we’ve been on the
0:10:10 building, you know, perfect network. So we’re kind of our comfort zone here. And again,
0:10:16 in finding the right and what we call our MVP customers was quite critical. So we can have
0:10:19 customers that can learn and grow with us.
0:10:25 Are there currently specific use cases that you’re tackling, whether on the internal side,
0:10:29 or, you know, that Hive or perhaps other external customers are interested in? What are
0:10:31 some of the leading use cases?
0:10:35 Yeah. So I think that the one thing all of them have in common, first of all, is sort of very
0:10:40 giant. They’re all solving a specific problem. It’s not just like, oh yeah, we’ll buy some GPUs,
0:10:42 and then we’ll work out what we’re going to do.
0:10:45 Right, right, right. What can this chatbot do? Let’s play around with it.
0:10:50 Yeah, exactly. Which is what I think a lot of people want to do. But as I know, we want to
0:10:57 sort of, so like Hive autonomy, for example, I mean, they work with logistics, robotics.
0:11:03 So they are actually innovating, I say a lot of industries, whether it’s ports, as I said,
0:11:10 factories or this sort of in their operations and have efficiency cases. So they have very
0:11:16 specific customer needs that they are trying to solve. The reason sort of why they were
0:11:20 very interested in coming to the factory is that they’re sitting with sensitive data. So it was
0:11:27 very keen, they wanted it to be really on Norwegian soil. The teleno grand sort of represents
0:11:32 security, you know, so there’s sort of a gain that really helps them. And then the sustainability
0:11:39 part is super key. And so that was sort of the combination of these three. Cup Gemini is also
0:11:46 a customer of ours. They are developing products of doing voice to voice translation. And we can
0:11:51 say, yes, that can be done. But these are for sensitive dialogues. Not all dialogues can go
0:11:56 out in the cloud somewhere. These are very sort of sensitive dialogues, if you think, you know,
0:12:02 within the health sector, within the police. So not so much on prep, but again, it’s sort of a
0:12:10 safe, secure environment. And that’s really key. And another customer is working a lot with the
0:12:17 municipalities in Norway. And again, with sort of sensitive cases that they sort of really would
0:12:25 like their data to be secured. And the sustainability part of it. And this is something that, again,
0:12:30 as I said to you in my intro, I’m very, very passionate about. And then sort of, you know,
0:12:36 while some people say AI can solve climate change. So I think, you know, with the increasing
0:12:41 number of compute power and data centers that are needed, we have to be responsible and build
0:12:49 data centers in a sustainable way. And this is also why Telenoor is also building with several
0:12:56 partners, a state of the art modern data center here in Oslo. So Telenoor, in addition to the AI
0:13:02 factory is also partnered with a leading power company called Hufsman, and also a renewable
0:13:08 energy investor called high tech vision are actually now building a super modern data center.
0:13:14 And here it’s actually, this is not just about using renewable energy sort of coming in,
0:13:20 but is also all the excess heat will actually go into district heating and actually heat up
0:13:25 apartments and the surrounding area. So the heat coming out of the data center, you’re going to
0:13:30 capture it and redistribute it to heat homes in the area. Yes. I have very little, you know,
0:13:34 physical world building and engineering capabilities. So it’s a genuine question.
0:13:40 Is that a tricky undertaking? Or is it? Yes, it is. And this is sort of a company,
0:13:46 which is sort of Telenoor is partnering, taking all that. So I will say, we know. But I think what
0:13:53 we need to provide is then sort of, again, the sort of the critical infrastructure, the connectivity,
0:13:59 the security elements of it, and then being able to say to customers, and we’re doing this in an
0:14:05 energy efficient way. Our guest is Karin Hilson. Karin is the chief innovation officer and head
0:14:10 of the AI factory at Telenoor. And Karin Telenoor, we’ve talked Telenoor Norway,
0:14:14 Telenoor Sweden, and forgive me, I should have asked this up front. How many countries,
0:14:19 how big of an area does Telenoor serve? Telenoor, I mean, globally has over 200 million customers.
