Nadal Sarkytbayev, founder and CEO of Zeal, joins the show to make the case that the AI race has moved on from chips and models — and is now being won or lost on power.
Sarkytbayev, who previously co-founded ApTap, an open banking platform deployed by Barclays, Lloyds, and BNP Paribas serving over 40 million customers across the UK and Europe, explains how he's applying that same fintech playbook to the energy grid. Zeal's mission is to make connecting energy-hungry assets like data centers, battery storage, and solar panels to the grid as simple as opening a bank account — cutting connection timelines that currently stretch to seven years in the UK.
On the UAE, he's direct: the region is already leading the race. The scale of ambition he's seen firsthand in Abu Dhabi — gigawatt-scale projects, billion-dollar commitments — puts it ahead of most of the world in its ability to finance and build the data centers AI needs. He closes by pointing to coordination and decentralization as the two strategic priorities that investors, business leaders, and policymakers can't afford to ignore.
FTV_CM_01JULY26_NADAL SARKYTBAYEV — Cleaned Transcript
Joining us now is Nadal Sarkytbayev, founder and CEO of Zeal, a company helping to solve one of AI's biggest challenges — making sure there's enough power to support the next generation of data centers. Before founding Zeal, Nadal co-founded ApTap, an open banking platform deployed by leading banks including Barclays, Lloyds, and BNP Paribas, reaching more than 40 million customers in the UK and Europe.
Nadal, it's great to have you with us today.
Great pleasure. Thank you.
Everyone seems to be talking about AI, but now it feels like the conversation isn't just about models or chips — it's about power. Why is energy now at the heart of the AI conversation?
Brilliant question. AI is obviously a super hot topic right now. The race was first about the chips, then it was about the models. But I think the biggest bottleneck now is power — specifically, speed to power. Whoever has access to the largest amount of energy capacity, I believe, is ahead of the race. The models are catching up very quickly — even open models are updating and catching up to the paid platforms. But whoever has the largest amount of compute, or access to the power needed to run that compute, has the biggest edge right now.
Zeal describes itself as open banking for the energy grid. That's a fascinating comparison. What does that actually mean in practice?
The reason I'm positioning Zeal as open banking for the energy grid comes directly from my background in fintech. I started my first company about nine years ago, straight out of my masters at Imperial where I studied physics. I was always fascinated by energy, but I ended up in fintech and open banking. I learned a lot about how that industry evolved — how banking changed, how fintech became a dominant force. And I realized it was the same playbook, the same problem statement, that could be applied to the energy system. Somebody needs to unlock that value and build the first application layer. So I thought — why not me, why not Zeal? The goal is to embed ourselves in the flow of electrons and information, and make the whole user journey as simple as possible for energy assets — data centers, battery storage, solar panels, electric vehicles — anything that needs huge amounts of energy. Help them get connected to the grid quicker, and make the whole experience as simple as what fintech did for banking.
The UAE has big ambitions to become a global leader in AI. From your perspective, how well positioned is it to achieve that, and what opportunities are you seeing?
The problem I'm solving is real and significant, but it looks different depending on the region. Here in the UK and the Western world, the main issue is connection queues. In the UK, if you want to connect a new data center to the grid, it takes an average of seven years — which is a ridiculous timeline, and that's the problem I'm focused on solving first. But my ambitions go beyond the UK. I've spent the last two years flying between London and Abu Dhabi, attending conferences and seeing the scale of what's being developed. Everything seems to start with a billion. Everything is at gigawatt scale. The projects the UAE — especially Abu Dhabi — is pushing for are tremendous. I think the region is currently leading the race in terms of how quickly it can build and scale data centers and energy assets to enormous capacities. It has probably one of the strongest advantage points right now to become the place where you want to finance your data centers — and where you want to build them.
In your opinion, what is the one thing investors, business leaders, and policymakers should be thinking about right now to stay ahead of the AI revolution?
It's hard to pick just one — I'll give you two. The first, more strategic and long-term: energy and AI are one and the same. The problem right now isn't just speed to power — it's coordination and orchestration. How do you orchestrate as many energy assets as possible so the grid always has enough capacity and the compute is always doing what it needs to do? The second is about the long-term future of the grid itself — decentralization. Having as many energy sources as possible, so data centers, battery storage, and solar panels can orchestrate and exchange electrons with one another, while the flow of information becomes simpler. I believe there are huge opportunities there.
Nadal, thank you for joining us and sharing your insights. It's been a pleasure speaking with you today.
