Nvidia and startup Emerald AI are working with major U.S. energy companies to develop a new class of data centers designed to flex their power use and connect to the grid faster. The effort reflects a growing push to turn AI data centers from massive power consumers into more dynamic grid participants, as electricity demand from AI surges. Companies including AES, Constellation, NextEra Energy, Invenergy and Vistra plan to collaborate on energy and infrastructure approaches to support so-called "flexible AI factories".
By bringing together technology, energy and infrastructure leaders, the collaboration demonstrates how companies across industries can convene to support AI innovation in the United States, while building a more reliable power system for Americans.
These next-generation AI factories will harness the new NVIDIA Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design, which includes the DSX Flex software library for connecting AI factories to power-grid services.
For accelerated deployment, the factories can use co-located energy generation and storage as bridge power for hybrid AI factories, then later harness these resources to flexibly supply the grid, accelerate AI factory interconnection and support the broader power system. This approach helps bring AI capacity online faster while creating broader value for customers and communities.
Emerald AI’s Conductor platform will orchestrate computational flexibility alongside onsite generation, batteries and other behind-the-meter resources to deliver precise, grid-responsive power flexibility while ensuring quality of service for AI compute tenants. This coordination helps operators meet power targets, protect priority workloads, shorten time on bridge power, and support larger and faster interconnections. It can also help reduce the need for infrastructure to be sized around peaks, easing pressure on future system costs.
“AI factories are the engines of the intelligence era, and like any great engine, every system must be designed together — energy, compute, networking and cooling as one architecture,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA and Emerald AI are working together to enable a future for AI where performance, efficiency and grid responsiveness can be tapped into immediately.”
“AI factories are too valuable to be treated as either passive loads or permanent islands,” said Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI. “They produce tremendously valuable AI tokens and knowledge, and with DSX Flex, they can also provide measurable relief back to the grid. Emerald Conductor orchestrates compute flexibility alongside onsite energy resources to support the grid, so projects can connect sooner, preserve quality of service for AI tenants and ultimately strengthen the power system around them.”
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