0:14:26 We have footprints in the Nordics. So Telenoor has a presence then in Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
0:14:32 and Finland. And then we have a presence in Asia. Got it. So to get back to the AI factory and thinking
0:14:38 about the use cases and such, are most of the use cases right now, and again, whether, you know,
0:14:44 actually happening or sort of in the works, are they centering around generative AI and large
0:14:51 language models? Or is it kind of, you know, other forms of machine learning and AI? What’s the buzz
0:14:56 right now in terms of, you know, the sort of current and future-looking use cases for the
0:15:02 factory? I would say that there is a lot of buzz that’s still in the exploratory phase to be very
0:15:07 open and honest. We forget. That’s where we all are. We’re still so early in all of this.
0:15:14 Yeah. And I see that there is definitely different maturity levels. I mean, when we talk to customers,
0:15:20 the market, and so many are, you know, exploring, you know, some very sort of super cool and
0:15:26 forward-leaning others are very much like, okay, again, going back to the, we’re sitting on very
0:15:33 critical data and everything. And it’s used to being in our, you know, basement or under our desks
0:15:38 and everything. But how can we sort of, we need more compute power and everything. And these are
0:15:44 the kind of dialogues that we are having with customers, sort of, how can we really, you know,
0:15:51 secure the handling of their data in a very secure way? They can trust that it is sort of,
0:15:58 stays on Norwegian soil that we still then are owning the production of intelligence as we
0:16:05 spoke about earlier. So I would say there is still, the dialogues are still very much evolving
0:16:08 around this. You’ve worked in different regions of the world and you currently do,
0:16:15 as you were just speaking to, how similar or different are not just the laws and regulations,
0:16:23 but sort of the common wisdom, the attitudes around responsible AI and data security, those
0:16:28 kinds of things. And these are obviously, you know, new and evolving topics, responsible AI
0:16:34 specifically. How similar or different do you find conversations about these things as you work in
0:16:39 different countries, different regions of the world? I would say they are very different.
0:16:46 I say the similarity is that certainly around security and sovereignty, what I have seen just
0:16:52 on the journey of the last two months is really increased. We are onboarding one customer at
0:17:00 the moment into the AIF factory and they sent us a list of 135 security questions. And this is sort
0:17:08 of what we forget. And again, these are becoming very, not just topical, but very sort of business
0:17:16 critical questions as well. And this is back to why we started the journey with the AI factory.
0:17:21 We saw that there was a bit of a hole in the market, if I could say that, we’ve been able
0:17:27 to have sovereignty, security and sustainability all three together. And then using the sort of
0:17:33 teleno trusted brand as when people trust us, we’re reliable, you know, is the sort of
0:17:39 combination. I mean, one could say, if you just want, you know, compute capacity to build an open
0:17:45 sort of model, go ahead and do that. But there is a lot of sort of really to move society forward
0:17:50 as a whole. You know, if it’s in the health sector, within defense, within the public sector, we see
0:17:56 that, you know, that there are sensitive dialogues, we see that there are, you know, things. So we
0:18:03 really see that the teleno AI factory, and together with our partnership with NVIDIA can
0:18:08 really help bring society forward. Absolutely. Because it’s some of these dialogues, as you say
0:18:14 now, around sovereignty and security, that are making people nervous, they’re making people
0:18:20 uncertain, they’re making people relook at their, you know, their fantastic IT, whatever that they’ve
0:18:26 had for the last years. So we’ve seen that there is definitely a change in climate, I would say,
0:18:33 around the seriousness of the dialogues. It seems appropriate, it makes sense to me.
