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Next Wave is the podcast that meets the people building the Morocco of tomorrow.

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I sat down with Amine Kandil to talk about data centers in Africa.

Data centers are the highways of the internet. They enable everything you consume online, from content to software. In the age of AI, they became strategic infrastructure, with billions in investment across the world in the past 3 years.

In 2008, Amine Kandil came back to Morocco from the US to build a software company. He asked a friend about data centers to host his software in Morocco, and understood that there weren’t any.He decided to build data centers instead of software, and that’s how N+ONE was born.

In this conversation, Amine explained why data centers matter, the impact of energy costs, why data sovereignty is key, and more.

We talked about the history of this “digital infrastructure”, from data centers to the cloud, and the current impact of the AI gold rush.

It was a fascinating discussion where we deep dive into this topic: history, business model, partnerships with hyperscalers, sovereignty, the state of the African market, and advice for building companies in emerging markets.

I loved having this conversation and look forward to hearing your thoughts! Thank you Amine for taking the time.

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▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ PLATEFORMES ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ TIMELINE ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

00:00:00 : Introduction

00:01:06 : What is a data center?

00:05:00 : Why Amine decided to build data centers

00:11:08 : Data center components

00:19:42 : Building the business

00:33:13 : Early challenges

00:34:00 : Solo founder journey

00:36:03 : Business growth

00:40:48 : Inside the servers

00:42:27 : Server evolution & competition

00:47:00 : Data sovereignty

00:53:45 : Hyperscaler deal

01:02:57 : AI data centers

01:09:22 : Africa’s data center market

01:14:01 : N+ONE’s global expansion

01:16:57 : $90m investment in N+ONE

01:18:16 : The future of AI

01:19:39 : Advice to entrepreneurs

01:22:10 : Life beyond work

01:22:37 : A book that inspired you