Perimeter Compute is emerging from stealth with a plan to install AI chips in the basements and mechanical rooms of Class A office buildings across major US cities, using power capacity landlords already have but are not using. The startup is targeting buildings with between half a megawatt and 20 megawatts of spare capacity, according to chief executive David Hall, a former executive at the AI cloud provider Lambda.
Hall toured buildings in New York and Boston and said he found space, cooling and power sitting unused. He said years of energy conservation cut those buildings' power consumption by 30% to 60%, while the wiring was still built for the original peak load.
Backed by Montauk Capital
Perimeter sits inside the portfolio of Montauk Capital, a New York venture firm that recruits experienced founders to run new digital infrastructure startups. Perimeter is raising capital to buy the GPU equipment, which Hall said costs about $35 million per megawatt. He would not say how much the round is targeting.
Edge computing for AI inference
Perimeter is entering what is known as edge computing, placing computing power physically close to where it is used rather than in one large, distant data center. The company is aimed at the AI inference market, the day-to-day running of chatbots and other AI programs after they have already been trained, which Hall said uses less energy than training large language models. He said even half a megawatt is enough to run 240 of Nvidia's newest GPUs. Because GPUs placed in city centers can process AI workloads faster than ones that must send data over longer distances, Perimeter believes it can charge hyperscalers a premium. Hall named OpenAI and Anthropic, along with tenants in financial services, robotics and healthcare, as sources of demand.
Perimeter follows two residential energy companies, Span and Sunrun, which launched pilots earlier this year putting AI chips in homes with spare capacity, largely from battery storage. Hall said those programs will install fewer chips per building than Perimeter.
Grid capacity is the open question
Perimeter has identified more than a gigawatt of excess capacity in US office buildings, Hall said. Some urban distribution grids, including in New York and Boston, may already be tight because utilities approve more capacity across homes and buildings than a single substation can serve at once, on the bet that not everyone draws power at the same time. GPUs, unlike typical building loads, draw power continuously, which could complicate a grid a utility has already stretched thin. "If they have oversubscribed their grid in different locations, we want to protect ourselves," Hall said. Perimeter is talking to local utilities about the added load and has hired a consulting firm with existing utility relationships.
Building owners will not pay for the buildout. Perimeter will cover the GPU equipment, installation and the extra electricity, tracked by a submeter, and will lease space from landlords and share a portion of compute revenue with them. Perimeter has no signed contracts yet.