0:18:38 All right, Karin, before we get to wrapping up, are there AI tools that you’re finding particularly
0:18:43 helpful, or, you know, just that you’re using regularly in your own life, be it work outside of
0:18:47 work, you don’t have to go into the details of what, but are there any tools that, you know,
0:18:52 you’ve been using regularly recently? Well, I have to confess, probably that I use it most to
0:18:57 help my kids with their homework, or if they say I’m cheating, I always tell them they can’t,
0:19:03 but I need to just answer all the, you know, I have to, you know, to answer all the why
0:19:09 questions and what it was. Yes, my older child tells me actually, when he’ll use it to sort of,
0:19:13 it’s almost the way that I use in people, we talk about on the show, people using, especially
0:19:18 folks in creative lines of work or doing creative, you know, projects that you’ll do something and
0:19:23 then send it to a chat bot to kind of get its take on it. And it kind of points out, oh, you missed
0:19:26 this, or, oh, here’s another way to think about that kind of thing. So I don’t think it’s cheating
0:19:31 myself, but, you know. No, it’s not cheating, but it helps get a dialogue because then exactly,
0:19:36 as you say, I then engage in discussions and we talk about whether it’s right or wrong,
0:19:41 and it is a fact that it actually, I find it actually is not cheating, I joke, but it actually
0:19:47 is a trigger to get the dialogue going. Which is fantastic, that’s great. Which isn’t always easy
0:19:53 with teenagers. No, no, it’s not. No, it’s not. All right, I want to give you time to talk about
0:19:58 the vision going forward. You know, this began with a vision, and it’s a vision that’s taken
0:20:03 flight now. What are your hopes? What’s your vision for the AI factory in the next, we’re
0:20:09 recording this in February 2025. So whatever time period makes sense, as we said, things are
0:20:13 moving so fast, it’s hard to know where AI will be in three years. But, you know, the next year,
0:20:17 two years, five years, what are you, where are you taking the AI factory?
0:20:21 Yeah, I mean, we certainly want to scale it. As I said, you know, we see, we’re starting in Norway,
0:20:30 we see Norway has this need. And I really believe that we can really help empower society here in
0:20:36 Norway through giving, you know, access to a place where different organizations, business,
0:20:42 it is the public sector, the private sector, can really innovate their businesses, make it more
0:20:49 efficient. And really sort of going back to this and feel that, yes, we are really doing this in a
0:20:56 sort of sustainable way. We’re helping that we’re really, we know our data and it’s safe,
0:21:01 we can run these really sensitive cases. And it’s sort of going back to this, I just love
0:21:07 this, the production of the intelligence is here in Norway. So really, I do see the AI factory as
0:21:12 being a very, maybe I’m being too, my vision is getting a bit, but the more I work with it,
0:21:17 the more I see it can really help move societies forward and develop.
0:21:21 Fantastic. That’s what it’s all about, if you ask me, but just my opinion.
0:21:23 My fully agree.
0:21:27 Karen Hilson, this was a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time. And you’ll be on the panel at
0:21:33 GTC next month as we record this. So looking forward to that. And for folks listening,
0:21:39 who would like to find out more about the AI factory, about Telanor, anything we’ve discussed?
0:21:44 Is there a good website, URL, social media, where can listeners go online to learn more?
0:21:49 Yeah. I mean, go onto the Telanor website, you’ll find our Telanor AI factory there. You can reach
0:21:57 out to me on LinkedIn as well. So please, we’re welcome. We’re on this journey together. As you
0:22:02 say, we’re still very much in an explorative phase. So I’d love to hear from people.
0:22:06 Fantastic. Well, again, Karen, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure and
0:22:09 all the best of luck with all the work you’re doing. There’s no better reason to employ AI
0:22:12 than to bring us all forward, as you said. So all the best.
0:22:14 Thanks, Snare.
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0:23:10 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:15 Hello and welcome to the NVIDIA AI podcast. I’m your host, Noah Kravitz.
0:00:19 In late 2024, the Telenoar AI factory was officially launched.
0:00:24 The AI factory is Norway’s first sustainable, sovereign, and secure
0:00:28 generative AI cloud service designed to enhance AI adoption for both internal
0:00:33 operations and external customers and to provide local AI computing
0:00:36 capabilities to the Nordic region. With us to share the story behind the
0:00:41 Telenoar AI factory and to discuss the impact responsible AI is set to have on
0:00:45 the country of Norway and the Nordic region more broadly is Karin Hilson.
0:00:50 Karin is the chief innovation officer and head of the AI factory at Telenoar.
0:00:55 And she’s also set to speak at NVIDIA GTC 2025 as part of a session titled
0:01:00 Accelerating Sovereign AI Factories – Insight from Telco Case Studies.
