Phaidra Raises $12 Million to Help Data Centers Increase Compute Infrastructure and Solve the Most Urgent Problem Facing AI Innovation Today
Summary
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. 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. There is simply not enough excess power available in the world to support AIs current growth trajectory without major improvements in data center infrastructure and efficiency. 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 Phaidras third co-founder and COO. 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.