The rapid increase in high-powered GPUs, driven by AI, has
created a looming energy and innovation crisis where data centers
don't have enough power to meet demand for compute; Phaidra uses AI
and reinforcement learning to help data centers scale compute by
optimizing cooling systems and reducing energy costs, which
represent up to 50% of operating expenses
SEATTLE, July 2, 2024
/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Phaidra, an AI-based control system that
helps mission-critical facilities like data centers improve energy
efficiency and increase compute infrastructure, today announced
$12 million in new funding led by
Index Ventures, bringing their total capital raised to $60.5 million. The new funding will allow Phaidra
to accelerate expansion of its autonomous control systems, which
use reinforcement learning to help data centers optimize their
power usage while improving reliability. The announcement comes at
a time when rapid AI innovation relies on scaling compute. This,
combined with a shortage of power and skilled labor needed to
support mission-critical facilities like data centers, is
contributing to a global crisis where AI innovation is constrained
by a lack of compute infrastructure.
"At Phaidra, we're on a mission to
revolutionize how data centers are managed with an AI-powered
control system that not only adapts in real time, but also
continuously learns and improves. The result is cost savings on a
massive scale and more revenue to drive further growth."
The data center industry, the backbone of AI, is growing
rapidly. In the US, which accounts for 40% of the global data
center market, demand is forecast to reach 35GW by 2030, up from
17GW in 2022. But data centers are extremely energy-intensive,
consuming 10-50 times the energy per floor space of a typical
commercial office building. As AI models proliferate, relying on
resource-hungry GPUs, existing markets are struggling to meet
demand. In Northern Virginia, the
world's largest data center market, only 0.2% of grid capacity is
available. In Ireland, data
centers are projected to account for 32% of national electricity
consumption by 2026. There is simply not enough excess power
available in the world to support AI's current growth trajectory
without major improvements in data center infrastructure and
efficiency.
"For as much as we talk about AI and growing compute capacity,
we are ignoring the heart of the problem—power," says Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures. "There
is no AI without sufficient energy. The more time we spent
researching this problem, the more clearly we saw the importance of
investing in solutions that address the downstream effects of
computational growth. Phaidra is a perfect example of the right
team with the right product in the right place, at a unique moment
in time."
Phaidra's AI control platform turns industrial facilities into
intelligent, self-learning systems that combine the precision of
manual methods with the scalability and efficiency offered by AI.
It seamlessly integrates into existing building management systems
to capture real-time data, feed that data into its cloud-based
reinforcement learning agent, and autonomously alter the settings
on the individual components to achieve optimal performance of the
entire system. And unlike traditional control systems, which slowly
degrade and require regular manual programming updates, Phaidra
automatically learns and gets better over time. Phaidra's early
customers have seen efficiency improvements amounting to millions
of dollars in cost savings, which translates to increased power
availability for revenue-generating services.
Phaidra's founding team brings a rare mix of specific
engineering know-how and world-class AI research credentials. While
working as a data center operator at Google, co-founder and CEO
Jim Gao was inspired by the AlphaGo
documentary to explore how machine-learning technology could be
applied to improve efficiency in Google's data centers. His
enthusiasm caught the attention of Phaidra's now-CTO Vedavyas
Panneershelvam, who had worked as a primary research engineer on
AlphaGo. They joined forces at DeepMind, where they developed
AI-powered solutions that reduced the amount of energy needed to
cool Google's data centers by 30%. After publishing their findings,
Gao and Panneershelvam were approached by industrial control
systems engineer Katie Hoffman, who
was leading innovation projects at Trane Technologies and later
joined as Phaidra's third co-founder and COO.
"The data center industry was already growing quickly and is
hitting an inflection point thanks to turbocharged AI demand," says
Jim Gao, co-founder and CEO of
Phaidra. "Every data center operator knows they will need to be
more efficient to meet this growing demand. At Phaidra, we're on a
mission to revolutionize how data centers are managed with an
AI-powered control system that not only adapts in real time, but
also continuously learns and improves. The result is cost savings
on a massive scale and more revenue to drive further growth."
Today, Phaidra's team of about 100 includes top software
engineers and researchers from Google, DeepMind, Meta, and Amazon,
along with specialists from leading engineering firms like Trane
and Johnson Controls. The new funding will support continued
investment in research and development, implementation, and
customer success, along with expanded go-to-market efforts as
Phaidra continues its mission of helping data centers worldwide
optimize their energy usage.
"When you meet the team and talk to their customers, it's clear
that Phaidra is in a unique position to tackle this problem
head-on," says Martin Mignot,
Partner at Index Ventures. "No other startup has the domain
expertise and AI research chops to actually deliver on the promise
of autonomous controls, to say nothing of the impressive
performance and results they've already shown. We're excited to see
Phaidra take the next step as a company and deliver solutions that
are not only critical to data centers' growth and sustainability,
but to the overall growth and sustainability of AI development, the
technology industry, and the world at large."
To learn more, visit phaidra.ai.
About Phaidra
Phaidra is an AI-powered virtual plant operator that helps
mission-critical facilities like data centers improve energy
efficiency, plant stability, and sustainability. Phada's autonomous
control systems use reinforcement learning to make real-time
decisions geared at helping data centers optimize their energy
usage, while automatically learning and getting better over
time.
Led by a former data center operator, reinforcement learning
researcher, and internal control systems engineer, the Phaidra team
brings a unique mix of specific engineering knowledge and AI
research credentials to help data center operators save energy
costs and free up power availability to meet the growing demand for
computing power as a result of rapid AI growth.
Media Contact
Amber D Moore, Moore Communications, 1 5039439381,
amber@moorecom2.com
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SOURCE Phaidra