YiDC in digi.no: "the biggest investment cycle in human history"

On the morning of our kickoff, digi.no published a piece on the new network, written by Andrine Resvoll with photography by Eirik Helland Urke.

Chair Olaf AB Styrmoe set out the scale of what the industry is riding: the largest investment cycle in human history, and a monster tsunami the sector is now surfing, with Norway holding decent surfboards.

The numbers behind that are in the article. Sixty commercial data centre operators are now registered with Nkom, against one in 2000. Statistics Norway estimates the industry employed 677 people and contributed over NOK 1.2 billion in direct value creation in 2024.

The core problem YiDC exists to solve is also there. The layer of younger employees and professionals across the industry is large, but has not built ties across companies. At the top, everyone already knows everyone.

On talent, Styrmoe points to two routes in: people retraining out of oil and industry, and new graduates and students, particularly in high and low voltage electrical engineering. Scarcity in some roles is already pushing companies to recruit abroad. He also argues for dropping the barrier between traditional and new power-intensive industry, whether that is Hydro and Bulk or Yara and Aker Nscale.

digi.no does not skip the contested side either, covering public scepticism around siting and the Sintef and NTNU findings that data centres generate less value creation over time than other power-intensive industry, a point SSB made earlier this year. That debate is part of why this network is worth building.

Read the article: https://www.digi.no/artikler/datasenterboomen-det-er-en-monster-tsunami/576329
Photos: Eirik Helland Urke, digi.no