AI start-up Poolside is scrambling to find new data center partners after its $2 billion funding round collapsed and a major deal with CoreWeave fell apart. The company had planned Horizon, a massive 2-gigawatt complex in Texas that would house tens of thousands of Nvidia's Blackwell AI chips. The partnership unraveled when Poolside failed to bring its first chip cluster online by CoreWeave's deadline.

Poolside had been negotiating with Google to salvage the project, hoping to secure commitments for 400 megawatts of capacity. However, those discussions have since gone cold. The funding setback is particularly damaging as Poolside had been in talks with Nvidia to invest up to $1 billion in the round, which would have quadrupled the company's valuation to $12 billion. Investors remained skeptical about Poolside's ability to develop AI models competitive with industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Despite these challenges, Poolside remains optimistic about finding a stronger partner to help finance the power-intensive project. The company has split into two entities - one focused on infrastructure called "PIC" and another on model development - in an attempt to attract different types of investors. With hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft racing to secure data center capacity, Poolside believes its strategic land holdings in Texas's Permian Basin position it well for future opportunities.