Intro

The Rise of Sovereign AI and Global AI Innovation in a World of US Protectionism // MLOps Podcast #331 with Frank Meehan, Founder and CEO of Frontier One AI.

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// Abstract

“The awakening of every single country is that they have to control their AI intelligence and not outsource their data" - Jensen Huang. Sovereign AI is rapidly becoming a fundamental national utility, much like defense, energy or telecoms.

Nations worldwide recognize that AI sovereignty—having control over your AI infrastructure, data, and models—is essential for economic progress, security, and especially independence - especially when the US is pushing protectionism and trying to prevent global AI innovation. Of course this has the opposite effect - DeepSeek created by a Hedge Fund in China; India building the world's largest AI data centre (3 GW), and global software teams scaling, learning and building faster than ever before.

However most countries lack the talent, financing and experience to implement Sovereign AI for their requirements - and it is our belief at Frontier One, that one of the biggest markets for AI applications, cloud services and GPUs will be global governments. We see it already - with $10B of GPUs in 2024 bought directly by governments - and it's rapidly expanding. We will talk about what Sovereign AI is - both infrastructure and software details / why it is crucial for a nation / how to get involved as part of the MLOps community.

// Bio

Co-Founder of Frontier One - building Sovereign AI Factories and Cloud software for global markets.

Frank is a 2X CEO | 2X CMO (with 2X exits + 1 IPO NYSE), Board Director (Spotify, Siri) and Investor (SparkLabs Group) with 20+ years of experience in creating and growing leading brands, products and companies.

Chair of Improvability, automating due diligence and reporting for corporates, foundations and Governments with AI.

Co-founder and partner at SparkLabs Group - investors in OpenAI, Anthropic, 88 Rising, Discord, Animoca, Andela, Vectara, Kneron, Messari, Lifesum + 400 companies in our portfolio. Investment Committee and LP at SparkLabs Cultiv8 with 56 investments in consumer food and regenerative agriculture companies.

Co-founder and CMO - later CEO - of Equilibrium AI (Singapore), building it to one of the leading ESG and Carbon data management platforms globally. Equilibrium was acquired by FiscalNote in 2021, where he joined the senior leadership team, running the ESG business globally, and helping the company IPO in 2022 on the NYSE at $1.1B valuation.

Board director at Spotify (2009-2012); Siri (2009-2010 exited to Apple); Lifesum (leading AI health app with 50 million users), seed investor in 88 Rising (Asia’s leading independent music label); CEO/CMO and co-founder at INQ Mobile (mobile internet pioneer); and Global Director for devices and products at 3 Mobile.

Started as a software developer with Ericsson Mobile in Sweden, after graduating from KTH in Stockholm and the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, and Master of Science in Fluid Mechanics.

// Related Links

https://www.frontierone.ai/ and

https://www.sparklabsgroup.com

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