Industrial AI company Phaidra has raised $12 million for its data center cooling control system.
As reported by TechCrunch, the startup secured the additional funding from Index Ventures and will use the money for R&D, implementation, and go-to-market efforts.
Founded in 2019, the company offers an AI control system for mission-critical operations such as data centers and helps manage power consumption. Its AI agent, known as Alfred, acts as a virtual plant operator, managing things like temperatures, pressures, and flow rates.
“The data center industry is in the midst of an arms race to build new capacity wherever land and power are available,” Gao told TechCrunch. “Phaidra’s service can deliver a more stable cooling system that runs on less energy.”
Seattle-based Phaidra’s platform connects as a supervisory layer on top of the building management system (BMS) or SCADA system, analyzes sensor trends in real-time, identifies the optimal strategy for operating the cooling system, and sends instructions back to the BMS for automatic implementation. It is trained on the historical telemetry data of the specific site it is managing and continues to learn during operation.
Phaidra was founded and is led by Jim Gao, Vedavyas Panneershelvam, and Katie Hoffman of Google, Deepmind, and Trane, respectively.
CEO Gao previously founded and led the energy team at DeepMind, which aimed to use the company’s AI expertise to optimize energy grids. Prior to DeepMind, he was a technical lead for Google’s Data Centers.
He was involved in the DeepMind system deployed at one of Google’s data centers that was able to drive 40 percent greater energy efficiency within an already optimized plant facility. The unit also helped improve efficiency at wind farms serving Google.
Gao left in August 2019 and Panneershelvam in May 2020 – a few months after the departure of DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who eventually joined Microsoft. DeepMind reportedly closed its energy unit in 2020 after three years. The closure came after the unit reportedly failed to secure a deal with the UK’s National Grid despite months of work together.
“We have our first international deployments up and running, and expect the higher energy cost regions of the world to fuel a lot of our growth in 2025,” Gao said. “Enterprises are seeking ways to do more with what they have … We’re well-positioned to execute our growth plan over the next two years.”
The company has raised $60.5 million to date. Other investors include the Callab Fund, Helena (which led Phaidra’s Series A funding round), Flying Fish Partners, Character, S32, Ahren, and GSFutures. Suleyman and Mark Cuban are also investors.
“This was an opportunistic raise that enabled Phaidra to bring Index Ventures to our board and cap table,” Gao said. “Although Phaidra was not actively seeking additional capital, we are especially excited about Index Venture’s scaling expertise as Phaidra expands rapidly with our industrial customers, particularly in the data center industry.”
