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Datacenters

141 items across 47 editions · appeared in the last 21 editions in a row. First seen Fri 11 Sep, last seen Fri 30 Oct. Traced across 6 weekly reviews.

How this story has evolved

From the week in review: the connections, developments and open questions filed under Datacenters, newest week first.

Week of 19–25 October 2026

Connection
Both money stories turn on the same number: what the labs and their customers have already committed to spend on compute

The shared element is the commitment line. The draft prospectus reviewed by the Wall Street Journal puts Anthropic's "Infrastructure commitments" above $600 billion, with "additional negotiations" that "could bring the potential total toward $750 billion", against first-half revenue of $16.3 billion. Meta's quarterly filing states "$454.52 billion of non-cancelable contractual commitments" at 30 September 2026, with "approximately $45.85 billion and $121.41 billion due in 2026 and 2027, respectively", plus leases not yet commenced of "approximately $355.73 billion". The same week, Andy Jassy said of AWS that "2027 is largely sold out" and "A good chunk of 2028 is sold out", and NVIDIA wrote that "More than $300 billion in equipment is backlogged" with "over 200 gigawatts of projects... waiting in U.S. interconnection queues".

Development · Mon 19 Oct, Tue 20 Oct, Thu 22 Oct, Sun 25 Oct
A leaked draft prospectus puts Anthropic's first-half revenue at $16.3 billion and its net loss at $80.7 billion as OpenAI closes an up-to-$30 billion round

Figures from a draft prospectus reviewed by the Wall Street Journal for its 20 October report: Anthropic "generated $16.3 billion in revenue for the six months ended June 30, up from $1.1 billion in the year-earlier period" and "recorded a first-half net loss of $80.7 billion, compared with $13 billion in the same period a year earlier". It "incurred nearly $9 billion in computing capacity and infrastructure costs in the first half of 2026", "exceeding the $7.3 billion spent during all of 2025". "Of the latest loss, $72 billion came from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other financing instruments issued to raise funding." "Subtracting the charges leaves $8.7 billion of net loss," though "that remainder does not establish an operating-loss figure or measure cash spent running the business during those six months." "Infrastructure commitments exceed $600 billion; additional negotiations could bring the potential total toward $750 billion."

Development · Wed 21 Oct, Thu 22 Oct, Fri 23 Oct, Sat 24 Oct, Sun 25 Oct
Meta discloses $454.52 billion of non-cancelable commitments and negative free cash flow as neocloud shares fall more than 30% in a month

Meta reported third-quarter results on 21 October: revenue of $64,601 million against $51,242 million, up 26%; income from operations of $12,988 million against $20,535 million, down 37%; an operating margin of 20% against 40%. "Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $34.91 billion." "Cash flow from operating activities was $32.79 billion, and free cash flow was negative $2.12 billion." Costs and expenses include "a $9.89 billion charge" related to an agreement with 52 attorneys general "which provides for payments of up to approximately $18.59 billion". Meta narrowed 2026 capital expenditure guidance to "$135-145 billion" from a prior "$130-145 billion", and guided fourth-quarter revenue to "$73-76 billion".

Open question
What is driving the neocloud share falls, and will any named party attribute them to something other than credit conditions?

No named source attributes the falls to a cause. The explanations on the record are CNBC's own narration, which points to Musk's post for the Monday drop and to the spread on CoreWeave's five-year credit default swaps for the month-long sell-off, plus an unnamed executive on "businesses with no credit rating". Every named person quoted disputes a demand problem. Musk, the only named party asserting a credit-market cause, runs a competing business; CNBC notes that "SpaceX is a direct competitor to the neoclouds which also rent compute." Apollo's note gives no percentage figures and names no company.

Week of 12–18 October 2026

Development · Tue 13 Oct, Wed 14 Oct, Thu 15 Oct
Twenty of the largest AI and chip stocks shed more than $1 trillion in a week as CoreWeave's 2032 bond yield reaches 14.8%

CNBC wrote on 15 October that "Collectively, 20 of the most valuable global AI and semiconductor stocks have shed more than $1 trillion in value so far this week, as interest rate hikes, AI financing and intensifying competition weighed on sentiment." It recorded SK Hynix down "more than 10%", Samsung Electronics "fell 8.73%", SoftBank Group "tumbled 7.9%", Advantest "plunged almost 14%", and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.88% to 26,692.87. On 14 October CNBC reported CoreWeave shares "nosedived 15.5%" and that "The yield to maturity on its 9.625% bond due in 2032 is sitting at 14.8%, while that of its 9.75% bond due in 2031 is around 14.9%."

Week of 5–11 October 2026

Development · Wed 7 Oct, Thu 8 Oct, Fri 9 Oct
SpaceX seeks $40 billion for Nvidia chips and Broadcom more than $50 billion for OpenAI's, as OpenAI's reported revenue is cut by $20 billion

Reuters, in a wire datelined 6 October and carried by The Star on 7 October, reported, citing the Financial Times, that SpaceX plans to raise "$40 billion for the purchase of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips" — "about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt" — with Apollo Global Management expected to lead and PIMCO in talks on financing. "The company plans to use Nvidia hardware exclusively to build its data centers, Musk said." The same wire notes that "Morgan Stanley estimates that AI infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028" and that Musk "took SpaceX public in June in a record $86 billion IPO". SpaceX shares were down 2% in early trade and Nvidia's stock rose 0.5%. On 8 October Benzinga relayed a Wall Street Journal report that Broadcom is pursuing more than $50 billion to finance custom AI chips developed jointly with OpenAI, that Broadcom "recently discussed financing with Apollo Global Management Inc." and Blackstone, that the financing "could support several gigawatts of chip capacity for OpenAI", and that "Oracle is negotiating with Apollo and Goldman Sachs Group Inc." to raise money for a substantial chip purchase.

Development · Thu 8 Oct, Fri 9 Oct, Sun 11 Oct
Drone strikes halt three Yandex data centres in four days, taking more than 80 services offline

Data Center Dynamics reported on 8 October that a drone strike caused a fire at Yandex DC Sasovo in Ryazan Oblast, which it describes as "Yandex's largest data center facility", forcing it to cease operations, with Yandex Cloud's status dashboard showing a power outage at its ru-central-b availability zone from 1:31am local time. DCD said this "is the first major data center to be taken down in Russia during the conflict with Ukraine". Al Jazeera reports that the Sasovo hub is the site "where two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company's AI model are housed", and a Reuters file caption on the same page describes the hub as hosting tens of thousands of servers.

Open question
Who struck the three Yandex data centres, and can the equipment at Sasovo be restored?

No Ukrainian claim of responsibility for the Vladimir strike has been reported, and no attribution of the Sasovo strike is given in the sources. Yandex says the scale of the damage at Sasovo is still being assessed and that it cannot confirm whether the equipment can be restored. The company has published no outage duration and no affected-user count, and the capacity, rack-count and service-count figures come from Telegram channels relayed by Kyiv Post rather than from Yandex.

Week of 28 September – 4 October 2026

Development · Mon 28 Sep, Tue 29 Sep, Fri 2 Oct
Anthropic's prospectus shows $4.6bn revenue and $518bn of obligations; a $60bn debt package sits behind the chips

On 28 September Reuters reported a prospectus it had seen showing revenue growing 12-fold in 2025 to nearly $4.6 billion, and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations. CNBC reported that the near-$42 billion net loss "included a roughly $34 billion accounting charge that reflected an increase in the estimated value of financing that could eventually turn into Anthropic shares, rather than money the company spent running its business", and that the company lost more than $8 billion on an operating basis. On 29 September CNBC reported that around 80 of the prospectus’s 261 pages are risk factors, warning of "catastrophic or existential risk to humanity", and carried Reuters’ account of language on models that resist shutdown, conceal or manipulate information, and behave in ways resembling blackmail. TechCrunch reported that the Financial Times said it had reviewed the filing and that nearly a third of it is risk factors, where Reuters’ account is over a third.

Week of 21–27 September 2026

Connection
The money for data centres got more expensive in the same week the permits got harder

Two constraints on the same build-out moved within days. CNBC reported on 27 September that Treasury yields had climbed to their highest levels since 2007 and that companies reliant on debt are poised to see borrowing costs rise; The Japan Times reported that SoftBank's yields were the highest-ever for its dollar bonds on a day when benchmark U.S. Treasury rates soared to two-decade highs. On 21 September Governor Newsom signed seven bills making data centres pay grid upgrade costs and disclose water use, and Governor Abbott ordered Texas to issue no new data-centre permits until two audits finish.

Development · Mon 21 Sep
Newsom signed seven data-centre laws and Abbott froze Texas permits as 45 US projects worth $68 billion were blocked or delayed

Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven data-centre bills on 21 September — AB 1577, AB 2383, AB 2469, AB 2619, SB 886, SB 887 and SB 1168 — requiring reporting on water and electricity use, making data centres pay grid upgrade costs while preventing cost shifts to low-income customers, requiring information to local governments and water suppliers with any water-supply upgrades paid for by the data centre, and making data centres ineligible for blanket environmental exemptions.

Development · Mon 21 Sep, Wed 23 Sep, Thu 24 Sep, Fri 25 Sep, Sun 27 Sep
SoftBank raised roughly $11 billion at its highest-ever dollar yields as the 10-year Treasury hit its highest level since 2007

The Japan Times, citing Bloomberg, reported on 24 September that SoftBank raised roughly $11 billion in debt across dollars and euros, making it the biggest corporate junk-bond borrower in the world. It sold $1 billion of 3.5-year bonds at a yield of 8.625%, $4.5 billion of 5.5-year securities at 9.25% and a $4.5 billion 7.5-year tranche at 9.75%, plus €1 billion of euro notes, the longer tranche at 8%. The paper writes that the yields are the highest-ever for SoftBank dollar bonds on a day when benchmark U.S. Treasury rates soared to two-decade highs. Its 21 September report said the money would in part fund a follow-on investment in OpenAI expected to close next month.

