# Phaidra

> Phaidra is a Seattle-based industrial AI company that builds self-learning, reinforcement-learning control agents for the world's most complex mission-critical facilities - chief among them the data centers powering the AI boom. Founded in 2019 by alumni of Google DeepMind and the HVAC and defense industries, Phaidra's software plugs into existing building automation and SCADA systems without new hardware, learns a facility's behavior, and continuously adjusts cooling, power and workload setpoints to cut energy use while improving reliability. The company raised a $50M+ Series B in October 2025 led by Collaborative Fund with participation from NVIDIA, positioning itself to make 'AI factories' radically more resource-efficient.

- **Founded:** 2019
- **Headquarters:** Seattle, Washington, United States
- **Founders:** Jim Gao (CEO & Co-Founder - former Google data center cooling lead and founder of DeepMind Energy), Vedavyas Panneershelvam (CTO & Co-Founder - primary engineer on DeepMind's AlphaGo), Katie Hoffman (President/COO & Co-Founder - industrial controls veteran from Trane / Ingersoll Rand and Raytheon)
- **Team size:** ~96 employees (remote-first, headquartered in Seattle)
- **Products:** Alfred (AI control platform / virtual plant operator), AI agents for AI factories, Prism / Factory product lines
- **Notable:** Founding CEO Jim Gao led the DeepMind/Google project that cut data center cooling energy ~40% within an already-optimized facility., Raised over $120M total across seed, Series A and Series B., Secured NVIDIA as both investor and infrastructure-design collaborator in the 2025 Series B.

## Products & services

- **Alfred (AI control platform / virtual plant operator)** — A reinforcement-learning control system that connects to a facility's building automation system or SCADA through standard protocols (BACnet, OPC-UA), monitors thousands of sensors, and adjusts equipment setpoints every few minutes. It trains in shadow mode before going live, has built-in safety guardrails and manual override, and reverts to original controls if connectivity fails.
- **AI agents for AI factories** — A portfolio of specialized agents that orchestrate liquid cooling, chiller plants, power and workload management for data centers purpose-built for AI workloads, trained to exceed human intuition and hard-coded control logic.
- **Prism / Factory product lines** — Phaidra's branded product offerings for monitoring and autonomous optimization across mission-critical facilities.

## Achievements

- Founding CEO Jim Gao led the DeepMind/Google project that cut data center cooling energy ~40% within an already-optimized facility.
- Raised over $120M total across seed, Series A and Series B.
- Secured NVIDIA as both investor and infrastructure-design collaborator in the 2025 Series B.
- Delivers documented 10-30% energy efficiency gains in live industrial deployments.
- Built a portfolio of autonomous AI agents that operate mission-critical plants in production with safety guardrails.

## Latest updates

- **2025-10** — Closed $50M+ Series B led by Collaborative Fund with NVIDIA, Sony Innovation Fund, Mark Cuban and Mustafa Suleyman participating, to build AI agents for AI factories.
- **2024-07** — Raised $12M led by Index Ventures to scale its data-center energy management software.
- **2022-07** — Raised $25M Series A led by Starshot Capital to expand its AI control platform.

## Links

- Website: https://phaidra.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/phaidra-ai
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/phaidraai
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/phaidraAI/

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/phaidra
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-13