AI Made Her Rich. Now She Wants To Make Movies.

Manav: I want to put you on the hot seat for a second. Let's make some predictions. Right now with the way that AI is growing, I think the data center industry will be massive. I read a report that China consumes 2.5 times the kilowatt energy as compared to the US. You know, I just talked to a group that said they need 10 gigawatts in the next 5 years. Can you explain more?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. So 10 gigawatts is the equivalent of like 10 cities. If we don't add these data centers, it's almost a question of national security where we're going to get left behind to countries like China.

Manav: Today on the show, we have Anita Varma Lai. She's a real estate developer and founder of Arizona Land Consulting. She has a portfolio of over $1.5 billion. She's leading major land deals for data centers, industrial projects, and AI infrastructure across Arizona. She's also the founder of Camelback Productions, which is a film production company sharing diverse stories. How are you today?

Anita Varma Lai: Good, good. How are you? So excited to be here.

Manav: I know. I'm really excited because first of all, I get really excited when I have Indian-American entrepreneurs on the show. It's rare, you know.

Anita Varma Lai: It is rare. Yeah.

Manav: Yeah. And seeing you like you have your hands on so many different things and it's really cool to see someone like you progressing in the world.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. I appreciate it. It's been a fun journey.

Manav: So before we start, I want to quickly get a recap of your last decade. I know you started working in the corporate world, but you also worked with your dad. For people who have never heard about you, can you give a little snapshot of your life?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, sure. So I actually grew up in Arizona. My family has a really long history of land development. My dad has been buying land in Arizona for the last 40 years or so. I kind of grew up in that industry and helped him a lot growing up. Then about 12 years ago, I started working for him. We were doing a lot of land acquisition and land development. At that time, I was doing a lot of solar development on different properties we had.

Then about five years ago, I started Arizona Land Consulting. The primary difference between Arizona Land Consulting and working with my family business, Varma Land, is we have investors in our fund. We go out and acquire properties and we've been getting bigger and bigger deals. Over the last couple years, we've been really focused on data centers. That's been our main thing—building out data centers for AI and then also doing some industrial development and multifamily development.

Manav: Interesting. For a little bit of context for the audience, I think Anita is being a little too humble. She did one of the biggest land deals in Arizona last year. I'll let you explain.

Anita Varma Lai: Okay. Sure. So last year we sold 2,000 acres to a company called Tracked. They're a data center builder and developer. We bought the property two years before that in 2022. We bought the property for $40 million. When we bought it, it was a residential master plan community. There were going to be homes—like 10,000 homes on it—schools. What happened is they didn't have the water to support that development. So when we bought the property, it was essentially worthless. It was a residential property with no water.

We took a lot of risk and then we repurposed that property. We rezoned it to data center use. We worked with Tracked quite a bit on doing the infrastructure planning and then also trying to figure out the power, which is really big for data centers. That's the role we played. Then we sold it last year and exited at a pretty good multiple.

Manav: Wow. And what makes Arizona such a great place for data centers?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think it's become the number two market for data centers. I think there's a lot of reasons. The weather is good. There are no natural disasters, which is important. Low property costs—land is a lot cheaper than other places. There's also availability of large tracts of land. When you go to some of the other markets like Virginia, which is also a big data center market, it's just hard to find 2,000 acres. You can find that in Arizona.

Power is also cheaper compared to other markets. And then we're also well-located. We're close to California, close to Nevada, so we can transport to multiple regions. I think all those factors make Arizona powerful for data centers.

Manav: And what makes California not such a good place for data centers?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think for California, there are a couple of things to add on, too, for Arizona. The regulatory environment is a lot better. Permitting is a lot faster. California's regulations are a lot more cumbersome. Development can take many more years than it would in Arizona. There's not much available land. Land is expensive. Power is expensive. Power's constrained.

I think there's also more opposition to data centers in California. People don't want neighbors to have data centers around them. In Arizona, given where the land that we're buying is, we can be away from residential development, which I think helps. We're not getting the opposition we're getting here.

Manav: Okay. I would love to get into your thought process. How do you analyze a land parcel? When you come across an opportunity, what do you look for and what are some concerns and some red flags or green flags that you look for?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think when you're looking for data centers, the main thing is you want some sort of power infrastructure. You want to be close to substations, you want to have power lines. Right now natural gas is a big bridge solution because the utilities are so constrained for power. So right now we're really paying attention to natural gas, having natural gas lines and capacity. Those are kind of the main things.

