Morning Edition · Thu 15 Oct 2026
Siemens Targets AI's Millisecond Power Problem, Not Just Its Electricity Bill
Siemens has led a strategic investment in Skeleton Technologies, a maker of supercapacitor systems that aim to smooth the millisecond power swings of AI computing clusters, according to Skeleton.
Chanan Zevin - Chief Editor and Head of Desks
Published
The deal
Skeleton Technologies announced on October 14 a strategic investment led by Siemens that it said brings its valuation to more than $1 billion. Skeleton described it as a “9-digit investment round” but did not disclose the amount. It said the money will mainly fund expansion of US manufacturing and research in Silicon Valley, and that it plans to invest more than $200 million in scale-up and R&D there, including domestic cell manufacturing.
The companies will develop products for AI data centers combining Siemens' electrical infrastructure with Skeleton's fast-response power systems, Skeleton said. Siemens previously supported Skeleton's expansion in 2023, and Siemens Digital Industries designed and automated Skeleton's Leipzig factory.
The millisecond problem
GPU clusters can shift between power states in milliseconds, creating rapid load swings, peaks and harmonics, according to Skeleton. Its systems combine supercapacitor cells made with its Curved Graphene material with power electronics and controls to absorb those fluctuations close to the workload. Skeleton claims up to 40% energy savings and double-digit improvements in GPU performance; those are the company's figures and have not been independently verified.
Siemens has worked on the same issue before. In January it signed a memorandum with data-center developer Soluna for a 2 MW pilot in Texas to manage rapid GPU-driven swings in power demand at a renewable-powered site, Siemens said.
What Siemens says it gets
In its own announcement dated October 14, Siemens described the deal as a strategic investment and exclusive partnership that gives it exclusivity to sell and scale Skeleton's products in the data-center market. It said it will integrate Skeleton's supercapacitors into its electrical infrastructure portfolio, extending its offering “from the grid connection to the AI rack.” Siemens said it has worked with Skeleton as a technology partner since 2022 and as an investor since 2023.
Siemens said AI workloads synchronise thousands of chips whose power demand “can rise or fall within milliseconds and aggregate into swings at megawatt scale in seconds.” It described the supercapacitors as an electrical shock absorber that can be deployed in existing AC systems and retrofit projects. “The race to scale AI is increasingly becoming a race for power,” said Peter Koerte, a Siemens managing board member. The transactions will be completed after customary formalities, Siemens said, so the deal had not closed at publication.
Why it matters
Analysis: Discussion of AI and power usually focuses on total consumption; the International Energy Agency, cited by Skeleton, expects global data-center electricity use to nearly double from about 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh by 2030. Fast load swings are a separate engineering problem that can affect power quality. Whether supercapacitors become standard equipment depends on performance data from real deployments, which the companies have not yet published.
What to watch: disclosure of the investment amount, first commercial products from the partnership, and results from the Soluna pilot.