How Schneider Electric is fueling Nvidia’s infrastructure growth

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Despite its name, Schneider Electric does not generate electricity. It is an energy management company, mixing electrification and digitization together so customers know exactly where their energy is consumed and can optimize their energy usage in real time. 

It’s the largest energy management provider for data centers, which represent about a quarter of its business, and it’s working with chipmaker and Wall Street powerhouse Nvidia. 

Schneider announced in June it would collaborate with Nvidia to serve the growing demand for sustainable, AI-ready infrastructure. This was a research and development partnership for power, cooling, controlling and high-density rack systems to enable the next generation of AI factories across Europe and eventually beyond. 

Then last month, Schneider announced new, highly technical and detailed data center blueprints, developed with Nvidia, that the company says will significantly accelerate construction timelines as well as help operators adopt AI-ready infrastructure. 

The first part of that is integrated power management and liquid cooling control systems. The second is a framework for the development of Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips. 

“We make sure, at every generation they come out with, that the solution we put together will minimize the consumption of energy to power their installations,” said Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman of Schneider Electric. “Those chips, which are powering AI or enabling AI, are chips which are consuming a lot of energy, and you need to cool them directly on the chip by bringing liquid directly on the chip.”

The partnership could prove extremely lucrative, especially given Nvidia’s recent $100 billion investment in OpenAI. More data centers will mean more demand not just for energy but energy management. 

“We are entering a new era of accelerated computing, where integrated intelligence across power, cooling and operations will redefine data center architectures,” said Scott Wallace, director of data center engineering at Nvidia, in a release about the new Schneider designs.

In something of a positive feedback loop, AI is helping to increase energy efficiency, even as it sucks up more energy. This is not just in data centers, but in all of the built environment. 

“To make it very simple, AI can help gain in efficiency four times more than it consumes, at least four to nine times more,” said Tricoire.

Power…