0:01:03 Karin, welcome to the AI podcast and thank you so much for taking the time to
0:01:07 join us. Thanks, Noah. Wow, what an introduction.
0:01:10 Well, you know, it’s hard because I try to, you know, I want to give you your
0:01:14 credit, give you your flowers as they say, but our guests and your no exception
0:01:17 have done so much. It’s hard to cram it all in there, but it’s all genuine.
0:01:21 We’re delighted to have you on the podcast. It’s great to be here, Nara.
0:01:26 So before we get into the story of the AI factory, which I’m really excited to hear
0:01:30 from you, maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about your own background
0:01:33 and your journey into AI. And then we can talk about Telenoar.
0:01:36 Yeah, I mean, the journey into AI, I mean, do we all end up here?
0:01:42 It’s a bit of the question, but is that my journey is maybe being shortly.
0:01:47 But I’ve been working in the the telco industry and with Telenoar now for 25 years
0:01:51 across the globe in many different continents and sort of moving back to
0:01:55 Norway a couple of years ago. And in the last few years, I’ve been working very
0:02:01 much with innovation, with sustainability and these things. And a bit of a fun fact,
0:02:07 I was actually sort of read up the other day that in, was it 2023 that
0:02:11 emissions that data centers have actually reached the same level as emissions
0:02:16 as the global airline industry. And that was a bit of an eye opener for me.
0:02:19 I don’t know if it’s fact or fiction, but it just sort of got me thinking.
0:02:24 And and then I see with the AI now sort of driving demand and everything,
0:02:27 the data sense is going to increase. And then I was thinking, well, okay,
0:02:32 but then we need to, how can we do this responsibly? And as I said, my journey to it,
0:02:36 I was working a lot with sustainability and how we can actually use our digital
0:02:44 infrastructure in the green shift. And then the vision of sort of democratizing AI
0:02:49 and every nation is an AI sort of came in. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we
0:02:53 could build a green AI factory? And it was very much sort of the, the
0:02:57 passion I had around the sustainability, the need for AI is sort of,
0:03:02 it just beautifully came together. And I remember in the summer, sort of standing
0:03:06 on the banks of the Thames with my friends at a pub in the UK. And they said to me,
0:03:08 oh, come on, what are you doing at the moment? And I said, oh, yeah,
0:03:12 I’m building a green AI factory. And they said, is that even possible?
0:03:21 So I just love, so it’s sort of how I ended up, but I guess it’s a passion to make ideas happen.
0:03:26 Absolutely. You were working on sustainability previously in the telco industry?
0:03:30 Yeah, I’ve had various roles, but I had a sort of passion to sort of,
0:03:36 I was working with the critical infrastructure. I’ve had various CEO roles in Sweden,
0:03:41 in Montenegro, I’ve been working in Asia. And as I said, move back to Norway for
0:03:47 private reasons and looking, what can we really sort of do now? And seeing more and more that
0:03:54 the telcos critical infrastructure has such a key role in society. And I think this was one of my
0:04:00 eye knows during COVID, I think, like many of us sit and reflect. And I think all of us became so
0:04:06 dependent on the critical infrastructure that we have and the digital infrastructure.
0:04:10 So let’s talk about the factory. Should we start on the sustainability angle?
0:04:16 Should we start on sort of the commercial and sort of benefit of the factory to the
0:04:20 community? How would you like to begin? Tell us the story of building the AI factory?
0:04:25 I mean, I always like to sort of say, the story always started with a vision. And it was there
0:04:31 are sort of a top executive teleno where we’re meeting the sort of top executives in Nvidia.
0:04:35 I love this standard. There’s sort of every country must own the production of their own
0:04:42 intelligence. I sort of love that. And that sort of vision, then with the combination of teleno,
0:04:48 we’re 170 years old. We’ve not been running critical infrastructure in Norway for that time.
0:04:55 That’s amazing. It’s just such a beautiful fit. And I just love this vision that we had, okay,
0:05:00 that every country needs to sort of own his own intelligence and produce it. We need to do this
0:05:06 in a responsible, sustainable way. And we need critical infrastructure to do this. So this was
0:05:11 sort of the idea was then born. And I remember executives sort of coming back to Norway and
0:05:16 sort of said to me, current, can you make this happen? And he’s like, okay, do I have any funding?