Then you want a property that is well configured for a data center. You want land that's flat. You want a good shape. A lot of times land can come in odd shapes, so it's hard to lay out data centers. And then you want to be in a municipality that will be supportive of data centers. You want the political environment in that city to be welcoming of data centers. There are some areas that just don't want data centers. So I think those are all things that we look for.

Manav: How are typically data centers receiving power? Is it natural gas? Is it solar? What's the typical setup?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think it's a combination. Right now the big utility in Arizona is APS. They have a lot of renewable energy that they pull from. They also have nuclear and gas that they use. And then there's solar, which is what most people want because it's renewable and clean. There's geothermal. But there's a lot of new technologies coming out. It'll be kind of interesting to see. We're in this phase where there's a lot of disruption happening with power. So we'll see if some of these technologies actually stick and are viable solutions.

Manav: But apart from Arizona, what other states are pro-data centers?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think Nevada is welcoming of data centers. Texas—right now the Stargate project is one of the biggest ones in the nation.

Manav: The Stargate project.

Anita Varma Lai: The Stargate project, exactly. Yeah, so that's in Abilene, Texas. That's a big one. I think Virginia historically has been very pro-data center. So those are some of the big markets.

Manav: Before we talk about how investors can cash in on this AI boom and actually invest in this opportunity—I just saw a report by McKinsey saying that every year the data center industry is growing by 25%. Can you talk a little bit about this AI boom that's happened in the last 3 years since ChatGPT came out?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I mean it's been exponential growth just from the demand side. The amount of people that are looking for land for data centers right now, we've never seen that level of interest. It's interesting because the real estate economy in general is a little slow right now with interest rates being as high as they are. There are fears that we may enter into a recession. So in general, you're not seeing a lot of real estate transactions take place. Multifamily is very slow, home builders aren't buying as much land.

But then when it comes to data centers, it's like this rush of people wanting to buy data centers. It's been almost hard to keep up with the demand. And I think power is the constraint right now. Making sure you have power is key. But if you have a site with power, it's like gold right now.

Manav: I read a report that China consumes 2.5 times the kilowatt energy as compared to the US. And I think what's been on your radar when it comes to power? Like what power source are you looking for? Like nuclear?

Anita Varma Lai: I think solar is a good power source. I think nuclear is a good power source. The issue right now isn't necessarily the power source. It's the speed to power. It's just the process you have to go through with the power companies. They're regulated, so there's just a lot of bureaucracy. It's not something that happens quickly.

I know all the utilities right now throughout the country are dealing with this increased demand on the grid. Everyone's trying to figure out how to meet that demand. So I don't think it's an issue of how we meet it. It's more timing—how quickly can we get through this regulatory process and get power up and running? I think China is outpacing us because they don't have this long lead time for regulations to get power online.

Manav: And I want to know, how big is your team right now? And what does your typical team entail? Is it a bunch of analysts? What does your typical team look like?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think our team's not huge. It's about 10 people. We do have a lot of subcontractors that we work with as well. Right now the main thing we're working on is power—figuring out the best and most cost-effective power solutions. So that's a lot of engineering. We're also working with architects and engineers on site planning, how to lay out these data centers. And then we also have land people that are just scouting land and trying to find the best piece of land. So those are kind of the main things that we focus on.

Manav: When any of these hyperscalers like Nvidia or Meta or Google want to build a data center, do they go through an intermediary or do they reach out to you guys directly?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, it depends. A lot of the big ones come through brokers. But I just got a very big lead for a large hyperscaler looking for land just through a contact today. So it can vary, but typically it's through brokers.

Manav: And what do you have to say when there's a lot of objection to data centers locally? I also see the positive side of it—giving a lot of jobs to people. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think the thing with data centers is they're low resource users aside from power. They don't use a lot of water. They're not harmful to the environment in any way. They create a lot of tax revenue for the city. They create jobs. So I think from an economic standpoint, it makes a lot of sense.

I just was meeting with the mayor of one of the cities that I own land in and he was like, "I love data centers. I think that they make a lot of sense." But the main concern people have is they don't want to live next to it. It's new. Some of it's just misinformation. They assume it's like big nuclear facilities that are emitting harmful things.

So I think there's a lot of that. But I think right now with the way that AI is growing, if we don't add these data centers, it's almost a question of national security where we're going to get left behind to countries like China. It's not bad for the environment in any way and it's not harmful to people who live around them. So I think it's just a matter of educating people as to exactly what you're doing and what the benefits are.

