Akash Systems Inc. believes it has a solution for the heat problem of graphics processing units: lab-grown diamonds.

The company originally got its start in space, managing solar radiation on satellites, and now wants to bring its technology to Earth. Akash Systems’ diamonds remove heat incredibly fast, according to Pamit Surana (pictured), co-founder and CCO of Akash Systems, who demonstrated the technology during the interview.

“The physics of heat is what we deal with every day, and it’s what the ecosystem’s dealing with every day,” Surana said, as he showed off the diamond’s ability to quickly transfer heat into an ice cube. “That piece of diamond is the most thermally conductive material on Earth. That’ll move heat faster from one end to the other than any other material. In fact, it’s five times faster than the second most thermally-conductive element, which is copper.”

Surana spoke with theCUBE’s Gemma Allen for theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how lab-grown diamonds improve the efficiency of AI data centers and Akash Systems’ growing customer base.

Lab-grown diamonds push AI centers’ physical limits

Akash Systems, which got funding from a major Wall Street bank at significantly subsidized rates, has focused on two types of customers: neoclouds and enterprises. Neoclouds want to move fast in a highly competitive market, while enterprises require more air-cooling options — Akash Systems addresses both needs.

“Everyone’s looking at efficiency,” Surana said. “That’s capital efficiency, heat efficiency, GPU efficiency, token efficiency, and everyone looks at two metrics: the cost per token and then the revenue per watt that you’re getting from the data center. We help both. We’re solving the densification issue at a data center, and we’re solving increased tokens at the server level.”

Enterprises are currently caught between the existing air-cooled systems and the move to liquid cooling, which has yet to become a full reality. Akash Systems has products for both types of systems and can improve the efficiency of air-cooled data centers, which will remain standard in markets such as Europe, where space for liquid cooling is limited.

“When you look at the installed capacity in the United States … the best place to leverage that is with the publicly traded, pure-play data center companies,” Surana said. “Most of them cannot handle liquid cooling that they’re building in the future. So, what do you do with that existing data center? You have to learn or find ways to operate it to squeeze more power and dedicate it to the servers.”

Akash Systems provides a strong return on investment at the server level, but even more importantly, it allows neoclouds and enterprises to stay competitive by giving them immediate capacity, Surana explained. The company recently began deploying diamond-cooled servers using GPUs from Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

“We innovate on every GPU, whether it’s a Blackwell, a Vera Rubin, whether it’s the Helios going to the future lines at AMD,” Surana said. “You could almost think of us as no different than a pharmaceutical company where we have multiple tracks solving multiple problems because each of these have different powers. It’s air cooling, liquid cooling; it’s a lot of different items.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future interview series:

Photo: SiliconANGLE