Enterprises looking to scale AI are grappling with power and resource constraints, and Hammerhead AI has a solution that it wants channel partners to deploy.
The software platform provider specializes in converting stranded or underutilized data center power into AI-ready capacity through its Orchestrated RL Control Agents software. In September, the company tapped global IT distributor TD Synnex to bring the technology to the channel.
Many data centers use less energy from the grid than is allocated. ORCA coordinates electrical, cooling and compute to convert existing electrical headroom into deployable capacity.
“We are unlocking the power that makes compute available,” Rahul Kar, CEO and founder of Hammerhead AI, told Channel Dive. “Think of us as power as a SKU, and then give it to anyone who's trying to build data centers, and then all the rest of the things can plug into that SKU.”
TD Synnex will provide solutions, integration and resale capability for ORCA software, leading go-to-market efforts funneled through its network of more than 150,000 resellers worldwide, according to a press release.
Limited power availability has emerged as the most significant bottleneck for the massive global data center buildout. Available capacity in North American data centers plunged to a record-low vacancy rate during the first half of the year, dropping to 1.4% as surging AI demand strained the grid.
The demand for powered space to support AI expansion is expected to continue, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis. The investment bank expects U.S. power needs to more than double over the next year.
Hyperscalers and large-scale vendors such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Google have ramped up capital investments to overcome resource challenges, funneling spending into power supplies, land use, cooling solutions, electrical equipment and chip production.
Hammerhead is banking on TD Synnex’s massive partner ecosystem to power AI operations for enterprises and neoclouds.
“What we are doing is becoming the front end for customers looking for compute and tokens,” Kar said. “We are giving the power to TD Synnex essentially for all their customers, so it becomes a very easy channel play for us to distribute the power, and then they take care of everything else related to the ecosystem: bringing together the parties, the hardware, the MSPs and then ongoing services alongside that.”
Unlocking AI power
TD Synnex’s partnership with Hammerhead is a significant move in addressing AI infrastructure challenges, according to Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Omdia, a Channel Dive sister company.
Edwards said that by making technologies like Hammerhead available to resellers, TD Synnex is giving partners a way to capitalize on the data center boom.
“Enterprise AI is a very complex stack that you're having to build, and I think TD has the opportunity to bring all the relevant vendors together that partners may not have access to today,” he said. “So the distributors who are going to win are going to be the ones that bring these new technologies in and expose them to their channel partners to help them succeed.”
Guy Wood, senior director analyst at Gartner, said the Hammerhead collaboration means TD Synnex is betting big on data center expansion.
“There’s this whole concept of optimizing various aspects of a data center run to make it as cost-effective, as power-effective, as compute-effective as it can be,” Wood said. “Partnering with companies like Hammerhead, who are able to package optimization software, suggests TD Synnex sees massive growth in the number of data centers, and not just a few big ones run by AWS or Meta, but a massive growth in data center expansions, requiring pre-packaged types of software to optimize the build and run process.”
Execution will determine success for TD Synnex’s collaboration with Hammerhead, according to Gartner Senior Director Analyst Anne McClelland.
“My immediate thought goes to what will be the training and enablement to get the resellers, the individual sellers, comfortable with conversations around land use, power management or cooling management,” McClelland said. “These are not conversations that these partners and salespeople are necessarily having today. They're talking about different kinds of feeds and speeds. So this is new turf.”
McClelland added that TD Synnex will have to focus on preparing partners to sell Hammerhead technology. Resellers will need technical expertise to have detailed infrastructure conversations with buyers.
Market pressures
Hammerhead’s technology is one approach to address power constraints. The problem's scale extends far beyond a single solution.
The IT market is growing at its fastest pace on record, according to Gartner research. The firm expects more than 80% of enterprises to deploy industry-specific AI agents by 2030, up from just 10% last year. This year, Gartner forecasted global AI infrastructure spending to reach nearly $1.5 trillion.
The amount of power it will take to support AI is expected to spike alongside data center buildouts, according to Gartner research. Then there’s the matter of securing and governing all AI activities, and extracting return on investment. Many channel partners are feeling overwhelmed, McClelland said.
“The rapid buildout of AI is a bit of a cacophony, from the standpoint of what traditional channel players are feeling right now,” McClelland said. “The channel can be a bit of a laggard community when it comes to picking up new technology, new trends, just because of their investment capability. Because they work on very slim margins, they have to place their chess moves, their chess pieces, very carefully on the chess board. I believe that they're waiting to see how things will actually settle out and what their roles should be.”
Partners should cultivate skills and hire employees focused not just on cloud, networking and security, but on power management, cooling and automation, McClelland added.
Channel's new role
Channel firms are already shifting to AI infrastructure hardware and services, according to Edwards.
In its initial stages, data center buildouts were centered around cloud giants AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Nvidia and a handful of other large hardware vendors reaped the rewards through direct sales of AI servers, storage and networking.
A shift started this year, according to Edwards.
“We've seen a big shift towards the channel, and there's a number of reasons for that,” Edwards said. “The buildout has expanded beyond just the big hyperscalers into regional neocloud, enterprise and public sector customers. We've seen this kind of skewing of growth in the channel towards those big data center deals, and investment that has been focused in the U.S. is broadening out into the rest of the world.”
Some channel firms, including Computer Center, WWT, SHI and Ahead, have already won neocloud and enterprise data center deals, Edwards said.
The impetus to build is mounting. Companies that started with AI pilots in the public cloud face high costs and lock-in contracts as they scale projects, driving many to weigh the benefits of on-premises environments and colocation facilities.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the channel for data center hardware, compute, networking, and storage,” Edwards said. “Distributors like TD Synnex, which have historically served channel partners, are now actually playing in those big enterprise data center buildups, as well.”
