Welcome to today's Fireside Chat with Gorilla Technology. I'm John Roy, I cover technology here at Water Tower Research. Today I'm joined by Jay Chandan, he's the CEO, and Bruce Bower, the CFO. I should mention that Gorilla's Safe Harbor statements can be found on their website. This Fireside Chat may not be reproduced, or written transcript distributed without the express written consent of Water Tower Research. Jay and Bruce, welcome, guys. How you doing?
John, absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. How are you?
I'm doing well, actually. Jay, obviously you made the Yotta announcement. Can you give us some of the color, and insights as to what is in that announcement? And what does it mean?
Absolutely. The first takeaway, John, is quite simple. It's a moment where I believe, and Bruce, of course. We both believe that Gorilla has moved away from just being an AI company to, you know, an AI infrastructure company. Think about it from, you know, moving from PowerPoint to power. Okay. For a long time, the AI market has been full of grand speeches. You know, we've been looking at all of those glossy decks. You're looking at people. We're using the word transformational like, you know, confetti at a wedding. For me, that's not what it is. Yotta is not about a pilot program. This is where, you know, real infrastructure, real GPUs, real deployment, but more importantly, real revenues.
The initial Yotta deployment is about 640 high-performance servers. And this is representing roughly 5,000+ GPUs. If you look at this, what Gorilla is doing, it's moving from what we call the base case of reality. To actually what really matters into what we can prove going forward. That has already been, what we call, scaled up by the second contract we signed with Yotta, which we also made announcement. That covers an additional roughly 20,736 GPUs. These are B300 GPU cards, which will be the largest AI cluster within the region. As you know, NVIDIA has taken one half of the offtake agreement with Yotta. And all these have to be delivered by 30th of September this year.
The total aggregate value of that second phase is roughly around $2.7 billion-$2.8 billion. Net-net putting about 22,000 and 25,000 GPUs. With roughly around $3.2 billion-$3.3 billion, of announced commercial values for the Yotta framework. For me, personally, that's not just a press release. That's intent. The second takeaway for us is India. India is not just a big market. India is one of the most important AI infrastructure markets on the planet after China, U.S., China. You're talking about 1.6 billion people with roughly about 1 billion+ people using the internet. Roughly around, what, 22.5 billion-22.6 billion UPI transactions just last month alone. You're not talking about a population story anymore. It's about a digitized population which loves data. Who loves data?
AI does, right? Data needs compute. Compute needs power. They need cooling. They need racks. They need networking. They need security, more importantly, people who can actually deliver. The whole thing without turning this into a very expensive. What I call, glamorous bunch of radiators. That's where we come in. We, as you know, we actually have teams in Taiwan. We have a big data center team now in Thailand, India, U.K., and in Egypt. We're bringing all of these together to create a global deployment team. The third one, which we are seeing, is very important, which is the sovereign AI part of it. This is not just about compute, you know, the companies wanting compute.
This is about nations where we are seeing countries like India decide. That their data, all of their models, all of their citizen services. Like the Aadhaar card, and so on and so forth. Their financial services, and all of the critical infrastructure. Just cannot be sitting somewhere else because it is convenient, right? India is building its own compute. As you know, they've gone from 38,000 high-performance GPUs. They'll be adding another 20,000 GPUs. We're also getting significant demand requests from India, and the Indian government. Where we're seeing another 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 GPUs on top of what we've already built. That tells you the direction of travel. It tells me that India is not just dabbling into it. They're investing billions so that they can be competitive. Finally, the most important thing is Yotta. Now, Yotta is a phenomenal partner for us.
It's not just like a local partner who just wakes up one morning. And says, "Look, I've got a few racks in there, and you've got to wave a flag, and thank you, we've declared victory." When somebody actually goes, and sees the Yotta data centers, they will understand how serious these guys are. I'm talking about data centers that are 14 stories high. Personally, I have not seen anything of that scale to date. What they bring is they, you know, they bring discipline. They bring the cooling. They bring all the customer access. More importantly, we have created a relationship of trust, finally. All that, including our commercial execution, it's not just about performance. It's not just about a supplier relationship. It's about scaling. For me, the bigger message, for your question, sorry, it's turning out to be a long response.
