We need to provide the infrastructure for the AI revolution
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Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. Dell used to make PCs here in Ireland. They're still here, but much of its work is building and selling servers which sit in data centres. They're also in the AI space, needless to say. But Dell is worried that Ireland is set to miss the boat when it comes to providing the infrastructure for the AI revolution, including grid connections, water supply and even good old-fashioned planning permission. This is a stark warning from one of the biggest tech companies in the world and comes as corporate America invests a trillion dollars in AI infrastructure and even nuclear power data centers. But do we have to copy the Americans? Jason Ward is ME at North, the vice president and managing director of Dell Technologies here in Ireland.
Good morning, Jason. Good morning, Joe. So where does Dell Technologies come in when it comes to AI these days?
Well, Dell Technologies today were a $100 billion organisation, probably the silent leader in AI. And if you think about a lot of the large language models or AI providers you hear in the world today, whether it's OpenAI, Cloud, Anthropic, Perplexity, a lot of these large language models are underpinned by Dell infrastructure. So, Joe, you mentioned Dell is recognised as PCs, desktops. You know, a lot of customers in Ireland would use a Dell PC and desktop. But fundamentally, Dell today is driving the AI engine around all of these large language models. So our servers, our storage and our networking infrastructure actually provides the compute capacity to drive and manage all of these large language models.
Yeah, and you're not best pleased with what Ireland is doing in preparation for this AI revolution.
Well, I would say we're pleased but not satisfied.
What infrastructure challenges does Ireland face for the AI revolution?
Look, Ireland and the IDA and the government have been a huge supporter of Dell Technologies. I think, look, Ireland can still lead in AI, but, you know, we must reset and have a forward-looking strategy. Regardless of what people like or dislike around data centers and AI, the fundamental point here is that data centers are going to consume and require a huge amount of energy. So for Ireland to be competitive in the AI arms race, we really are going to have to deploy an awful lot more energy to sustain large language models, AI companies, and underpin the innovation that's happening globally. So we can still lead, but we need to act now. Okay. Why have we fallen behind? Well, I think there's a number of reasons.
Ireland has been a very productive nation, very, very high GDP. We've been very successful in the digital age, if you think about all of the large technology companies that came to Ireland and the pharmaceuticals have contributed hugely to Ireland's GDP. But Along the line, in terms of our national grid, the energy grid, in terms of energy production, we have fallen a little bit behind. If you look at our Nordic neighbours, you know, the amount of green energy they provide to their grid is far superior than what we have here in Ireland. Now, obviously, the government has obviously introduced the new investment through the budget NDP, where we're going to have, you know, 1.5 billion allocated to ESB networks.
We'll have 2 billion that goes to air grid. But the capacity for onshore, offshore green energy, which could sustain the new AI workloads, investment and expedited planning in those areas is absolutely critical.
Okay. And of course, we refuse to build nuclear power stations in this country as well, which will be used in America to fire the data centers of the next few years.
No, absolutely. Look, obviously, if you want to go down the nuclear conversation, it'll have a change in our constitution. But even if we disregard nuclear, right, our onshore, offshore wind capacity, we've ample capacity. So, you know, we're forecasting that we'll you know, bring on stream about five gigawatts of energy offshore by 2030. But Ireland has 30, 40, 50 gigawatt capacity, which we could certainly bring on board and utilize in a very efficient and cost-effective way to drive further investment in AI across Ireland.
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