Open question
Does the higher cost of debt change any announced AI data-centre commitment?

CNBC writes that the market is not in panic mode, at least not yet, while quoting a senior private credit investor saying neocloud deals will be more difficult to finance. Oracle's force majeure notice is reported by Bloomberg and Oracle has not publicly confirmed it, saying instead that the project remains on its planned schedule. The Nscale contract figures come from a filing whose active portion is a small fraction of the headline, and no audited figure has been published for any of the burn or revenue projections.

Week of 14–20 September 2026

Connection
Record data-centre financing and the first federal vote on who pays for the power landed in the same week

Both developments are about the same buildings. Crusoe's 17 September round funds data centres including the Abilene site used by OpenAI; the Crux AI loan is earmarked for Google TPUs; Generac's 8-K covers backup generators for Amazon data centers. The measures on the other side name the same class of facility: the Ratepayers Protection Act sets a federal standard for making large, high-power data centres cover generation and transmission costs, and the framework signed under Virginia's Executive Order 22 asks the legislature to end by-right approval above 25 megawatts.

Development · Tue 15 Sep, Wed 16 Sep, Fri 18 Sep
House passes the Ratepayers Protection Act 417-3 and Virginia orders a data-centre accountability framework, as a chip analyst puts the capacity actually delayed at 2.3 GW

The House passed the Ratepayers Protection Act 417-3 on 16 September under suspension of the rules, with the only opposition from Reps. Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez and Rashida Tlaib. NBC News reports it was "the only legislation related to artificial intelligence that was scheduled for a vote this week", in the House's final week before the 3 November midterms, and that it is unclear what the Senate will do with it.

Development · Wed 16 Sep, Thu 17 Sep, Fri 18 Sep, Sat 19 Sep, Sun 20 Sep
Crusoe raises $3.9bn, CoreWeave offers $3.0bn of converts and banks lend $22bn against TPUs as OpenAI forecasts $278bn of negative cash flow

Crusoe said on 17 September it raised $3.9 billion in a Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation, co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners, ten months after raising $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation. CoreWeave said the same day it intends to offer "$3.0 billion aggregate principal amount of its convertible senior notes due 2033", with initial purchasers granted an option for up to $500 million more; Quartz reports it separately filed an 8-K disclosing an equity distribution agreement under which it may sell up to 35 million Class A shares through an at-the-market programme.

Open question
Does the cost of data-centre power actually shift onto operators, or does the House vote stand alone?

NBC News reports it is unclear what the Senate will do with the Ratepayers Protection Act and that the Senate has moved none of its own data-centre bills. The bill sets a standard for state regulators to consider rather than a tariff. Cardinal News lists the by-right change among the governor's legislative priorities for the 2027 General Assembly session rather than among the directives Executive Order 22 enacted. The PJM reliability figures are a state-commissioned model, not PJM's own planning numbers, and PJM's own planning projections are not in it.

Friday, 30 October 2026

Amazon holds 2026 capex at $220 billion; trailing free cash flow is an outflow of $42.4 billion Company claim

SEC (Amazon 8-K Ex. 99.1)·CNBC·Reuters
  • Amazon's release says "Free cash flow decreased to an outflow of $42.4 billion for the trailing twelve months," against "free cash flow inflow of $14.8 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2025," and that "We continue to expect 2026 cash capital expenditures to be approximately $220 billion." CNBC reports capital expenditures "reached $77.3 billion during the quarter, ticking up from $35.1 billion one year earlier, and coming in well above analysts' estimated $58.7 billion, according to FactSet."
  • The operating business is not the problem. Net sales "increased 12% to $201.9 billion in the third quarter, compared with $180.2 billion in third quarter 2025"; "Operating income was $28.1 billion and operating margin was 13.9%—Amazon's highest operating margin ever"; and "AWS segment sales increased 39% year-over-year to $46.0 billion." Purchases of property and equipment were $175,670 million for the nine months to 30 September 2026, against $92,297 million a year earlier.
  • Amazon said the cash shortfall was "primarily due to an increase in purchases of property and equipment as a result of AI investments," and CEO Andy Jassy told investors the company expects to "spend meaningfully more in 2027." The release projects AWS revenue growth "of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028"; Jassy said the chips business "continues to grow triple-digit percentages year over year" and that Trainium will be made available externally "late in 2027."
  • Markets read the spending, not the margin: Reuters reports Amazon shares down 7.2% in premarket trading on 30 October, with Nasdaq futures down more than 2%. Fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $240 billion to $247 billion has a midpoint below the $244.5 billion LSEG consensus. The AWS and Trainium projections are company statements about the future and are not verified.
Compute moneyAmazonDatacentersComputeEarningsChips

Intel falls 23% after hours and says the Israel fab explosion will erase roughly $600 million of revenue

Reuters
  • Reuters reports Intel shares "plunged 23% after hours on Thursday after the chip maker warned it would burn cash this year due to the faltering PC market, bottlenecks in manufacturing and heavy spending on expanding production," and that Intel "expects the deadly October explosion at its Israel plant to erase roughly $600 million in revenue over two quarters and reduce supplies of AI server chips to cloud customers."
  • Finance chief David Zinsner told Reuters Intel "lowered its fourth-quarter revenue outlook by roughly $300 million and cut its gross margin outlook by about 200 basis points," and expects a similar hit in the first quarter. The Kiryat Gat factory "killed two and seriously injured one," was shut for two weeks, and "largely produces data center chips using the company's 10 nanometer manufacturing process."
  • Intel guided fourth-quarter revenue to between $15 billion and $16 billion against an LSEG average estimate of $17.07 billion, with adjusted profit of 25 cents per share against estimates of 43 cents. PC chip revenue fell 5% to $8.10 billion in the third quarter and is expected to decline in the mid-20% range in the fourth.
  • The read-through is that AI server supply is now hostage to single-site physical risk, not just demand. CEO Lip-Bu Tan: "We face near-term challenges, including manufacturing supply shortages, the unprecedented memory crunch, and the resulting softness in PC demand." Reuters reports Intel tanked 25% in premarket trade on Friday, with Nvidia down 2.5%, AMD down 7% and Broadcom down roughly 4%.
Compute moneyChipsEarningsComputeDatacenters

Microsoft raises about $25 billion in its first US investment-grade bond sale in more than nine years

Reuters·Reuters
  • Reuters reports that "Microsoft is planning to raise about US$25-billion through its first U.S. investment-grade bond sale in more than nine years, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday," with Bloomberg News first reporting it. Reuters' 30 October markets story states that "Microsoft, the only exception, nevertheless raised $25 billion through a debt sale on Thursday."
  • Per Bloomberg as relayed by Reuters, Microsoft is selling the debt "in as many as 10 tranches, with maturities ranging from two to 40 years," with Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and UBS Group AG managing the offering. "Microsoft pointed Reuters to a regulatory filing that confirms the bond sale without disclosing the size of the sale."
  • The timing is the story: it lands a day after CFO Amy Hood told investors Microsoft would pursue additional funding sources "when we believe it is attractive to do so," and Microsoft "expects to keep generating positive free cash flow in its current fiscal year that runs through June, 2027" — making it, in Reuters' framing, the standout among peers now burning cash.
  • The $25 billion figure is from an unnamed source and Bloomberg's reporting; Reuters notes no final decision had been made on the offering's size and that it could change with demand. The confirming regulatory filing does not state the amount.
Compute moneyMicrosoftFundingDatacentersCompute

Nvidia in talks to guarantee billions of Nscale debt for the West Virginia site Anthropic plans to use Single source

Reuters
  • Reuters reports that "Nvidia is in talks to offer AI cloud provider Nscale billions of dollars in credit guarantees to support debt funding for a data center earmarked for Anthropic, The Information reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the talks." The support would fund power infrastructure and construction of Nscale's West Virginia site; Nvidia is an investor in the UK-based provider.
  • The sums already committed there are large: "Anthropic struck a deal in August to spend $45 billion to rent computing power from Nscale's West Virginia data center campus," and "Nscale is also in talks to sell about 460 megawatts of AI computing power to Anthropic in another deal that could also be worth about $45 billion."
  • A chip vendor underwriting a customer's customer's debt is the circularity critics of the build-out have been pointing at. Reuters notes the report "comes as companies such as Coreweave and Firmus, which are both backed by Nvidia, have been hit by concerns about debt financing behind the AI build-out."
  • Nothing is signed: "The deal has not been signed and terms could still change, the report said." The original reporting is The Information's, behind a paywall and not read here; Nvidia, Nscale and Anthropic "did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment."
Compute moneyNVIDIAAnthropicDatacentersFundingEnergy

Foxconn says an OpenAI collaboration is in the works and more than 10 humanoid robots are deployed in Texas Company claim

Reuters
  • Reuters reports that Foxconn Chairman Young Liu "told reporters at the company's annual event to showcase its technology that he had met OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman earlier in the day and there would be an announcement once details were confirmed." Any deal would build on last year's agreement to work together on designing and engineering data-centre racks, components and other AI hardware.
  • Separately, Brand Cheng, chairman of Foxconn Industrial Internet, "told Reuters on Friday that more than 10 humanoid robots had been deployed at its Texas facilities for internal use," with plans to extend deployment beyond Texas. Presentation materials seen by Reuters show two wheeled models introduced in October, one lifting vertically and one bending at the waist for assembly and loading; the unit is developing models based on Nvidia's GR00T foundation model.
  • The scale context: Foxconn has six factory buildings in Houston making AI servers for Nvidia and sees a need for further expansion, and said in August that its cloud and networking products segment, which includes AI servers, "accounted for 51% of second-quarter revenue, exceeding 50% for the first time."
  • Liu "said the industry was not in a bubble and that Foxconn expects to maintain double-digit growth next year" — a claim from the company that stands to gain most from continued build-out. No details, value or timing were given for the OpenAI collaboration, and the robot count is a company statement, not an observed deployment.
OpenAIRoboticsDatacentersLaborNVIDIA

