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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 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/show/71TB2zh...
Apple Podcast : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 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