Data Centers Aren't Killing the Grid. They Could SAVE It.

October 8, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Data Centers Aren't Killing the Grid. They Could SAVE It.

This Week in AI

When a soccer match hits halftime in London, a gigawatt of load spikes onto the grid as millions of tea kettles switch on simultaneously. That moment—not a hot summer day in Phoenix—was the test case for a new idea about how AI data centers can stop being the grid's problem and start being its solution.

Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI, has spent two decades in energy. For most of that time, demand was flat. Then AI arrived. Between now and 2028, America wants to plug in 70 gigawatts of new AI data centers. Sivaram estimates we'll actually manage about 30. The gap isn't about land or construction workers. It's about power.

The Grand Bargain: Interruptible Service

The core insight is simple but runs against decades of electric utility practice. Today, the grid sells a single product: always-on power, no throttling, no exceptions. That product has worked well for homes and factories. But data centers are different from any load the grid has ever seen. They're big, they're controllable electronically, and they can shift work between locations at the speed of light.

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of This Week in AI

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **Introduction: The Data Center Energy Crisis** - Varun Sivaram, CEO of Emerald AI, joins to discuss how data centers can become grid assets instead of liabilities.
2 (01:29) **The Core Thesis: Flexibility Over Efficiency** - Emerald AI's goal is not to make AI use less energy, but to make data centers flexible grid participants.
3 (03:12) **How Flexibility Works: Software, Not Just Batteries** - The solution involves intelligent software orchestration, not just hardware like massive battery banks.
4 (04:38) **The Broken Grid Communication Problem** - There is no standard for grids to communicate with data centers, often relying on manual phone calls.
5 (06:12) **Intelligent Throttling: Preserving Quality of Service** - The software intelligently chooses which workloads to throttle to avoid noticeable impacts on users.
6 (08:50) **The Grand Bargain: A New Class of Service** - A new "interruptible" or "non-firm" service agreement is needed from both the grid and the AI industry.
7 (12:44) **The Highway Analogy: Avoiding the Ninth Lane** - Building new grid infrastructure is like adding a new lane to a highway during peak rush hour.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Thanks to our partner, @Paypal! Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.launch.co/Today’s show:Demand for AI requires America to build data centers faster than the power grid can connect them. Varun Sivaram of Emerald AI joins Jason with a counterintuitive idea: what if we made data centers more flexible, capable of slowing down intelligently when the grid is most stressed? (That only happens a few hundred hours each year.)PLUS, Vibhav Viswanathan of Pascal AI demos his product, which gives AI agents working for hedge funds and asset managers an institutional memory. Why can't Claude or ChatGPT do the same job? And what happens to analysts when bots handle the back office admin?Guests:Varun Sivaram on X: https://x.com/vsiv Emerald AI: https://www.emeraldai.co/Vibhav Viswanathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vibhav-viswanathan-13550015/ Pascal AI: https://www.pascalailabs.com/Relevant Links:Emerald AI's $150M Series A (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/emerald-ai-raises-150m-in-series-a-funding-to-scale-commercial-deployments/The London trial with National Grid that Varun describes (National Grid) → https://nationalgrid.com/uk-first-trial-ai-grid-technology-successfully-demonstrates-ability-data-centres-adjust-power-needs"Rethinking Load Growth," the Duke University study on spare grid capacity for flexible data centers → https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/rethinking-load-growthThe AI Energy Management Alliance from Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA (NVIDIA) → https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-energy-management-alliance/The power-flexible Aurora AI Factory in Manassas, Virginia (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-to-deploy-emerald-ais-orchestration-software-at-96mw-aurora-data-center-in-manassas-virginiaTexas pauses data center grid connections (Utility Dive) → https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-hits-pause-data-center-interconnections/827046/Emerald AI careers → https://www.emeraldai.co/careersPascal AI's $3.1M seed round (Unite AI) → https://www.unite.ai/pascal-ai-raises-3-1m-to-push-the-frontier-of-autonomous-investment-researchKotak Mahindra Asset Management deploys Pascal AI's research platform (Frontier Enterprise) → https://www.frontier-enterprise.com/kotak-mahindra-amc-deploys-pascal-ais-agentic-research-platform/Jane Street plans its own AI data center, which Jason brings up (DatacenterDynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/quant-trading-firm-jane-street-plans-data-center-report/What "Tiger Cub" hedge funds are, like the Pascal customer Vibhav mentions (Wall Street Prep) → https://wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/tiger-cubsS&P Capital IQ Pro, one of the licensed data feeds Pascal plugs into → https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/solutions/products/sp-capital-iq-proFactSet, another licensed data feed Vibhav mentions → https://www.factset.com/Timestamps:0:00