Manav: Yeah. ChatGPT has 800 million active users right now and it's going to keep growing more and more. People are not even accounting for humanoid robots.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, for sure.

Manav: Yeah, Elon just came out with the Tesla 2027 project and they said they'll ship a million Optimus robots and they're all going to be needing that compute to run on. You need more data centers for that. So I think you're on to something.

Anita Varma Lai: I think so. It feels like it's the wave of the future. I think AI is kind of at its infancy right now. It's only going to exponentially grow from here. So I think it's going to change the way that the world looks in the next five years.

Manav: And before AI was there, what were you guys doing with the land?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think before it was more industrial. That's what we were doing. We were doing a lot of manufacturing—like battery production.

Manav: Yes, exactly. And then prior to that, it was a lot of residential development as well, homes. You've pivoted quite a bit to get to this point.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: Why have you like never branched out to California?

Anita Varma Lai: It's very difficult. It's just difficult to make deals pencil here. The costs are expensive. The timelines are longer. I own a home in California, so just even that experience compared to owning a home in Arizona, everything's a little bit more expensive, a little bit more difficult. So for us, I think Arizona is a good market to work in. It's easy and it's my hometown. I have the relationships there. We haven't gotten to a point where we've run out of projects or land there. If we do, then I think we would consider going to other markets.

Manav: They call it the weather tax. [laughter]

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. Which I mean, I own a home here for a reason. There are a lot of pros for sure.

Manav: Yeah. And I think California, a lot of companies are leaving.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: We saw like Tesla was one of the major ones that left and I think it's kind of hurting them in the long run. But I still think I'm very bullish on California because all the people who've made it, they end up coming here, you know. It just has this influx of people, but they really need to fix it.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I agree with you on that. I do think long term every California will continue to be a very desirable place to live, but I think there are some short-term challenges to work through.

Manav: Yeah. And I want to ask you a little bit about your dad because when I was researching before this podcast, something really resonated with me. I'm just turning 30 and I saw when your dad turned 30, he had to go back to India for some family opportunity. I want to kind of hear from you what was that experience when he had to go back, and then he came back.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. So my parents moved a lot when we were younger. I was born in Chicago and we lived there till I was about three. Then we moved back to India for a few years. My dad wanted to work with his family business, which is a TV manufacturing business called Beltech. He felt like it was a good opportunity for the family. I think also my mom is a retired physician, so she was working a lot. I think they felt like it was a good decision for the family to go back to India.

Then after a few years, he just had bigger dreams and wanted to come back to America. Real estate was always—he's a civil engineer by profession—but he always wanted to get into real estate. He always had this entrepreneurial spirit. They moved to Arizona in the '90s. I think he just saw this potential for growth that most people didn't see. It's funny, some of the properties that he bought, everyone just thought he was crazy. Like, why would you buy something so far out? Nothing's ever going to come there. He had this vision which I think a lot of people just didn't see at that time.

Manav: I read the story about the banquet where he was hosting marriages and then he ended up flipping that. And I think historically you guys have been really fortunate but also smart with your investments. What would you like to attribute to making those really good investments?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think one thing that my dad has always ingrained in me is just knowing your market really well. Whether you're in commercial office buildings or land, the more you know everything about that market, the better decisions you can make. When an opportunity comes along, you know that it's a good opportunity and you can act quickly. A lot of the best deals I've gotten have just been because we can act very quickly.

Like the property we sold last year, I had to buy that in two weeks. We bought this $40 million property in two weeks. I had to do a lot of due diligence like everything in such a quick amount of time. But I knew that market so well, so I knew this was a really good opportunity.

Manav: And that must have been nerve-wracking, like two weeks to make that big decision.

Anita Varma Lai: I had a really strong intuition that something big was going to happen on that site.

Manav: And are you still on the hunt for like more opportunities like that in Arizona right now?

Anita Varma Lai: For sure. Always on the hunt.

Manav: Yeah. It never stops. And what are—I really like how South Asian people, you know, have you read the article "Patel Motel Cartel" on the New York Times?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: It basically talks about how most 50% of American motels are owned by Patels and it goes back to the story of just being scrappy and Indian families. They just put their entire family to work. [laughter]

Anita Varma Lai: You have to.

Manav: So I want to like hear, what was the early story of you? Like where your dad was making you work when you were like 10 years old or something?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. I mean, as long as I can remember, I was helping him with different things—whether it was doing his bookkeeping. He always wanted either myself or him to personally do the accounting. He always wanted a family member to check all the books. So that's something that I still do to this day. I always verify everything at the end of the year. I spend two full days at the end of the year just going through all of our accounts, making sure that everything was done right.

