As Big Money Rolls Into Data Centers, Startup Investment Gains

This column is a look back at the week that was in AI. Read the previous one here.

It’s been hard to browse tech headlines this week and not read something about billions of dollars being poured into data centers.

The world’s largest asset manager, Blackstone Group, reportedly plans to invest $8.2 billion to develop data centers in Spain. Energy and data center company Crusoe Energy Systems announced it raised $3.4 billion dollars in debt financing — and reportedly will raise an additional equity investment led by Founders Fund — for a data center in Texas that will be used for OpenAI. And pension fund AustralianSuper announced it has committed $1.5 billion to become a minority owner in DataBank, a provider of enterprise-class data centers across North America.

Of course, all of that is just this week and doesn’t even touch on the fact that Amazon plans to invest $100 billion in AI data centers in the next decade, nor the planned OpenAI and Microsoft joint data center project that is expected to cost $100 billion.

That heightened level of investment seems to be starting to bubble up to the startup realm. So far this year, $1.3 billion has been invested in database-related startups — those that provide connectivity, efficiency or other needed tools/solutions for the centers — per Crunchbase data.

The raises by data center-related startups this year already nearly matches the total raised in 2023 and could even reach the nearly $1.9 billion similar startups received in 2022 if the last two-and-a-half months of the year are strong.

Of course, this week helped out a lot, with Lightmatter locking up a $400 million Series D led by new investor T. Rowe Price at a $4.4 billion valuation. The startup uses light to link chips together and to do calculations for the deep learning necessary for AI.

The week also saw  Xscape Photonics — a startup also using photonics technology to address the energy, performance and scalability challenges of AI data centers — raise a $44 million Series A led by IAG Capital Partners and with investment from the likes of Cisco Investments and Nvidia.

It seems like it should only be a matter of time before even more rounds into similar data center-related startups are announced as Big Tech pours billions into the new data centers needed to keep the promise of AI alive. Those centers will need new innovation — especially when it comes to tackling the energy consumption problem — and it is likely Big Tech and VCs will be there to provide the cash necessary to nurture those new technologies.

Things that caught our eye and other stuff:

• Xscape’s raise was not the only round to catch our interest this week. Path Robotics, a startup using AI in robotic welding systems in the manufacturing industry, announced it has closed $100 million in new investments in the past year led by Drive Capital and Matter Venture Partners. The Columbus, Ohio-based company currently has two robotic welding products in the market, both leveraging vision systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning to autonomously weld steel parts. Founded in 2018, Path has raised $170 million, per the company.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

Related reading:

Illustration: Dom Guzman