Uplink: AI, Data Center, and Cloud Innovation Podcast

AI agents don’t just need intelligence. They need somewhere to work.

In this episode of Uplink, David Crawshaw, Co-Founder and CEO of exe.dev, joins Michael Reid to explore why the rise of AI agents could trigger a new boom in virtual machines. As agents move from answering questions to writing code, running applications, using tools, and completing long-running tasks, the infrastructure underneath them starts to matter a lot more.

David unpacks why persistent, isolated computing environments are becoming increasingly important for agentic AI, what traditional cloud infrastructure gets wrong for this new generation of workloads, and why the humble VM may be finding a completely new purpose in the AI era. exe.dev itself is built around persistent Linux VMs designed for developers and agents, with isolation, networking, storage, and agent-friendly environments as core parts of the platform. 

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI—with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid, we dive into cutting-edge trends with top industry experts.

👍 Follow the show, leave a rating, and tell us what you think.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts:
https://www.megaport.com/uplink/ 

📺 Watch video episodes on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/

The AI infrastructure race is often measured in gigawatts and billion-dollar campuses. But in Europe, the story looks very different.

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Ben Baldieri, Founder of The GPU, to explore how Europe's power constraints, fragmented regulation, and limited grid capacity are forcing a new generation of AI infrastructure strategies. Rather than chasing hyperscale alone, the market is increasingly turning to smaller, distributed data centers positioned closer to where inference workloads actually run.

Ben explains why securing power has become one of the biggest competitive advantages in AI infrastructure, how GPU cloud providers are thinking about capital, contracts, and deployment risk, and why projects that look attractive on paper don't always succeed in practice.

The conversation also explores the industry's shift from training-focused clusters toward inference-driven infrastructure, the economics of liquid cooling and high-density deployments, and how token-based pricing models could fundamentally change the way AI is consumed.

A fascinating discussion on European AI infrastructure, GPU clouds, data center investment, and why the future of AI may depend less on building bigger campuses, and more on building smarter ones.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI, with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid, we dive into cutting-edge trends with top industry experts.

👍 Follow the show, leave a rating, and tell us what you think.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts:
 https://www.megaport.com/uplink/

📺 Watch video episodes on YouTube:
 https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport:
 https://www.megaport.com/

Websites are no longer just digital storefronts. They're becoming intelligent experiences designed for both people and AI.

In this episode of Uplink, host Michael Reid sits down with Linda Tong, CEO of Webflow, to explore how AI is reshaping websites, marketing, software development, and the way businesses acquire customers.

Linda shares lessons from launching Google Chrome, scaling Android, and leading startups through pivotal moments before explaining how Webflow is evolving from a visual website builder into a complete web experience platform.

The conversation explores why traditional SEO is giving way to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), how AI agents are changing customer journeys, and why personalization, experimentation, analytics, and localization are becoming core capabilities for modern digital experiences.

They also dive into AI-assisted software engineering, including token limits, quality assurance bottlenecks, AI coding workflows, CI/CD, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Experience (AX), and what an agent-first future could mean for product-led growth.

Whether you're a marketer, developer, founder, or technology leader, this episode offers practical insights into building digital experiences that are ready for the next generation of the web.

Topics covered:

• The future of websites in an AI-first world
• SEO vs Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
• AI agents and the modern customer journey
• Personalization, experimentation, and web performance
• Webflow's evolution into a complete web experience platform
• Lessons from launching Google Chrome and Android
• AI coding workflows, QA, and CI/CD
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent Experience (AX)
• Product-led growth in the age of AI

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI—with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid, we dive into cutting-edge trends with top industry experts.

👍 Follow the show, leave a rating, and tell us what you think.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts:
https://www.megaport.com/uplink/ 

📺 Watch video episodes on YouTube:
 https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport:
 https://www.megaport.com/

CI is supposed to be the safety net that lets developers merge code with confidence. But in the age of AI coding agents, it’s becoming the bottleneck.

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Aditya "JP" Jayaprakash, Co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith, to explore how AI-generated code is reshaping software delivery—and why continuous integration is struggling to keep up. As coding agents produce pull requests in minutes, developers are increasingly stuck waiting on builds, tests, and validation pipelines that weren't designed for this new scale.

JP breaks down what CI actually is, why it slows down as organizations grow, and how Blacksmith is rethinking GitHub Actions infrastructure to make validation faster, smarter, and largely invisible. From micro VMs and build acceleration to caching strategies and infrastructure design, this conversation dives deep into the future of developer productivity.

A fascinating look at the intersection of AI, CI/CD, GitHub Actions, and high-performance infrastructure—and what happens when software development starts moving faster than the systems designed to validate it.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI—with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid, we dive into cutting-edge trends with top industry experts.

👍 Follow the show, leave a rating, and tell us what you think.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts:
https://www.megaport.com/uplink/ 

📺 Watch video episodes on YouTube:
 https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport:
 https://www.megaport.com/

Finding a gigawatt gets headlines, but securing a single megawatt can feel nearly impossible.

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Tony Rossabi, Founder & CEO of OCOLO and one of the industry's most experienced operators, investors, and builders of digital infrastructure.

As AI drives unprecedented demand for compute, data centers have become the critical foundation of the modern economy. But delivering new capacity isn't as simple as building more facilities. Power availability, cooling requirements, permitting challenges, supply chain constraints, and accelerating deployment timelines are reshaping the industry from the ground up.

