Telenor's Kaaren Hilsen on Launching Norway’s First AI Factory - Ep. 247

Hello, and welcome to the NVIDIA AI podcast. I'm your host, Noah Kravitz. In late two thousand twenty four, the Telenor AI factory was officially launched. The AI factory is Norway's first sustainable, sovereign, and secure generative AI cloud service, designed to enhance AI adoption for both internal operations and external customers, and to provide local AI computing capabilities to the Nordic region. With us to share the story behind the Telenor AI factory and to discuss the impact responsible AI is set to have on the country of Norway and the Nordic region more broadly is Karen Hilson. Karen is the chief innovation officer and head of the AI factory at Telenor, and she's also set to speak at NVIDIA GTC twenty twenty five as part of a session titled Accelerating Sovereign AI Factories, Insight from Telco Case Studies. Karen, welcome to the AI podcast, and thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Thanks, Noah. Well, what an introduction. Well, you know, it's hard because I I try to, you know, I wanna give you your credit, give you your flowers as they say. But but our guests, and and you're no exception, have done so much. It's hard to cram it all in there. But it's all genuine. We're delighted to have you on the podcast. It's great to be here, Lara. So before we get into the story of the AI factory, which I'm really excited to hear from you, maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about your own background and your journey into AI, and then we can talk about Telenor. Yeah. I mean, the journey into AI, I mean, do we all end up here is Right. A bit of the question, but is is that my journey is, maybe being shortly, but I've been working in the the telco industry and with Telenor now for twenty five years across the globe in many different continents and sort of moving back to Norway, a couple of years ago. And in the last few years, I've been working very much with innovation, with sustainability, and these things. And, a bit of a fun fact, I was actually sort of read up the the other day that in, was it 2023 that emissions that data centers have actually reached the same level as emissions as the global airline industry. And that was a bit of a an eye opener for me. I don't know if it's fact or fixed, but it just sort of got me thinking. And, and and I see with the the AI now sort of driving demand and everything, the the data center is gonna increase. And then I was thinking, well, okay. But then we need to how can we do this responsibly? And Right. As I said, my journey is where I was working a lot with sustainability and how we can actually use our digital infrastructure in the green shift. And then …