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The Innovation Champion Award recognizes people who are demonstrably committed to leveraging technology to help save the planet and advance humanity. Our vision is to collaborate and innovate to drive progress and transform the industry.
2023 finalists and winner are selected by the iMasons Innovation Committee.WINNER: Benedikt Gröndal, atNorth
Benedikt is a visionary leader who has driven innovation and technology in the data center industry. He is one of the pioneers of sustainable data center design and operation, and his work has helped to make digital infrastructure more accessible. Benedikt founded one of the first data centers in Iceland in 2009, believing that the sustainable benefits of the cooler climate and renewable energy sources would be a game changer for future data center innovation. This was a risk at the time, as the Nordic region was not known for its digital infrastructure. Benedikt designed and built atNorth’s SWE01 site in Sweden in 2022, a state-of-the-art data center facility that caters for high-performant computing needs alongside high and low-density workloads in the most ecologically beneficial way. He also implemented elite heat recovery systems at SWE01 that allow for all the residual heat from the data center to be recycled and used to heat up to 20,000 apartments. This partnership with Stockholm Exergi set a benchmark for next-level cost efficiency and sustainability. Benedikt’s work has had significant impact on the data center industry. He has shown that it is possible to operate data centers in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, without sacrificing performance or reliability. He has also made digital infrastructure more accessible to the digitally deprived by reducing the cost of data center services.Meet the Finalists
