The digital infrastructure development side of German technology giant Siemens AG is investing in artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled data center energy management firm Emerald AI.
The strategic investment by Siemens Smart Infrastructure also is centered around a working partnership with Emerald AI to expand the company’s data center ecosystem with next-gen energy flexibility technologies. As part of the combination, Siemens Smart Infrastructure and Emerald AI also will integrate Fluence battery energy storage solutions into the data center offering.
“Scaling AI infrastructure isn’t just a computing challenge, it is equally an energy and infrastructure challenge,” said Ruth Gratzke, President of Siemens Smart Infrastructure U.S., in a statement. “As demand for AI processing accelerates, data center growth is increasingly constrained by grid capacity and interconnection timelines. Addressing this requires complex coordination across both the digital and energy domains.”
The Emerald AI collaboration will also bring in AI engineering modeling with startup PhysicsX. Altogether, the integration of energy flexibility, data engineering and AI is designed to build a reliable ecosystem for data center operators.
Emerald AI was launched last year with a $24.5 million seeding fund round by NVentures, the venture capital arm of chip and processing unit maker NVIDIA.
The PhysicsX capability applies physics-based AI to the design and operation of power distribution at data centers. For example, using these types of AI models can help engineers predict thermal behavior in complex busway systems in real time.
“Siemens is actively investing in key technologies and partnerships to expand the ecosystem required to scale AI responsibly and support the next generation of data center infrastructure,” Gratzke added.
Siemens Industry Inc. will be exhibitor at the upcoming Microgrid Knowledge Conference happening May 4-6 at the Renaissance SeaWorld in Orlando. Devin Geckeler, microgrid solution architect at Siemens, also will be speaking at the event in the session on “Streamlining Customer Behind-the-Meter Microgrid Interconnections.”
The North American Electric Reliability Council is warming of grid capacity shortfalls by 2028 due to skyrocketing AI and data center demand growth. Forecasters across the industry are predicting as much or more than 125 GW of new computing energy load by the early 2030s.
These feared power bottlenecks are driving many hyperscalers and other data center developers to work on potential off-grid and co-located energy projects.