Schneider Electric, the leading provider of energy management solutions, is joining forces with Nvidia to address the surging demand for sustainable and AI-ready infrastructure. This collaboration, spearheaded by chairman Jean-Pascal Tricoire, aims to streamline the construction of data centers, which constitute approximately a quarter of Schneider Electric’s business. Tricoire has been at the helm of that charge for almost 40 years. Looking back on the most extraordinary period of energy technology innovation in history, he now sees the energy landscape as a “digital energy revolution.”
The partnership will help meet a critical need for energy-efficient technologies in data centers. This urgency is compounded by the fact that global demand for AI-driven technologies is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Tricoire’s claim that the pace of energy technology evolution has never been witnessed is bold. He explains how the intersection of electrification, digitization, and artificial intelligence (AI) forms a huge opportunity for efficiency and sustainability like we’ve never seen before.
To encourage this shift, Schneider Electric has released comprehensive playbooks for data centers created in partnership with Nvidia. These designs aim to tremendously speed up construction timelines while enabling operators to implement AI-ready infrastructures. Tricoire stresses that these blueprints will all have state-of-the-art power management systems. They will require liquid cooling control systems developed specifically, it seems, for Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips.
“We make sure, at every generation they come out with, that the solution we put together will minimize the consumption of energy to power their installations,” Tricoire stated regarding the collaborative effort.
Europe, India, and especially China are moving fast in the direction of electrification as fossil fuel resources run out. Schneider Electric’s programs are well positioned to have an outsized impact on this transition. In Tricoire’s view, the accelerating costs of new technologies require all companies to adapt to new innovative ways of working quickly. He remarked, “Companies are very pragmatic. If a solution makes money, they will go for it, right? If, on top of it, it’s better for their footprint, they will go even faster.”
Our partnership goes beyond just minimizing energy usage through the installation of great technology. Our primary goal is improving operational efficiency. Tricoire emphasizes that AI can yield significant efficiency gains, stating, “To make it very simple, AI can help gain in efficiency four times more than it consumes, at least four to nine times more.” This claim highlights the growing ability of AI technologies to create new, more profitable pathways that have a lower environmental footprint.
Tricoire underscored the need and speed of this transition. He illustrated the challenge of curbing energy use from data centers. He explained, “Those chips, which are powering AI or enabling AI, are chips which are consuming a lot of energy, and you need to cool them directly on the chip by bringing liquid directly on the chip.” This underscores the urgent need for more holistic solutions tackling both power and cooling demands in a rapidly more energy-intensive world.
Besides solving safety and other operational imperatives, Tricoire sees a long-term goal with homes as independent mini-power plants. He stated, “If your home is not consuming any more electricity, because you are autonomous with solar batteries, because you recharge your electric vehicle, then that means you have freed enough power to power a fraction of this data center which is close to you.” This vision is in line with Schneider Electric’s mission to democratize sustainability in all sectors.
Scott Wallace from Nvidia echoed the transformative potential of this collaboration: “We are entering a new era of accelerated computing, where integrated intelligence across power, cooling and operations will redefine data center architectures.”