Schneider Electric’s Bid to Power AI Factories with Nvidia

Nvidia continues to partner with leading companies in the data centre industry, including Schneider Electric, to co-develop new cooling power, building management and control systems for digital and physical AI data centres.

Both companies are eager to advance new research and development (R&D) initiatives for power, cooling, controls and high-density rack systems to enable the next generation of AI factories across Europe and the rest of the world.

“Schneider Electric and NVIDIA are not just partners — our teams are driving advanced R&D, co-developing the infrastructure needed to power the next wave of AI factories globally,” says Olivier Blum, CEO of Schneider Electric. 

“Together, we’ve seen tremendous success in deploying next-generation power and liquid cooling solutions, purpose-built for AI data centres.”

Emboldening AI infrastructure growth across Europe

Announced during NVIDIA GTC Paris, the unique partnership is designed to bring together world leaders in sustainability and accelerated computing to support the European Union’s (EU) AI infrastructure ambitions and its ‘InvestAI’ initiative, which plans to mobilise a €200 billion (US$228.77bn) investment in AI. 

Both companies are eager to leverage their shared experience in AI-ready infrastructure, sustainability and grid coordination to respond to the European Commission’s ‘AI Continent Action Plan’ – an initiative that outlines a shared mission to set up at least 13 AI factories across Europe, while establishing up to five AI gigafactories. 

Olivier explains: “This strategic partnership — bringing together the world leaders in sustainability and accelerated computing — allows us to further accelerate this momentum, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for the AI workloads of tomorrow.” 

“These innovations enable rapid deployment and efficient operation of next-generation AI factories at scale,” Pablo Ruiz Escribano, Senior Vice President, Secure Power Europe at Schneider Electric, tells Data Centre Magazine. “By leveraging our expertise, the partnership supports the EU’s goals and actively helps investors and customers align with the EU’s €200 billion AI investment strategy.”

Nvidia-enabled infrastructure solutions to enable rapid deployment

In support of today’s announcement, Schneider Electric has unveiled a suite of new AI-ready data centre solutions, including new EcoStruxure™ Pod and Rack Infrastructure. 

Its Prefabricated Modular EcoStruxure Pod Data Centre is a scalable, pod-based architecture that is designed to enable rapid AI data centre deployment.

Designed to accelerate AI developments globally, the Prefabricated Modular EcoStruxure Pod Data Centre is a scalable, pod-based architecture, enabling rapid AI data centre deployment.

As part of this, a new Schneider Electric Open Compute Project (OCP) inspired rack system has also been developed to support the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 platform that uses the NVIDIA MGX modular architecture, integrating Schneider Electric into NVIDIA HGX and MGX ecosystems for the first time.

These new announcements aim to build on a series of milestones shared by the two global leaders earlier this year. This includes Schneider Electric and ETAP unveiling the world’s first digital twin for electrical and large-scale power systems in AI factories using the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint.

Together, Schneider Electric and Nvidia have also co-developed a series of full electrical and liquid cooling-based reference designs. 

Many of these include solutions from Motivair’s liquid cooling portfolio, following its acquisition by Schneider Electric in March 2025.   

Both companies are set to continue accelerating their infrastructure initiatives via their extended partnership, eager to fast-track new products to build the AI factories of the future.

Founder and CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, adds: “AI is the defining technology of our time—the most transformative force reshaping our world.

“Together with Schneider Electric, we are building AI factories: the essential infrastructure that brings AI to every company, industry and society.”

The role of AI in advancing sustainable data centres

Nvidia has recently powered ahead with its supercomputing efforts, including advancing JUPITER in Europe. With such rapid data centre innovation, operators are having to also position themselves to support this scalable growth, whilst also focusing on sustainability pledges. 

Schneider Electric is a well-recognised leader in sustainability across the industry and so we asked them about the environmental impact of its partnership with Nvidia.

“The growth of AI doesn’t have to derail our data centre sustainability goals,” Pablo explains. “Solutions like energy efficient infrastructure, liquid cooling and AI-powered energy management are powerful tools that will help data centres balance performance with environmental responsibility.”

He continues: “As global demands for data centres grow, we see many predictions that suggest electrical grids may fail to keep pace and create challenges for AI’s role in industry growth. At Schneider, we believe this is overhyped. While it is true that some factors have combined to strain the grid and limit capacity in some regions, there are viable options for data centres to continue building as utility companies take steps to mitigate these challenges. 

“In future, data centres may also become utilities, combining AI infrastructure and renewable energy systems as one complete ecosystem.”

In the meantime, Pablo suggests that it’s critical for the industry to continue exploring innovative solutions to manage energy constraints.

“This involves a  strategic shift in energy procurement and utilising alternative power sources such as natural gas turbines, HVO-fueled generators, wind, solar, fuel cells and battery storage systems to ensure AI’s role in data centre development is fully realised,” he explains.

“[Schneider Electric and Nvidia] are driving advanced R&D and co-developing the infrastructure needed to power the next wave of AI factories globally. Our multi-domain expertise across data centres, industrial automation, buildings and the grid, together with our global supply chain, facilitates the speed and scale required to propel AI adoption. 

“We’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for the AI workloads of tomorrow.”

Explore the latest edition of Data Centre Magazine  and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Tech & AI LIVE and Data Centre LIVE. 

Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.

Data Centre Magazine is a BizClik brand