Thursday, 29 October 2026

Alphabet Q3: revenue up 25% to $127.6 billion, capex $51,355 million, free cash flow negative $9,065 million

SEC·CNBC
  • Alphabet's release says "consolidated Alphabet revenues increased 25% to $127.6 billion" ($127,577 million) and that "Google Cloud revenues grew 103%" to $30,709 million, from $15,157 million a year earlier. The filing shows purchases of property and equipment of $51,355 million for the quarter and $131,953 million year to date, and free cash flow of negative $9,065 million.
  • CNBC reports this as Alphabet's "first top-and-bottom-line miss in nearly four years": revenue of $127.58 billion against $128.22 billion expected and adjusted EPS of $2.67 against $3.02 expected (LSEG), with negative free cash flow far below the $2.70 billion analysts expected and capex of $51.36 billion short of the $55.09 billion forecast. Shares "slumped more than 10%".
  • The spending is being funded with debt: CNBC reports long-term debt climbing to $125.1 billion from $21.6 billion a year earlier. Alphabet kept full-year capex guidance of $195 billion to $205 billion, and CNBC quotes finance chief Anat Ashkenazi telling analysts "we continue to expect our capex to increase significantly in 2027, and will provide further details on our Q4 call".
  • Sundar Pichai's quoted framing is demand-led — "Google Cloud revenues grew 103%, powered by huge demand for our AI infrastructure and AI solutions" — but the release itself gives no capex guidance and no cloud backlog figure.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersEarningsGoogle DeepMind

Microsoft discloses Azure revenue in dollars for the first time at $33.17 billion and names $170 billion for calendar 2027 capex

CNBC·TechCrunch
  • CNBC reports that "for the first time, Microsoft disclosed revenue from its Azure cloud in dollars, at $33.17 billion in the quarter", with Azure growth of 48% against a StreetAccount consensus of $32.32 billion and a June-quarter growth rate of 42%. Quarterly revenue was $92.28 billion, up 19%, against $90.69 billion expected, and adjusted EPS $4.89 against $4.73 (LSEG).
  • Capital expenditures and finance leases were $45.2 billion, up about 30% year over year but below the $50.67 billion StreetAccount projected. CFO Amy Hood said "some third-party capacity deliveries we expected in Q1 were delayed", and is aiming at over $50 billion in fiscal Q2 "with $170 billion for all of calendar 2027 because of the capacity issues".
  • CNBC reports around 75% of capital expenditures are now tied to short-lived assets such as Intel chips and Nvidia GPUs, up from about 66% in the past three quarters and half a year earlier, and that free cash flow fell 27% to $18.63 billion. Hood guided Azure to 49% to 50% constant-currency growth next quarter, saying "we still have demand that exceeds supply".
  • Microsoft reported under two segments for the first time in 11 years; "Agents and Infra" revenue rose almost 25% to $76.8 billion. Hood said Microsoft will keep generating free cash flow through fiscal 2027 but would tap debt markets when attractive: "we haven't yet, I would say, tapped that".
Compute moneyMicrosoftComputeDatacentersEarnings

Wednesday, 28 October 2026

SK hynix posts its first 100-trillion-won quarter, an 80% operating margin, and sees shortage through 2030 Company claim

SK hynix·CNBC
  • SK hynix reported third-quarter revenue of 104.6155 trillion won, operating profit of 83.3338 trillion won with an operating margin of 80%, and net profit of 39.7756 trillion won at a 38% net margin — its first quarter above 100 trillion won, with revenue and operating profit up 32% and 38% on the previous quarter. CNBC reports revenue rose 327.9% and operating profit 632.1% year on year, against LSEG SmartEstimates of 98.34 trillion won and 76.72 trillion won.
  • The company says HBM4 shipments "began in earnest" and it expects HBM4 to surpass HBM3E in both shipment volume and revenue in the fourth quarter, with M15X ramped to maximum capacity by year-end. It says long-term agreements are secured for more than 50% of 2027~2028 production capacity, and that given "technical difficulty of leading-edge processes and the long lead time required to build new production facilities, it expects the structure in which demand exceeds supply to persist through 2030". Cash and equivalents stood at 114.5 trillion won against borrowings of 15.8 trillion won.
  • The figures are preliminary and the company's own. CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said SK hynix has "discontinued" its review of a Solidigm IPO after "carefully considering recent financial market conditions and other factors", and that gains from its Kioxia investment will go to shareholders — about 100 trillion won in returns this year. CNBC reports shares closed 10.89% higher on Wednesday against a Kospi up 6.63%.
Compute moneyChipsComputeEarningsDatacenters

Oracle will sell Google TPUs on its cloud, the first access to the chips outside Google's own infrastructure

CNBC·Data Center Dynamics
  • CNBC reports: "A day ahead of its third-quarter earnings report, Alphabet said on Tuesday that Oracle will offer Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs, the custom chips the internet giant has been developing since 2013. It's the first time customers will be able to access TPUs outside of Google's infrastructure." Karan Batta, SVP of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, told Data Center Dynamics it would be a "multi-year, multi-gigawatt partnership with Google", adding "this is not an experiment" and that "when Google launches a new TPU, we will have it on day one".
  • DCD reports the chips will be available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in calendar year 2027, ramping over a multi-year period, and that Oracle is the first hyperscaler to adopt them since Google said in April 2026 it would sell to a "select group of customers". On the hardware, DCD gives the training-oriented TPU 8t at "nearly 3x the compute performance per pod over the previous generation" with 19.2Tbps bidirectional scale-up bandwidth, and the inference TPU 8i scaling to 1,152 chips per pod at 11.6 exaflops of FP8 and 331.8TB of HBM per pod.
  • Oracle declined to comment on the scale of the initial deployment, and DCD notes a caveat on the "first" claim: Google is also working with Blackstone on a US cloud platform offering TPUs named Crux AI, so "depending on which launches sooner, Oracle could be the first to bring TPUs online outside Google's platform". CNBC reports analysts expect Google Cloud revenue to jump about 90% from a year earlier, after growing 82% in the second quarter.
Compute moneyChipsComputeGoogle DeepMindDatacenters

Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Banks and Blackstone commit $63 billion to buy Broadcom AI chips and lease them to Anthropic

Reuters·Reuters
  • Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley will provide $63 billion in financing to buy Broadcom's AI accelerators and networking gear for Anthropic, in what Reuters describes as one of the largest debt deals tied to the AI buildout. A newly formed special purpose vehicle will buy the equipment and lease it to Anthropic, with deliveries expected to begin in 2027 under a previously announced strategic compute capacity agreement.
  • First-lien loans total about $43.5 billion, "according to two sources familiar with the matter, or 69% of total financing", Reuters reports. Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley arrange the first lien and Blackstone provides the committed second-lien portion. The companies' release did not disclose the loan breakdown.
  • Broadcom provides "residual value support" to first-lien lenders, which Reuters says effectively amounts to a significant guarantee. Under a prior agreement Apollo and Blackstone financed a $35 billion Anthropic compute expansion with a Broadcom backstop of up to $29 billion per a filing.
  • Reuters reports Moody's described Broadcom as one of the strongest large technology companies but warned risk would increase if multiple such transactions were done over a short period. Broadcom did not respond to a request for comment. The deal was announced the same day Anthropic filed its S-1.
Compute moneyChipsNVIDIAFundingAnthropicDatacenters

Meta moves to raise $95 billion for AI infrastructure and Nvidia puts in $3 billion Company claim

NVIDIA·CNBC·CNBC
  • Meta said on Monday it plans to raise a total of $95 billion to support investments in AI infrastructure, initially $35 billion in underwritten public equity offerings and a further $60 billion through an at-the-market programme. Meta said Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom were interested in purchasing up to $5 billion in shares, per CNBC.
  • Nvidia announced on Tuesday that it will invest $3 billion in Meta's equity offering, and that the two companies will deepen their partnership on Muse, Meta's AI agent. Nvidia says Meta will deploy more of its infrastructure for next-generation agents, including Vera Rubin systems and Vera CPUs with Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and BlueField-4.
  • CNBC reports Meta now expects full-year capital expenditure of $135 billion to $145 billion, raising the bottom of the range from $130 billion, and third-quarter revenue of $64.60 billion, up 26% year on year against the $63.37 billion analysts expected. Meta says it is building four superclusters of more than 1 gigawatt each. Meta's stock was down 1.6% in morning trading after the raise was announced; both companies' shares were flat in premarket trading on Tuesday.
  • CNBC reports Nvidia has participated in 121 investment rounds so far this year, according to Dealroom, up from 13 in 2022, and that it has also invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, Intel and xAI. The capacity and supercluster figures are the companies' own.
Compute moneyMetaNVIDIADatacentersComputeFunding

Anthropic's S-1 shows about $417 billion of committed compute payments and $125 billion to $150 billion more ordered Company claim

CNBC·Fortune·SEC EDGAR
  • CNBC, reading the filing, reports future obligations to pay providers approximately $417 billion for compute — data centres, the computing equipment inside them, and cloud services — with deals starting between 2026 and 2027 and lasting from under one year to up to 20 years, plus additional capacity ordered for delivery between 2028 and 2031, pricing not yet final, expected to add $125 billion to $150 billion. Fortune reads the same filing as committing between $542 billion and $567 billion for future compute and infrastructure.
  • Per-supplier commitments CNBC cites from the filing: $110 billion on Amazon Trainium chips through 2036, $114.5 billion on Google TPUs through 2033, more than $20 billion possible in AMD chips, and up to $120.5 billion with SpaceX extending into 2029.
  • CNBC reports noncancelable purchase commitments rose from $54.6 billion at year-end 2025 to $265.6 billion at June 30, 2026, and future undiscounted lease obligations from $50.2 billion to $321.4 billion over the same period, while net property and equipment was $1.19 billion at June 30 against $146 million at year-end 2025.
  • The risk-factor text in the filing leaves the aggregate committed spend figure blank, and the two outlets' totals differ because they aggregate different schedules. Treat the headline total as a reading of the filing rather than a figure Anthropic states, and all of it as the company's own disclosure.
Compute moneyAnthropicComputeDatacentersChips

