Ian Black

Bringing compute, power, and community together

Ian is an Unreasonable Mentor.

Ian is a leader in community-based compute and power solutions. Ian held chief development and global power leadership roles with top tier power and datacenter companies and has been a power expert for twenty years. Most recently, Ian was the global head of power strategy at Digital Realty, where he enabled 3GW of new datacenters through utility contracts, behind-the-meter power deals and community leadership. Ian is a trusted advisor to customers, suppliers and policy makers in the compute space.

Ian is the CEO of Free Man LLC, a company formed to improve speed-to-power, and power quality for datacenters. The risk profile, technical and commercial expertise needed, and investment requirements are new ideas, requiring a different approach to capital and development. Free Man represents this new asset class, specifically focused on a "needs based" siting and powering of datacenters.

Ian has a Bachelors in Finance from the University of Colorado, and an MBA and MS in energy systems from the University of Michigan.