Utilidata raises $40M more to optimize data center power use
Utilidata Inc. today disclosed that it has raised $40 million in funding from Renown Capital Partners and Keyframe Capital.
The cash infusion comes as an extension to a $60.3 million Series C round the company closed in April. That deal included the participation of Nvidia Corp. Utilidata will use the newly expanded round to expand the adoption of its flagship product, a compact hardware module called Karman (pictured) that data center operators can install in their server racks.
Adding more servers to a data center usually requires the facility’s operator to purchase additional power from the local utility. In many cases, it’s also necessary to build a new power line. Such upgrades are not only expensive but can also take years. According to Utilidata, Karman enables customers to cut costs by making more out of their existing power instead of buying more capacity.
Data center operators historically allocated a fixed amount of electricity to each server rack. That power capacity often is underutilized. For example, a server rack may use less electricity than usual during scheduled maintenance or when it’s running low-complexity customer workloads. Server clusters used for artificial intelligence inference are especially prone to power draw fluctuations.