Monday, 26 October 2026

Arizona attorney general says the state has about fifty data centres on the books and does not need them Single source

Politico (via Yahoo News)
  • Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Politico Energy podcast: "We don't need fifty more data centers in the state of Arizona, and according to my staff's research, that's what's on the books right now." She has called for a moratorium on new builds, arguing "You can be a tech hub and not build data centers" because "we don't have the water for it".
  • Politico reports a July poll in which "41% of respondents would oppose a data center being built within three miles of their home, up from 28% in January", and says the backlash "may fuel the first Democratic takeover of the state House in six decades". Mayes pointed to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing's "$265 billion facility" in Phoenix as the kind of project that creates more jobs than AI computing hubs. On power, she opposed Tucson Electric Power and Arizona Public Service rate rises "of up to 13% and 14%, respectively".
  • Arizona Democrats are split: Governor Katie Hobbs "has rejected the idea of temporarily banning data centers, saying instead that she wants to find the 'right balance'", and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has also opposed a moratorium. Mayes is on the ballot on 3 November, so this is a campaign position, not state policy. Politico's own article page is blocked from this session; the text above is from Politico's syndicated copy on Yahoo News.
US State PolicyDatacentersEnergy

Around half a dozen Connecticut towns have banned or paused data centres before any were proposed Single source

CT Mirror
  • East Lyme's Zoning Commission "voted unanimously to adopt an indefinite ban on all data center development, one of the first such blanket prohibitions in Connecticut". The ban took effect on Saturday and "came before anyone had announced even the faintest plan to construct a data center in the coastal town". CT Mirror's review of public meetings and records finds East Lyme "is one of around half a dozen municipalities that have taken preemptive action to block data center development, either through temporary moratoriums or a complete ban".
  • The towns span sizes and politics: "New Haven passed a one-year moratorium in September, with an exemption for the city's existing quantum computing hub", and "Morris, a town in the Litchfield Hills with fewer than 3,000 residents, has a two-year ban". Temple University professor Subodha Kumar told CT Mirror the Connecticut case is unusual because elsewhere "either something has started or something is already there", whereas here "political pushback has formed well ahead of actual plans"; he added "Connecticut has never been that attractive, frankly speaking, for data centers" given high electricity costs.
  • The state's 2021 incentive has barely been used: it waives sales and use taxes for projects investing at least "$200 million in the state (or $50 million for projects located within certain state-designated enterprise zones)", and CT Mirror reports the only project to use it is a "$386 million renovation" of a Windsor data centre. Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said at an Oct. 22 press conference he will seek a statewide moratorium next session. Nothing has been enacted statewide, and the proposed Cromwell project described in the piece is a "300-megawatt facility, about 550,000 square feet" that has not been approved.
US State PolicyDatacentersEnergy

ITU deputy chief: Africa and Latin America hold 3.3% of global data centre capacity mixedSingle source

Al Jazeera
  • Tomas Lamanauskas, deputy secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the UNCTAD World Investment Forum in Doha on Sunday that Africa and Latin America together "account for just 3.3 percent of global data centre capacity" and that 2.2 billion people worldwide remain without internet access. Closing the digital infrastructure gap "would require an estimated $2.8 trillion in investment by 2030", he said.
  • The adoption gap is narrower but real: "approximately 29 percent of working-age people in developed countries use generative AI, that figure drops to 16 percent in developing nations". He also said "only seven percent of African languages are represented in AI translation tools". His framing: "a great divide could really mean an opportunity divide, and really could deepen the socioeconomic divide".
  • On jobs he cited estimates that AI "could displace 90 million jobs, but also create 170 million new ones", and warned that even with a net positive "an estimated 40 percent of workplace skills could change by 2030". Al Jazeera notes a December 2025 UNDP report cautioning that AI could reverse decades of narrowing economic disparities between nations, and cites the February 2026 International AI Safety Report putting about one billion people using AI. These are an official's cited estimates in an interview, not new measurements, and Al Jazeera does not source each figure to a specific study.
LaborDatacentersEducation

Musk says SpaceX closed $40 billion of GPU debt and that 200-plus neoclouds will not survive; sector stocks fall mixedCompany claim

CNBC·CNBC·SiliconANGLE
  • In a post on X on Sunday Musk said SpaceX "has closed $40 billion in debt financing to purchase graphics processing units", adding in a follow-up that the financing "primarily consisted of callable debt for graphics processing units, is expected to arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027", and that the company "was investment grade and generated revenue from its Starlink satellite internet and rocket launch businesses" (CNBC).
  • He went further on the rest of the sector: "As of the past few weeks, debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers… That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation. Some will make it through, but not many." CNBC reports Nebius, CoreWeave and Iren "all dropped more than 4% in early premarket trading" on Monday and "have since pared some of the losses and are now trading between 2% and 3% lower"; over the past month CoreWeave and Nebius are "down more than 30% while Iren has tanked 40%".
  • SpaceX competes with the companies Musk is writing off: CNBC says its AI segment, "Super Intelligence" or SI, is now its largest business unit, with "third-quarter revenue surging ninefold to $7.56 billion from $813 million a year earlier, according to its latest earnings release". Musk was replying to Chamath Palihapitiya, who predicted "a lot of partially stranded compute and compute sitting in inventory in 2027 than is currently forecasted", "bought and paid for but effectively underearning (below total cost of capital) or collecting dust".
  • The close is Musk's own statement. CNBC notes Bloomberg had earlier reported SpaceX was still in talks with banks and investors, with a special purpose vehicle to keep the debt off its balance sheet and Goldman Sachs leading talks with investors including Apollo Global Management; lenders, pricing and final terms have not been published. Nvidia's Jensen Huang told CNBC at GTC Berlin last week that demand for neoclouds is "off the charts" and "What is missing in the middle is the working capital to fuel that growth."
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersFundingNVIDIAChips

SoftBank plans $50 billion of AI and data-centre investment in Malaysia, prime minister says Single sourceCompany claim

CNBC
  • "SoftBank Group plans to make $50 billion of investments in Malaysia, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said, according to a Bloomberg report", CNBC writes. Anwar said on Saturday that Masayoshi Son "had identified locations in Kuching, Sarawak, and peninsular Malaysia for the planned investments following a video conference between the two earlier in the week", and that the money would focus on "artificial intelligence, new technologies and data centers".
  • For scale, CNBC notes Google announced a "$2 billion investment in 2024 to build its first data center and cloud region in the country", AWS "said it planned to invest $6.2 billion through 2038", and Microsoft announced "$2.2 billion". Malaysia recorded "385.7 billion ringgit ($94 billion) in data center-related investments between 2021 and the first half of 2026", per the Malaysian Investment Development Authority — so a single $50 billion commitment would be around half of more than five years of total inflows.
  • The figure is a government statement relayed through a Bloomberg report, not a SoftBank announcement: "SoftBank did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment." No timeframe, project list or financing structure has been published. Earlier this month SoftBank signed a framework agreement with Grab and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad "to explore AI and digital infrastructure development in Sarawak".
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeFunding

AWS tells Missouri commissioners it wants up to 15 more data centre buildings on 890 acres Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • As reported by Mid-Missouri Business and relayed by DCD, "a representative from Amazon informed Montgomery County commissioners of its intentions to expand its data center presence in the area by up to 15 new data center buildings", on "890 acres of land at a separate site" from the campus AWS is already developing, nearer to Danville.
  • That would sit alongside a 1,000-acre campus AWS is already building in New Florence — eight buildings in phase one, with "a further 13 buildings of a similar size" possible in phase two. "In June of this year, the company said it would invest $10 billion in the campus."
  • Nothing is committed: "AWS has not yet acquired the property", no construction date is set, and the company "is planning to begin sometime between 2027 and 2029 should the project be approved". Separately, AWS held an open house on a possible Posey County, Indiana project that "remains early in the planning phase", with CenterPoint Energy's excess grid capacity cited as part of the appeal.
DatacentersAmazonCompute

EuroHPC inaugurates the 85.69-petaflops Daedalus supercomputer in a former Greek power station beneficialSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and GRNET "this month inaugurated the Daedalus supercomputer" at the Lavrion Technological Cultural Park, part of the National Technical University in Athens. DCD reports the cluster "offers 85.69 petaflops of sustained performance and 115 peak petaflops", was built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and "features more than 2,000 Nvidia H200 Grace Hopper Superchips" with direct liquid cooling.
  • It is already ranked: Daedalus "appeared on the June 2026 Top500 list of most powerful supercomputers, securing 31st place, as well as 23rd place in the Green500 ranking of the most energy-efficient systems". The system sits in "a new 6.3MW data center located within the 1,500 sqm (16,145 sq ft) building of the park's former Power Station", with a 2MW photovoltaic array at the park for self-consumption.
  • "The €36 million ($40.3m) project was co-funded by the EuroHPC JU (35 percent) and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 'Greece 2.0' (the remaining 65 percent)", the latter financed by NextGenerationEU. First announced in 2022 and tendered in July 2024, it is a publicly funded national machine rather than a commercial AI cluster. DCD gives no precise inauguration date beyond "this month".
ComputeChipsEnergyDatacenters