It's about Gorilla becoming the picks, and shovel company of the AI revolution, right? Soup to nuts, the one throat to choke, as you said. Everybody wants to talk about AI. Everybody wants GPUs. Everybody talks about networks. For me, what Gorilla is building along with Yotta. It does three things, w hich shows that the demand is real. It shows that India is enormous, and Asia is growing as a banner. Third, Gorilla can execute at scale. We're not talking about, you know, smaller deployments of GPUs. We are going to be banging our chest or beating our chest hard. We're gonna make sure that those machines switch on. We're not just gonna live on hope. More importantly, I think, you know, this is where for us the fun begins. It's exciting.
Well, that's a whole lot going on. Bruce, how do you corral all this stuff to, you know, really focus on profitability, and improve the balance sheet?
The improvement in the balance sheet has been an ongoing focus for the company. At the end of 2024, we had about $21.5 million of debt. As of the end of the first quarter, it's down to $13.2 million. It's been a very disciplined, sustained reduction. We didn't just go pay it off willy-nilly. It was, you know, basically when it came up for renewal or we didn't need it, we paid it down. In so doing, we freed up restricted cash. That was held against the debt. Basically, we had debt, we had to post collateral. The collateral was a restricted deposit, we would pay off the debt, release the restricted cash. Net- net, it was very little unrestricted or free cash that was moving out to pay this debt down.
We've also been disciplined in terms of reducing restricted cash balances. So just last week we had an extra $5 million released. We're feeling very comfortable about the reduction in restricted deposits, and debt. The cash that we have is about $19 million as of today on the balance sheet, and this is really with one goal. It's to fund all of the ambitious project pipeline, that we have identified. I think the way we think about it is two ways. First is that there's plenty of cash for growth, and then to take the steps that we need. So, for instance, putting down deposits to place orders for equipment, et cetera. And also having a reserve so that there's plenty of runway for SG&A, and everything else in the meantime.
The other thing I would say is that, you know, profitability, all the projects that we're talking about. The new ones that we've signed up that we're implementing, will be a boon to profitability. You know, the sort of historical margin profile of the business has been 30%-35%. The exact kind of gross margin depends on the data center of focus project, but it's higher than the previous. Each of these new projects, when we implement them. Improves the overall mix, and it's going to lead to improving margins. Both gross margin level, and then at an EBITDA level. We're excited about the outlook for revenue growth. We're excited about the outlook for profitability, and margins overall, and also for cash generation going forward.
The last thing I would say is that, as always, our focus remains on finding the funding. Where it doesn't stress the parent company balance sheets. For many of the projects where we can, we're getting project-level financing. So that means, you know, debt or in some cases, you know, non-recourse, and non-debt financing at the project level. Also, where we're looking for additional funding. It would be, we're looking at debt, and non-dilutive financing at the parent company level as well. I think Jay can talk about Gorilla Tech Capital, and what that means as well.
Oh, excellent. We've talked about some of the recent future outlook. We've talked about controlling cost, and getting the profitability better. That's stupendous. Jay, give us an update of where you are on the progress? And how are you on the global rollout. I mean, there's a lot of countries you've mentioned. What's the progress?
John, I mean, you've covered us for a long time now, right? I think we've grown old together. Three years ago, Gorilla was largely seen as a, you know, strong technology company or a technology company with one market. Today, we're becoming a serious AI infrastructure player across not just Asia, Middle East, and North Africa, and even in Europe. That shift did not happen by accident. It was very deliberate. The decision we made was deliberate, because we decided we're not gonna simply sit in one corner of the world. Polish a few products here, and there. And wait for the world to notice us. That, for me, was an expensive mediation with a bad return on investment, right?
We decided that the demand is real, governments are caring about sovereign AI. Enterprises need secure infrastructure, and global players were not always moving very quickly. Some of them, actually, we've realized, move with all the urgency of the HM Passport Office in August. You can understand how slow that is, right? That has taken us to different markets. Whether it's India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan. With the Astrikos.ai investment, we're actually now starting to look into the Middle East, and U.S. We're having multiple conversations, particularly around real-time infrastructure intelligence, smart infrastructure, and more importantly, AI-enabled operational control. That also leads us into, you know, the GPU deployments. Service level agree operations, data center intelligence, and so on.
We're not just dropping, you know, equipment in a room. And hoping that someone is going to remember where to switch the lights on or put the switch on. This is about real infrastructure where we're actually creating very complex machines. This is also, more importantly, it's about how we can help design, deploy, and manage in these regions. Remember, when we are going into a region, we're not just building from, let's say, India or Thailand as a low-cost base. We're building within those regions. Like Indonesia, we're building a team now. Singapore, we're building a team. Malaysia, we're just started looking at hiring as well locally. When I talked about Thailand is becoming a very important anchor for us. Why? Because we've been very active in Thailand.
