Datacloud 2022: Star turns and ‘deal or no deal’

Our team enjoyed returning to the Datacloud Global Congress in Monaco last week.

After two years away, it was great to reunite global leaders from the data centre, cloud, edge, digital infrastructure and AI industries. We are always pleased to bring Goldacre’s interest and expertise in digital infrastructure and technology to the conference, which never fails to be an exciting opportunity to meet people who are driving real change to society through technology.

On day one of the Congress, I was able to fulfil a lifelong ambition of being on a gameshow. I joined the judging panel for “Would you invest?” session!

Our panel discussed a hypothetical deal around an edge network rollout: Would we fund upwards of $90 million of equity to fuel market growth in the European region? We scrutinised a range of investment considerations including sustainability, client type and market type, which led towards the two critical questions:

• Would you invest in the project?
• How would you structure the investment?

It was fascinating to hear the various viewpoints of different players ahead of the next few days jam-packed with meetings that shaped up to be less ‘would you invest?’ and more ‘deal or no deal’.

Young Digital Innovator of the Year

Outside of a foray into show businesses, a personal DataCloud 2022 highlight has been to meet many new and admittedly more youthful innovators. This included presenting the Young Digital Innovator of the Year Award 2022 at the annual Datacloud Global Awards.

Goldacre, aptly a Gold Sponsor, was pleased to support the event which celebrates outstanding achievements across the data centre, cloud and edge sectors throughout the past year.

The Young Digital Innovator of the Year Award recognises talented young and upcoming digital innovators from many disciplines. Our team was very impressed by the many candidates: talents from engineering, entrepreneurs and founders, policymakers and future business leaders.

All have made noteworthy achievements or contributions to the digital industry at large. For me, this category is perhaps the most significant at the awards.

Congratulations again to Joe Vele, the winner of The Young Digital Innovator of the Year Award in 2022.

At Goldacre, we back the teams behind leading companies and the future looks very bright based on the many talented young people in attendance this year.

The change mindset

We are all aware of recent digital accelerants; economic, geopolitical and pandemic. We have had to rapidly change the ways we work, interact and problem-solve. That is set to continue and young innovators will drive the solutions to challenges we may not even anticipate today.

This mindset is one of the reasons why Goldacre continues to back Kao Data. Yes, we know the data industry as a whole has seen surging demand and Kao stands out as a leader in colocation. But that is down to the strength of their team as well as their technological prowess.

Not content with being the first data centre operator/developer in Europe to transition its backup generators to renewable HVO fuels, last July, the Kao team has taken another step towards pushing for industry-wide energy consumption progress.

Kao was one of a range of leading players from across the data centre industry who signed up to the Infrastructure Masons (iMasons) Climate Accord which commits to reduce carbon consumption in digital infrastructure materials, products and power. We were delighted that Kao Data chose to support this critical initiative.

Their ethos – to stand up and take action – is also clear and present among the 2022 cohort of Goldacre’s RElab; an ecosystem of the most promising entrepreneurs, teams and partners who have come together and routinely young(er) innovators within the smart built environment.

It really is exciting to see such incredible talent-driven developments year on year. At Goldacre we are proud to back the teams behind businesses that drive revolutionary change and fix the greatest challenges facing future generations.