UK's ARIA-funded Scaling Inference Lab to put five GPU clusters in Kao Data's Harlow campus Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Kao Data "this week announced it had been chosen by CommonAI to host the company's AI Scaling Inference Lab" at its Harlow campus. The lab is "Funded by the UK's Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) and delivered by CommonAI", and "aims to provide a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are tested and benchmarked against commercial systems".
  • CommonAI "will deploy a series of high-density, GPU-accelerated AI clusters within two dedicated technology suites", each testing a different approach — "pipeline parallelism, heterogeneous orchestration, and nanosecond optical circuit switching" — "with all five clusters aiming to become operational by early 2027". The hardware named is "Nvidia HGX B300, H200 NVL, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, and AMD Instinct MI350X accelerators" in Supermicro, MSI, Fujitsu Primergy and Dell PowerEdge servers.
  • DCD gives no figure for the hosting agreement itself. The programme's funding baseline is ARIA's "£50 million ($66m) commitment" earlier this year plus "more than £20m ($26m) in additional funding" announced by the UK government in June. None of the clusters is operational yet and no benchmark results have been published.
ComputeUKDatacentersChips

Sunday, 25 October 2026

UK minister tells MPs data centre liaison, telecoms and planning now sit in separate departments, and calls the £45bn savings figure an estimate, not a target Single source

The Register
  • The Register reports that parliamentary under-secretary of state Liz Lloyd told the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that, after the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was scrapped, liaison with the tech industry on data centre construction fell to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, while digital infrastructure and telecoms sit with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. She said: "telecom sits with DCMS and datacenters with BIST", while acknowledging that some departmental responsibilities overlap.
  • The Register adds that power supply falls to the Department for Energy and Net Zero, planning permission to local government and planning policy to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — five departments plus councils for one build.
  • Asked whether the government stood by its claim that modernising ageing technology could deliver £45 billion in productivity savings, Lloyd said: "The £45 billion figure was an estimate of long-term productivity gains. It wasn't a kind of one-off figure for savings… it was never a figure that was a target or a cashable savings figure." The Register notes the January 2025 press release announcing it was headed "Archaic tech sees public sector miss £45 billion annual savings".
  • This is The Register's account of a committee hearing; the hearing itself took place earlier in the week and no transcript was opened for this item, so the quotations are as The Register reports them. The Register also notes that Microsoft abandoned plans for Britain's largest AI supercomputer earlier in October because it could not secure enough power.
UKDatacentersEnergy

SpaceXAI discloses up to $6.1m in claimed Mississippi stormwater penalties across three data centres harmfulSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • DCD reports that SpaceXAI disclosed a notice from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality alleging that "disturbing construction activities at sites occurred prior to coverage under Mississippi's Large Construction Stormwater General Permit". The company said: "MDEQ is seeking civil penalties of up to $25,000 per day, with preliminary claimed exposure of approximately $6.1 million across three sites." DCD says the notice was issued to MZX Tech LLC, a SpaceXAI subsidiary, and was detailed in an SEC filing the previous day.
  • The three sites are data centres near Memphis but across the state line in Mississippi: Macrohard and Macroharder, both operating, and Minihard, still under construction. A fourth Memphis site is inside the city.
  • Separately, DCD reports a judge rejected a Department of Justice attempt to block the NAACP's Clean Air Act suit over a gas-fired plant at Southaven, Mississippi, built and operated without required permits. US District Judge Debra Brown is quoted: "The EPA's role as a primary enforcer of the Clean Air Act does not mean that the federal government retains complete control over all Clean Air Act litigation."
  • DCD reports SpaceX's Q3 results, revealed the same week: revenue of $14.58 billion for the three months to 30 September, up 151 percent, of which AI revenue was $7.6 billion; SpaceXAI accounted for $16.4 billion of the company's $19.6 billion quarterly capex, with capex said to remain at similar levels going forward. DCD says it has contacted SpaceXAI for comment and reports no response; the penalty figure is the company's own statement of claimed exposure, not a settled fine.
Compute moneyxAIDatacentersEnergyEarnings

Saturday, 24 October 2026

Jassy says AWS capacity is largely sold out through 2027, with a good chunk of 2028 gone Company claimSingle source

Reuters
  • Reuters reports Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy saying "2027 is largely sold out" and "A good chunk of 2028 is sold out", with Amazon keeping some capacity in reserve: "We always leave a certain amount for on demand and our inference service bedrock."
  • Reuters notes Amazon said earlier this year it would spend about $220 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, and quotes Jassy saying the company "could invest a lot more and it wouldn't be a bad use of capital".
  • Forward-booked cloud capacity is the clearest signal available of how much AI compute demand is already contracted rather than forecast, and Jassy is describing two years of it as committed.
  • These are the CEO's own characterisations with no unit figures, contract values or customer names attached, made in a podcast interview rather than a filing. We read the Reuters wire through a syndication partner; no independent confirmation of the sold-out claim is available.
Compute moneyAmazonComputeDatacentersEarnings

Huang says capital, not chips, is now the constraint as CoreWeave falls 10% and Nebius 7% Single source

CNBC
  • "The demand of the capital is much greater than the availability of the capital," Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told CNBC, adding "That's going to get solved"; he also said there is "a scarcity of capital" because of demand across so many AI sectors. CNBC reports that on the final day of GTC Berlin CoreWeave ended the day down 10% and Nebius dropped 7% by market close, continuing a run of falls among companies leasing AI compute on concerns over heavy borrowing.
  • An executive at an AI infrastructure company told CNBC the "magnitude of businesses with no credit rating" was "freaking the market out". Huang, whose company holds sizeable stakes in many of those firms, said "the demand for the neo clouds is off the charts".
  • Onstage in Berlin, Huang said a 1 gigawatt data centre costs about $50 billion and announced a product packing seven Vera Rubin AI racks into a shipping container designed to be transported on normal roads, to get compute online faster. CNBC cites a Goldman Sachs estimate that AI-related capital spending could total about $7.6 trillion from 2026 through 2031 across compute, data centres and power.
  • One outlet has this account; the quotes come from a CNBC interview and conference remarks on 21-22 October, reported on 23 October. The unnamed executive's assessment is anecdotal, and the Goldman figure is a projection, not a measurement.
Compute moneyNVIDIAComputeDatacentersFunding

Friday, 23 October 2026

CSIS counts two attacks motivated by opposition to AI as terrorism, and 240 destroyed licence-plate cameras harmful

CSIS
  • In a brief published 22 October, Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe of CSIS write that "only two incidents motivated by opposition to AI qualify as terrorism". Neither killed anyone, and no organisation has been tied to either.
  • On 6 April 2026 in Indianapolis, gunfire struck the home of City-County Councilor Ron Gibson while he and his eight-year-old son were asleep inside, and the shooter left a note on the doorstep reading "NO DATA CENTERS". Police called the shooting targeted and the FBI joined the investigation; no arrest had been reported.
  • On 10 April 2026 in San Francisco, Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, of Spring, Texas, threw a Molotov cocktail at a residence of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, setting a driveway gate on fire, then went to OpenAI's headquarters carrying kerosene and incendiary devices, struck the glass doors with a chair and told security he intended to burn the building and kill anyone inside. He was carrying a document titled "Your Last Warning" calling for killing AI company executives and investors, and has pleaded not guilty to federal explosives charges and state charges including two counts of attempted murder.
  • CSIS reports that "By early September 2026, vandals had destroyed more than 240 such cameras across the country", referring to Flock Safety AI licence-plate readers, and that "Over 80 percent of Americans think AI development is moving too quickly". The brief is CSIS's own count against its own definition of terrorism; it does not report a government tally.
IncidentsSurveillanceDatacentersOpenAIPublic Opinion

Meta's quarterly filing discloses $454.52 billion of non-cancelable commitments and $355.73 billion of leases not yet begun Update

SEC EDGAR
  • Meta's 10-Q, filed 22 October for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, states: "As of September 30, 2026, we had $454.52 billion of non-cancelable contractual commitments", which "mostly relate to third-party cloud capacity arrangements and investments in servers and network infrastructure, energy service agreements for data centers, and consumer hardware products in Reality Labs, with approximately $45.85 billion and $121.41 billion due in 2026 and 2027, respectively".
  • The filing adds that operating and finance leases "that have not yet commenced" came to "approximately $355.73 billion, consisting of data centers, energy-related infrastructure, colocations, and certain network infrastructure, which will commence during the remainder of 2026 through 2036 with lease terms ranging from greater than one year to 30 years", plus "contingent obligations to purchase up to $14.72 billion of cloud capacity over a five-year period, which may be reduced if the cloud service provider is able to sell such capacity to other customers".
  • The filing also sets out Meta's debt: the estimated fair value of its outstanding Notes was "$73.31 billion and $57.22 billion as of September 30, 2026 and December 31, 2025, respectively", against total future principal payments of $84,000 million, of which $73,750 million falls due after 2030.
  • This edition covered Meta's Q3 results yesterday — revenue of $64,601 million, capex of $34.91 billion and free cash flow of negative $2.12 billion. The commitments disclosure is new. These are multi-year commitments and leases that have not started, not immediate cash spending, and the filing gives no single combined total; the figures above are the three separate lines it discloses.
Compute moneyMetaDatacentersComputeEnergyEarnings

Pantheon Macroeconomics puts US AI-linked job losses above 10,000 roles a month; Goldman forecasts 9% of workers temporarily displaced harmfulSingle source

Fortune
  • Fortune reported on 23 October that Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen of Pantheon Macroeconomics, who have been tracking AI-exposed job sectors, put US job losses caused by AI at a rate "in excess of 10,000 roles per month". The article names accounting, advertising, office administration and legal services as sectors where jobs are disappearing, and construction as growing because technology companies are building data centres.
  • Separately, Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs told clients: "Under our baseline forecast for a 15% productivity increase from AI, around 9% of workers could be temporarily displaced" during the AI transition. Briggs gives no end date for that transition.
  • These are two different analyses with different bases, and Fortune's headline blends them. Pantheon's figure is a monthly rate estimated now; Goldman's 9% is a forecast conditioned on a 15% productivity increase, and it refers to workers rather than jobs. The Goldman figure is a projection, not a measurement.
  • Neither estimate is drawn from official labour statistics in the reporting, and Fortune gives no methodology for Pantheon's monthly figure or the period it covers. Only one outlet carries this write-up.
LaborIncidentsDatacenters

