Iceland ditches crypto mining for AI: “A great opportunity for Nordic data centres”

However, according to data centre leaders, they have now moved from crypto mining to serving artificial intelligence. It is a rapidly increasing change which also creates opportunities, not only in Iceland but in the Nordic region as a whole.

Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth which runs data centres across the Nordics, says that by 2020 – 2021, the industry realised that AI services were starting to grow rapidly.

Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, administrerende direktør i atNorth.

“Back then, we didn’t know what we know now. In 2022 we started to get an increased number of requests from customers who were asking about this kind of service. These were mostly startup firms and high-tech companies closely connected to AI. In 2023 it simply blew up and the big increase is still ongoing.”

Crypto mining only the beginning

At the same time, crypto mining has decreased. Kristinsson says that there is not a direct connection between the two. 

“In general cryptocurrencies now enjoy a stronger position and the environment around them has matured. In 2022, our company decided not to make new deals or renew current deals on crypto mining. 

“Icelandic data centres started to offer that kind of service because it was the best way to reach 10 MW use of energy so the national distributor, Landsnet, would consider the company to be a big energy user."

That allows the company to connect to the public energy distribution system directly instead of buying it in wholesale. That electricity is also delivered at a higher voltage.

"It was never our idea to offer crypto mining services, and since we have now reached that limit with other services we don’t need the mining anymore.”

The AI service that the data centres provide is not different from other services. 

“What is different is the client’s demands. Data centres that were built only three years ago are not capable of servicing AI, simply because requirements on cooling and energy density are so much larger than for other data centre services.”

Kristinsson says the AI process is still in its early stages. 

“We’re still moving forward with all kinds of services and technology. Now, for example, many are using ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot. And we’re already seeing this having a huge effect. 

“I have personally moved my internet search from Google to ChatGPT and I haven’t used Google Translate for months. This transition is ongoing. Only when the enterprise adoption is fully finished will we know for sure what we have. For now, we can only guess. But this is very exciting and will change much of how we do our work today.”

AI services moving to the Nordics?

This change in the environment calls for changes to infrastructure, which Kristinsson says is a relatively simple task. It also creates an opportunity for data centres in Iceland and other Nordic countries.

“The clients working with AI are not as dependent on location as most other clients. In Europe, most data centres are operating in the so-called FLAPD area, which is Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. 

 Et av de datasenter på det vanligvis kjølige Island, som atNorth drifter.

“This is because the clients are near Europe’s larger population centres. That is not an important factor for the AI sector because the latency speed doesn’t matter nearly as much. So the AI sector is moving their data centres to areas that are more convenient for this type of processing.”

The Nordic countries are, according to Kristinsson, the most convenient for that. 

“The climate is cool, the portion of renewable energy is high and the population is not dense. Also, especially in Denmark, Sweden and Finland, there are very sophisticated remote heating systems which can be connected to the data centres and reuse heat created from the data processing. 

“So we can make a very good product around AI in the Nordic countries. This represents a big opportunity for these countries.” 

atNorth intends to leverage these opportunities. They already run seven data centres in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden, and three more will open next year – two in Finland and one in Denmark.

Kristinsson points out that some forecasters believe 50 per cent of all AI workload will end up in the Nordic countries in the next two to three years. 

“Of course, we don’t know if that will happen, but the opportunity is there.”