GridCare raises $64M to speed up AI data center projects
GridCare Inc., a startup that helps data center operators more quickly connect their facilities to the electrical grid, has raised $64 million in funding.
Early Nvidia Corp. backer Sutter Hill Ventures led the Series A round. GridCare stated in its announcement of the deal on Thursday that billionaire tech investor John Doerr, power utility National Grid plc and Stanford University were also among the participants. GridCare spun off from Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator program early last year.
One of the most time-consuming tasks involved in building a data center is sourcing electricity for the servers that it hosts. In many cases, the facility’s operator must finance new power lines to link the campus to the local utility’s grid. It’s often also necessary to invest in auxiliary components such as transformers, which lower the voltage of electricity to a usable level before it’s delivered to servers.
The largest data center projects require utilities to add new power generation capacity. That can extend a facility’s launch time frame by years.