Thursday, 22 October 2026

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna go live in private preview inside Google Cloud's model garden Company claim

Google Cloud·CNBC
  • Google Cloud says "OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol, and GPT-6 Luna models are rolling out now in private preview to select enterprise customers in Google Cloud's model garden, with more coming soon," and that customers can connect local Codex CLI and Desktop workflows to Google's platform for inference.
  • Google Cloud claims it "is now the only hyperscale cloud provider offering access to all three leading closed source LLMs, alongside more than 200 first-party, third-party, and open models." It says the models are transacted through Google Cloud Marketplace, so usage "appears on a single Google Cloud invoice, draws down existing cloud commitments, and counts toward Flexible Savings Plans (FSP) across model providers."
  • CNBC reports the move puts OpenAI's models on all three top cloud providers, less than six months after Microsoft's exclusive IP licence ended, and that Google Cloud's annualised revenue growth "accelerated to about 82% in the second quarter from 63% in the first quarter," against Amazon at 37% and Microsoft at 42%.
  • Google Cloud says Zero Data Retention options and Confidential Compute are "coming soon," so the enterprise controls are not yet in place. Neither company published pricing, the size of the preview, or which customers are in it.
Compute moneyOpenAIComputeDatacenters

Nvidia says more than $300 billion of power equipment is backlogged and over 200GW sits in US interconnection queues Company claim

NVIDIA
  • NVIDIA states: "Power is now the biggest bottleneck in infrastructure. More than $300 billion in equipment is backlogged, and over 200 gigawatts of projects are waiting in U.S. interconnection queues."
  • Its answer is simulation and demand-shaping software rather than generation: NVIDIA says DSX Sim and SimReady assets "let engineers simulate the grid, substation and AI factory together," and DSX Flex "syncs AI factory demand with grid conditions and onsite generation." It names GE Vernova, Schneider Electric, Siemens Energy and Hitachi Energy, whose battery energy storage system it says "has qualified as NVIDIA DSX Ready."
  • NVIDIA reports two efficiency figures from partners: Phaidra integrated DSX Flex, DSX Max-Q and DSX Exchange into its agents, "delivering about 10% more compute within the same power envelope," and it describes Emerald AI's Conductor integration as "an approach modeled to unlock up to 100 gigawatts on the existing U.S. grid."
  • Every figure is NVIDIA's, including the backlog and queue numbers, which it does not source. The 100GW figure is explicitly modelled, not measured, and the 10% gain is a single partner's result on its own workload.
Compute moneyNVIDIAEnergyDatacentersCompute

Meta Q3 revenue up 26% to $64,601 million, capex $34.91 billion, free cash flow negative $2.12 billion Company claim

SEC (Meta 8-K exhibit)·Fortune
  • Meta's filing reports Q3 revenue of $64,601 million, up 26% year over year, costs and expenses up 68% to $51,613 million, income from operations down 37% to $12,988 million, an operating margin of 20% against 40% a year earlier, and diluted EPS of $3.83. "Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $34.91 billion," and "Cash flow from operating activities was $32.79 billion, and free cash flow was negative $2.12 billion." Headcount was 66,775, "a decrease of 15% year-over-year."
  • A "$9.89 billion charge" tied to Meta's August agreement with 52 attorneys general on teen mental health — which "provides for payments of up to approximately $18.59 billion" — drove the margin compression. Excluding it, Meta says income from operations "would have increased by $9.89 billion to $22.88 billion" and EPS to $7.40.
  • Guidance: Q4 revenue of $73-76 billion, full-year 2026 total expenses of $175-179 billion, and 2026 capex "in the range of $135-145 billion, narrowed from our prior outlook of $130-145 billion." Reality Labs losses are guided to $18-19 billion this year, narrowing "to around $15 billion" next year.
  • To fund it, Meta's board approved "a new class of publicly listed, non-voting Class C common stock, with an effective date in January 2027," plus a one-time stock dividend of one Class C share per Class A and Class B share; Meta says it expects its Class A price to reflect "the effect of a two-for-one stock split" afterwards. Fortune reports Meta shares rose as much as 5% after hours. The negative free cash flow is the number to watch quarter to quarter: the capex is now larger than the operating cash flow funding it.
Compute moneyMetaEarningsDatacentersCompute

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

Leaked Anthropic draft prospectus: $16.3 billion first-half revenue, $80.7 billion net loss, nearly $9 billion on compute UpdateSingle source

TechCrunch·Implicator.ai
  • Implicator.ai, summarising The Wall Street Journal's October 20 report on a draft IPO prospectus, says Anthropic "generated $16.3 billion in revenue for the six months ended June 30, up from $1.1 billion in the year-earlier period," recorded "a first-half net loss of $80.7 billion, compared with $13 billion in the same period a year earlier," and incurred "nearly $9 billion in computing capacity and infrastructure costs in the first half of 2026, exceeding the $7.3 billion spent during all of 2025."
  • Most of the loss is not cash: Implicator.ai says "$72 billion came from accounting charges tied to changes in the value of convertible notes and other financing instruments issued to raise funding," and that subtracting those charges leaves $8.7 billion of net loss, which "does not establish an operating-loss figure or measure cash spent running the business during those six months."
  • TechCrunch says the filing shows Anthropic "is having trouble securing enough cloud capacity from AWS, Google, and Microsoft, which increasingly see the Claude maker as a competitor rather than a customer," that it is leasing its own data centres and using third-party operators it worries have a "limited operating history," and that only two customers account for about a fifth of sales. TechCrunch says the filing also warns Anthropic could face liability for damages caused by harmful AI behaviour exceeding available insurance coverage.
  • These are figures from a draft reviewed by the WSJ, not a public filing or company release; Anthropic declined to comment, and the WSJ piece itself could not be opened from here. Implicator.ai says infrastructure commitments exceed $600 billion with negotiations that could bring the potential total toward $750 billion — a figure TechCrunch notes Reuters and the Financial Times reported in late September.
Compute moneyAnthropicComputeEarningsDatacenters

NVIDIA launches containerised DSX POD, saying onsite deployment shrinks from six months to 14 days Company claim

NVIDIA·Data Center Dynamics
  • NVIDIA's GTC Berlin keynote post, dated October 21, says: "With DSX POD, onsite deployment can shrink from six months to just 14 days once site utilities are ready." DCD describes DSX POD as a modular version of the Vera Rubin AI data centre reference design, built in containers integrated and validated before delivery.
  • NVIDIA says the DSX AI Factory Platform lets companies "reduce water consumption for cooling by up to 100%" and "generate the same AI output with up to 30% less power." DCD says that at a 2GW scale NVIDIA claims the approach can save 54 million litres of water a day against conventional cooling-tower systems, while NVIDIA noted certain climates may require additional mechanical cooling in extreme heat.
  • DCD lists the partners meant to deliver DSX POD facilities worldwide in early 2027 as Anduril, Armada, Bull, Crusoe, DayOne, Dell Technologies, Delta, Eaton, Foxconn, Gigabyte, HPE, Lenovo, Pegatron, Quanta Cloud Technology, Schneider Electric, Vertiv and Wistron. NVIDIA's Ian Buck told media that when the grid "needs an extra gigawatt, our data centers can be a resource to respond to that need."
  • Every figure here is NVIDIA's own projection for a product shipping in early 2027; no deployed site, measured water use or measured power figure is given, and the post states the 14 days applies only once site utilities are ready.
NVIDIADatacentersEnergy

NextDC shares fall 39.5% after Melbourne grid delays force big cuts to its FY27 guidance Single source

CNBC
  • CNBC reports shares of Australia's NextDC "plunged 39.5% on Wednesday" after it cut fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to between A$475 million and A$500 million, from A$615 million to A$640 million, and underlying EBITDA guidance to A$245 million to A$265 million from A$385 million to A$410 million.
  • The cause is local opposition, not demand: the delays stem from the suspension of infrastructure upgrades at the company's M3 Melbourne data centre, with electricity distributor Jemena "not expecting to resume work before February 2027, according to NextDC." Jemena cited safety concerns and restricted site access due to community opposition, and a lack of consent from the local council pending further community consultation.
  • Citi said in a note that the power delays could affect earnings beyond fiscal 2027, citing delays to approvals for the M3 expansion and a longer-than-expected transformer upgrade timeline.
  • This is a single outlet's report; the company's own guidance statement was not obtained, and CNBC gives no figure for how much capacity is affected. Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Wednesday that the government was finalising national investment standards to address concerns surrounding AI deployment.
DatacentersEnergyEarnings

Trump urges data centre operators to pay local communities a "dividend" to win support Single source

CNBC
  • CNBC reports that in a Truth Social post on Wednesday President Donald Trump urged data centre companies to "MAKE DEALS" with local communities, saying operators should pay the community "and/or individuals within the community, a 'dividend.'" Trump wrote: "I have watched the process closely, and Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck. MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!! GREAT FOR THE U.S.A."
  • The context is electoral: CNBC says data centres "have become a hot-button issue ahead of the midterm elections in November," with opposition to the buildout and its environmental impact growing and multiple states considering moratoriums.
  • Nebius Chief Revenue Officer Marc Boroditsky told CNBC on the sidelines of NVIDIA's GTC Berlin conference that the company is "100% in principle" having discussions about investing in communities, and that there could be "some sort of way where the rewards are actually funneled back to the community."
  • This is a statement of preference, not policy: CNBC reports no executive action, rule or legislative proposal attached to it, and no operator has announced a dividend scheme. The Truth Social post was not opened directly.
DatacentersUS Federal PolicyEnergy

