Erich Sanchack, CEO of Salute – Interview Series

Erich Sanchack, CEO of Salute, brings more than three decades of leadership across technology, data centers, and mission-critical infrastructure. A former U.S. Marine Corps officer, he combines operational discipline with large-scale enterprise experience from senior roles at Digital Realty, CenturyLink, and Lockheed Martin. His background spans global data center operations, design and construction, cybersecurity, supply chain management, and customer operations, positioning him to scale complex organizations while maintaining a strong focus on reliability, people, and execution.

Salute is a global, full-lifecycle data center services provider supporting hyperscale, colocation, and edge infrastructure worldwide. The company delivers advisory, design, operations, and refresh services with a reputation for military-grade precision, sustainability, and customer intimacy, while also standing out for its commitment to training and employing veterans as certified data center professionals across its global footprint.

Salute has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the data center lifecycle space. What differentiates your model in an era defined by AI-driven demand and global sustainability pressures?

We’re unapologetically ambitious, and that ambition is felt across the entire business. It’s been a real driver behind our growth but what customers care about is how that ambition translates into results.

At its core, Salute is built as a full lifecycle services company with a senior leadership team who have come from a customer background. We advise, design, build, commission, operate, integrate and refresh data center environments, and we understand how it feels to be on the other side. That matters because in an AI-driven world, optimizing one phase in isolation creates risk elsewhere and our customers need to have absolute trust in us as their end-to-end partner.

That becomes especially critical as AI infrastructure moves toward high-density architectures and Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling. These environments magnify operational risk if cooling, operations, training, and lifecycle governance are not designed together from day one. That’s exactly why differentiators like our proven operational processes for Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling are so important. Proven operators have written these systems from years of experience, living and breathing what we do day in, day out to maximise investments and minimise risk for our customers.

We often describe our approach as next-generation lifecycle services. It’s similar to the jump from fourth- to fifth-generation fighter aircraft. That leap wasn’t incremental, it redefined what “generation” even meant and the same is happening in data centers. If you can’t operate at scale, integrate AI readiness and deliver sustainability outcomes simultaneously – what I’d call X, Y and Z – you’re not truly full lifecycle anymore, and you’re behind.

AI density and sustainability pressures demand standardized, industrialized execution. Our World-Class Operating Model is built on repeatability, data and disciplined operations and allows customers to scale without degradation. That’s the real differentiation.

How is Salute using AI across the full data center lifecycle?

We see ourselves as genuinely leading the AI data center evolution, so it’s only right that we use AI very practically in our operating model.

There are two domains where AI plays a role for us. First, AI agents that support our own organization. This is a strategic initiative led by Salute employees, and it’s been impressive to see how our teams are building capabilities that make us better as a business and ultimately deliver more value to our customers.

Second, AI as it applies directly to the data center itself, embedded across lifecycle services. In design and readiness, AI supports scenario modeling for density, power, cooling, sustainability trade-offs and safety considerations. In commissioning, it accelerates validation, strengthens safety assurance, and reduces human error. In operations, it enables predictive maintenance, incident prevention, workforce and site safety optimization, and more consistent execution. Even refresh and decommissioning decisions are informed by data.

In Direct-to-Chip liquid-cooled environments, tolerances are even tighter and operational mistakes can have immediate impact on uptime and personnel safety. AI-driven operational insight, combined with disciplined processes, helps protect availability, keep people safe, and safeguard capital investment.

The goal is to reduce risk, improve consistency, enhance safety, and increase resilience. AI is only valuable if it does those things.

The rise of AI workloads has accelerated global demand for compute and power. How is Salute preparing to meet this growth responsibly?

On the infrastructure side, responsibility starts with readiness. AI workloads demand high-density environments, advanced cooling strategies and the ability to adapt continuously as technology evolves. That requires operators who understand how facilities are built, and how they behave over time under increasing load and complexity.

Equally important is the workforce. The AI era makes it clear that single-skill roles don’t scale. We’re moving deliberately toward multi-skilled, AI-augmented operators who can manage complexity, respond to change, and operate resilient systems safely.

Through Salute University, we’re cross-training teams in AI readiness, sustainability and operations. This includes structured Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling training for operations teams, leveraging detailed curriculum, on-site instruction, qualification cards, and hands-on lab environments to ensure operators are truly prepared for high-density liquid-cooled systems. The future of AI depends on better-enabled people operating more intelligent systems, not simply adding more headcount.

That’s also why we’ve invested heavily to ensure we have the right depth of expertise across the lifecycle. The acquisitions of Northshore and Keysource were deliberate steps to bring world-class sustainability engineering, front-end advisory and lifecycle design capabilities into the business. Leading the AI evolution responsibly requires the right skills, disciplines and perspectives working together, and these acquisitions make that a reality for us.

Importantly, our Industry Best Practices Guide is authored by operators who have built and run direct-to-chip liquid-cooled data centers powering some of the world’s largest AI supercomputers.

It incorporates proven practices aligned with NVIDIA and other leading technology and infrastructure partners, and is developed by one of the few NVIDIA program participants that is neither a data center operator nor a cooling vendor—ensuring an independent, operator-first perspective.

Which parts of the data center ecosystem are seeing the greatest transformation due to AI?

Hyperscale AI campuses are under the most immediate pressure as power, density, sustainability and speed are all converging. Colocation providers face a particularly tough challenge in adapting legacy assets for AI workloads without going offline.

The shift toward Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling is one of the clearest indicators of this transformation. It enables the density AI requires, but it also raises the bar significantly for operational discipline, training, and lifecycle execution.

The biggest opportunity lies with operators who need to modernize while staying live. That’s where lifecycle execution really matters.

Looking ahead five years, how do you see AI reshaping the data center ecosystem—and Salute’s role in it?

There’s a narrative out there that AI is a bubble. Some people are trying to make money by calling the top and not only do I think that’s a mistake, but frankly, it’s disingenuous.

There are billions of dollars already committed to AI infrastructure. This isn’t speculative, it’s industrial transformation. I categorically believe that there is no end in sight for AI, regardless of what is being said in certain forums.

As data centers become AI factories which are standardized, automated and sustainability-constrained, human roles will shift from reactive labor to supervising intelligent systems, making people, skills and training more critical to success. Sustainability will act as a growth gate, instead of a branding or tick box exercise.

In that future, technologies like Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling will be foundational, but success will be determined by who can operate them reliably at scale. That comes down to having rigorously trained teams, clear operating models, and a safety-first culture and not experimental playbooks.

At Salute, we’ve made a deliberate investment in our people through world-class training and development, anchored by Salute University. Salute University standardizes and elevates capability across regions, roles and technologies, from core facilities operations through to advanced AI and Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling environments. It’s how we ensure consistency, safety and readiness as technologies evolve. Our role is to ensure those environments are supported by proven operating models, industry-aligned best practices, and highly trained, safety-conscious teams that can execute at scale.

Salute’s role is to define and operate the global standard for next-generation lifecycle services by combining technology, disciplined processes and continuous workforce development so our customers can scale AI with confidence, resilience and responsibility.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Salute.