NVIDIA and Emerald AI Join Leading Energy Companies to Pioneer Flexible AI Factories as Grid Assets

NVIDIA and Emerald AI have announced a collaboration with major energy players, including AES Corporation, Constellation Energy, Invenergy, NextEra Energy, Nscale Energy & Power, and Vistra Corp to develop a new generation of AI factories. These facilities are designed to connect to the power grid more quickly, generate valuable AI-driven outputs, and function as flexible energy assets that can actively support grid stability.

By uniting leaders across technology, energy, and infrastructure, the initiative highlights how cross-industry collaboration can accelerate AI innovation in the United States while strengthening the reliability of the national power system.

The next-generation AI factories will be built using NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory reference design, which incorporates the DSX Flex software library to enable seamless integration with power grid services. To speed up deployment, these facilities can initially rely on co-located energy generation and storage as bridge power, forming hybrid AI factories. Over time, these same energy resources can be leveraged to supply electricity back to the grid, enhance interconnection speed, and support overall grid resilience—bringing AI capacity online faster while delivering broader value to communities and customers.

The DSX reference architecture also supports flexible AI factories that operate without on-site energy resources, enabling larger-scale and faster grid connections where needed.

Meanwhile, Emerald AI’s Conductor platform will manage computational flexibility alongside on-site generation, battery storage, and other behind-the-meter resources. This orchestration allows for precise, grid-responsive power management while maintaining high service quality for AI workloads. It also helps operators meet power targets, protect critical computing tasks, reduce reliance on temporary bridge power, and enable faster, larger interconnections—ultimately lowering the need to size infrastructure for peak demand and easing long-term system costs.

“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,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA and Emerald AI are working together to enable a future for AI where performance, efficiency and grid responsiveness can be tapped into immediately.”

“AI factories are too valuable to be treated as either passive loads or permanent islands,” said Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI. “They produce tremendously valuable AI tokens and knowledge, and with DSX Flex, they can also provide measurable relief back to the grid. Emerald Conductor orchestrates compute flexibility alongside onsite energy resources to support the grid, so projects can connect sooner, preserve quality of service for AI tenants and ultimately strengthen the power system around them.”

Building AI Factories That Strengthen the Grid

Today’s power systems are designed to meet peak demand, yet remain underutilized for much of the day. Power-flexible AI factories offer a way to unlock up to 100 gigawatts of capacity across the United States by combining optimized infrastructure design, better use of existing assets, and—where needed—new energy generation. These facilities can also adjust operations during periods of grid stress, reducing the need for large-scale grid expansion while maintaining reliability.

AI factories transform electricity into high-value outputs such as AI tokens, models, and intelligence—making them one of the most valuable forms of modern infrastructure. Realizing this potential will require not only advances in computing, but also new approaches to planning, building, and operating energy systems.

As many large-scale AI projects accelerate, developers are increasingly turning to co-located power generation and storage due to slow conventional grid interconnection timelines. However, keeping these resources permanently isolated from the grid can lead to inefficiencies, including underutilized assets, higher long-term costs per AI output, and missed opportunities to support overall grid stability.

To address this, companies such as AES Corporation, Constellation Energy, Invenergy, NextEra Energy, Nscale Energy & Power, and Vistra Corp are committed to expanding generation capacity to meet growing demand. Working alongside NVIDIA and Emerald AI, they will evaluate optimized energy solutions—including hybrid models with co-located generation—to accelerate deployment and create value for the broader grid.

By pairing large AI workloads with flexible operations, new generation capacity, and intelligent control systems, this approach enhances grid reliability. It also supports AI factories that are connected to the grid from the outset, while still allowing the use of co-located energy resources when available.

“Grid flexibility will be key to addressing AI’s unprecedented demand while supporting system reliability,” said Andrés Gluski, CEO of AES. “At AES, we are enabling next-generation AI infrastructure to accelerate our clients’ time to power. DSX Flex embeds flexibility from the outset, allowing AI infrastructure to operate as a grid asset that supports faster, more efficient growth.”

“As the largest producer of clean energy in the U.S., we know data centers have enormous potential to unlock energy infrastructure investment, job creation and benefits for our communities,” said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation. “They can also address the need for additional capacity through demand response. We don’t have a supply problem — we have a peak problem. By effectively using what we already have, including power-flexible AI factories that also enable AI-powered demand response, we can accommodate new load growth more efficiently.”

“AI is changing how we’re thinking about energy, and our customers need power fast, with the ability to scale over time,” said Michael Polsky, founder and CEO of Invenergy. “Combining near-term generation solutions with a path to full grid connection and flexible operations is an innovative and efficient way to help our customers meet their energy needs faster while keeping the system reliable.”

“To meet unprecedented new electricity demand while maintaining a reliable and resilient grid, now more than ever, we need to add generation resources,” said John Ketchum, chairman, president and CEO of NextEra Energy. “We also need technologies that allow new demand and related generation to integrate into the grid quickly and at the lowest possible cost. NextEra looks forward to working with NVIDIA and Emerald AI to help design efficient energy campuses and flexible AI factories that economically support rising demand while further strengthening America’s energy infrastructure.”

“We are committed to stabilizing the grid and helping West Virginia families and businesses have ready access to the power they need,” said Daniel Shapiro, chief power and energy officer of Nscale Energy & Power. “When we’re interconnected, we’ll be there on the grid’s highest-demand days to supply electricity back — that’s what 2 gigawatts scaling to 8 gigawatts of onsite generation means. Nscale’s Monarch campus is a power asset for West Virginia, not a load on it.”

“U.S. grids are designed to handle the highest-peak demand scenarios, which make up very few hours during the year,” said Jim Burke, president and CEO of Vistra. “AI factories that have the flexibility to adjust their power use with grid conditions are a faster solution, especially with co-located generation, for better utilization of the current grid infrastructure. This helps boost speed while we continue to build out more infrastructure for the long term.”

Over the past year, Emerald AI and NVIDIA have conducted AI power flexibility trials across five commercial data centers worldwide. Looking ahead, DSX Flex is set to be deployed at commercial scale later this year at the NVIDIA AI Factory Research Center in Virginia, which is planned to be among the world’s first power-flexible AI factories powered by NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin infrastructure.

The companies also plan to identify and advance new project opportunities based on the Vera Rubin DSX reference design with DSX Flex. These initiatives aim to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure deployment, enable faster and larger grid interconnections, and open new pathways for energy generation development. In addition, they are expected to expand the economic benefits of AI and energy investments for local communities, strengthen United States energy leadership, and support the broader adoption of AI over time.