Emerald AI officially launched with $24.5 million in seed funding to address one of the most pressing challenges in AI infrastructure: the lack of power grid capacity to support exponential data center growth. Led by former energy executive and physicist Dr. Varun Sivaram, the startup’s core product—Conductor—is a software platform that enables data centers to modulate power usage in real time while sustaining AI workload performance. The platform turns data centers from static energy consumers into flexible, grid-responsive assets.
Backed by Radical Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), and prominent figures including Jeff Dean, Fei-Fei Li, John Doerr, and John Kerry, Emerald AI aims to unlock up to 100 GW of untapped grid capacity by better utilizing existing infrastructure. The company demonstrated its platform’s capabilities in a Phoenix-based pilot with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, NVIDIA, and Salt River Project, showing a 25% reduction in power use for three hours during a critical peak load event, all without compromising AI performance.
Joining Sivaram on the leadership team are Professor Ayse Coskun of Boston University, known for her work on adaptive computing; cloud infrastructure veteran Shayan Sengupta (ex-Amazon, Intel); and energy transition expert Aroon Vijaykar. The company is preparing for scaled-up demonstrations across the U.S., hoping to define the benchmark for grid-responsive computing amid AI’s explosive power demands.
- $24.5M seed round led by Radical Ventures, with backing from NVentures, CRV, AMPLO, and Neotribe
- Leadership team includes experts from energy, cloud, and high-performance computing
- First demo showed 25% power reduction in an OCI/NVIDIA GPU cluster during peak grid load
- Emerald AI’s Conductor orchestrates workloads to reduce data center grid strain in real time
- Backers include Jeff Dean, Fei-Fei Li, John Doerr, John Kerry, Malcolm Turnbull, and Tom Steyer
“To unshackle AI technology progress from power constraints, Emerald AI transforms data centers from grid liabilities into flexible assets,” said Dr. Varun Sivaram, CEO of Emerald AI.
