Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA, XETRA:NVD) announced on Monday that it and Emerald AI are collaborating with several major US energy companies to develop a new class of “AI factories” designed to operate as flexible assets on the power grid while accelerating the deployment of large-scale computing infrastructure.
The initiative, announced at CERAWeek in Houston, brings together AES, Constellation, Invenergy, NextEra Energy, Nscale Energy & Power and Vistra. The companies plan to combine AI infrastructure design with power generation and grid integration strategies to reduce the time required to bring data center capacity online and to support grid reliability.
The proposed AI factories will be built using NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin DSX reference architecture, including its DSX Flex software, which is intended to allow facilities to adjust electricity usage in response to grid conditions.
Emerald AI’s Conductor platform will coordinate computing workloads with onsite energy resources such as generation and battery storage to help balance power demand while maintaining performance for AI operations.
The companies said the model is designed to address growing electricity demand from AI workloads by enabling facilities to draw power more quickly through co-located generation and storage, then later connect more fully to the grid. These resources could also be used to supply electricity back to the grid during periods of peak demand.
The approach differs from fully off-grid data center models by aiming to keep energy assets connected and responsive to broader system needs. According to the companies, this could improve utilization of existing infrastructure and reduce the need for grid expansion by allowing AI facilities to scale consumption up or down during periods of stress.
The collaboration also reflects increasing interest in pairing large data center loads with flexible energy strategies, as conventional grid interconnection timelines have struggled to keep pace with AI-related investment. Some projects have turned to dedicated generation to speed deployment, though that can limit broader system benefits if not integrated with the grid.
Participating energy providers said they will evaluate generation and infrastructure configurations to support the AI factory model, including hybrid setups that combine grid access with onsite power. The companies indicated that aligning flexible operations with new generation capacity could help meet rising electricity demand while maintaining system reliability.
NVIDIA and Emerald AI said they have tested elements of the concept at five commercial data centers globally over the past year. Commercial-scale deployment of the DSX Flex system is expected to begin later this year at an NVIDIA AI research facility in Virginia.
The partners said they plan to identify and advance additional projects using the architecture, with a focus on accelerating AI infrastructure deployment, improving grid integration and supporting broader energy system capacity.
“AI factories are the engines of the intelligence era, and like any great engine, every system must be designed together — energy, compute, networking and cooling as one architecture,” NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said.
“NVIDIA and Emerald AI are working together to enable a future for AI where performance, efficiency and grid responsiveness can be tapped into immediately.”
Shares of NVIDIA added almost 3% on the news.