Embrace the Slime: An Immersion Cooling Journey

In this episode of the Nomad Futurist, hosts Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence welcome Daniel Pope, Chief Technology Officer of Submer, an immersion cooling technology company. Pope embarked on his journey in the web hosting business at just 16, transforming a single-bedroom server into a multi-million dollar data center. Boasting over 20 years of experience in data center design and operations, his expertise and vision are focused on enabling the transition toward sustainable and future-proofed digital infrastructure.

As Pope starts to share his journey, he explains that Submer, the company he helped found, is revolutionizing the way the industry approaches cooling systems for high-density chips. Headquartered in Barcelona, it stands at the forefront of the industry and has attained global reach.

“Our products and our technology are mostly focused on large-scale crypto mining operations and the data center industry, including anything from enterprise customers to hyperscale companies. So Google, Amazon, AWS, etc.”

Pope goes on to describe his innate curiosity and penchant for experimenting that began in childhood. He describes himself as a “tinkerer,” and recounts a story of taking apart an expensive PC computer his parents had bought for him. Years later, at 16, he embarked on his first data center venture, which started with a humble server in his bedroom.

“In a decade, we went from one server in my bedroom to 18,000 servers in a big data center.”

From there, he transitioned into roles as a solution architect and later overseeing professional services teams. Through all this, Pope remained deeply connected to the data center industry. Finally, in 2015, he ventured into immersion cooling.

“People [started] uncovering the amount of water that was being used in the data center industry, which has been this deep, dark little secret of the industry for a long time.”

As he concluded the podcast, Pope left listeners with a resounding message: “Embrace the slime.”

Daniel Pope’s episode unfolds as a journey through opportunities made from obstacles. Embracing a connection to the data center industry, he now stands as the Chief Technology Officer of Submer, where immersion cooling represents not just a technological breakthrough but a paradigm shift—an opportunity to embrace innovation and sustainability in equal measure. To continue this journey, connect with Pope on Linkedin and follow Submer on Linkedin for updated news and insights.