Tony shares his perspective on what has changed since the AI boom began, why power has become the industry's most valuable commodity, and how liquid cooling is forcing a fundamental shift in data center design. He also explains why retrofitting existing facilities is emerging as a major opportunity and why operators must balance speed with long-term reliability.

The conversation explores:
• Why power is now the defining factor in data center development
 • The realities of liquid cooling adoption and AI infrastructure readiness
 • How chip innovation is moving faster than traditional construction cycles
 • The growing opportunity in retrofitting existing facilities
 • What it takes to secure powered land and bring new capacity online
 • Permitting, community engagement, and infrastructure planning challenges
 • Why "AI bubble" concerns may be missing the bigger picture
 • The multiple demand drivers fueling long-term digital infrastructure growth

Whether you're building, operating, investing in, or relying on digital infrastructure, this episode offers an inside look at the forces shaping the next generation of AI-ready data centers.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/  

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube  

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/ 

AI doesn’t slow down because we run out of ideas. It slows down when the data can’t move fast enough, the racks can’t get enough power, and the infrastructure stack can’t evolve quickly enough to keep up with GPU-scale reality.

In this episode of Uplink, Michael Reid sits down with Renen Hallak, Founder and CEO of VAST Data, to unpack the infrastructure challenges shaping the next era of AI. Renen shares the long arc behind what looks like “overnight success,” and why he believed early on that AI would fundamentally change the requirements for storage and data platforms.

The conversation explores how software-defined storage eliminates old trade-offs between performance and capacity, why decoupling software from hardware creates leverage during supply shortages, and what efficiency really means when supporting modern AI training and inference workloads. They also dive into the rise of neoclouds, the changing competitive landscape around hyperscalers, and why AI infrastructure is being rebuilt layer by layer.

Finally, the episode looks ahead to agentic AI, where thousands of specialized agents behave more like artificial workers that require orchestration, observability, and governance at scale.

Join a conversation about AI infrastructure, cloud evolution, storage architecture, and the next bottlenecks shaping the future of compute.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/ 

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube 

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/ 

What if the real AI boom hasn’t started yet?

Brink Sanders, SVP of Global Networking Sales at Cisco, joins us to map the shift from GPU-packed data centers to edge networks where AI operators, robots, and latency-sensitive apps will live, and why simplification is now the most valuable feature in enterprise networking.

We dig into the unification of Meraki and Catalyst with a single license model, how G2’s product leadership is speeding innovation and slashing complexity, and why customers want hybrid choice without penalty: cloud where possible, on‑prem where required, and a smooth path between them.

We get candid about the next bottlenecks – not model size, but campus and branch design. As inference grows and agentic workflows proliferate, east‑west traffic inside sites surges, and the security model must evolve beyond user-only thinking. Brink lays out how segmentation, identity, and observability adapt when AI agents become first-class actors. He also shares Cisco’s AI Canvas approach to cross-domain operations, plus a peek at a deep networking model trained on Cisco’s knowledge to assist CCIE‑level operations.

If you’re choosing between platforms, clouds, and models while trying to keep options open, this conversation offers a pragmatic path forward.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/

What if cloud storage were fast, predictable, and free of egress surprises?

In this episode of Uplink, Wasabi CEO & Co-Founder David Friend joins host Michael Reid to break down how a clean architecture and a simple, one-price model reshaped the economics of cloud storage – especially for AI-driven workloads.

David shares why S3 compatibility was essential, how software-driven durability achieves eleven nines without late-night rebuilds, and how Wasabi scaled from a bold prototype to selling a petabyte every few hours. We explore hidden cost traps like egress and API fees, the rise of SSDs over HDDs, and the demands of next-gen AI applications.

He also walks through sovereignty and compliance options—from replication strategies to fully managed, isolated deployments—and shares founder stories spanning ARP synthesizers, trend-spotting apps, and decades of building with the same engineering team.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/

The internet’s greatest strength—connecting everything to everything—has become its biggest risk for industries that can’t afford downtime or hijacks.

In this episode of Uplink, we sit down with Martin Bosshardt, CEO of Anapaya, to explore how the SCION protocol brings private-network control to the public internet – without replacing BGP.

Martin unpacks how this architecture enables multiple trusted paths, keeps routing invisible to attackers, and confines data flows within national boundaries, all while improving performance and resilience.

From banking to healthcare, he shares real-world examples of how SCION protects critical infrastructure and enables digital sovereignty in an increasingly hostile landscape.

If you care about securing critical systems, reducing attack surfaces, and building reliable networks for AI-era workloads, this episode is for you.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/

What does it take to build a technology business from scratch in a new market?

In this episode of Uplink, Emmanuel Sevray, Head of Sales SEMEA, and Lionel David, Solutions Architect at Megaport, reveal how they transformed a virtually non-existent operation into a thriving business serving over 100 major French companies in less than four years.

From delivering 50 Gbps during peak mass-mailing campaigns to turning customer challenges into platform innovations, Manu and Lionel share how a small team of five created a blueprint for success now shaping Megaport’s growth across Southern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

We explore the importance of complementary skills, the agility of making big decisions in 24 hours, and how ecosystem partnerships power expansion. Their story is one of hustle, creativity, and technical excellence.

🚀 Uplink explores the future of connectivity, cloud, and AI with the people shaping it. Hosted by Michael Reid.

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.uplinkpod.com/

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://mp1.tech/uplink-on-youtube

🔗 Learn more about Megaport: https://www.megaport.com/