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Data center power startup Emerald AI raises $150M at $1.05B valuation

By: IDCNOVARegion: North America
Emerald AI, a startup developing software to make data center power consumption more flexible, announced Monday that it has raised $150 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at $1.05 billion. The round was co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC, with participation from a broad roster of strategic investors including Nvidia, Samsung Ventures, Siemens, GE Vernova, RWE, Aramco Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, JERA Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Radical Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Lowercarbon Capital, Emerson Collective, Earthshot Ventures and General Catalyst's scout fund. Individual investors John Doerr and Tom Steyer also participated.

Emerald will use the capital to scale up commercial deployments worldwide. Its core product, Emerald Conductor, is software that schedules artificial intelligence workloads against the batteries and generation available onsite. When the local grid is stressed, the system reduces power draw at the facility while keeping critical training and inference jobs running. In effect, the utility gains a site it can dispatch like a generator.

The funding comes as AI data center demand outpaces the pace of new transmission development, which typically requires a decade of permitting and construction. The International Energy Agency projects that the data center sector will drive nearly half of U.S. electricity demand growth through 2030. Emerald estimates that flexible operation could unlock more than 100 gigawatts of capacity on the existing U.S. system, years before new construction could deliver it.

Over the past year, Emerald ran five demonstrations on live commercial load at sites in Arizona, Illinois, Virginia, Oregon and London, with partners including Nvidia, Oracle and National Grid, plus regional utilities and grid operators. Founder and Chief Executive Varun Sivaram said the demonstrations showed data centers can "adjust their power use precisely when the grid needs relief, without compromising critical computing workloads." That technology now runs commercially at full data center scale, he said in the funding release.

Commercial deployment followed in California, where a data center flexed its entire load during a stretch of peak demand. Utilities, AI companies and data center operators are now on the customer list, and Emerald has more large installations due before the end of the year. Silicon Valley Power, the municipal utility serving Santa Clara, California, has established a Flexible Load Interconnection Program with Emerald, offering faster and larger interconnection to data centers that commit to verified, dispatchable flexibility.

A larger test is coming in Manassas, Virginia, where Emerald is working with Digital Realty Trust and Nvidia on the nearly 100-megawatt Vera Rubin AI Research Factory, expected online later this year. Dominion Energy, PJM Interconnection and the Electric Power Research Institute are supporting the testing effort. Emerald launched publicly in July 2025 out of Washington, D.C., and investors have now committed more than $220 million to the company. Twelve of its backers are Fortune Global 500 companies, all serving on a strategic advisory board that collaborates with Emerald on product integration.