Building the Future of AI Infrastructure — and Human Potential

Brian Neirby operates in two worlds that rarely intersect.

In one, he builds AI infrastructure campuses powered by advanced energy models and Bitcoin mining innovation.

In the other, he walks prison yards such as San Quentin, helping formerly incarcerated men rebuild their lives.

At first glance, ChillMine and CROP seem unrelated. But for Neirby, they are connected by a single principle: transformation.

Reinventing Energy Through ChillMine

ChillMine sits at the center of one of the most urgent global conversations — the explosive growth of AI and the infrastructure required to power it.

As artificial intelligence accelerates, so does demand for compute capacity. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity. Bitcoin mining, often criticized for energy intensity, generates even more heat — literally.

Neirby sees opportunity where others see waste.

“A Bitcoin miner is essentially a 3,000-watt heater,” he explains. “The question isn’t whether it produces heat. It’s what you do with it.”

Rather than allowing that thermal output to dissipate, ChillMine captures and repurposes it. The company is pioneering heat-reuse models that transform mining operations into dual-purpose infrastructure — producing digital assets while solving real-world energy challenges.

In northern Idaho, miners are being used to:

• Heat car washes during harsh winters
• Melt snow from rooftops and driveways
• Warm commercial buildings
• Power greenhouses in remote climates

The economics are compelling. If a business pays eight cents per kilowatt but generates five cents in Bitcoin hash revenue, its effective energy cost drops significantly — while simultaneously recycling heat into productive use.

It reframes Bitcoin mining not as an isolated digital enterprise, but as a layered infrastructure strategy: energy optimization, capital efficiency, and environmental pragmatism working in tandem.

ChillMine’s ambitions extend beyond the U.S. In Botswana and parts of Southern Africa, Neirby is involved in developing green data campuses that combine solar and natural gas — positioning the region as an emerging AI corridor for the continent.

But the model is more than megawatts.

“We don’t bring in outside teams to build and operate,” Neirby says. “We invest in the sons and daughters of the soil.”

By training local talent and embedding economic opportunity into the infrastructure itself, data campuses create ripple effects — improving water systems, retail development, banking access, and long-term employment pipelines.

“There’s capitalism in it,” he acknowledges. “But there’s also a humanitarian component.”

In a world where AI is often discussed abstractly, ChillMine represents something tangible: infrastructure that attempts to balance innovation with responsibility.

Building Second Chances Through CROP

If ChillMine focuses on energy transformation, CROP focuses on human transformation.

CROP — Creating Restorative Opportunities and Programs — is an Oakland-based nonprofit founded by formerly incarcerated individuals. Its mission addresses one of the most overlooked gaps in the justice system: reentry.

“When someone leaves prison, they may receive a few hundred dollars and a bus ticket,” Neirby says. “Then what?”

Without structured support, recidivism remains high. CROP intervenes with six-month cohorts that provide:

• Stable housing
• Budgeting assistance
• Professional development
• Job placement support

Participants receive training in journalism, digital skills, and professional communication — preparing them for roles in companies willing to offer second chances, including firms like SAP.

Neirby admits he initially approached the board opportunity with hesitation.

“I had my own preconceived ideas,” he reflects.

That perspective changed during a visit to San Quentin. As board members walked across the yard wearing CROP shirts, several incarcerated men ran toward them.

“My defense mechanism kicked in,” he says. “But they just wanted to know how to get into the program.”

The moment reshaped his understanding.

“What I see now is accountability and appetite for growth. There’s no victim mindset. They own their past and want to build a future.”

CROP’s admissions process is rigorous. Not everyone qualifies. But those who do commit to rebuilding — not just employment, but identity.

For Neirby, the impact has been deeply personal.

“It’s helped me grow,” he says. “People are people. We may just have different problems.”

Infrastructure and Redemption

On paper, ChillMine and CROP operate in separate industries — one in advanced computing infrastructure, the other in restorative justice.

But both challenge inefficiency.

ChillMine asks: How do we stop wasting energy and start repurposing it?

CROP asks: How do we stop wasting human potential and start restoring it?

Both operate on the belief that value can be reclaimed — whether thermal output from a data center or opportunity for someone who has served their sentence.

In an era defined by artificial intelligence, automation, and digital acceleration, Neirby’s work suggests that infrastructure must extend beyond servers and power grids.

It must include systems that allow people to grow.

“It’s not just about living,” he says. “It’s about acting from purpose daily.”

In that sense, turning heat into efficiency and second chances into contribution may be part of the same equation — building not only smarter systems, but stronger societies.

Interview Transcript:

Alan Olsen
Welcome to American dreams. I’m here today with Brian Neirby, Brian, welcome to today’s show.

Brian Neirby
Thank you, Alan. It’s great to be here, and always a pleasure to see you.

