Hyperscale Power is the latest startup to challenge 140-year-old transformer technology

The iron-core switch is a 140-year-old technology that powers both the electrical grid and AI companies. These devices are old but reliable, which explains why they’re still in use: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

However, as power demand in data centers skyrockets, and batteries and renewables take up larger portions of the grid, legacy technology may finally have reached its limits. Fortunately, their electronic replacement – the solid-state converter – may be having a moment, and not a very early one.

In the past few months, startups specializing in solid-state converters have done just that It raised $280 million. This technology promises to reduce the number of components needed by data centers, improve network stability, and reduce the footprint of power conversion equipment.

now, Excessive force He says things could be scaled back even further. “We’ve never seen anything as small as our system,” Daniel Rothmond, co-founder and CEO of Hyperscale Power, told TechCrunch.

To build a prototype of the switch, Hyperscale recently raised a €5 million seed round led by World Fund and Vsquared Ventures, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.

In the past couple of years, the solid-state converter market has gone from almost non-existent to almost crowded. Among the competitors Ampersandwhich was incubated by Temasek Fund at the early stage; General Directorate Matrixwhich counts industrial giant ABB as an investor; and Heron’s powerfounded by former Tesla CEO Drew Baglino and backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Together they have raised more than $330 million, according to PitchBook.

It may seem like Hyperscale is late to the party, but both Rothmund and co-founder Sammy Peterson have been working on the technology for a while. Rothmund, in particular: He completed his PhD at ETH Zürich in part by designing and building a solid-state converter with 99.1% efficiency.

All solid-state converters are smaller than their iron-core counterparts, but Hyperscale says it has a way to go further by building a converter that can operate at much higher frequencies than competitors. When power enters the transformer, it will be ramped up to something in the tens of kilohertz range. It is converted to the required voltage and then backed down to the necessary frequency.

Size becomes increasingly important within data centers as the power density of server racks increases. Nvidia’s latest racks consume more than 100 kilowatts of power, and the company is already preparing 1 megawatt racks, enough to power up to 1,000 homes.

At these scales, the amount of transformers and rectifiers needed to prepare electricity for servers will explode. “It’s more than twice as large as the server racks themselves,” Rothmond said.

Robust roadmaps being developed by AI companies and data center developers have made solid-state converters almost a necessity, he said.

“It will actually slow down progress in scaling data centers if you don’t have solid-state converters ready soon,” Rothmund said. “It’s not a question of if solid-state converters will come, it’s a question of when they will come.”