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Span Installs Prototype Home-Based XFRA Data Center Nodes in Northern California
California-based Span has installed cabinet-sized XFRA units on residences and small businesses in partnership with Nvidia. The company projects 1 to 2 megawatts of compute later this year, scaling to more than 1 gigawatt annually beginning in 2027. Similar home-based approaches by UK startup Heata have saved 1 gigawatt-hour of energy while generating 8 million liters of hot water.
May 15, 8:00 PM·2m read2 sources
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California-based Span has deployed prototype data center nodes in Northern California in partnership with Nvidia. The cabinet-sized units, dubbed XFRA, are installed on the sides of homes and small businesses. Requiring no fans, the XFRA technology is quiet.
Ryan Harris, chief revenue officer of Span, said the company estimates XFRA will generate about one to two megawatts worth of compute later this year. Harris said XFRA will scale across the country to an annual capacity of more than 1 gigawatt beginning next year. , is testing the XFRA system.
Nvidia will provide the liquid-cooled RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs for the XFRA system. "We do see a path to being able to contribute on an annual basis hundreds of megawatts, if not gigawatts, of scale compute capacity, while doing so in a deflationary-to-energy-price way," Harris told Fortune.
Span can install nodes at six-times the speed of centralized 100-megawatt data centers and at about one-fifth of the cost of construction of centralized 100-megawatt data centers.
The company charges a flat monthly fee of about $150. In return for the $150 monthly fee, Span pays a host’s electricity and internet bills. The computing power generated from the XFRA nodes is distributed to customers like hyperscalers and AI companies.
Span states that XFRA is not designed to replace commercial data centers but to reduce strain on the grid. Heata, a UK-based startup, has installed units in about 100 homes. The company claims to have saved about 1 gigawatt-hour of energy.
