Today I'm delighted to be joined by the CEO of Quantum Data Energy. Pieter, good morning to you.
Good morning, Martin.
How are you this morning?
I'm very good, thank you.
Good.
Thanks for having me.
No, that's our pleasure. Now, we wanted to talk to you about, you know, the business, how it's been. 2025 has been a pretty transformational year for the business. Would you like to talk us through how it's changed over the last 12 months?
Yes. Thank you for that, Martin. I think looking back at the start of 2025, we came out of a few difficult years. You know, the market capitalization was below GBP 1 million. We were fairly debt-laden balance sheet, and coupled with, you know, difficult capital markets conditions in general made it very difficult for a company like us, to raise funding. But notwithstanding that, you know, we were able to conclude an equity fundraise, at the end of June, beginning of July in 2025 of GBP 5 million gross, and that was really transformational for the company. Yes, it was expensive money, but that's to be expected, being the position that we're in. On balance, you know, it really changed the game for us.
It allowed us to clean up the balance sheet. We're essentially debt free in our PLC level, which I think for a company like us is fairly remarkable. It left us with a very healthy bank balance in order to grow the business, and that's exactly what we've done. If we look back over the past year, you know, I think key milestones are first and foremost our asset that's in production. We generate electricity into the U.K. National Grid. We help to keep lights on, and we generate specifically. We're a flexible generator, what they call or Flex Gen. We generate when there's peak demand and there's not sufficient other supply at that time.
When the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, you know, with increasing renewables and renewables being intermittent, that's when we come online. We typically generate at the moment around 11 hours per day. And the demand for Flex Gen generation is very strong. We've produced record electricity generation and sales revenue at our Pyebridge 8.1 MW Flex Gen asset this year. I mean, that's we're very proud of that. And that also underscores and proves our business model. That's the first thing. Secondly, we procured GBP 5 million of CapEx investment funding at project SPV level, so that's non-dilutive to PLC shareholders for a second project, being our Hindlip 7.5 MW Flex Gen project. That's in construction at the moment.
Construction is progressing very well. We've given quite a few updates to the market on that. We've shown some nice photos of the construction on site, and we expect the construction to be completed in Q1 2026, and then we'll have a second asset in production. That's the second milestone for us this past year. We also procured the exclusive rights to a portfolio of 25 MW of development projects at a significantly lower cost compared to market. That was a nice one for us. That also bolstered our portfolio. We've got a portfolio of circa 48 MW at the moment. We've already taken a big step forward toward our initial target of 300 MW.
We've also introduced our new AI data center power supply strategy, which we think is gonna become a key part of our business model going forward. It's very complementary to what we do already. We feel that's you know a very attractive space to be in. I think you know as a start that's what we've done this year. Those are just the key milestones. We've had a very busy year. We've made a lot of progress, and we're in a very good position heading into 2026.
You mentioned AI. I'm fascinated to learn a little bit more about how AI is being used in your business because you know, you often envisage it as just being a sort of, you've got a generator there which switches on and off as demand comes online. But what does the AI part do?
The AI part is the data center piece itself. Any use of AI globally needs to be processed in a data center. The U.K. is very supportive and very pro AI in general, but also data centers. The U.K. government has very clearly said that they want to make the U.K. a number one destination for AI and AI data center processing globally. There's been a lot of official announcements about that, the U.K.-U.S. trade pact and the U.S. tech giants' investment deals into the U.K. We're seeing a very big growth in AI data centers in the U.K. One of the major challenges that any AI data center globally, but specifically in the U.K., has is power resilience.
They need to have 100% power supply 365 days, and they can't get that from the National Grid. What we offer is the power resilience solution. We co-locate our power generation assets right next to the data center, and we, you know, warrant that they will have 100% power supply. It diversifies our offtake base. It gives us a new client that didn't exist two- three years ago. You know, that's how quickly the market changes. There's a massive demand for that. I mean, the power supply demand for AI data centers at the moment in the U.K. is about 2.5 GW. That is expected to increase to 8 GW, so almost quadruple by 2030.
There's a very, very big demand for power supply for AI data centers in the U.K.
That's great. Do you see that for sort of looking forward then to 2026, do you see the data centers now being a key priority or an important priority for yourselves, or is that just one part of a bigger sort of vision?
It is one of our key strategies, but going into 2026 it is a primary focus. You know, we've introduced that new strategy this past year, you know, the past few months, and, you know, a very big, important next step for us in that new strategy is to secure a first project, first of many, which we are working on, and that will be the primary focus. In tandem, you know, we'll progress everything else. Our existing assets and existing portfolio of projects will advance. We'll keep growing that as well because everything at the end of the day contributes towards our target megawatts, which the first is 300 MW. We're at 50 MW now. We want to get to 300 MW as quickly as possible.
The AI data center piece will be a major part of that, certainly, but, you know, we've got a diversified strategy stack, which I think is important, so we're not reliant on a single strategy or a single offtaker.
That sounds like an incredibly ambitious growth, if you don't mind me saying, almost six times growth in capacity there. Do you really see that's feasible? Is that something you can achieve?
Yes. One of the reasons is our business model is modular. You know, we can copy and paste everything, and we've successfully proven that now by, you know, successfully getting Pyebridge into production, very good numbers coming out of Pyebridge. We've copied and pasted that onto Hindlip, and we can continue growing that. It's a modular business. It's not human capital intensive at all. All our assets are managed remotely. Yes, our business is very scalable.
The generators, for want of a better word, are they sort of, you know, easily replicated? Well, it's plug and play I would imagine, are they?
It is 100% plug and play, yes.
Operationally this is quite easy to scale. That's interesting.
Yeah.
What would you say to an investor now, you know, they say to you, "Right, what's gonna be the focus on the next sort of six to 12 months?" What are those key sort of performance or milestones you're hoping to achieve?
Yes. I think ultimately the growth in megawatts, you know. That's our ultimate yardstick, you know, that's kind of the focus. Hindlip is gonna be the next one, so that's a further 7.5 MW coming into production in Q1. We've got our development portfolio that we're busy developing and will go into construction and then the AI data center piece. I think that's gonna be big, chunky steps forward for us. I think that's what investors need to look out for.
That's very interesting. Well, Pieter, thank you so much for your time today, and well done in 2025 and good luck in 2026.
Thank you very much, Martin.