Then I helped him lease a lot of his buildings early on. He bought an old grocery store that they were going to tear down, but they had to wait a few years. So we ran different spaces in this grocery store—almost like a flea market. I would lease spaces to people when I was in high school. I got a lot of exposure to sales, which has been very helpful in my career.

And then he would always take us to his sites, which we hated as kids, but you know, I really appreciate that now because you saw a piece of land that was nothing, and then we would go back a few years later and there would be homes or grocery stores or different developments on it. That was always really fascinating to kind of see that transformation.

Manav: Yeah, it's the appetite for risk also. I think a lot of South Asian people, some of them don't have the appetite for risk, but then there's a few that stand out, you know, like your dad. I mean, he was an engineer, right? And then he just went from being an engineer to taking this complete risk with your family on board. That's a huge thing.

Anita Varma Lai: For sure. Yeah. Especially for immigrants at that time.

Manav: Yeah. And then I mean now you're crushing it.

Anita Varma Lai: Thank you.

Manav: So I want to know what made you want to transition to film production because for an outsider it would be like, "Anita, what are you doing?"

Anita Varma Lai: I think for insiders and outsiders that question comes up. [laughter]

Manav: Where did that stem from? Was that something like you were a movie buff or where did that come from?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I've always loved movies. I think I've always had a fascination with Hollywood from a young age. It's funny—one of the first jobs I got when I was graduating from USC with my MBA was a job at Sony and I really wanted to try it. But then I decided to go to Arizona and work with the family business, which I think was definitely the right move at the time. But I think I've always sort of had this fascination with Hollywood and wanted to be part of the industry.

This opportunity came along very organically. We weren't necessarily looking for it, but an opportunity to invest in a movie came along. At that time, I didn't even know you could really invest in movies or how anything worked. So it was interesting and exciting. A lot of our investors were excited by it, too. So we all decided to come together and invest in our first movie called "Doing It."

After that, it was just a fun thing. It was different. Storytelling is something I've never had an opportunity to do. It was something very creative—a creative side of me that I never got to use before. So then we started the company and we've done three or four movies since.

Manav: Awesome. Can you talk a little bit about how the Hollywood industry has changed because now it's all streaming, right? Basically a movie barely stays on the theaters for like a week or two. Frankenstein just came out on Netflix and I didn't even know it was in the theaters. It was a great movie on Netflix. Can you talk about how the movie industry is like for investors? How has that changed?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, the industry is changing a lot. People aren't going to theaters as much. Before, fewer studios controlled everything and most movies went to theaters. There was a set model. Now you have a lot of different streamers and you have a lot of movies being made independently. That's good in the sense that a lot of smaller production companies can have the opportunity to make movies.

But it's also harder because you don't have that theatrical model to fall back on in a lot of cases. You have to rely on streaming. It's an interesting time too because a lot of people are not streaming as many movies as they were before. So you have to be really careful with how you structure your investment. Make sure you have pre-sales in place or distribution so your investment is as protected as possible.

Manav: Yeah. One thing I'm really bullish on is Indians are almost two billion of us. They're becoming like the biggest audience on YouTube, on Instagram. You know, it's banned in China but Indians are becoming the biggest audience. I'm noticing movies always have to have that Indian character just so they address that Indian audience. How do you feel about this growing population?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity. I think there's also a really interesting opportunity to merge the two worlds. Bollywood is such a huge industry. Trying to do some sort of Bollywood movie that appeals to both audiences—Bollywood and Hollywood. So I think that's an interesting opportunity that we're exploring right now. But I think it's great that we have such a big audience and I think more streamers and networks are realizing the importance of this growing audience. They're trying to tailor and cater to that audience. So I definitely think that there's a big opportunity right now to focus on the South Asian community as it pertains to movies.

Manav: And what particular genre interests you personally?

Anita Varma Lai: For me personally, I love romcoms. That's like my go-to. But you know, we're kind of open to anything. Comedy, I think movies are a good way to escape reality and some of the things happening. So anything that makes people laugh and feel hopeful, I think those are stories that resonate with me a lot.

Manav: Yeah. I think content is becoming—now you're competing with YouTube. YouTube is competing with Netflix. Netflix is competing with streaming services. So initially as an investor, you just self-fund the project and then you try to sell it to Netflix. Is that how it works?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. That's kind of the model. I remember when Netflix came out, they had like a 12 billion budget to acquire content. I don't know how that's changed because now there's a million streaming platforms.