As you know, we're working on smart grids. We worked in smart city, we worked on data center security, and critical infrastructure projects. With the announcement we made a day ago. Korat, that's where the story became real for us. This was about Gorilla owning land, Gorilla owning power. Gorilla owning fiber, water, and execution at the same time. The Korat, which is near in Nakhon Ratchasima. Is a campus that we recently purchased. It's roughly around 200 MW of total facility load, providing about 150 MW of IT load. There is, obviously, we are working with the government. To help us provide more power within that particular campus.
Currently the government's talking to us about additional 250 MW-300 MW of power being available. Through the local substations, which are right next to the plant, the land we purchased. We're not talking about a proper AI infrastructure campus. We're talking about a, you know, not a hyperscale, but near hyperscale quality. That means it gives us the ability to create high-density compute, AI GPU as a service. It allows creating sovereign clouds, and hyperscale colocation. Really why it matters is it becomes our steppingstone. Into the next level as to how we're evolving. We're also looking at other land agreements in the region. Not just here, but we're looking at Indonesia, and Malaysia as well.
You know, we're looking to invest into Malaysia, at the Johor complex. Where we can actually buy land, and build data centers. Across the region, for me, it is absolutely clear. Singapore gives us the financial, commercial, regional discipline. Malaysia kind of gives us the, what I call the power-rich data center market. Indonesia gives us the population. It gives us the scale and the digital demand. The Philippines is developing really quickly. And what is happening is there's need for cloud, AI, and sovereign infrastructure. And the demand is increasing, and accelerating quite rapidly. Taiwan, of course, as you know, remains core part of our DNA. Which helps us develop all the products we want, whether it's the BMS products. Whether it's your SOC, NOC, and so on, and so forth. And more importantly brings us the customer history.
In short, if AI for me was a, let's say, a, a dinner party. India would bring the appetite, Thailand would bring land, and power, Singapore would bring discipline, Malaysia brings scale. Indonesia brings in population, but Philippines brings in the growth. And Taiwan brings for me the engineering brain, and we have some very strong people. I think we have a little over 200+ people in Taiwan. For me now, when I go to any meetings. I look at it, and say, "Great. Listen, wonderful speeches, everyone. Now, how are we actually going to build this bloody thing?" Right? That's very important. We're moving from country to country, but we're winning at the same time. It's not just about creating an office in a fancy place. We're becoming aggressive.
As you know, a few years ago, everybody saw us as a, you know, technology company or a smart technology company. Today, people are seeing us as an AI infrastructure partner. Which is helping them grow to the next phase. Which is sovereign, secure, and building regional compute. I hope that answers.
No, that's great. It does bring up the question, maybe, one final question is that. What are your plans for fundraising to support a lot of this stuff? And can you give us an outlook into 2026?
Sure. I think Bruce touched upon this very briefly. I mean, this is a very touchy subject for a lot of people. Everybody thinks we're going to dilute the hell out of them. Let me start with this very important point, and I think I need to let the market know. When people hear AI infrastructure. They immediately assume huge capital requirement, therefore huge dilution, right? I follow some of the message boards. I've stopped looking at them now because people keep thinking, you know, "God, this guy's gonna raise $1 billion, and dilute them." Frankly, some companies do that, and I can understand why they're upset by it. People, you know, get one contract, they run to the market. They issue equity, dilute the hell out of everybody else. Very elegant, it's like basically burning the furniture to heat your house.
You don't do that, right? That's not our model. What we are trying to do is our approach is very clear. We wanted to be very disciplined. As Bruce Bower mentioned, we're trying to be as non-dilutive or with minimal dilutive structures. That is very important for us. Even if we're going to a $1 billion, couple billion market cap. We will keep that rigor absolute. That means we're looking at various options. Project-level financing, customer-backed structures, asset-backed debt. Bruce Bower talked about vendor financing, SPV-based financing, institutional co-investments. What am I missing? Infrastructure funds. We've got strategic partners funds. We're looking at AI data centers. We're looking at family offices. We're looking at long duration of asset investments, and not worried about their whole quarterly gimmick or anything like that.