Alan Olsen
So Brian, you have a very unique background. We actually met over in Africa this last summer, and then quickly became friends. So, yeah, I’d like to get into that Africa trip a little bit, and then maybe, maybe you can tell what we were doing over there. And then let’s go back to your background. Share a little bit about how you got to where you are today.

Brian Neirby
Yeah, I’m happy to thank you again for having me today. You know, I’ll go, I’ll go back in time a little bit, only because, you know, part of how I’m shaped today was my my upbringing, and it’s a it’s a bit unorthodox. So I’m hoping your listeners and viewers find it to be somewhat unique is that, you know, my my family, worked for the government in the US as I was a young child, and the first several years of my life, up until 1979 I lived outside of Tehran, Iran. That has really shaped who I am today, really, in the last probably three to five years, more than in the earlier stage of my life, growing up a couple hours outside of Tehran on an American base and being part of that culture and community. And as you’ve probably already, you know, fast forwarded. You know, we were evacuated in 1979 during the revolution. Obviously, I’ve been paying playing, paying very close attention to what’s going on in the news today. You know, really only have fond memories of my upbringing there. We moved back to the states in 79 and moved back to a more conventional way of living, and grew up here in the Northwest. I’m coming to you from Bellevue, Washington today. I split my time here and in in a few different places, in in Idaho, you know, after, you know, completing my undergrad at University of Oregon and moved to Seattle and joined kind of a mid stage company founded by Paul Alan and Bill Gates Microsoft. So I was really thankful to spend, you know, the first, you know, half of my career at that company, and being part of the first wave of real high growth at that company, I think even my first week on the job, the stock split the fourth week on the job, the stock split again, and it was just a really incredible place to get my footing into technology. And after spending, you know, a good part of my my career there, I was pulled into private equity through Silver Lake capital and some of their portfolio companies, and really got to be an operator applying all the things I’d learned at Microsoft, not only in the business, but just some really incredible mentors there. I attribute so much to the people who believed more in me than I believed in myself during that time at the company, and that’s where I got, you know, I really got my my entrepreneurial fire at Microsoft, because early, in the early days, you were really rewarded for great ideas and incredible results in innovation. And that’s what entrepreneurship is about to me,

Alan Olsen
and from there, got more,

Brian Neirby
got more into the venture world, started doing some direct deals, started, you know, my own small fund, and I’ve just been aligned to projects that I’m interested in, that align to, you know, where I spend my time today, not just professionally, but the things that are important to me on a more on a more personal level. So that’s a little bit of the Reader’s Digest version.

Alan Olsen
Now you’re currently working on some AI infrastructure, heat reuse of Bitcoin mining through chill mine, for someone I’m familiar with, with, with this concept, how do you explain what you’re building in simple terms?

Brian Neirby
Yeah, you know, I’ll keep it as simple as I can. It’s, it’s a really interesting use case. You know, when we think about sovereignty and we think about, you know, alternative currencies and technologies, whether it’s blockchain layer one, two, whatever, and I’ll avoid all that. Think about a miner. A bitcoin miner is really a personal heater. It draws anywhere to 3000 to 3500 watts of power, and that energy becomes heat. So. When you think about 3000 watts, that’s a very powerful heater, like a normal heater, miner produces heat at Gen and while it produces heat, it’s generating Bitcoin revenue at the same time via hash rate, and as more miners are operating in any given time, that’s driving the value of the Bitcoin currency up. And in every every 10 minutes the there is a block awarded. And if you think about that block awarded, that translates to Bitcoin being awarded to whoever’s mining that Bitcoin at that time through passion. Okay, so with all this heat, and it generates a lot of heat, what do you do with it? So there are a lot of businesses and consumers today utilizing miners for different commercial and residential use cases. On the business side, think about a miner as a capitalized expense. Can write off the hardware and say you’re say you’re operating at eight cents a kilowatt, and you’re generating five cents in hash via mining. Really your cost of energy comes down to three three cents. So you’re reducing your costs on a monthly basis, while also recycling that heat into various forms. One form might be taking that heat and channeling it into your HVAC system and heating your home or heating your commercial building. I’ve seen heat off take utilized in car washes to run the car wash in the wintertime in very northern parts of Idaho, there’s a town, Chalice, Idaho that’s really doing some advanced thinking and some advanced work around utilizing these miners to power car washes for snow melt on roofs, warming homes through thermal heating and also melting snow melt on their driveways, for example. There’s also a use case around greenhouses, how you’re utilizing this technology and all the heat it produces to power greenhouses to produce vegetables that normally wouldn’t be available to you in some of the most remote areas and some of the harshest climates. So it’s a very interesting use case on, on mining Bitcoin, creating heat, off, taking that heat, capitalizing your expenses, and recycling this this heat to solve just everyday challenges that we all have, so I find to be very entrepreneurial. And there’s a whole set of use cases that haven’t been deployed today that we’re pioneering here at chill mine, and hope to make some pretty exciting announcements in 2026 around some of those use cases

Alan Olsen
that’s well said and well stated to kind of give us a vision of future and your more efficient use of energy and heat that’s put up. You said your recent growth is connected to travel outside of North America, especially Africa. What did you see there that most people in tech might be overlooking?

