AI giant Nvidia and boldface names in tech and finance are backing a new startup that aims to transform data centers into flexible grid assets instead of liabilities.

Why it matters: Emerald AI is emerging from stealth today as the AI surge risks straining grids and hyperscalers are limited by power availability.

Driving the news: Radical Ventures led the $24.5 million seed round with participation from Nvidia, AMPLO and others.

• Individual backers include ex-climate envoy John Kerry; Kleiner Perkins chair John Doerr; Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, and pioneering AI scientist Fei-Fei Li, to name a few.
• The founder and CEO is Varun Sivaram, a physicist whose prior stops include Ørsted and serving as a senior Kerry aide.

State of play: The software shifts AI computational loads to match regional grids' needs.

• That eases stress when demand is peaking and lessens pressure for new generation projects and grid infrastructure.

Catch up quick: A recent field test in Phoenix with Oracle, Nvidia, the Electric Power Research Institute and the regional utility Salt River Project put the software through its paces.

• It showed that Emerald AI can reduce AI workload's power consumption by 25% over three hours during a "grid stress event," while ensuring acceptable performance, Emerald AI and Nvidia said.

The big picture: "Imagine a future in which AI data centers become an important solution, if not the most important silver bullet solution to better utilize our existing electricity system, which actually makes rates go down, not up," Sivaram said in an interview.

• Hyperscalers can avoid waits for interconnection that can stretch five to 10 years, because the software makes new power availability less of a constraint, he said.

How it works: Integrating Emerald AI's software with Nvidia chips and data center controls enables instant changes in AI workloads at and between facilities.

• That can mean redirecting queries away from data centers where local power use is spiking, or briefly slowing workloads, such as the training of large academic models.

The intrigue: There's growing interest in data centers' flexibility to lower power use for limited stretches.

• Duke University's Tyler Norris, lead author of a buzzy recent paper, is among Emerald AI's advisers.
• How much of this "curtailment-enabled headroom" is available and tapped could affect how much new gas-fired power is built.

Sivaram is seeking a "paradigm shift" that lets data centers become "the ultimate virtual power plant."

• The tech can also help integrate more renewables onto grids, execs say.
• Variable renewables are "easier to add to a grid if that grid has lots of shock absorbers that can shift with changes in power supply," Ayse Coskun, Emerald AI's chief scientist, said in a statement.
• "Data centers can become some of those shock absorbers."

What's next: A larger test in Phoenix, followed by more demos elsewhere in the country over the next six months.

• Emerald AI is eyeing commercial deployment in early 2026, Sivaram said.

Republicans in Congress are on the verge of kneecapping America's renewable energy boom, prompting urgent 11th-hour warnings from climate analysts, China hawks and industry titans like Elon Musk.

Why it matters: Critics say President Trump's megabill amounts to an abject surrender in the battle for the future of energy. The consequences for U.S. jobs, electricity prices and the AI arms race could reverberate for decades.

• The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which would gut key Biden-era clean energy subsidies, could reach Trump's desk as soon as this week.

Threat level: Jason Bordoff, who leads Columbia University's energy think tank, said the bill could hinder the U.S. in the AI race with China.

• "Winning that race is going to require that we increase electricity generation capacity in the U.S. really fast — and by a lot," he told Axios.
• That soaring demand is creating tailwinds for natural gas and nuclear, but even those "great" sources can't ramp up fast enough to meet the urgent near-term needs of data centers and AI infrastructure, Bordoff said.

"We need all the tools in the toolkit to meet rapidly rising electricity demand very quickly to win a competitive race with China for leadership in AI, and this bill makes that harder by throwing sand in the gear to renewable energy," he argued.

The other side: Many Republicans say the government should prioritize energy sources that can run around the clock and argue the IRA showered wasteful subsidies on politically favored industries.

What we're watching: Several GOP senators are pushing an amendment that would strip out the bill's new taxes on wind and solar projects.

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📝 Federal agencies have begun rolling out updates to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) procedures in the wake of a presidential order and Supreme Court decision narrowing the scope of those requirements.

• Why it matters: The changes mean fewer projects will need environmental reviews and regulators will have less time to identify potentially significant environmental consequences of major infrastructure projects.
• Driving the news: The Defense Department, Energy Department, Agriculture Department and other agencies published new NEPA guidance, which each hailed as cutting unnecessary red tape. Full story.

🌀 AP reports that NOAA "said Monday it is delaying by one month the planned cutoff of satellite data that helps forecasters track hurricanes."

➡️ Via Bloomberg, "Enbridge Inc.'s long-simmering dispute with the state of Michigan over an oil pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac is headed for the US Supreme Court after years of legal battles and the intervention of Canada's government."

🛑 Via Reuters, "The U.S. Supreme Court turned away on Monday Exxon Mobil Corp's bid to overturn a $14.25 million civil penalty that a judge imposed in a long-running lawsuit over air pollution at its Baytown, Texas, crude oil refinery."

"The price of oil and Wall Street remain the de facto regulators of U.S. crude production. The onset of conflict in Iran briefly injected a fear premium into oil prices, and fresh uncertainties do remain. But the fundamentals are the fundamentals, and the oil price trend remains the same — downward."

That's part of a wider note that concludes the conflict and price spikes with it haven't shaken up the underlying market outlook.

The big picture: It sees supply outstripping demand by 1.2 million barrels per day in the second half of 2025, and a surplus of 800,000 bpd next year.

• WTI prices could fall as low as the high-$40s per barrel later this year, S&P projects.

That's Tesla's projected year-over-year decline in Q2 deliveries, per a consensus estimate from FactSet.

• The EV maker has been mired in a sales slump, and its stock is down another 5.7% in pre-market trading as CEO Elon Musk and President Trump are beefing anew.

What's next: The company report is expected tomorrow.