0:05:22 Do I have no, no, just make it happen. And it was like, okay, where do we start sort of thing?
0:05:28 And every, you know, and everybody said, just believe, believe. And this is where our journey
0:05:34 started. There’s sort of which angle do you sort of tackle it? And if anything, I was overwhelmed.
0:05:39 And I think the only thing was certain is there was so much uncertainty, so many unknowns.
0:05:45 And we very much then started the journey exploring, okay, is there a need for it in
0:05:52 Norway? What’s the level of maturity? How can we build on this? And we started then working in
0:05:58 sprints. Forgive me for interrupting Karen, but when was this? How long ago? So this was, we started
0:06:02 the journey in February last less than a year ago. Less than a year ago. It’s amazing how fast
0:06:07 things are moving. Yeah, it was, even when I say, do you know, I feel like I’ve been working on a
0:06:15 lifetime, but it’s just just the sort of a year ago. And we started looking up the market, we
0:06:20 started looking, okay, what is our go to market proposition? You know, what equipment do we need
0:06:27 and what data center do we do it in? And all these sort of questions were coming up. And this is
0:06:34 quite early on we said, okay, you know, telcos are fantastic, but they maybe haven’t got the best
0:06:39 reputation for moving fast. So it’s like, how could we do it? And this is where we said, okay,
0:06:45 let’s take a bit of a different approach. And even the basic thing I faced with like, okay,
0:06:50 I want to order our first sort of cluster to put in a data center. And I didn’t have a legal entity
0:06:56 to do this with. I mean, a very silly sort of internal governance. So we decided, okay, let’s
0:07:02 think like a setting up like a startup, we’re going to set up a new company. So we set up a new
0:07:07 legal entity. And we said, okay, we’re going to be a startup. I said, I don’t want a huge team,
0:07:12 I don’t want a huge program, which is going to sort of drag us down in corporate governance,
0:07:18 slow decision making. So we said, okay, we’re going to think like a startup, we set up then our
0:07:26 first cluster, we caught together our go to market proposition. And then in August, we started to go
0:07:32 talk to some customers out in the market and said, this is our proposition, we’re going to have,
0:07:37 we’ve got an offering where we can offer a sovereign, secure and sustainable effectively.
0:07:43 What do you think? And this is sort of them where I think the fun really, really started.
0:07:49 And I always say, I said to the organization as well, the decision makers, the next talk I’m
0:07:55 going to come is when we’ve signed two customers. And I even remember standing on stage at an
0:08:00 internal town hall. And one of the leaders said to me, Karm, what does success look like? At the
0:08:05 end of the year, what does success look like? And I spontaneously said, yeah, we have two customers
0:08:11 in our AI factory. And there was, okay, that is Ray. And I said, yeah, we’re going to have two
0:08:16 customers, one internal and one external. And I was like, okay, so that became our goal. And this
0:08:22 is where the team then were fully focused that this is what we would then work towards.
0:08:24 Was that high autonomy, the first external customer?
0:08:31 So high, actually, we actually started off saying we wanted to tell another as our own
0:08:38 internal customer. Because we said it was very good to sort of start with that, to learn, build
0:08:43 confidence, you know, make sure we’re there before we dare go out and talk to other customers.
0:08:44 Right, right.
0:08:49 And this is where we pivoted quite early is then we need more intel if we just focus on one
0:08:54 customer. And again, we did a lot of this in building the AI factory for our own needs.
0:09:01 We saw this capability being fundamental for Teleno to accelerate his own AI journey.
0:09:07 Right, as well. I mean, Teleno sits on a lot of critical information and data,
0:09:13 which we need to secure that is sort of stays within in Norway and is operated very, very
0:09:19 securely. So we actually built the AI factory originally for our own needs. But we saw that
0:09:25 there was also a demand outside Teleno. So we pivoted quite quickly saying we can do this in
0:09:32 parallel, get one internal customer and one external customer. So we’re working sort of with
0:09:38 the Teleno operations to say, okay, they come on board. And then as you mentioned,
0:09:41 Hive Autonomy were then the actual first external customer.
