By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Palantir Technologies, Nvidia and U.S. utility CenterPoint Energy on Thursday said they are developing a new software platform to accelerate the building of new artificial intelligence data centers.
The new software system will be called Chain Reaction. It will seek to help firms that are building AI data centers, which can consume as much electricity as a small city, with permitting, supply chain and construction challenges. Executives involved in the project said Chain Reaction will use AI tools to help its customers.
The Chain Reaction system will build upon previous work between Palantir and Nvidia, unveiled last month, by using AI to solve logistical challenges for retailers like Lowe’s and other firms.
But the effort is more ambitious because it intends to take into account supply chain and construction efforts at different types of companies, executives involved in the effort said. For example, Nvidia works with chipmaking partners like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. CenterPoint works to secure permits for and construct electrical grid upgrades.
All of those efforts must come together on time for data center projects to move forward.
“It is a very complex supply chain,” said Justin Boitano, a vice president for enterprise AI products at Nvidia, in an interview. “Every ecosystem partner in the world gets touched as we build this rack-scale infrastructure out.”
AI can help because it is good at understanding data that does not always reside in orderly corporate software systems. For example, email conversations between a firm’s procurement department and a vendor might indicate a possible delay that AI can detect and help formulate a response plan, the executives said.
“Whether you’re talking about the energy company, the data center developer, the data center operator, the grid operator, the generation company, everyone’s delays kind of compound on each other, and there’s interdependencies everywhere,” said Tristan Gruska, head of energy infrastructure at Palantir, in an interview.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
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