Armada Secures $131 Million for Portable AI Data Centers, Revolutionizing Edge Computing

Founders Fund, Microsoft-Backed Armada Raises $131 Million For AI Data Centers

Armada, a startup that makes movable AI data centers for use in fields like manufacturing and defense, has raised $131 million from investors in a deal that highlights the broad use cases for artificial intelligence. The round included new investors Pinegrove Capital Partners, Veriten and Glade Brook Capital Partners, as well as more funding from existing investors like Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Microsoft Corp.'s venture fund and Marlinspike Partners. The company declined to provide its valuation.

Portable data center startup Armada gets $131M to power computing operations in remote locations - SiliconANGLE

Portable data center startup Armada gets $131M to power computing operations in remote locations Mobile data center startup Armada Inc. has closed on a $131 million strategic funding round as it looks to bring powerful computing capabilities to the world's most remote and challenging environments. A smorgasbord of investors were involved in the round, with new backers Pinegrove, Glade Brook and Veriten joined by existing investors such as Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Shield Capital, 8090 Industries, Microsoft's [MSFT] M12 venture fund, Silent Ventures, Overmatch, Felicis and Marlinspike. Today's round brings Armada's total funding to date to more than $200 million, and will help it to scale its latest and most powerful product yet - a portable, megawatt-scale data center called Leviathan, which can be deployed in almost any environment. Leviathan is the latest addition to Armada's Galleon family of ruggedized, mobile and relocatable data centers, which are housed in shipping containers and can be trucked into any location and brought online using whatever local power source is available. The Galleon data centers range in size dramatically, with the smallest form-factor being a briefcase-sized server called Beacon. It also sells Cruiser, which is packed inside a 20-foot shipping container, and Triton, which is twice the size and comes in a 40-foot container. Leviathan is said to provide ten-times as much computing power as Triton, and is shipped in two 45-foot containers, plus a smaller 20-foot container. One of the 45-foot containers is used to house the racks for computer servers powered by central processing units and graphics processing units, while there's a power distribution system inside the other. As for the smaller unit, this houses a liquid cooling system. Armada explained that Leviathan is power-agnostic, which means it can run on any power source - including local energy supplies, or even stranded energy sources such as solar and natural gas that aren't hooked up to the grid. The startup said there's a large number of customers who have expressed interest in its technology. For instance, there's the U.S. Navy, which is working with Armada to test its mobile data centers in a variety of remote locations. According to Armada's co-founder chief executive officer Dan Wright, the Navy is interested in "processing data from autonomous technologies, drones etc. at the edge, in remote, hostile and disconnected environments." Armada's data centers have also been deployed by energy firms such as Fidelis New Energy LLC and Bakken Energy Corp. in "strategic locations" across the U.S. and in allied nations, in order to convert surplus power into high-density compute. Besides these partners, Armada says its data centers can power artificial intelligence applications at the edge, in various remote facilities, such as oil rigs, ships, mines, rail yards and factories. Besides being portable and power agnostic, Armada's data centers also cost a lot less. It said Leviathan, for example, costs only a "small fraction" of the price of a traditional data center. Furthermore, there's no construction required and no need for customers to secure permits. Due to this, Armada says its data centers can be set up and brought online in just a few weeks rather than years. They're "connectivity-agnostic" too, so they can be hooked up to the internet through satellite, for example. In addition, Armada says they can easily be updated by swapping out the computer chips, servers and cooling systems for newer technologies. "Each [Leviathan] unit delivers megawatt-scale performance in a fraction of the time and much more flexibly than traditional data centers, due to their ability to rapidly adapt to changes in AI chips and cooling, and co-locate with all available land and energy, regardless of its form or location," Wright said. According to Wright, Armada's mission is to "bridge the digital divide" and help bring hyperscale data centers and advanced AI services to the 70% of the world that currently does not have access to them. Moreover, he wants to "ensure that the world runs on the American AI stack", as opposed to Chinese technologies.