Manav: Their budgets are definitely not as high as they used to be.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: I think in terms of consumer behavior, what I've noticed in myself is I'm on everything and I'll basically subscribe when something good comes and then I'll unsubscribe when it goes away. So people are just jumping from platform to platform.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. No, I think that's definitely a huge trend in the industry. I think that's what makes it harder for movies right now. If you just look at some of the data, a lot of movies, even movies with A-list stars, have not had good results. It's been one of the worst years this year in terms of profitability. We're trying to figure out exactly what it is. Is it people aren't going to theaters, or is it people aren't watching that streaming service that the movies are on? So I definitely think there's a lot of things happening right now.

Manav: But there's disruption. It's interesting how they've all come up with ads.

Anita Varma Lai: And I think some would argue that the ads model is even more profitable than the higher-tier subscription because it's also like targeted ads. So I'm getting ads relevant to Los Angeles. I think that's a really interesting model where you're getting hyperargeted ads while you're streaming.

Manav: Yeah, I think that's going to be the future.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: And one more thing—I want to ask you, people see your success, they're like, "Hey, Anita, how can I cash in on this boom? Like, what should I invest in? Should I go into stocks? Should I go into investing in land with you? Should I go into investing in something else?" What do you advise on?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot of different things right now as it relates to AI. So there are so many different things you could do. It depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for a liquid investment, stocks like Nvidia or any AI-related stock would make sense. If you have the appetite to be a little more patient, I think land—what we're doing with data centers—is a really good investment.

And then I think there are so many different technologies. Even with film, the film industry, for instance, there's a lot of AI companies looking to revolutionize that industry. So if there's a specific industry you're interested in, there are different companies revolutionizing those industries. So that's also an interesting thing to look at.

Manav: And are you planning to do like a fund for Arizona Land Consulting?

Anita Varma Lai: We are not going to do a fund. We've considered it on and off, but we basically raise per project and that's worked out well for us. We've kind of toyed around with the idea of a fund, but that's not something we're going to do right now. Every time we have a project, we'll raise for that individual project.

Manav: Are any of these deals like subsidized by the government?

Anita Varma Lai: No.

Manav: No. So like the Stargate project—that was the government supporting Intel, SoftBank, OpenAI? What was the government's role in that?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, no, there were definitely incentives. So once we have the hyperscaler or the end user, then we will go to the government and help them get incentives. But just purely from the real estate aspect, we don't have incentives in place. But there are really good incentives for data centers that exist.

Manav: Cool. I want to put you on the hot seat for a second. Let's make some predictions. You can give me 1 year, 5 year, 10 year—whatever. Where will things be with AI or with data centers? Like how many data centers, how big the data center industry will be? Or you can make any kind of prediction you want.

Anita Varma Lai: I think the data center industry will be massive. Probably if I had to guess, like three to five times what it is now. Just talking to a lot of different hyperscalers, they are looking to do massive projects. I just talked to a group that said they need 10 gigawatts in the next five years, which is huge. That's just one company.

Manav: Can you explain more?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. So 10 gigawatts is the equivalent of like 10 cities. That's how much power it would take. So I think the big thing that I'm hopeful for is that we'll figure out good power solutions that are quick, that provide speed to market. And I think once that happens, it's just going to really explode and you're going to see a lot more growth in data centers. As far to quantify it, I don't know exactly how big it'll be, but I anticipate it'll be at least three to five times what it is now.

Manav: Do you invest in India by any chance?

Anita Varma Lai: You know, we have land in India that's been passed down. And I have family in India that we've done a few things with, but it's not a big part of the portfolio.

Manav: Because India is also like growing demographically really crazy. You know, we have the highest young people population in the world and we're seeing a lot of countries like Japan and South Korea aging. They don't even have enough young people to serve the old people. So I'm always curious to see who's investing in India.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, if for people like you who were born here, I don't see you investing there because you just—this is what you know.

Manav: This is what I know. Yeah. I mean, I think India over the last five or 10 years has grown exponentially and I think that'll continue.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: And I've seen India is really behind on AI. Like we don't have our version of any kind of LLM. We don't know if we have any major data centers there. I haven't seen much movement in India.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah.

Manav: Before we wrap up, do you have any advice for young people who want to get into major industries like real estate, like land, data centers? How can they get started in that industry?

Anita Varma Lai: I think what I would say is research whatever industry you want to get into and really learn as much as you can about it. Talk to people that are already in there. And don't rush. I think a lot of people read the news or get caught up in the hype and they'll invest quickly and feel like they're going to miss out on something.

