Emerald AI Raises $150 Million for AI Data Centers
WASHINGTON, DC – Emerald AI, a company transforming data centers into flexible assets for the power grid, has raised $150 million in an oversubscribed Series A financing giving the company a valuation of $1.05 billion. The round was co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC, joined by a global group of leading financial and strategic investors–the company now counts 12 Fortune Global 500 companies as investors. With five global demonstrations complete, Emerald AI’s technology is now deployed commercially, dynamically flexing power consumption at multi-megawatt, full data center scale. The company plans to use the new capital to scale commercial deployments worldwide with its customers, which include leading AI firms, data center operators, and electric power utilities.
Rather than treating data centers as inflexible consumers of electricity, Emerald AI transforms them into intelligent, responsive assets that are good grid citizens and protect energy affordability and reliability for local communities. The Emerald Conductor software platform dynamically orchestrates AI computational workloads and onsite energy resources to control a facility’s power draw when the grid is stressed while protecting the performance of critical AI workloads. The result is AI infrastructure that strengthens the electric grid rather than straining it.
The financing arrives at an inflection point for American energy. Building new grid infrastructure can take a decade or more, while data centers are projected to account for nearly half of the growth in U.S. electricity demand through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. Data centers running Emerald AI’s software can connect to the grid faster and at larger scale, support grid reliability during periods of stress, and help hold down energy costs for the communities around them. Applied across the AI build-out, this approach can unlock more than 100 gigawatts of untapped capacity in the U.S. alone on the existing United States power grid, power available years before new infrastructure can be built.
“We founded Emerald AI on the conviction that the intelligence driving the AI revolution could solve its own greatest bottleneck: power,” said Emerald AI Founder and CEO Dr. Varun Sivaram. “Our demonstrations around the world proved that data centers can adjust their power use precisely when the grid needs relief, without compromising critical computing workloads. Today that technology runs commercially at full data center scale, and this financing lets us take it everywhere AI is built, so the AI era can accelerate while the grid becomes more reliable and more affordable for the communities it serves.”
The round drew together the companies building the AI era and the companies powering it. Energize Capital, a leading multi-strategy investment firm focused on digital solutions for the energy transition, co-led the financing alongside DCVC, one of the world’s foremost deep tech venture firms, known for backing companies that turn frontier science and engineering into industrial-scale businesses. The round also convened leading financial and strategic investors across North America, Europe, and Asia. Twelve Fortune Global 500 companies are now investors in Emerald AI and sit on the company’s Strategic Advisory Board, working directly with the company on product integration and commercial deployment across the AI and energy ecosystem.
“The binding constraint on AI is no longer chips or capital; it is power, and software is the fastest way through it. Emerald AI has converted world-class research into commercial deployments faster than any company we have seen in this category, and we are proud to co-lead this round as the team defines how AI infrastructure and the grid grow together,” said John Tough, Managing Partner at Energize Capital.
“Emerald AI’s compute workload orchestration platform makes flexibility a permanent feature of how data centers are powered. This turns data centers into grid-responsive assets instead of energy-hogging liabilities—increasing America’s strength in AI, decreasing rises in electrical bills for communities, and protecting the environment. This is deep tech at its best,” said Zachary Bogue, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, DCVC.
Over the past year, Emerald AI has completed five successful demonstrations at commercial data centers in Arizona, Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, and London, working alongside partners including NVIDIA, EPRI, Oracle, Nebius, and National Grid as well as regional utilities and grid operators, proving at live commercial sites that AI data centers can flex their power use on the grid’s schedule.
