Prithpal Khajuria

I work on infrastructure shifts before the market has fully named them. My focus is the convergence of frontier AI, compute, energy, and the electric grid—where new technology cycles collide with infrastructure designed for the last one. I identify the constraint early, define the architecture around it, and build the ecosystem required to move it from concept to commercial adoption. That is how I approached software-defined power systems. In 2019, led a pioneering utility development and demonstration of virtualized protection relay with Southern California Edison and Salt River Project. The work challenged a century-old model built around dedicated hardware and demonstrated a path toward programmable, software-defined protection, automation, and control. That thesis became the foundation for the vPAC Alliance, which I co-founded in 2023. Today, the Alliance brings together more than 40 utilities, OEMs, and technology companies. At DistribuTECH 2026, three major global OEMs announced commercial products aligned with this architecture. What began as a forward-looking idea is becoming an industry category. I see the next transformation forming around AI infrastructure. As compute campuses scale toward hundreds of megawatts and beyond, silicon roadmaps, workload behavior, substations, protection systems, energy resources, and utility operations will no longer evolve independently. They will need to operate as one coordinated infrastructure system. The next advantage will not come from securing more GPUs or megawatts alone. It will come from creating infrastructure that can be repeated, upgraded, and operated at the speed of compute. At Intel, I lead strategy for the Energy & Utilities segment, working across utilities, OEMs, technology partners, and infrastructure ecosystems in more than 50 countries. My work is focused on four things: identifying the co