Interview with Bhupinder Bhullar
In a world increasingly dominated by AI, massive data creation, and energy-hungry compute infrastructure, the question isn’t just how to store our data, but how to store it better. On the latest episode of the AI Think Tank Podcast, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with Bhupinder Bhullar, CEO of Swiss Vault, to discuss a truly groundbreaking approach to data storage.
What I found was a company that has quietly engineered a revolution, one that delivers hyperscaler-grade resilience, performance, and efficiency to everyone from small businesses to satellite networks.
From cryptography to sustainable storage
Swiss Vault began in 2018 with a focus on encryption and cryptography. Over time, that evolved into something far broader and more ambitious: long-term, environmentally conscious, automated data preservation. As Bhupinder shared, “Our DNA is about long-term storage. How can we help organizations and individuals manage their data with privacy for their entire lifetime, 100 years, and do so with a low impact on the environment?”
That mission led to solving some of the biggest technical headaches in storage: file corruption, hardware failure, and inefficient media usage. Swiss Vault’s system not only auto-corrects corrupted files but also dynamically migrates data away from failing drives without human intervention. The result? Near-zero downtime, no data loss, and a user experience traditionally reserved for hyperscale environments like AWS or Google Cloud.
Turning legacy infrastructure into superpowerful systems
The key lies in Swiss Vault’s Vault File System, a software-defined marvel that combines low-overhead erasure coding with intelligent parallelization. Most conventional setups require 200% hardware overhead to maintain redundancy through backups. Vault cuts that to just 5%.
“Our system guarantees 17 nines of uptime, 99.999999999999999%,” said Bhupinder. “And we use less energy, extend equipment life, and increase speed, all simultaneously.”
Even aging hard drives are given new life. The Vault system enables low-cost spinning drives, including Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives, to outperform modern SSDs by distributing reads and writes in parallel. It’s hyperscaler-grade engineering, but delivered in a way that’s actually affordable.
Bhupinder even demonstrated real-time disk removal during high-definition video playback, without a single glitch. The system rebuilt the data instantly using parity information. “You can mix SSDs, HDDs, even unformatted drives. Just plug them in and go. It’s that easy.”
Affordable edge solutions – From clinics to the cosmos
Swiss Vault isn’t just impressive in the lab, it’s already deployed across a wide spectrum of industries: healthcare, aerospace, agriculture, and beyond.
In one healthcare deployment, Swiss Vault took 10 petabytes of raw data, eliminated the need for redundant backups, and delivered 2x capacity with 8x performance improvement, using the client’s existing Dell servers.
And it doesn’t stop there. Swiss Vault’s briefcase-sized server, consuming just 100 watts, delivers over 1.5 petabytes of storage. It’s whisper-quiet, ultra-cool, and rugged enough for travel. “This unit has been to Athens, Zurich, San Francisco, it just works,” said Bhupinder.
Their architecture also supports globally distributed file systems, allowing data to be shared across cities, or across orbits. Swiss Vault is working with aerospace partners to bring its platform to satellite clusters, ensuring data integrity even when satellite nodes drop offline. It’s resiliency for the edge, and beyond.
Powering AI and the next generation of decentralized compute
Swiss Vault’s innovations also fit perfectly into the evolving world of AI and edge compute. Their platform supports low-power neural processing units (NPUs) for inference, making it possible to run 15-billion-parameter models with a 10-watt CPU, a dream for developers and researchers who need performance without the power bill.
“Storage and compute must live together,” Bhupinder noted. “Especially as we move toward decentralized AI, local data sovereignty, and sovereign infrastructure.”
Swiss Vault is already supporting this vision through its sponsorship of non-profit company Kwaai AI, an open-source initiative aimed at democratizing AI by offering shared compute and storage resources globally. With a Swiss Vault node already running live in Vancouver, Kwaai’s members can tap into high-efficiency infrastructure that was once only accessible to the largest cloud providers.
The containerized data center – and the road ahead
Swiss Vault’s ambitions extend to bringing hyperscaler resilience to rural and underserved communities. In collaboration with Kaiser and BladeRoom, they’ve developed a containerized, prefab edge data center, deployable in 24 weeks. These units offer a petabyte of storage at only 300 watts, with the remaining energy free to power other compute operations.
And the future looks even brighter. Bhupinder hinted at an upcoming “Infinite Storage” white paper, laying out Swiss Vault’s vision for 100-year storage systems that can be manufactured locally, enabling sustainable data ecosystems from Nigeria to Peru.
“We started with a blank slate,” he told me. “No sacred cows, just a mission to reduce complexity, power, and waste, while keeping data safe and accessible for everyone.”
Verdict: Swiss Vault isn’t just a product, it’s a movement
What Swiss Vault has achieved is nothing short of alchemy: combining performance, sustainability, cost-efficiency, and resilience into a plug-and-play solution that scales from mobile clinics to intercontinental networks, and even to outer space.
If your organization is navigating the growing demands of AI, edge computing, or sustainable infrastructure, Swiss Vault is not just worth watching; it’s worth adopting.
To explore more about their technology and upcoming developments, visit SwissVault.global and check out the full episode of the AI Think Tank Podcast.
Join us as we continue to explore the cutting-edge of AI and data science with leading experts in the field.
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