Employees at Amp, a startup dedicated to helping other start-ups, universities, and organizations pool resources to buy computing power from artificial intelligence data center operators.
Employees at Amp, a startup aiming to help other start-ups, universities and other organizations pool resources to buy computing power from artificial intelligence data center operators , in Menlo Park, California. on April 15, 2026.
— Ian C. Bates/The New York Times: The world’s leading artificial intelligence companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the computer data centres needed to create AI. Tech giants like Amazon and Google and well-funded startups like Anthropic and OpenAI are among the tiny group of outfits with the money and connections to get access to all that computing power.
Anjney Midha, a serial tech entrepreneur who was a partner with the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, hopes to change that dynamic with an unusual startup. His young company, Amp, is trying to buy extra computing power from data centre operators in the United States and other countries so it can share that valuable resource with anyone who needs it.
Amp, based in Menlo Park, California, aims to create a global pool of specialised computer chips that can be used by startups, universities and other organisations that otherwise would not have access to the vast amounts of computing required to train the most powerful AI models.
“Some companies just can’t get the computing power they need,” Midha said. “The world’s wealthiest and most powerful companies are hoarding the infrastructure for themselves. ” Amp has raised more than US$1.3bil from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, the startup incubator Y Combinator and various cloud computing providers.
Several notable startups have also agreed to help use and share its pool of computing power, including Periodic Labs, an AI startup focused on scientific discovery, and Eleven Labs, which builds AI systems for generating voices. Amp is part of a wider effort to pool AI infrastructure. Chipmaker Nvidia and French startup Mistral said this year that they would pool computing power for building AI systems for European companies and nations, hoping to reduce their dependence on US tech giants.
Midha compared his startup to forming an electricity grid. Just as a pool of electrical power can be shared among homes and offices, a pool of computing power can be shared among startups and universities. Investors contribute funds that Amp can use to buy computing power from the data centre operators. AI startups then join the coalition so they can use the computing power to build AI models.
In return, these startups contribute additional funds or perhaps other resources. Some startups may share digital data needed to train AI models. Or they may share the models themselves, giving away the core software code to others in the coalition. Companies may even work to train models together.
The ultimate value of the coalition is collective bargaining, said Liam Fedus, CEO of Periodic Labs. On its own, his startup would struggle to get the computing power it needed. But if Amp can negotiate with data centre operators on behalf of many startups, it can gain additional leverage.
“When you pool your demand, you can have far more serious conversation about buying computing power,” Fedus said. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
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