Microsoft-backed company VEIR is bringing superconductors to data centers

Data center power requirements have increased from tens to 200 kilowatts in just a few years, a pace that has data center developers scrambling to design future facilities that can handle this load.

“In the next two years, capacity will reach 600 kilowatts, and then we will reach megawatts,” said Tim Heidel, CEO of the company. VerTechCrunch said. “We’re talking to people who are now trying to understand the architecture of how to design data centers that have multi-megawatt racks.”

At those scales, even the low-voltage cables that supply power to the racks start to take up quite a lot of space and power generation Lots of heat.

To mitigate this, Veir has adapted its superconducting electrical cables to be inserted inside the data center. The Microsoft-backed startup’s first product will be a cable system capable of carrying 3 megawatts of low-voltage electricity.

To demonstrate this technology, Veer built a data simulation center near its headquarters in Massachusetts. The cables will be trialled in data centers next year before an expected commercial launch in 2027, Heidel said.

Superconductors are a class of materials that can conduct electricity without losing energy. The only drawback is that they need to be cooled well below freezing temperatures.

FAIR had previously focused on using superconductors to improve capacity on long-distance transmission lines. But utilities are cautious and tend to be slow to adopt new technology. While there is still a good chance that utilities will eventually leverage superconductors for high-demand transmission lines, that transition will be a little further in the future.

“The pace at which the data center community moves, evolves, grows, expands and addresses challenges is much higher than the transportation community,” Heidel said.

Veir has been in talks with data centers for years. Recently, the content of those conversations has changed.

“We were seeing a lot of people saying, ‘This network interconnection problem is a real thing, and we have to figure out how to solve it.’ But then a group of potential customers started turning around and saying, ‘We actually have very difficult problems to solve on our campuses and inside our buildings.

The startup took the same basic technology it developed for transmission lines and adapted it to the low-voltage needs of data centers. Veir purchases the superconductors from the same suppliers, and they are encased in a jacket to contain a liquid nitrogen coolant that keeps the material at -196 degrees Celsius (-321 degrees Fahrenheit). Termination boxes are located at the end of those cables to go from superconductors to copper cables.

“We’re actually a systems integrator that builds the cooling systems, manufactures the cables, and puts the whole system together in order to deliver a huge amount of energy in a small space,” Heidel said.

The result is cables that require 20 times less space than copper while carrying power five times farther, Fair said.

“The AI ​​and data center community is desperate for solutions today and wants to stay ahead of the curve,” Heidel said. “There is a tremendous amount of competitive pressure to stay ahead of the curve.”