{"text":[[{"start":9.69,"text":"AI start-up Poolside has held talks with Google and other cloud providers to revive a large Texas data centre project after a deal with CoreWeave collapsed and a $2bn funding round anchored by Nvidia fell apart. "}],[{"start":26.17,"text":"The search for new partners comes just months after Poolside announced plans for Horizon, an ambitious 2-gigawatt complex that CoreWeave would fill with tens of thousands of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell AI chips. "}],[{"start":43.1,"text":"The partnership began to falter late last year, according to five people familiar with the matter. Poolside was unable to bring the first cluster of chips online in time to meet CoreWeave’s deadline, prompting the pair to end their contract, they added."}],[{"start":62.74,"text":"Poolside had been in talks with Google to get the Horizon project back on track and hoped to secure commitments backing construction of 400 megawatts of capacity, the people said. However, one person familiar with Google’s position said discussions are no longer active."}],[{"start":82.93,"text":"The setback comes as Poolside’s talks to raise $2bn from investors, which would have quadrupled its valuation to $12bn, have also stalled, according to four people familiar with the matter. This included discussions for Nvidia to invest as much as $1bn in the round. "}],[{"start":102.47,"text":"The start-up struggled to convince potential investors that it would be able to train AI models as sophisticated as those from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, they added. "}],[{"start":115.11,"text":"Poolside was founded in early 2023 by Jason Warner, the former CTO of GitHub, and AI entrepreneur Eiso Kant. They raised $500mn at a $3bn valuation in 2024 to develop AI products focused on coding automation, specifically targeting government and defence companies. The start-up has since expanded into data centre infrastructure."}],[{"start":144.5,"text":"CoreWeave told the FT that its partnership with Poolside ended as both “companies ultimately chose to pursue different paths for their own strategic and timing reasons.” "}],[{"start":157.04,"text":"It added: “Demand for AI infrastructure remains relentless . . . Poolside is an innovative company, and we remain open to working together.”"}],[{"start":167.48999999999998,"text":"Poolside, Google and Nvidia declined to comment."}],[{"start":171.48999999999998,"text":"Despite the setback, Poolside could still benefit from a scramble for electricity and land between Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle. Hyperscalers are spending hundreds of billions on data centres and power infrastructure as demand for AI continues to outpace supply."}],[{"start":192.43999999999997,"text":"“There are a lot of people in the market for capacity,” said a person familiar with the company’s strategy. “A little over a year ago Poolside started seeing that infra was the major bottleneck, their insight was that the only way to scale is if energy is present, so they went out to secure strategic assets.”"}],[{"start":212.18999999999997,"text":"The half a million-acre site is on a plot of land in Texas’s Permian Basin owned by the billionaire Mitchell family, who pioneered hydraulic fracturing. It sits on an abundance of natural gas and claims to have a maximum capacity of more than 10 GW of power. Poolside also plans to develop 2.5 GW of solar and wind power there."}],[{"start":238.88999999999996,"text":"Poolside remains confident that Google or another “stronger and better partner” will step in to help them purchase AI chips and finance the power required, the person said."}],[{"start":250.82999999999996,"text":"However, if the start-up is unable to swiftly find a new counterparty it could reignite concerns about the riskiness of so-called “neocloud” start-ups that have been snapping up land, power and chips to capitalise on the AI boom."}],[{"start":267.80999999999995,"text":"Poolside has now split itself into two companies, one focused on infrastructure called “PIC” and the other on model building, in an attempt to better appeal to the distinct sets of investors for each. Last year the start-up hired Phil Drury, a veteran Citigroup investment banker, to help it raise funds."}],[{"start":288.04999999999995,"text":"It has yet to release a model, but hopes to release an application programming interface (API) by the end of April that will show enough promise to rekindle funding talks with Nvidia and venture capital firms. Warner and Kant are betting that the AI market will be large enough for second-tier models to gain a profitable foothold."}],[{"start":311.03999999999996,"text":"Poolside also sees an opening to sell its products to the government and defence contractors after Anthropic was blacklisted by the Pentagon in a spat over the military use of its AI, two of the people said. "}],[{"start":325.71999999999997,"text":"Additional reporting from George Hammond"}],[{"start":339.69999999999993,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1775180021_9861.mp3"}