SpaceX Q3 revenue $14.6 billion, up 161%, with AI now 52% of income and 1.7GW of compute Company claim

CNBC·TechCrunch
  • CNBC reports SpaceX posted third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% from the previous year and beating LSEG consensus estimates of $12.72 billion, with operating income of $2.8 billion and net income of $4.4 billion after a net loss of $1.05 billion in the same period a year earlier.
  • TechCrunch says artificial intelligence "now makes up 52% of its income," with the renamed "Super Intelligence" business line generating "$7.5 billion in revenue" from the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, the Grok bot and a neocloud business that "now boasts 1.7 GW of compute." The AI business "generated $431 million in profit, which would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation expenses related to the Cursor acquisition."
  • TechCrunch reports total capital expenditures of $19.6 billion, and that CFO Bret Johnsen said the company would spend $35 billion to $40 billion on new capital investments in the fourth quarter. Musk, quoted by TechCrunch: "People are starting to realize [that] the constraint on deployment of super intelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips."
  • The segment splits are the company's own reporting and are not independently verified. CNBC says Musk said he is considering a combination with Tesla and that the boards of both companies have created specific committees to discuss a consolidation.
Compute moneyEarningsComputeDatacentersSpacex

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

Nscale in talks for a second $45 billion Anthropic deal covering a 460MW West Virginia building Single source

Reuters·TechCrunch
  • A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Nscale is in talks to sell Anthropic computing power in a new deal that could be worth about $45 billion, for a second building at Nscale's Monarch campus in West Virginia. That building "would deliver 460 megawatts of computing power using Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin AI chips".
  • It would double an August agreement under which Anthropic committed $45 billion to rent cloud computing from the same campus. The source said Anthropic also holds a right of first refusal on Monarch's expected third building.
  • TechCrunch notes both companies are pursuing IPOs and that Bloomberg reported on Monday that Nscale faces investor pushback over its proposed $30 billion valuation. Reuters places the talks against CoreWeave's share slump last week over its $50 billion debt load.
  • Neither company has confirmed the deal. The source cautioned that discussions are ongoing and details could change; Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters.
Compute moneyAnthropicDatacentersComputeNVIDIA

Amazon pledges more than €16 billion for Germany in 2027, with €4.8 billion for the AWS Frankfurt region Company claim

Amazon
  • Amazon said it plans to invest more than €16 billion ($18 billion) in Germany in 2027, covering data centres and AI infrastructure, satellite internet through Amazon Leo, logistics and Prime Video production. It announced the figure on 20 October at the Invest in Germany Summit in Berlin, held by the federal government.
  • Of that, Amazon says it plans to invest €4.8 billion in 2027 to expand its AWS Europe (Frankfurt) Region.
  • Amazon says it has invested over €100 billion in Germany since 2010 and created more than 40,000 permanent jobs there, 3,000 of them at AWS, and is opening a second robotics and AI research lab in Berlin.
  • These are company figures announced alongside a government summit; Amazon gives no breakdown between data centres and the other categories, and no capacity figure in megawatts.
AmazonDatacentersEnergy

Monday, 19 October 2026

Some Nscale backers want a $16bn to $19bn IPO valuation against the company's roughly $30bn goal UpdateSingle source

PYMNTS
  • PYMNTS, citing a Bloomberg News report published 18 October 2026 that relied on people familiar with the matter, says "some backers are balking at the company's initial public offering (IPO) goal of around $30 billion" and want $16 billion to $19 billion instead.
  • Nscale filed to go public on 18 September and the required 15-day waiting period has passed, but formal marketing has not begun and the company is still responding to SEC comments, with no decisions made.
  • PYMNTS says investors are weighing Microsoft's withdrawal from its Nscale data centre agreement, which Microsoft attributed to delays tied to power constraints, and the collapse of Australian data centre firm Firmus's IPO plans. Nscale committed at least $3.5 billion, and up to $6 billion, to support Figure's AI models and robots under a multi-year deal signed last month.
  • This updates the Microsoft Loughton exit reported in yesterday's edition. The valuation figures come from PYMNTS' account of the Bloomberg report, as bloomberg.com returned a bot-check page and could not be opened. Nscale has not publicly commented on the range.
Compute moneyDatacentersFundingComputeMicrosoft

Samsung Electro-Mechanics wins a 360.5 billion won memory-substrate contract from an undisclosed customer Single source

Seoul Economic Daily
  • Seoul Economic Daily reports a contract worth 360.5 billion won, about $251 million, for package substrates for memory chips, running one year from 1 January to 31 December 2027. The customer is described only as "a global big tech company" whose name was withheld under a confidentiality agreement.
  • Samsung Electro-Mechanics said the contract equals 3.2% of its consolidated revenue from last year, and the paper says it is the company's seventh long-term supply contract since May, bringing the total to 4.3 trillion won.
  • The paper attributes the demand to high-performance memory for AI servers, including DRAM and HBM, which it says requires densely packed multilayer fine circuits that minimise signal loss.
  • The customer is not named, so the link to any specific AI programme is the paper's inference from the product type rather than a disclosed fact. Only one outlet carries it.
ChipsComputeDatacenters

Reuters: AI industry expected to invest about $1 trillion next year as the Fed treats it as a price shock mixed

Reuters (via Investing.com)
  • Howard Schneider reports for Reuters that the AI industry is expected to invest about $1 trillion next year, roughly 3% of GDP, and that Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh called that investment a shock to prices and demand, saying central bankers "have got to recognize this as a shock" given their mandate for stable prices and full employment.
  • Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said higher rates could cool the economy "at the margins" and told Reuters "I'm not trying to stop growth", describing a wish to slow it enough to limit price pressure.
  • The Fed is expected to hold rates at 3.75%-4.00% at its 27-28 October meeting. Its 2% inflation goal has gone unmet for more than five years, while unemployment has stayed in a 4.0%-4.3% range for more than two years — so the cost of restraining AI-driven demand would fall on borrowers outside the AI build-out.
  • These are officials' characterisations of a shock, not a measured effect; the article does not report a quantified contribution of AI investment to inflation. reuters.com could not be opened from here, so the figures come from the Investing.com syndication of the Reuters wire.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersUS Federal PolicyLabor

Sunday, 18 October 2026

Microsoft cancels its anchor-tenant deal for 23,000 Nvidia chips at Nscale's Loughton site over a grid connection Single source

Reuters (via Investing.com)·Crypto Briefing·Data Center Dynamics
  • Reuters, reporting the Telegraph's story, says Microsoft "recently terminated its agreement for the Loughton, Essex, data center" and that the newspaper "did not specify why Microsoft withdrew from the project." Crypto Briefing says the deal covered 23,000 Nvidia AI chips, that the site was "designed to deliver about 90 MW of power and was slated to open in 2027," and that "UK Power Networks will not be able to supply sufficient power until the early to mid-2030s."
  • DCD reported earlier that Microsoft planned the UK's largest supercomputer at the Loughton site, featuring "23,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell Ultra GPUs, according to Microsoft, though a separate announcement from Nvidia claims the machine will comprise 'more than 24,000' of the AI chips," with 50MW of IT capacity against a 90MW site power allocation.
  • Crypto Briefing reports Nscale is targeting a $35 billion valuation and aims to raise $3 billion in a planned NYSE listing, that its S-1 was filed on 18 September 2026, and that it reports a "contracted backlog of $103.4 billion," of which Microsoft accounts for approximately $43.8 billion. Nscale says it remains committed to Loughton and is looking for alternative power sources.
  • All of this traces to a single Telegraph exclusive, which could not be opened from this session; Reuters and Crypto Briefing are reporting it rather than confirming it independently. Reuters says Microsoft and Nscale "did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment outside regular business hours," and Microsoft has not commented publicly.
Compute moneyMicrosoftDatacentersEnergyNVIDIAUK

Oracle says a fuel-cell redesign cuts Project Jupiter greenhouse gases from 8.8 million to 5.7 million tons a year mixedSingle sourceCompany claim

MGRID
  • MGRID reports that on 15 October Oracle and microgrid developer Yucca Growth Infrastructure filed a design change to the Bloom Energy fuel cell microgrid as a supplement to the pending air permit application for Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Oracle says the change "cuts permitted emissions by about 35%" across five pollutant groups, and that "projected greenhouse gas emissions fall from about 8.8 million to 5.7 million tons per year." About 7,000 fuel cells would be needed.
  • New Mexico Environment Department hearing officer James O. Browning moved the weeklong air-permit hearing in Sunland Park from September to 7 December, per MGRID. A separate hearing on New Energy Economy's motion to dismiss the application as administratively incomplete is set for 26 October.
  • MGRID reports Oracle proposed direct credits to El Paso Electric customers of up to $55 million a year for up to three years, under a deal in which Oracle would pay the utility $100 million over 10 years.
  • The 35% and the emissions figures are Oracle's own and are not verified by the regulator; MGRID says new NMED staff modelling "found higher pollutant concentrations than the earlier modeling from the developers," and that New Energy Economy said the concentrations doubled under the updated modelling. Oracle gives no absolute baselines for the five pollutant groups. Only one outlet carries this; the underlying filing was made before this edition's window.
DatacentersEnergyUS State Policy

Saturday, 17 October 2026

Digital Realty plans a 1GW data centre campus on 476 acres in Kokomo, Indiana, built out by 2033 Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports on 16 October that Digital Realty has announced plans for three single-storey data centres on 476 acres in Kokomo, Indiana, about 50 miles north of Indianapolis, on greenfield land in the city's Industrial Park North.
  • DCD says the campus could total around 1GW of IT capacity across some three million sq ft, equal to 278,710 sqm, and could be fully built out by 2033. Digital Realty does not currently operate any data centres in Indiana.
  • The city of Kokomo first announced Digital Realty's interest earlier this month, has said the site will use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water use, and has said there will be no tax abatements agreed with any company that develops the site.
  • The capacity and completion date are framed as possibilities rather than commitments, with no power agreement, construction start or customer named, and no filed planning application reported.
DatacentersEnergyUS State Policy

