Emerald AI and Lumen Collaborate to Advance Energy-Aware Networking for AI Infrastructure

Companies are exploring new capabilities in a pioneering effort to dynamically shift AI computing workloads based on power availability, cost and network conditions

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2026 — Emerald AI announced a collaboration with Lumen Technologies (NASDAQ: LUMN) to develop energy-aware networking capabilities designed to automatically shift AI computing workloads between locations based on power availability, cost and other factors.

As AI's growing energy demands put pressure on power grids, dynamically moving computing workloads to locations where electricity is available could help organizations make better use of existing energy resources, manage costs and support faster, more sustainable AI growth without waiting for new power capacity to come online.

“Power is the critical bottleneck to AI growth, and flexible AI data centers could unlock up to 100 gigawatts of capacity on the existing U.S. grid while being good grid citizens—helping keep electricity affordable and the power system reliable,” said Dr. Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO, Emerald AI. “Our collaboration with Lumen brings that opportunity to AI inference. By combining our Emerald Conductor platform with Lumen’s programmable fiber network, we’re developing energy-aware routing that can move inference requests to locations with available power while keeping latency low and performance high. This is designed to give data centers a way to ease demand during rare periods of grid stress while continuing to serve their customers, helping AI grow alongside the communities that power it.”

By integrating Emerald AI's energy-aware technology platform with Lumen's programmable network and edge locations, the companies are working to automate how AI computing shifts among locations based on energy availability. Using intelligence about power availability and network conditions, the companies aim to coordinate these shifts while accounting for network performance, latency, security and cost.

“The network must do more than just connect. It must help solve the defining challenges of our time,” said Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen. “We’re innovating our network to help AI computing adapt to available energy, lay the foundation for a connected quantum future, and prepare enterprises for continuous and emerging security threats. These are distinct challenges that demand a network built for what’s next.”

“The network has traditionally connected computing resources wherever they happen to be. We’re exploring how to turn that equation around, making the network an active part of how and where computing happens,” said Jim Fowler, chief technology and product officer at Lumen.

The collaboration will expand Emerald AI's power-aware technology beyond the data center and into network routing. To test the concept, the companies are exploring a pilot using Lumen's edge and network infrastructure to demonstrate how automated, energy-aware networking can help data centers and enterprises make better use of available energy.

Read more from Lumen Technologies in their release

About Emerald AI

Emerald AI transforms AI data centers into flexible assets for the power grid, securing larger and faster power connections for AI infrastructure, protecting electricity grid reliability, and advancing energy affordability for communities. The Emerald Conductor software platform is the intelligent interface between the world's two most valuable networks, power grids and AI infrastructure, unlocking critical power capacity for the AI era. For more information, visit www.emeraldai.co.

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