0:09:41 Right, okay.
0:09:46 We got a board. And I think from both, you know, we’re learning a lot from both our customers.
0:09:52 And we have an MVP product. It’s not perfect. We’ve set some design principles that the whole
0:09:59 team, whereas where we say speedover perfection, we always like to say that roughly right is
0:10:05 better than precisely wrong. And again, in a Telco, we are so, for years, we’ve been on the
0:10:10 building, you know, perfect network. So we’re kind of our comfort zone here. And again,
0:10:16 in finding the right and what we call our MVP customers was quite critical. So we can have
0:10:19 customers that can learn and grow with us.
0:10:25 Are there currently specific use cases that you’re tackling, whether on the internal side,
0:10:29 or, you know, that Hive or perhaps other external customers are interested in? What are
0:10:31 some of the leading use cases?
0:10:35 Yeah. So I think that the one thing all of them have in common, first of all, is sort of very
0:10:40 giant. They’re all solving a specific problem. It’s not just like, oh yeah, we’ll buy some GPUs,
0:10:42 and then we’ll work out what we’re going to do.
0:10:45 Right, right, right. What can this chatbot do? Let’s play around with it.
0:10:50 Yeah, exactly. Which is what I think a lot of people want to do. But as I know, we want to
0:10:57 sort of, so like Hive autonomy, for example, I mean, they work with logistics, robotics.
0:11:03 So they are actually innovating, I say a lot of industries, whether it’s ports, as I said,
0:11:10 factories or this sort of in their operations and have efficiency cases. So they have very
0:11:16 specific customer needs that they are trying to solve. The reason sort of why they were
0:11:20 very interested in coming to the factory is that they’re sitting with sensitive data. So it was
0:11:27 very keen, they wanted it to be really on Norwegian soil. The teleno grand sort of represents
0:11:32 security, you know, so there’s sort of a gain that really helps them. And then the sustainability
0:11:39 part is super key. And so that was sort of the combination of these three. Cup Gemini is also
0:11:46 a customer of ours. They are developing products of doing voice to voice translation. And we can
0:11:51 say, yes, that can be done. But these are for sensitive dialogues. Not all dialogues can go
0:11:56 out in the cloud somewhere. These are very sort of sensitive dialogues, if you think, you know,
0:12:02 within the health sector, within the police. So not so much on prep, but again, it’s sort of a
0:12:10 safe, secure environment. And that’s really key. And another customer is working a lot with the
0:12:17 municipalities in Norway. And again, with sort of sensitive cases that they sort of really would
0:12:25 like their data to be secured. And the sustainability part of it. And this is something that, again,
0:12:30 as I said to you in my intro, I’m very, very passionate about. And then sort of, you know,
0:12:36 while some people say AI can solve climate change. So I think, you know, with the increasing
0:12:41 number of compute power and data centers that are needed, we have to be responsible and build
0:12:49 data centers in a sustainable way. And this is also why Telenoor is also building with several
0:12:56 partners, a state of the art modern data center here in Oslo. So Telenoor, in addition to the AI
0:13:02 factory is also partnered with a leading power company called Hufsman, and also a renewable
0:13:08 energy investor called high tech vision are actually now building a super modern data center.
0:13:14 And here it’s actually, this is not just about using renewable energy sort of coming in,
0:13:20 but is also all the excess heat will actually go into district heating and actually heat up
0:13:25 apartments and the surrounding area. So the heat coming out of the data center, you’re going to
0:13:30 capture it and redistribute it to heat homes in the area. Yes. I have very little, you know,
0:13:34 physical world building and engineering capabilities. So it’s a genuine question.
