Ep. 015 - DG Matrix Explains 800V DC vs Legacy AC Distribution (Datacenter, Energy) | Jordan Nanos, Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Nicolas Bontigui, Haroon Inam

Summary

SemiAnalysis hosts speak with Haroon Inam, CEO and co-founder of DG Matrix, about why 800V DC is emerging as the practical power architecture for AI datacenters. Haroon argues that rising rack densities and megawatt-scale GPU loads make legacy AC cabling too costly and too constrained, while higher voltage lowers copper cost if creepage, clearance, and grounding are handled correctly. He frames 800V as a compromise between EV ecosystem maturity and widely available 1200V-class silicon carbide devices, and contrasts unipolar 800V with plus/minus 400V schemes on the basis of load balance, fault behavior, and arc-flash risk. The discussion then shifts to DG Matrix’s multiport solid-state transformer, which can combine AC and DC conversion, UPS, rectification, statcom-like functions, and behind-the-meter aggregation into one system. The hosts also explore adoption timing, brownfield retrofit sidecars, supply chain choices, and the longer-term trend toward much denser racks, integrated cooling, and software-defined power infrastructure.

Notes

• 800V DC is presented as a response to rising AI rack power and GPU synchronicity demands that legacy AC cabling cannot economically serve.
• Haroon Inam is introduced as DG Matrix’s co-founder and CEO, with a background in power electronics across computer room power, solar inverters, transmission control, and jet-engine starters.
• The core driver is 1 MW-class racks; Haroon says legacy AC architecture and standard AC strands cannot carry the required power.
• Haroon says moving from 240V AC three-phase to 800V can deliver almost triple the power on the same copper, assuming the distribution is designed correctly.
• He frames 800V as an economic sweet spot: enough headroom to lower copper cost without pushing into harder device and system territory.
• One reason 800V is attractive is the EV ecosystem, which already normalized 800V architectures.
• Another reason is semiconductor availability: 1200V devices are common, especially in motor drives, and wide-bandgap devices were developed around that class.
• Haroon says 800V is a safe settling point when the devices can already tolerate 1200V-class stress.
• The central engineering principle is simple: if creepage and clearance are managed, raising voltage is cheaper than raising current.
• Haroon says adoption has started, but demand will accelerate when Nvidia’s next architecture requires it.
• He argues the supply chain and manufacturing base are already shifting from EV applications toward datacenter applications.
• A key customer concern is stranded investment if a datacenter commits too hard to DC and adoption comes in slower than expected.
• DG Matrix’s early SST work on AC-to-AC conversion was, in Haroon’s view, a bad idea after years of work and millions spent.
• The value proposition emerged when AC-to-DC rectification was integrated into the SST, reducing balance-of-system cost and improving reliability.
• The bigger leap came from making every port bidirectional, enabling one machine to subsume multiple grid and facility functions.
• Haroon says it took about 700,000 engineering hours to get multiport SSTs to deployment readiness.
• The episode links the economics of AI tokens back to electricity, arguing the cost per token increasingly depends on kilowatt-hours.
• Haroon expects rack voltages to keep rising, with 1500V DC already part of the conversation.
• He expects rack density to continue increasing while racks shrink and power infrastructure becomes more physically integrated.
• He also expects more integrated cooling input as power and compute converge inside denser environments.
• Haroon explains plus/minus 400V as a split-rail architecture similar to Dreamliner-style power distribution.
• He says the alternative is 800V without a third conductor, which can simplify the system if load balance and fault behavior are handled.
• Haroon argues the third copper conductor is a meaningful cost factor in the architecture decision.
• He says plus/minus 400V depends on the loads staying balanced; otherwise the system becomes more complex.
• Haroon favors unipolar 800V if arc-flash risk is handled properly, because it simplifies grounding on the return conductor.
• The hosts cite a model in which 800V DC rises from near-zero adoption in 2026 to almost 80% of incremental datacenter capacity by 2030.
• That same chart implies more than 30 GW of annual 800V DC adoption by 2030.
• Haroon agrees the trajectory may be right, but says exact forecast numbers are inherently hard to pin down.
• He expects sidecars to decline over time as native 800V DC architecture becomes standard.
• Brownfield installs are a major use case for sidecars because they reduce retrofit friction and delay risk.
• Jeremie says SST adoption risk is dominated by uncertainty about hardware mix, not just timeline.
• He notes that if Nvidia’s roadmap clearly settles on 800V, the decision gets much easier.
• Jeremie adds that AI datacenters are not always operated by the same entities that build them, complicating infrastructure decisions.
• Haroon says multiport SSTs let customers run full load on either AC or DC, as long as total load stays within machine rating.
• He says the architecture allows a port to be switched from AC to DC without changing the copper, though protection changes.
• The hosts imagine modular data centers with mixed AC and DC modules as a plausible future use case.
• Haroon says DG Matrix uses 1200V-rated silicon carbide devices, some of which overlap with EV supply chains.
• He ties semiconductor failure physics in datacenter power systems to EV surge behavior.
• Haroon says silicon carbide is best suited for hundreds of kilowatts to megawatts, while gallium nitride is better for hundreds of watts to kilowatts.
• DG Matrix says it has been experimenting with both SiC and GaN for more than 10 years and is agnostic about device choice.
• The medium-voltage SST project takes 35 kV in and programmable 800V or 1500V out, aimed at 10 MW in one container.
• Haroon says the 6 MW SST is planned for 2027 and the 10 MW version for 2028.
• DG Matrix currently has 400 kWh units that can be paralleled to multi-megawatt scale.
• Haroon says bringing medium voltage to the top of a rack reduces copper, but creates major safety and zoning issues.
• He says that physical proximity between power and compute is becoming a major trend.
• DG Matrix says it is avoiding Chinese silicon carbide sourcing, relying instead on U.S. and European suppliers and possibly Japan.
• The company uses a China-plus-one strategy for non-CPU, non-software electromechanical parts, with alternate sources like Mexico and Vietnam.
• Haroon warns that more software-defined power systems require stronger cybersecurity.
• He says DG Matrix has experience with cybersecurity-proof power systems on the transmission grid.
• Haroon recommends background checks on every entity that touches electronics and software in critical power infrastructure.