Brian Neirby
It was really life changing for me, Alan, even you know, our time in Mozambique and time I spent in Zimbabwe and Morocco and South Africa, I just found a real entrepreneurial appetite for innovation. And you think of certain parts of of Africa, you know, 4050, years ago, they were sort of trade corridors for the continent. How, how do these locations? And especially, I’m really fond of Mozambique, obviously, for the time that we spent there, also in Botswana, you know, there’s a, there’s a beautiful project that we’re involved with. There’s about one and a half gigs of power there, and it’s based on a, you know, green sustainable data campus. And it’s a combination of of of natural gas and solar. And we’re specifically getting involved with Triple A s energy there, out of the Netherlands, for their their solar project, but beyond the technology. And you know, maybe you know, this part of Africa becoming the AI corridor for the continent. I really appreciate the structure that’s been set up by, you know, our US Embassy, as well as by the local government to address some of the reasons a lot of Westerners don’t get involved in the continent. It can still be a tricky place to do business, and they’ve they’ve put more controls in place to simplify. Process where you’re not getting tethered to certain situations that perhaps you we would be subjected to in the past. You know, for example, the embassy was so welcoming to us on this project, and they’ve helped us, you know, not only build a president, but just understand how the rules and the regulations worth work. And even, you know, from a currency standpoint, there’s a natural conversion of the euro and the US dollar in Botswana. So they’re making it very easy, just from a financial standpoint, there, to invest what they like about our approach, maybe just some other approaches, is, you know, other countries who have done projects in Africa, they typically will bring their own people along with their projects. And for us, it’s really important to invest into the local talent and create a path for that local talent of careers in technology and as well as in, you know, other commercial type opportunities, as well in infrastructure. You know, these campuses, the data centers, are one aspect of the campus, but they they have a halo effect around the community, around, you know, turning gray water into clean water and around creating opportunities in retail and in banking and the infrastructure that these villages and local communities may not have access to in a convenient way in the past. So it’s obviously there’s a capitalism component to it, but there’s a humanitarian component to it, and that’s what that’s what this time in Africa and abroad last year really revealed to me is there’s a willingness, a voracious appetite and a welcoming when you’re looking to Bring a path for the talent, similar to what Greg has done in most Mozambique right, like use the train the local talent, employ the local talent cert, you know, circulate the the the economy locally, while bringing, you know, a more structured opportunity to the continent. So from a business standpoint, that’s what was very revealing to me. And the personal aspect was life changing for me.

Alan Olsen
When you’re working through, of course, you’re, you’re based in the United States right now, working through another country, through other governments. You mentioned that you do feel good cooperation with governments, but what about, you know, investors thinking about going in there? What are some of the challenges that they need to be aware of that as they look at the you know, becoming part of a scaling business in Africa.

Brian Neirby
It’s a great question. It’s one, you know, when I, when I landed, very urgent to see the controls that were put in place. You know, there’s very process driven organizations that are that will lay out the process that needs to be followed. And you pay a small fee for this. It goes to a governed organization, but they have all their vendors. You go through all the licensing, you go through all the requirements, you go through all the due diligence with them so you’re not getting sidebar by certain groups, regimes, politicians, the where you’re going to, you know, in the past, you would have to get involved in those type of relationships. What I really respect today is it’s been very governed where you can avoid those situations. There was also, you know, a notion I had going into it, that everything in Africa is going to cost you five times as much and take three times as long. And I’m finding the pacing to be very respectable over there as well. The communication is solid. All that being said, you have to have boots on the ground. You have to have boots on the ground. And we, we look at really recruiting what, you know, a term coin that I learned while I was there is that sons and daughters of the soil, it’s, it’s important to employ the local talent to be your boots on the ground there. Like, like you said, I’m I plan on being over there three, four, maybe five times a year, but I’m not there every day, and you’ve got to keep to keep a beat on the economy. Each country in Africa has its own set of rules, and it’s important that you understand how business works and who the key players are there. I’m finding that your money’s. Safe. I’m finding that, yeah, if you have good people on the ground, you can put the right guardrails in place to make sure the projects are advancing while you know there’s always going to be things that come up that you don’t anticipate, right? But you can get better optics on those.

Alan Olsen
Now you’re also on the board of crop, C, R, O, P, can you tell us a little about this organization, how you got involved with it?

