Emerald AI announced a $25 million strategic expansion round as it looks to address one of the most pressing constraints facing the artificial intelligence industry: energy availability. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners, with participation from a wide range of financial and strategic investors, including Amplo, Eaton, GE Vernova, IQT, Lowercarbon Capital, NVentures, Radical Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Samsung, and Siemens.
The new funding brings the company’s total capital raised to approximately $68 million in just 16 months since its founding.
The company is leveraging this capital to accelerate the deployment of its software platform, which aims to transform AI data centers into flexible, grid-supportive assets.
Emerald AI is focused on solving a growing mismatch between rapid AI infrastructure expansion and limited power grid capacity. Industry projections suggest that nearly 50 gigawatts of new data center capacity could come online in the United States over the next several years, but only about half may be able to connect to the grid under current constraints. The company’s approach centers on enabling “power-flexible” AI operations that can dynamically adjust energy consumption in response to grid conditions.
At the core of this strategy is Emerald AI’s Conductor platform, which orchestrates AI workloads, integrates onsite energy resources, and interfaces with the broader power system. By enabling both temporal flexibility, such as slowing or pausing non-urgent workloads, and spatial flexibility, such as shifting workloads across locations, the platform allows data centers to act as responsive participants in the energy grid rather than fixed, high-demand consumers.
Alongside the funding announcement, Emerald AI launched its Strategic Advisory Board, which includes seven Fortune 500 companies. The board is designed to bridge the gap between the technology and energy sectors, bringing together stakeholders across the value chain to accelerate adoption of flexible AI infrastructure.
The company has already demonstrated its technology across multiple commercial data centers in locations including Arizona, Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, and London. These deployments showed that power usage can be reduced significantly during periods of grid stress without compromising performance or latency requirements. In one recent demonstration in London, electricity demand was reduced by more than one-third in under a minute while critical workloads continued uninterrupted.
Emerald AI is now moving toward commercial-scale deployment. In collaboration with partners including NVIDIA, Digital Realty, EPRI, and PJM Interconnection, the company is working toward launching a large-scale, power-flexible AI facility in Virginia later in 2026.
The broader vision is to reposition AI infrastructure from being one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand into a stabilizing force for the grid. By aligning energy consumption with available capacity and enabling real-time responsiveness, Emerald AI aims to reduce infrastructure strain, lower costs for communities, and support continued AI growth without requiring massive grid overhauls.
KEY QUOTES
“Energy is the most intractable bottleneck to the advancement of AI. Over the next three years, the AI industry seeks to bring nearly 50GW of data centers online in the United States, but S&P Global forecasts that just half of that can be plugged into the power grid. Emerald AI was founded to help address this critical challenge, and I am thrilled to announce today that we have raised $25 million in a Strategic Expansion Round, bringing our total funding to $68 million in just 16 months since our founding. This round provides us with the capital to scale solutions aimed at addressing this power crunch.”
“AI Factories Belong on the Grid—and Can Strengthen It. As AI companies face decade-long interconnection queues and complex regulatory structures, the industry is understandably seeking to go off-grid—up to and including into space—potentially making AI even more expensive and technically complex to power. The best, most scalable, and most affordable way to maximize AI deployment is to use every last MWh of energy from the terrestrial power grid, alongside other innovative solutions. The key to that is power flexibility.”
“Thought leadership and strategic capital mean little without execution. From day one, Emerald AI has been focused on proving that power-flexible AI is a tangible reality. I am incredibly proud of our team for successfully completing five live demonstrations at commercial data centers over the last year across Arizona, Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, and London.”
Varun Sivaram, Founder And CEO, Emerald AI
