Emerald AI Teams with NVIDIA and Partners to Develop Power-Flexible AI Factory and Reference Design to Unlock 100 GW of Grid Capacity and Supercharge the AI Revolution

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A coalition of leaders from the artificial intelligence and energy sectors—including NVIDIA, Emerald AI, EPRI, Digital Realty, and PJM—today announced the world's first power-flexible AI Factory. This facility, the 96MW Aurora AI Factory in Virginia, will serve as the implementation of a new reference design and certification standard for power-flexible AI infrastructure, enabling utilities to unlock existing grid capacity and rapidly connect new AI data centers.

The new power-flexible reference design, if adopted nationwide, could unlock an estimated 100 GW of capacity on the existing electricity system to power AI's growth, equivalent to 20% of total U.S electricity consumption in a year. Flexible AI Factories could more swiftly connect to power grids, accelerating the buildout of AI infrastructure and accelerating AI innovation while advancing power grid reliability and affordability.

"Virginia has long been the leader in data center investment and is committed to promoting economic development and AI competitiveness while at the same time protecting the affordability and reliability of the power grid," said Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. "This pioneering Flexible AI Factory in Manassas represents a critical innovation to supercharge U.S. AI competitiveness while strengthening energy security and affordability for our communities."

The Aurora AI Factory, under construction by Digital Realty in Manassas, Va., and slated to open in the first half of 2026, will be the first facility built to this new standard and will serve as a live innovation hub. It aims to demonstrate how AI compute can align with grid needs to improve the utilization of existing power networks, relieving grid stress during peak demand, and ultimately contribute to a more stable and affordable energy future.

As the demand for generative AI drives unprecedented growth in compute, Emerald AI is working with NVIDIA's development of AI factory infrastructure, that not only advances AI, but also actively participates in stabilizing the grid. At the heart of this architecture is close integration between technology from Emerald AI, an NVIDIA NVentures portfolio company and NVIDIA Inception member, and the NVIDIA AI software stack. Emerald AI's GridLink and Conductor products leverage NVIDIA AI Enterprise components, including NVIDIA NIM microservices, in coordination with the NVIDIA Mission Control, providing a crucial link between the grid's real-time needs and the data center's operational controls, allowing for intelligent workload scheduling and power management to meet both grid needs and stringent AI workload performance standards.

To validate the architecture's effectiveness, the Aurora facility will undergo demonstration testing in collaboration with the EPRI DCFlex Initiative. DCFlex explores how data centers can provide grid services, benefiting utilities, operators, and consumers alike. The effort will test precise, real-time responses to simulated grid stress events. Scenarios will include mimicking demand spikes during summer heatwaves or sudden drops in renewable energy generation. The overall aim of the demonstration is to see whether the data center can intelligently ramp power consumption down to support the grid while using sophisticated workload orchestration to assure acceptable Quality of Service and performance for mission-critical AI training and inference workloads.

NVIDIA and Emerald AI previously conducted a groundbreaking demonstration of AI data center flexibility through EPRI's DCFlex Initiative in Phoenix, Ariz., along with Oracle and the Salt River Project utility. In addition to U.S. trials, Emerald AI will conduct an upcoming demonstration in the United Kingdom with its strategic partners and investors, National Grid and NVIDIA, which was announced as a part of the U.S.-U.K. Tech Partnership in London last month.

"We are thrilled to work with NVIDIA and this distinguished group of industry leaders to demonstrate what's possible when data centers become intelligent, flexible partners to the grid," said Varun Sivaram, Founder and CEO of Emerald AI. "Through our tight integration with NVIDIA's AI factory stack, we are turning grid awareness into actionable data center control. Aurora is the first step in proving that AI can grow sustainably—accelerating AI innovation, harnessing massive spare grid capacity, and safeguarding grid reliability and affordability."

"AI Factories are critical for AI leadership and essential for driving economic development, and they must be built in harmony with the electric grid and the communities they serve," said Marc Spieler, Senior Managing Director of Energy at NVIDIA. "By making Project Aurora the world's first power-flexible AI Factory, Emerald AI is establishing the benchmark architecture that enables NVIDIA's AI platform to function as a massive, flexible energy asset. This model will support communities, unlock underutilized grid capacity, and help make energy more affordable for everyone."

"As part of DCFlex, we are excited for the opportunity to test the viability of the Emerald solution set as collaborators at the Aurora facility," said EPRI Vice President of Electrification and Sustainable Energy Strategy David Porter. "Computational flexibility provides the ability for data centers to dynamically adjust workloads in response to grid conditions, and could play a role ensuring reliable and affordable power for all."

"As the world's demand for AI compute grows, infrastructure innovation must evolve with it," said Chris Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty. "Digital Realty is committed to advancing solutions that integrate compute performance, sustainability, and grid resiliency. The Aurora initiative and Emerald AI's innovative solutions provide a valuable opportunity to explore how flexible power management can support both our customers' growth and the broader energy ecosystem."

The power-flexible AI Factory aims to redefine how data centers are built and operated, ensuring that the exponential growth of artificial intelligence coincides with the sustainable growth of the world's power grids.

About Emerald AI

Emerald AI is the pioneer in AI-driven compute orchestration, transforming energy-intensive data centers into intelligent grid assets. Its AI-powered Conductor platform enables data centers to dynamically adjust power consumption by orchestrating AI workloads, such as training, fine-tuning, and inference, across networks of data centers in real-time. For more information, visit www.emeraldai.co.

SOURCE Emerald AI