0:13:40 Is that a tricky undertaking? Or is it? Yes, it is. And this is sort of a company,
0:13:46 which is sort of Telenoor is partnering, taking all that. So I will say, we know. But I think what
0:13:53 we need to provide is then sort of, again, the sort of the critical infrastructure, the connectivity,
0:13:59 the security elements of it, and then being able to say to customers, and we’re doing this in an
0:14:05 energy efficient way. Our guest is Karin Hilson. Karin is the chief innovation officer and head
0:14:10 of the AI factory at Telenoor. And Karin Telenoor, we’ve talked Telenoor Norway,
0:14:14 Telenoor Sweden, and forgive me, I should have asked this up front. How many countries,
0:14:19 how big of an area does Telenoor serve? Telenoor, I mean, globally has over 200 million customers.
0:14:26 We have footprints in the Nordics. So Telenoor has a presence then in Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
0:14:32 and Finland. And then we have a presence in Asia. Got it. So to get back to the AI factory and thinking
0:14:38 about the use cases and such, are most of the use cases right now, and again, whether, you know,
0:14:44 actually happening or sort of in the works, are they centering around generative AI and large
0:14:51 language models? Or is it kind of, you know, other forms of machine learning and AI? What’s the buzz
0:14:56 right now in terms of, you know, the sort of current and future-looking use cases for the
0:15:02 factory? I would say that there is a lot of buzz that’s still in the exploratory phase to be very
0:15:07 open and honest. We forget. That’s where we all are. We’re still so early in all of this.
0:15:14 Yeah. And I see that there is definitely different maturity levels. I mean, when we talk to customers,
0:15:20 the market, and so many are, you know, exploring, you know, some very sort of super cool and
0:15:26 forward-leaning others are very much like, okay, again, going back to the, we’re sitting on very
0:15:33 critical data and everything. And it’s used to being in our, you know, basement or under our desks
0:15:38 and everything. But how can we sort of, we need more compute power and everything. And these are
0:15:44 the kind of dialogues that we are having with customers, sort of, how can we really, you know,
0:15:51 secure the handling of their data in a very secure way? They can trust that it is sort of,
0:15:58 stays on Norwegian soil that we still then are owning the production of intelligence as we
0:16:05 spoke about earlier. So I would say there is still, the dialogues are still very much evolving
0:16:08 around this. You’ve worked in different regions of the world and you currently do,
0:16:15 as you were just speaking to, how similar or different are not just the laws and regulations,
0:16:23 but sort of the common wisdom, the attitudes around responsible AI and data security, those
0:16:28 kinds of things. And these are obviously, you know, new and evolving topics, responsible AI
0:16:34 specifically. How similar or different do you find conversations about these things as you work in
0:16:39 different countries, different regions of the world? I would say they are very different.
0:16:46 I say the similarity is that certainly around security and sovereignty, what I have seen just
0:16:52 on the journey of the last two months is really increased. We are onboarding one customer at
0:17:00 the moment into the AIF factory and they sent us a list of 135 security questions. And this is sort
0:17:08 of what we forget. And again, these are becoming very, not just topical, but very sort of business
0:17:16 critical questions as well. And this is back to why we started the journey with the AI factory.
0:17:21 We saw that there was a bit of a hole in the market, if I could say that, we’ve been able
0:17:27 to have sovereignty, security and sustainability all three together. And then using the sort of
0:17:33 teleno trusted brand as when people trust us, we’re reliable, you know, is the sort of
0:17:39 combination. I mean, one could say, if you just want, you know, compute capacity to build an open
0:17:45 sort of model, go ahead and do that. But there is a lot of sort of really to move society forward
0:17:50 as a whole. You know, if it’s in the health sector, within defense, within the public sector, we see
0:17:56 that, you know, that there are sensitive dialogues, we see that there are, you know, things. So we
0:18:03 really see that the teleno AI factory, and together with our partnership with NVIDIA can
0:18:08 really help bring society forward. Absolutely. Because it’s some of these dialogues, as you say
0:18:14 now, around sovereignty and security, that are making people nervous, they’re making people
0:18:20 uncertain, they’re making people relook at their, you know, their fantastic IT, whatever that they’ve
0:18:26 had for the last years. So we’ve seen that there is definitely a change in climate, I would say,
0:18:33 around the seriousness of the dialogues. It seems appropriate, it makes sense to me.
