Unlocking Hidden Power: Our Investment in Hammerhead AI

The Power Bottleneck in the Age of AI

Over the past two years, we’ve written (most recently here) about the extraordinary growth in data center development driven by artificial intelligence—and the equally extraordinary strain it’s placing on the grid. Across every region, from Northern Virginia to Dublin to the Pacific Northwest, the bottleneck for AI isn’t GPUs or capital. It’s power.

Technology companies want more computing power today, but interconnecting new generation and building out transmission can take up to seven years. This mismatch has become the defining challenge of digital infrastructure. As utilities and hyperscalers move at fundamentally different speeds, the gap between compute demand and energy availability continues to widen. For example, Sam Altman has stated a goal of adding 1 GW of power capacity each week to support OpenAI’s infrastructure needs, while the entire United States added only about 26 GW of new generation over the first eight months of 2025.  

In the U.S., natural gas is supplying approximately 40% of electricity for data centers, with renewables at 24%. These two sources will be the biggest growth over the next 5 years as well. To meet soaring demand, operators are increasingly relying on peaker plants and diesel backup generators, driving up both emissions and costs. Utilities face forced load shedding during peak events and, in some cases, are even delaying the retirement of coal plants to keep up with growing demand. The AI boom is reshaping not only our digital economy, but also the future of our energy system.

The Utilization Problem Hidden in Plain Sight

While many innovators focus on building new generation, the most immediate opportunity lies in flexibility and utilization, or making better use of the power we already have.

Data centers today are over-provisioned by design. Operators build in significant headroom to guarantee reliability and meet 99.99999% (i.e. “five nines”) uptime standards, provisioning for rare peak events that may occur only a few hours per year. The result is vast amounts of stranded power capacity: grid allocations that sit idle most of the time.

Average utilization varies across data center types, as shown in the chart below. We also learned from experts that the industry as a whole hovers around 30-50% utilization, meaning that nearly half of the available power inside a data center goes unused. This inefficiency represents a financial opportunity. Unlocking even a fraction of that stranded capacity could add meaningful compute supply without waiting for new substations, while reducing reliance on carbon-intensive generation.

In addition to the underutilization of servers, certain AI workloads are more latency-tolerant than others, meaning they don’t require instantaneous response times. Tasks like model training or batch inference can be scheduled or shifted in time without affecting user experience. This further creates an opportunity for intelligent orchestration, where flexible workloads are dynamically allocated to make better use of available power.

Our Investment in Hammerhead

At Buoyant, we’ve spent the past two years developing a thesis around efficient computing. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our investment in Hammerhead, a company transforming how data centers use their existing power capacity.

Hammerhead’s platform dynamically orchestrates compute, cooling, and power backup systems to maximize output within fixed grid allocations. This allows operators to generate more tokens on the same grid allocation, without impacting existing customers and their Service Level Agreements (or SLAs). SLAs are formal commitments data centers make to guarantee uptime and performance, which defines how much operational flexibility they have. More token processing capacity means operators can sell more compute, defer costly  and lengthy grid upgrades, and reduce their reliance on diesel and gas generation. The result is a scalable solution that grows revenue for data centers while cutting emissions across the grid.

The company’s first product, ORCA (Orchestrated RL Control Agents)  is its flagship orchestration platform. ORCA enables rapid deployment and immediate efficiency gains, unlocking up to 30% additional compute capacity without waiting for the grid. Hammerhead’s technology applies proven principles of grid optimization (honed by its founders at AutoGrid) to the world of AI infrastructure. 

This approach has several immediate benefits:

• Increased capacity: Up to 30% more usable power per facility, improving energy efficiency 
• Reduced emissions: Less reliance on diesel generators and peaker plants
• Deferred capex: Extended life and usability of existing grid interconnections and the build out of additional high-utilization data centers  

The Team Behind Hammerhead

Hammerhead is co-founded by Rahul Kar (CEO) and Rajeev Singh (CTO), who previously led AutoGrid, a pioneer in distributed energy orchestration acquired by Schneider Electric. Together, they bring more than three decades of experience building and scaling mission-critical energy software platforms. They are joined by Sadia Raveendran (Head of GTM), who managed AutoGrid’s strategic partnership with Schneider Electric from early investment through acquisition. 

This team deeply understands the technical complexity of large-scale energy systems and the operational realities of reliability, uptime, and risk. Their credibility with utilities, OEMs, and data center operators is unmatched, and their ability to translate that expertise into the AI era positions Hammerhead as a category-defining company.

Welcome to the Buoyant Boat

We’re proud to welcome Hammerhead to the Buoyant portfolio and to partner with Rahul, Rajeev, Sadia, and their team on this journey. Buoyant is leading Hammerhead’s Seed round, investing alongside with participation from SE Ventures (the venture fund backed by data center equipment leader Schneider Electric), AINA Climate AI Ventures, MCJ Collective, Wovenearth Ventures, Bombellii Ventures, Clearvision Ventures, Stepchange and Acclimate Ventures, and individual contributions from prominent industry leaders such as Jack Cogen, a member of the Board of Directors at CoreWeave.

As data center growth continues to reshape our energy landscape, Hammerhead reminds us that the fastest path to a sustainable future often begins with using what’s already built.

Welcome aboard, Hammerhead.

Read the press release here

Read Axios coverage here