Preparing for the agentic web revolution 

Working with its customers and partners, atNorth is paving the way for innovative new technologies that will transform our experience of the internet and create exciting new ways to work and play. Recently, we sat down with Krystian Zubel, VP Group IT at Opera, the Norway-headquartered browser company, to talk about how it uses its own supercomputer located in our ICE02 data center, to experiment, deploy and deliver cutting-edge ‘Agentic Web’ features to its browser customers worldwide.  

What is the Agentic Web? 

The Agentic Web is the next evolution of our digital experience. Rather than using a browser to search for information on websites, it will act as our own personal assistant, completing tasks on our behalf. As Krystian explained in a recent interview with us, this means that, for example, instead of searching for tickets to see your favorite football team: “It’s possible to just simply give the browser a task – book me tickets for a particular game of my favorite team. I don’t want to spend all my money, but I would like good seats in this stand.” He continued, “The AI takes control and first finds the best game, finds the stadium, sees the good places, figures out the cost of tickets and puts them into the basket and then just asks you – do you want to buy these now?” This is possible now using Opera’s recently announced Neon Browser.  

Agentic AI and the Agentic Web are the next big things in digitalizing our work and lives. But they require significant computing and data processing power to train the models and then deliver high-quality customer experience required to add value to our lives. This is why Opera made the decision to invest in its own supercomputer. Technically a cluster of hundreds of cutting edge Nvidia H100 processor cards, the computer is called the Opera KEF1AI Cluster. Opera uses AI internally for code development among other things, but the primary purpose of the KEF1 AI Cluster is to develop and deploy new AI features for customers.  

Why use a supercomputer? 

“The AI Cluster is a great opener for possibilities,” said Krystian. “We’ve developed a program called AI Feature Drops where we develop small, sometimes complex features or ways that AI could enhance how you browse.” The features are supported by models that are trained and inferred on the Cluster and then ‘dropped’ into Opera Developer, where people can try them. From here, those that are seen as useful are developed into mature products and become part Opera’s built-in AI assistant, Aria. Tab management, a popular AI-driven feature of Opera that automatically groups or closes browser tabs so you can keep on top of them, was born from this process.  

Clearly, a supercomputer of this nature (​​​​recognized as the 88^th most powerful supercomputer in the world when it went live) requires significant energy and cooling, which means the decision on where to host it was critical. “We looked all over the world for hosting space but finally atNorth and your Iceland location, was a no brainer,” Krystian commented. He remarked that the climate is “not too warm, not too cold which helps in being very efficient in cooling,” while furthermore, “the energy comes from green sources. It’s hydro, it’s geothermal, it’s a very sustainable energy.” 

Sustainability Imperative 

As scrutiny intensifies on the climate impact of data centers, it is imperative to demonstrate environmental sustainability of AI and data center operations. However, for Opera as for atNorth, sustainability is more than a tick box reaction to current concern. The environmental performance of ICE02, the 100% renewable energy make-up of Iceland’s electricity grid, and the leading PUE of less than 1.2 are all critical in this regard. But Opera goes further to increase the efficiency of its AI operations. “One thing that saves energy to be more environmentally friendly is to use specialized models,” Krystian explained. “Training a small model to perform certain tasks, like helping you to manage those tabs, uses a small amount of energy. We can be very efficient instead of using a giant LLM.” 

Privacy First AI 

The protection of personal data in the AI era is another issue rapidly gaining attention today. Europe is recognized as a leader with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) one of the earliest and strongest laws in this area. Opera’s approach to privacy and protection of customer data in AI models is a useful example of how innovation and protection can be combined. 

One thing Opera does is to create AI models and agents that only process customers’ data on their own computers, ensuring privacy and security. For larger models – and more intensive training and inference tasks – the location of Opera KEF1 AI Cluster at ICE02 in Iceland is a further safeguard to customer data. As Krystian says; “Iceland is part of the GDPR regime. So, for us it makes it significantly easier to develop an AI product which has privacy at its heart.” 

More than a location 

For all the advantages Iceland offers, there was more to Opera’s decision to site its supercomputer at our ICE02 facility than its location. “I think we broke every possible world record in setting up things in ICE02,” said Krystian. “From when the actual parts landed in Iceland it was less than a month to be up and running. That’s pretty impressive, and atNorth was very professional.”  

atNorth is proud to be a partner to Opera as it forges ahead in delivering a privacy-centric, sustainable, and cutting-edge agentic web experience. Thank you to Krystian Zubel for taking the time to speak to us and tell us about the exciting future of browsing and agentic AI and we look forward to continuing to support you in this next chapter.