0:18:38 All right, Karin, before we get to wrapping up, are there AI tools that you’re finding particularly
0:18:43 helpful, or, you know, just that you’re using regularly in your own life, be it work outside of
0:18:47 work, you don’t have to go into the details of what, but are there any tools that, you know,
0:18:52 you’ve been using regularly recently? Well, I have to confess, probably that I use it most to
0:18:57 help my kids with their homework, or if they say I’m cheating, I always tell them they can’t,
0:19:03 but I need to just answer all the, you know, I have to, you know, to answer all the why
0:19:09 questions and what it was. Yes, my older child tells me actually, when he’ll use it to sort of,
0:19:13 it’s almost the way that I use in people, we talk about on the show, people using, especially
0:19:18 folks in creative lines of work or doing creative, you know, projects that you’ll do something and
0:19:23 then send it to a chat bot to kind of get its take on it. And it kind of points out, oh, you missed
0:19:26 this, or, oh, here’s another way to think about that kind of thing. So I don’t think it’s cheating
0:19:31 myself, but, you know. No, it’s not cheating, but it helps get a dialogue because then exactly,
0:19:36 as you say, I then engage in discussions and we talk about whether it’s right or wrong,
0:19:41 and it is a fact that it actually, I find it actually is not cheating, I joke, but it actually
0:19:47 is a trigger to get the dialogue going. Which is fantastic, that’s great. Which isn’t always easy
0:19:53 with teenagers. No, no, it’s not. No, it’s not. All right, I want to give you time to talk about
0:19:58 the vision going forward. You know, this began with a vision, and it’s a vision that’s taken
0:20:03 flight now. What are your hopes? What’s your vision for the AI factory in the next, we’re
0:20:09 recording this in February 2025. So whatever time period makes sense, as we said, things are
0:20:13 moving so fast, it’s hard to know where AI will be in three years. But, you know, the next year,
0:20:17 two years, five years, what are you, where are you taking the AI factory?
0:20:21 Yeah, I mean, we certainly want to scale it. As I said, you know, we see, we’re starting in Norway,
0:20:30 we see Norway has this need. And I really believe that we can really help empower society here in
0:20:36 Norway through giving, you know, access to a place where different organizations, business,
0:20:42 it is the public sector, the private sector, can really innovate their businesses, make it more
0:20:49 efficient. And really sort of going back to this and feel that, yes, we are really doing this in a
0:20:56 sort of sustainable way. We’re helping that we’re really, we know our data and it’s safe,
0:21:01 we can run these really sensitive cases. And it’s sort of going back to this, I just love
0:21:07 this, the production of the intelligence is here in Norway. So really, I do see the AI factory as
0:21:12 being a very, maybe I’m being too, my vision is getting a bit, but the more I work with it,
0:21:17 the more I see it can really help move societies forward and develop.
0:21:21 Fantastic. That’s what it’s all about, if you ask me, but just my opinion.
0:21:23 My fully agree.
0:21:27 Karen Hilson, this was a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time. And you’ll be on the panel at
0:21:33 GTC next month as we record this. So looking forward to that. And for folks listening,
0:21:39 who would like to find out more about the AI factory, about Telanor, anything we’ve discussed?
0:21:44 Is there a good website, URL, social media, where can listeners go online to learn more?
0:21:49 Yeah. I mean, go onto the Telanor website, you’ll find our Telanor AI factory there. You can reach
0:21:57 out to me on LinkedIn as well. So please, we’re welcome. We’re on this journey together. As you
0:22:02 say, we’re still very much in an explorative phase. So I’d love to hear from people.
0:22:06 Fantastic. Well, again, Karen, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure and
0:22:09 all the best of luck with all the work you’re doing. There’s no better reason to employ AI
0:22:12 than to bring us all forward, as you said. So all the best.
0:22:14 Thanks, Snare.
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Telenor’s Chief Innovation Officer and Head of the AI Factory, Kaaren Hilsen, discusses Norway’s first AI factory. Opened in November, the facility processes sensitive data securely within Norway, ensuring data sovereignty and environmental sustainability. Learn how Telenor’s green computing initiatives, including a renewable energy-powered data center in Oslo, are advancing responsible and sustainable AI.