This opportunity is funded by Public AI and fiscally sponsored by Metagov.

Location: Maine, hybrid
Commitment: Fractional contract, 8 days per month
Start date: ASAP

A team incubated by Public AI is building the Maine Open Compute Services Initiative (MOCSI), the first community-owned AI data center in the United States. MOCSI is a community-scale facility (on the order of 8–16 GPUs and under $1M capex) with local ownership, an explicit public-interest focus, and an open, auditable service stack. As the fractional CEO, you will lead this founding team through the raise, establishment, and execution of MOCSI’s mission: to provide affordable, community-owned AI to Maine.

You will

  • Close anchor customer MOUs. Bring in customers, in particular written LOIs/MOUs from Maine institutions (and any out-of-state anchors that strengthen the raise).
  • Close the raise. Most likely: a blend of philanthropic, state, federal, and aligned private capital. As part of this, you will maintain final responsibility for the pitch deck, business model, and financial model that will serve as core tools of the raise.
  • Form the entity. Select and stand up the legal vehicle with counsel, including governance structure, board composition, and the community-ownership provisions that make “community-owned” a legal fact rather than a slogan.
  • Advance site selection and negotiate the site agreement. Diligence candidate locations, then lock power, cooling, interconnection, and expansion options with the chosen host.
  • Lead the founding team of MOCSI. The founding team of MOCSI is composed of leads working across product, infrastructure, community, and legal/governance. Your role is not execute across all these fronts, but to help prioritize, unblock, and represent externally.
  • Define the permanent leadership structure of MOCSI once capital has been raised, and recruit into it.
  • Build the political base. Maine’s congressional delegation, the Governor’s office, Maine Connectivity Authority, municipal officials, and the regional business community.
  • Publish the recipe. Bylaws, MOU templates, the financial model, site diligence, power negotiations, and more all described in an open publication.

You will have wide latitude. We need someone who can hold a project together before there is an organization to hold it.

What we’re looking for

Required

  • You have built and run infrastructure in a capital-intensive or regulated sector. Telecom, broadband, energy, water, or datacenter.
  • You have stood up and raised money for a new entity from nothing: incorporation, board, first customers, first hires.
  • You have real relationships in Maine institutions, politics, and business, and you can get a meeting this month.
  • Comfort making the case for philanthropic and state funding, and arguing why this is an advantage of the model.

Most important: intrinsic motivation.

MOCSI, at its core, is a public-goods project. It is about creating something that will serve the people of Maine, and communicating that to our many stakeholders. The compensation is fractional and the equity story, if any, is deliberately capped. If you are here for the equity upside or because you just want to run a data center, this is the wrong role.

Nice to have

  • Cooperative, mutual, municipal, or member-owned governance experience
  • Middle-mile, open-access network, or rural broadband background
  • Working knowledge of GPU infrastructure economics, colocation, and inference workloads
  • Federal and state grant experience, particularly EDA, DOE, or NTIA programs
  • Existing relationships with Maine economic-development or site-host institutions

This role will operate as an independent contractor engaged by Public AI (hosted via Metagov), transitioning to employment with the MOCSI entity upon its formation and adequate capitalization.

Send a note to josh@publicai.co. Tell us what you have built, who you can call in Augusta, and why community-owned compute matters to you.

We read every application.

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