Recognizing that, local officials want to make sure that Omaha-area businesses are ready to capitalize on the technology and that the metro area is prepared to attract new companies that are developing AI solutions that intersect with existing industries.
To that end, the Greater Omaha Chamber and the nonprofit Scott Data recently launched a new partnership to accelerate the adoption of AI by Omaha-area businesses, particularly small and midsize companies and startups, through education, technical advising and affordable access to AI computing.
"It's here. It's not going anywhere. And it absolutely will be impactful to every industry," said Alec Gorynski, senior vice president of economic development with the chamber.
And when it comes to making the transition, he said, Omaha has an ace up its sleeve in Scott Data. The secure, 110,000-square-foot data center in the Aksarben area, founded by the late Walter Scott Jr., a former Kiewit CEO, has been enhanced over the past two years with banks of high-speed AI processors, as well as the other elements, from software to expertise, needed to put them to work.
"We like to say we are experts from concrete to the cloud," said Ken Moreano, Scott Data's president and CEO.
From an economic development standpoint, Gorynski said, the chamber sees AI computing as so important to businesses that it might be viewed as a basic utility. Just as Omaha's inexpensive, reliable electric power supply is a draw when recruiting businesses to the area, the city's AI capacity can be a similar attraction.
He and Moreano, in fact, first threw out the idea of the partnership last year during another Omaha asset — the College World Series.
Makayla Leiting, the chamber's senior manager for industry development and innovation, now is meeting with area companies to identify opportunities for them to use AI or otherwise become more innovative.
Some already are using AI in day-to-day tasks, she said. But Scott Data can help companies identify how they can expand that use. The partners already have held workshops for various industry groups in sectors from ag commodities to manufacturing. Scott Data staff also have been providing examples of how businesses might be able to begin incorporating the technology into their work practices.
Moreano said the organization can provide consulting and technical advising to companies, many of which don't have dedicated staff to explore the technology. Chamber members have access to discounted services and expert guidance through the partnership.
Some just need a strategy, he said. For others, it goes further.
For one cattle company, the team connected cameras that monitor a cattle pen 24/7, training an AI system to recognize individual animals, whether in summer or winter coats, and monitor some 20 behavior variables, including gait patterns, head drooping, nasal discharge and food and water consumption, and identify any that are off. The system can quickly flag a veterinarian or the company's owner, an important step in containing infectious diseases.
While the partners have started with supporting existing companies to make sure they're incorporating AI as an operating system, Gorynski said the second aim is to work to attract companies with AI capabilities that fit with local industries, such as insurance, financial services and health care.
Moreano said infrastructure — computers, storage and networks — are the biggest cost facing AI startup companies. Scott Data, which already has about 110 customers in its traditional co-location operation, some of which share the data center's systems and others that house their own servers there, offers an incubator and startup support.
Gorynski noted that the data center is a big reason one AI startup Leiting has been recruiting is looking at moving to Omaha from another state.
The data center this month also began onboarding customers to its AI platform, a secure, private Chat GPT-like product called Seeker, with three added so far. Because it's private and secure, a company's data doesn't get mixed with that of others, as it might with outside platforms. It also means no outside AI is training on the company's data.
As for AI itself, Javier Fernandez, OPPD's president and CEO and an economist, said it's hard to know at this stage exactly what the technology will deliver. And it will be a while before the public sees and feels it.
But based on what observers are seeing in research, manufacturing and other sectors, the potential is significant, he said. The Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit research group, has calculated that the technology is expected to squeeze three times the economic output in terms of Gross Domestic Product out of each kilowatt hour of electricity it consumes than that unit of energy produced today.
As for Scott Data, some of what it's now offering traces to its history.
The organization started with one building in 2002 and added a hardened, secure information facility for the U.S. Strategic Command in 2006.
Five years later, the military moved that mission to Offutt Air Force Base, Moreano said. They had to figure out what to do with the space. So they renovated and added on to the building and installed a 20-megawatt central power plant. While the facility usually is powered by the Omaha Public Power District's grid, it can fire up four diesel generators to power it if necessary. The facility also built two cooling towers to supply water to cool its server banks and drilled its own well in case its connection to the Metropolitan Utilities District is compromised. The data center received Tier III certification in design and construction from the Uptime Institute.
"There were decisions we made in 2011 ... that positioned us to do what we've done in the last two years," Moreano said.
That began in May 2023, when Moreano attended a trade conference in Austin, Texas. He heard a speaker say that no co-location facility like Scott Data would be able to support AI. Chat GPT had just taken off and millions of users were trying it out.
Moreano returned to Omaha and worked with his team to determine whether they could, in fact, support AI. They had the building, the power and the cooling systems, with room for more.
To make the project financially feasible, they designed a cabinet and support systems that could house six servers with Nvidia AI chips. The company's design called for four. Nvidia later certified the design and Scott Data is seeking to patent it.
They also had to design the system so that more than one customer could use the servers at the same time and still keep their data private and secure, which required a new cable design. After the chipmaker approved it, its team acknowledged that they had approved only one other like it, one designed by xAI, founded by Elon Musk.
Scott Data, which has 27 employees, including four interns, now has 96 servers housed in 16 cabinets and connected by 12,000 fiber-optic cables but has the space and support to grow to about 100 cabinets.
Gorynski said that asset now is bringing a new capability to Omaha's economy, all the while continuing Walter Scott's legacy of investing in the community.
A third piece, still to come, will be to leverage entrepreneurship in Omaha with what Scott Data offers to help develop new capabilities and technologies built on AI. "That's a journey we know that's ahead of us," he said.
Moreano said the upshot for now is for the data center to help businesses implement AI so they can focus on what they do best.
"Let's help them understand how this innovation, this revolution," he said, "can actually help their business, both the historical business and where they want to go in the future."
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