But I think really educating yourself and positioning yourself well is what I would say. And do something that you're passionate about and excited about, not something that you just think you should do. So I think when you're excited about it, then you want to learn more about it. You want to invest more of your time, kind of mastering it. So that's what I would say.

Manav: Yeah. I really think it's important that you enjoy it as well because then you're not going to get bored and quit fast, you know.

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah. And I would also say patience is important. A lot of times you have to think long term. If people don't see results quickly, a lot of times they're like, "This isn't going to work," and they just stop. But I would say just be patient.

Manav: So Anita, why do you think Indians are like the number one highest per capita income ethnicity in America?

Anita Varma Lai: I think it's probably because of our parents because there's no option. Like, Indians have to succeed in school. There's like only so many different degrees that you can go into. A lot of Indians become doctors because their parents want them to. I think it's just that work ethic that's instilled in you from a young age. I think a lot of us are also second generation. Our parents were all immigrants and worked really hard to come here and support us and give us a good life. So I think we're all kind of seeing the benefits of that now.

Manav: And scrappiness.

Anita Varma Lai: And scrappiness. Yeah, that's huge.

Manav: I think in my opinion, the values of Indians are they're scrappy but they also use their family. They're very humble. They don't invest in things that depreciate a lot. When it comes to investing, what would you advise like women specifically? Like how to be an investor as a woman? Like what can they do? When can they start? How early can they start?

Anita Varma Lai: I don't think there are any barriers. I think you can start as early as possible. As soon as you're making money and you have money to put aside, I think you should start investing—even something as easy as the stock market. I think, you know, money compounds a lot over time. So I think, you know, thinking even if it's a small amount, even if you're putting aside $100 or whatever it is, that'll grow into a lot bigger of an amount. So I would say just any age, just start investing and researching whatever it is that you want to look into.

Manav: How do you use different AI tools in your business right now?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think we use AI quite a bit to help us learn different things. For data centers, for instance, there are so many technical things involved. I think AI can be a really good resource to just understand some of the basics and then you verify it with your technical team. But I think AI just gives you more education, more knowledge, and that helps a lot. You're able to scale a little bit faster.

AI also helps with mundane tasks like bookkeeping and things like that. So it kind of frees up a lot more time for the entire team. My entire team is pretty heavily using AI for a lot of different things. I think we're all so much more productive. Instead of having 10 employees, I feel like I have 20 employees.

Manav: Arizona is such a huge state. How do you look for land parcels?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just knowledge of what parcels exist already. We really know who owns what. And then a lot of times we'll just make calls to people like farmers who own land and see if they'll sell. That's how we get a lot of our deals. We mainly buy things off-market. So we don't usually go through brokers when we're looking to acquire. It's mainly just finding the property that we like ourselves and trying to see if we can buy it.

Manav: And because the 2,100 acres is a huge property, right? It's probably the size of West Hollywood or even bigger, I think.

Anita Varma Lai: Possibly. Yeah, possibly.

Manav: Right. So for investors who are watching and listening to this episode who want to get involved with Arizona Land Consulting, how can they get a hold of your team?

Anita Varma Lai: Yeah, I think either through our website or LinkedIn, social media—those are all good ways to get a hold of us.

Manav: So it's arizonalandconsulting.com.

Anita Varma Lai: Yes.

Manav: Awesome. And then people who are interested in watching Anita's films, go to camebackproductions.com.

Anita Varma Lai: Yes.

Manav: And you'll see the movies they've done so far. And I'm really looking forward to it. Can you tell me what's the next big thing for both companies?

Anita Varma Lai: For Camelback Productions, we just got involved with a couple more movies. One is called "Runner" with Owen Wilson, and then the next one is called "Bear Country" with Russell Crowe. So those are two movies that we just got involved with. On Arizona Land Consulting, we're continuing to build out data centers, and then we also have a film studio in the works.

Manav: Wow. Owen Wilson and Russell Crowe, guys, that's incredible. I just saw I just heard Russell Crowe on the Joe Rogan episode like for four hours. He's amazing. And Owen Wilson, I mean, like "Zoolander," everyone loves that guy. So I mean, I'm really looking forward to that and seeing all your success.

Guys, this has been a great episode. Anita, thank you so much for being generous with your time and thank you for coming on the show.

Anita Varma Lai: Of course. Yeah, really enjoyed talking to you.

Manav: Awesome.