Brian Neirby
Yeah, I’m really, really happy, too. So about 18 months ago, maybe it was two years ago, I reconnected with a colleague of mine at Microsoft from 20 plus years ago, when I was running the office in Boston. We spent some time together, and I he ran the nonprofit arm at Microsoft, and was really responsible for Community Affairs. And in this catch up, he was telling Tell me about a colleague on he gets these calls all the time about crop and in crop, crop stands for creating restorative opportunities and programs. And it was, it’s a, it’s an organization that was formed by five formerly incarcerated in Soledad in sort of central California. And it was, it was built on the notion of the system does, the system provides programming for the incarcerated. And I use my words carefully here from a labeling standpoint, because it’s really important to the people have been been part of this. There are certain words that I’ve learned that you just don’t want to use with this community, because it’s all about it’s all about trying to respect, you know, the path forward so formerly incarcerated to get this programming in prison. And I saw this firsthand when I spent the day at San Quentin, which was also very eye opening for me, and a beautiful journalism programming. That they offer, as well as social media programming that they offer. So they’re trying to provide love, you know, relevant tooling while you’re while you’re incarcerated. What I learned is that the exit system is very interesting. So basically, when you’re released, you’re given a couple $100 literally, and you’re given what you entered with. Sometimes what you entered with isn’t always what you receive when you exit with. For example, if you’re issued state a state wardrobe, you need to buy your own clothes before going out. Well, there’s probably your $200 you also need to get a bus ticket. Where are you going? You might get, you might be given one night lodging, but, but then what? And that’s why the recidivism rate has been so high in this part of California in particular. All their crop is based in Oakland. So these five men who were convicted of, you know, crimes that they were accused of and found guilty of, they created this programming inside and what, what crop provides is a two core two cohorts every year. It’s a six month program where you’re released into this program where you provided housing, a budget and skilling to go and get jobs literally Alan at places like SAP. And I applaud SAP for providing second chances to these individuals, so it’s really preparing them for coming back into a a market where they’re providing a positive impact.

Alan Olsen
Now, why is Second Chance is a theme that resonates so strongly with you.

Brian Neirby
You know, if I was to really look at myself and in the mirror before joining crop, you know, I had my own opinions on all this. I had my own opinions on the acts that you know were done in order to put people, these these humans, into these situations. What I what I learned of what I’ve learned about crop and appreciate and as well as from some of the speakers at the legacy builders conference is that people can change and people can grow. I’ve had my own growth the last year, different type of growth, but my own growth. And it doesn’t matter what stage of life you’re at, if you have the willingness and you have the rigor, it can be done. And I believe that we all grow in our own way through our experiences. Last week, at our board meeting, I met a gentleman who had been in the system for 41 years, more than 50% of his life, and he’s learning programming around counseling and social skills, and he’s going to take that experience. And what I appreciate about the people I’ve met at your conference and in other nonprofits as a crop is that there’s no victimness. They have owned up to their past, and they’re looking to grow from it. And so that’s why I believe Second Chances are really important, because everyone who has demonstrated the willingness and the appetite and crop has a very rigorous application process. In fact, when we were walking across the yard at San Quentin, a few of the board members had crop shirts on, and there were a couple men running across the yard to us in a first I was caught a little flat footed, like what’s happening here. But what happened was, you know, my my defense my amygdala trigger, my defense mechanism, like, what’s happening here? These men are running towards us. They’re in San Quentin. What happened was, they extended their hand and said, Thank you for coming. How do I get my application approved? I really, really want to be part of this program. So I think it’s about being open, and I think it’s about supporting people who want to put the work in and crop. And, you know, other places I spend my time, they provide the infrastructure that some state systems don’t provide. And the state of California has been very generous with crop. They were the governor, you know, pardon some of these sentences with a requirement that these men come out and they build this program. That is what they had to do. And crop, or the state of California, basically provide the a round of funding to help get this program off the ground.

Alan Olsen
What impact have you personally witnessed from helping these individuals reenter society?

Brian Neirby
For me, it’s been all around growth, and some of my opinions and some of the ideas that I’ve had about individuals going in and individuals going out. It’s helped me grow, just from the lens of, you know, people are people. We’re all the same. We may just have different problems. And it’s, you know, if you invest your time and energy, and you see that time and energy being channeled into a positive outcome, that for me, helped address some of my peak and preconceived ideas of what I’ve had about systems and, you know, acts that people have made in the past. And when I see accountability and I see true appetite for growth, I’m all in on it.

Alan Olsen
So Brian, it’s been a pleasure having you with us today here on American dreams. Person wants to reach out and talk to you more about what you’re working on with chill mining, or AI or other things. How would they reach you?

Brian Neirby
You can reach me at Brian, at chill mine.io, and if we’re all in the community here, you can text me at 781-626-1179, 16261179, I’m on WhatsApp and I’m on telegram.

Alan Olsen
Been pleasure having you with us today. Brian, best wishes.

Brian Neirby
My pleasure. Thank you very much.