Our History
The Mills Network emerged over time in response to shared infrastructure constraints affecting compute-intensive systems, regional energy networks, and long-term operational planning.
Early conditions
In the early 2010s, organisations across both public and private sectors began to encounter common limits in the development and operation of large-scale compute facilities. Growth in computational demand increasingly intersected with constraints related to energy availability, cooling requirements, water systems, and the long-term viability of site-based infrastructure.
Existing models for data-centre development were typically optimised for short planning horizons and fragmented ownership structures. While effective during earlier phases of digital expansion, these approaches proved less suited to infrastructure expected to operate continuously over decades and across multiple regulatory environments.
By the middle of the decade, it became clear that no single sector could address these constraints in isolation. Governments, utilities, and private operators faced overlapping challenges that exceeded the scope of individual projects or short-term commercial arrangements.
Coordination and experimentation
In response, a period of cross-sector coordination began to take shape. Informal working groups, pilot projects, and shared planning exercises explored alternative approaches to site selection, energy integration, and long-term operational continuity.
During this phase, emphasis shifted away from individual facilities and toward systems-level planning. Considerations such as grid stability, environmental integration, regulatory alignment, and long-horizon maintenance became central to infrastructure development.
These early efforts did not immediately result in a single organisation. Instead, they established a set of operational principles and governance expectations that would later inform a more durable institutional structure.
Formalisation of the Network
As compute infrastructure assumed greater systemic importance, the need for a standing organisation capable of coordinating long-term capacity became increasingly evident. Persistent demand required an approach that extended beyond project-based development.
The Mills Network was established to consolidate these emerging practices into a coordinated operating model. Its role was defined by continuity rather than expansion: maintaining consistent standards across sites, aligning infrastructure development with energy and regulatory frameworks, and supporting multi-decade operational lifecycles.
From the outset, the Network was structured to operate across jurisdictions and to engage with public authorities, energy providers, and regional stakeholders as part of its core mandate.
Hybrid infrastructure identity
Today, the Mills Network operates as a hybrid infrastructure organisation, combining private operational capability with public-interest alignment. Its work reflects the reality that large-scale compute capacity now interacts directly with regional energy systems, water resources, and long-term planning regimes.
Rather than treating infrastructure as a series of isolated facilities, the Network approaches capacity as a coordinated system designed to remain stable across technology cycles, policy environments, and shifts in demand.
Further detail on the Network’s current responsibilities is set out under Operations Overview and Governance Overview.
The organisation now known as The Mills Network has operated under several names as its scope and responsibilities evolved. These changes reflect shifts in operational focus rather than discrete founding events.
Early work was conducted under the name Northern Inference, a privately operated initiative focused on the siting and operation of compute-intensive systems in cold-climate regions. At that stage, the organisation’s activities were narrowly defined and primarily technical in nature.
As operations expanded across multiple sites and began to intersect more directly with regional energy systems, regulatory frameworks, and public planning processes, the limitations of a purely technical name became apparent. Transitional naming was used during this period to reflect broader coordination and shared infrastructure responsibilities.
The adoption of the name The Mills Network marked a shift toward a stable institutional identity. The term “mills” reflects an emphasis on long-lived systems that process and sustain continuous flows, including energy, data, and heat, rather than any single technology or facility.
This naming convention supports the Network’s role as a coordinating infrastructure body designed to operate across jurisdictions and remain durable across technology cycles, policy environments, and changes in demand.