SolidUltra raises £2.5M to build power tech for AI data centres
What's the deal? SolidUltraDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a French developer of modular solid-state transformers (SSTs) for AI data centres, has raised €3 million (£2.5 million) in seed funding led by founding partner Watt & Well, a French power electronics group. The round closed within three months of the company's incorporation in June.
What's the endgame? SolidUltra is building a medium-voltage SST that connects the electricity grid directly to 800VDC distribution systems in a single conversion stage. It targets next-generation AI data centres, where GPU racks are moving towards megawatt-scale power consumption.
Why now? Conventional data centre power setups rely on a low-frequency transformer followed by several conversion stages. As GPU density rises, that adds energy losses, cooling needs, equipment footprint, and deployment time.
SolidUltra claims its modular design, which scales from hundreds of kilowatts to 10MW, can cut power losses threefold and equipment footprint fourfold against conventional architectures, while targeting 98.5% efficiency. Field-replaceable modules can be swapped in under 15 minutes.
The funding will support engineering, industrialisation, and early customer engagement. SolidUltra is targeting a commercial launch in 2028 and aims to deliver 10,000 SST systems by 2032, representing about 1GW of installed power.
What could go wrong? The company is early-stage, and its efficiency and cost claims remain targets, not demonstrated results. Commercial deployment is years away, with no customer adoption yet proven.
"AI is not only changing computing; it is fundamentally changing the electrical infrastructure required to power it," said chief executive officer Raul Iglesias. He added that the raise "gives us the means to move rapidly towards industrial deployment."
The signal: The round lands as 800VDC shifts from a proposed architecture toward industry-backed designs, with NVIDIA, Google, and Microsoft developing specifications through the Open Compute Project. SolidUltra's modest raise is a step into a strategically important market — but not yet evidence of a proven alternative to established power architectures.
Read more: dcnnmagazine.com
Image credit: bugeaters