The most important acquisition which we did this year was the Gorilla Technology Capital. Which is the Shackleton Finance acquisition with a full FCA approval. I think the market has missed the message on that. What people don't understand is that we have created a new route. To fund data centers, and GPU as a service deployment. How? We're basically looking to work with, like I said, SPVs, build co-investment, non-dilutive project funding across the infrastructure pipeline. We are targeting roughly around $2 billion-$3 billion of funds under management by the end of 2027. The strategy for us is to raise money, but not to raise money for the sake of raising money. It's to make sure that we match the right capital to the right asset. We've broken down our assets.
If you're looking at data centers, we would be looking at infrastructure capital. People have asked me, "How do you deploy GPUs? Isn't it gonna be expensive?" No, we're looking at asset-based or customer-backed financing. That's number two. If you're looking at, let's say, long-term government contracts or enterprise demand. Like we have signed up recently with Yotta, we're looking at contracted cashflow financing. That's number three. If you look at sovereign AI infrastructure, we attract institutions using the likes of Shackleton. Where we attract pension funds, endowments, institutions, strategic capital, right? Family offices. For me, the lazy answer would be dilution. The grown-up answer for me is structure.
Personally, I don't think so Bruce, and I spent the last three years. Building or strengthening the balance sheet, you know, just so that we could hand over. You know, a dilution sandwich just because we have the some financial jargons being thrown in there. As you know, you asked about our outlook. We're looking at, what? About $150- $200 billion of revenue. Again, that's another question for people. People are like, "Oh my God, you've signed all these big deals. Why aren't you know, re- giving us guidance or re-upping your numbers," right? I could do that. I could wake up one morning, and just say I can do that overnight, but I have to be realistic. Data center projects do not happen overnight.
The time taken to build the architecture. The time taken to work with the likes of NVIDIA, Supermicro, getting the architecture design correct, the networking, and getting the supply chain. Nowadays everybody's talking about memory, and storage. People don't realize it takes five- six months to get it delivered. How can I sign a contract, and then come to the market and say, "Look, I have re-upped my guidance."? I would be the absolute idiot, unless the market's missing something. We're not, you know, we're building infrastructure. The most important thing is 2026 for me was a year, is a year, sorry. Where we're gonna be proving that the turnaround is real, and we're scaling. It's no longer going from 100- 120 or 130. We're going from 100 to, you know, 150, 200.
My personal target next year will be about $600+ million, which I've already talked about. We said $500+. Market, hear this, hear me out, hear Bruce out. We will adjust the guidance responsibly as, and when needed. Data centers definitely take time to develop, deploy, and finance as well at the same time. We're not talking about a microwave dinner where we can just cook it overnight. It's gonna take. You know, we have to make the right level of guidance. We've got to get the market excited at the same time. It's not a five-minute job, and I surely don't want to disappoint people at the end of three months and say, "Look, we've got to, you know, reissue the guidance to a lower number." Finally, again, my message to the market, we're not gonna fund this like amateurs. Okay.
The last five months, or now what? Four months, and five days, I have spent more than 3+ months on a plane. Not because I fancy sitting on a plane, and having my bones aching. It's making sure that we get the funding. Bruce Bower, and I are on a plane almost every week. We wanna make sure that we're not wandering around Wall Street with a begging bowl every time we need a cable. We're making sure that the money is real, and that it is long-term and sustained. This is the difference between building a company or just a financing story. We're building a real company, John. What is the outlook? Big opportunity, serious buyer discipline, and pipeline, and definitely no nonsense.
If you'd ask me, some people in this market are still doing this whole AI like What is the best example I can give you? Like Mr. Bean trying to assemble an IKEA furniture without instructions, right? Lots of noise, one missing screw, and a surely very worried set of investors. We're taking the opposite approach. Land, power, GPUs, customers, contracts, cash flow. Most important, cash flow.
Excellent.
John.
Excellent, gentlemen. Well, I think we're gonna have to leave it there at this point. Jay and Bruce.
Sure.
Thanks so much for spending time with me today, and with the investors. Investors, to learn more about Gorilla, please visit our website or visit Gorilla's website. Our website is www.watertowerresearch.com. I wanna thank everyone for joining us. Now I'm gonna read a short disclaimer. The views expressed in this fireside chat may not necessarily reflect the views of Water Tower Research LLC. And are provided for informational purposes only. This fireside chat may not be distributed or reproduced without the written consent of Water Tower Research. And should not be considered research nor a recommendation. WTR is an investor engagement firm, not a licensed broker-dealer, market maker, investment banker, underwriter, or investment adviser. Additional disclaimers can be found at.