In a move that may bring new meaning to the term "cloud-computing", HyperScale Nexus Holding Corp, a business centred around providing Nvidia H100 GPUs for AI and HPC markets, entered into an agreement to acquire the Colorado based American Cannabis Company inc last month. The company describes itself as providing industry specific advisory and consulting services, manufacture of cultivation products, and facilities for cannabis startups.
HyperScale Nexus meanwhile provides "unparalleled cloud services, managed hosting and professional services" with their current stock of 30,000 leased Nvidia H100 chipsets, although quite what that's got to do with the acquisition of the American Cannabis Company remains hazy.
All that being said, it's not the first time we've seen a marriage of datacentres and, shall we say, cultivation. Equinix has been recycling heat from its data centres to grow fruit and vegetables in Paris, and well, cannabis can be grown in much the same way, so it's reasonable to assume that there may be more cross-pollination here than you may initially expect.
As we understand it (and of course this is based purely on a large amount of internet research), cannabis flowers require a lengthy and intensive drying process before becoming, shall we say, usable. Perhaps we might even be looking at a brave new world in which someone's next bag of devils-lettuce has been gently cooked by the exhaust of an Nvidia GPU. What a time to be alive indeed.
All this brings to mind the glory days of the first crypto-craze, in which some enterprising Bitcoin miners endeavoured to make use of all that climate-bothering waste heat by, err, drying small bags of fruit for purchase. While this was rightly derided by many as a nothing but a bit of enterprising gimmickry, it does tie in to a genuine concern amongst datacentre providers that their businesses are, at least on the surface, not the most eco-friendly of operations. Tech companies like Microsoft and Meta have been eager to announce creative uses for their own heat recycling initiatives, and it would come as no surprise if we saw more datacentre providers attempting new and creative ways to make use of all that excess energy.
Any way to recycle waste heat may well be worth looking at, and while the true motivations of this acquisition remain unclear, this budding new venture may be an attempt to waylay those concerns in a single hit.