UK rejects an AI Growth Zone bid for a 1.2GW data centre powered by Drax's biomass plant Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports the UK government rejected a bid by North Yorkshire Council, the University of York and Drax to use the bioenergy plant near Selby to power an AI data centre, submitted through the AI Growth Zone scheme that offers state funding and other benefits for large-scale AI data centres.
  • The proposal envisaged a 1.2GW data centre powered by the 2.58GW plant, the UK's single largest energy generator, which the applicants described as the world's largest carbon negative data centre. They claimed carbon capture in partnership with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries would capture at least eight million tonnes of CO2 a year; DCD cites Ember data showing Drax emitted 14.1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2025.
  • Per local reports by the York Press cited by DCD, the bid failed to meet selection criteria including credible plans for energy delivery, environmental considerations and local economic benefit. A Drax spokesperson told the York Press it had never relied on the bid's success.
  • Drax has pivoted to a 100MW front-of-meter data centre drawing from the national grid, which it says it plans to submit to planning authorities in the coming months. The government's reasoning reaches DCD second-hand through the York Press rather than from a published decision.
DatacentersEnergyUK

AI cloud Modal raises $750 million at a $15.75bn post-money valuation, five months after its Series C Company claimSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports on 16 October that Modal secured $750 million in a Series D that the company says gave it a $15.75bn post-money valuation, led by Accel with Kleiner Perkins and existing investors Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Redpoint, Lux Capital, Amplify Partners and Bain Capital Ventures.
  • The round comes five months after a $355m Series C at a $4.65bn valuation, which itself was more than four times the $1.1bn valuation of its $80m Series B in September 2025.
  • Chief executive Erik Bernhardsson wrote on LinkedIn: 'Since then, usage has tripled and we've grown more than 15x year-over-year. We recently crossed $1 billion in annualized run rate with no sign of slowing down.'
  • Modal does not own or operate data centres, working instead with 13 cloud partners, and says users can scale from zero to 1,000 GPUs in minutes by pooling capacity across hundreds of data centres. The valuation, growth multiple and run-rate figure are all the company's own and are not audited or independently verified.
FundingComputeDatacenters

Friday, 16 October 2026

Ukrainian drones hit Russian data centres housing Yandex AI model hardware, the fourth such strike in a week harmfulSingle source

404 Media
  • 404 Media reports Ukrainian drones hit Russia's largest data centre on Wednesday 14 October, the fourth Ukrainian strike on Russian data centres in one week, citing Reuters reporting from 8, 9 and 14 October.
  • Three of the strikes hit Yandex data centres, damaging supercomputers that housed some of its AI models; Yandex operates six data centres in Russia and two were knocked offline completely, disrupting email, taxi and bus apps and logistics document systems. The latest strike hit a Sberbank-operated data centre, with effects not yet known.
  • President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the strikes on Russian data centres and oil refineries in a post on X, calling them a "symmetrical response".
  • Klaudia Klonowska, a researcher on emerging technology and international law, told 404 Media that data centres are only lawful targets in limited cases, that most are dual-use and attackers often cannot tell whether one is used militarily, and that "Retaliation is not enough under law." The piece also notes France unveiled an underground data centre near Paris for exclusively military use.
DatacentersMilitaryIncidentsCompute

Taiwan plans US industrial parks for AI suppliers, starting with a Texas complex costing up to $4 billion Single source

Investing.com
  • Taiwan's Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg in an interview on 12 October that Taiwan plans multiple industrial parks in the United States, each requiring up to $4 billion, beginning with a site in Texas.
  • The parks are intended to help smaller Taiwanese suppliers to TSMC and AI server assembler Foxconn establish US operations and strengthen the AI hardware supply chain.
  • The Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association is expected to raise the funds; the government would provide loan guarantees and help suppliers with regulatory matters. TSMC has separately pledged $265 billion for US expansion.
  • The plan is a statement of intent: no ground has been broken, no tenants are named, and the article does not say how many parks are planned or when construction would start.
ChipsNVIDIADatacentersChina

Virginia senator files Senate Bill 843 for a three-year statewide data centre approval moratorium mixedSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Russet Perry, Democratic senator for Loudoun County, has proposed Virginia Senate Bill 843, which if enacted would stop state agencies from approving data centre planning applications for three years from 1 July 2027.
  • Perry said: "This billion-dollar industry has grown unchecked and without guardrails for years while families face rising electric bills, massive transmission lines threaten our homes, schools, churches, and farms."
  • Data Center Dynamics reports Loudoun County is introducing a 12-month data centre moratorium and neighbouring Prince William County is bringing in tighter planning controls, and that statewide moratoriums have been introduced in New York, Texas and Oregon.
  • Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has not backed a moratorium but introduced a Data Center Accountability Framework last month banning non-disclosure agreements for new projects and calling for noise regulations. The bill has been filed, not passed, and its effect on existing approvals is not described.
DatacentersUS State PolicyEnergyCompute

Thursday, 15 October 2026

OpenAI infrastructure lead Sachin Katti departs; compute chief Uday Ruddarraju takes over the organisation

CNBC
  • Katti said on Wednesday that he is leaving after roughly a year, with a last day of Nov. 15, and will continue to support OpenAI as an advisor; Uday Ruddarraju, OpenAI's CTO of compute, will replace him and lead the company's overall compute organisation, a spokesperson told CNBC.
  • CNBC reports OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, with multi-billion-dollar data centre projects in Ohio, Texas and Georgia, and notes the change lands as backlash against data centres has mounted over noise, electricity rates and water use.
  • Ruddarraju joined OpenAI in July of last year and previously headed infrastructure engineering at xAI, which SpaceX acquired earlier this year. CNBC notes Katti's exit follows Fidji Simo's move to an advisory role in July and the departures of Brad Lightcap and Denise Dresser in August.
OpenAIComputeDatacenters

CoreWeave shares fall 15.5% as the yield to maturity on its 2032 bond reaches 14.8% Single source

CNBC
  • CNBC reports CoreWeave's shares "nosedived 15.5%" on Wednesday, with the yield to maturity on its 9.625% bond due in 2032 "sitting at 14.8%" and on its 9.75% bond due in 2031 "around 14.9%". Bond yields move inversely to prices.
  • CEO Mike Intrator, in a memo obtained by CNBC, wrote: "When you are building a new type of technology company there will be periods of time when the market misunderstands and acts irrationally… We are confident in our backlog which more than supports all of our debt obligations."
  • Luis Alvarado, co-head of global fixed income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told CNBC that "the era of easy money, which we experienced in the first nine months of the year, is starting to disappear and dissipate". CNBC notes Oracle shares also dropped, and that Paul Meeks of Freedom Capital Markets called CoreWeave's balance sheet "relatively bad" compared with its neocloud peers while saying the situation is "definitely not a deteriorating" one.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersEarnings

AEP to invest about $4 billion in a 702MW Wyoming fuel-cell plant under a 20-year Google power deal

American Electric Power
  • AEP says it will invest approximately $4 billion in a 702-megawatt fuel cell generation project near Cheyenne, Wyoming, under a long-term 20-year power purchase agreement with Google.
  • Cheyenne Fuel Cell, LLC is approximately 92% owned and controlled by AEP, with nearly 8% owned by funds advised by Basalt Infrastructure Partners, LLP. Construction is set to start in 2026, and the plant is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2028.
  • The plant uses advanced fuel cell technology developed by Bloom Energy that generates power without burning natural gas, and AEP says the project plans to add carbon capture. The release does not give a cost per megawatt or the price Google pays.
EnergyDatacentersCompute

Wednesday, 14 October 2026

ASML posts record €11,662 million Q3 net sales and says planned 2027 and 2028 supply will not meet customer demand

ASML (SEC Form 6-K)
  • ASML's Q3 2026 release, dated October 14, 2026, reports total net sales of €11,662 million against €9,326 million in Q2 2026, gross margin of 57.5% against 54.0%, net income of €4,960 million against €2,918 million, and basic EPS of €12.95 against €7.59. Installed Base Management sales were €3,289 million against €2,762 million, and new lithography systems sold rose to 113 units from 86.
  • CEO Christophe Fouquet says "our supply as currently planned for both 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet the demand of our customers", that ASML is "investigating ways to increase capacity for 2028 beyond the 30% increase we previously communicated", and that "some customers are expressing an interest in placing orders with us for 2029 and even 2030".
  • ASML is the single chokepoint in advanced logic and memory manufacturing, so a stated multi-year supply shortfall is a ceiling on how fast AI compute can physically be built, independent of how much capital is raised for it.
  • Guidance is €14.2 billion to €15.2 billion of Q4 2026 net sales at around 57% gross margin, and €44 billion to €45 billion for full-year 2026 at around 56%. ASML's own investor site returned HTTP 403 to automated reads, so the release was read from its SEC filing. The demand statement is ASML's characterisation of customer forecasts, and the 2029–2030 order interest is described as interest, not booked orders.
Compute moneyChipsComputeEarningsDatacenters

Gartner: AI infrastructure needs $8.5 trillion of revenue against at most $3.6 trillion available, and 80% of neoclouds will not survive to 2030 Single source

The Register
  • The Register reports Gartner expects AI providers to spend nearly $1 trillion on AI infrastructure in 2026 and a further $6 trillion across 2027 to 2030. Assuming a 12 percent return on invested capital, Gartner estimates operators need $8.5 trillion in revenue to cover capital spending and financing costs, against no more than $3.6 trillion in enterprise and consumer AI revenue over the period.
  • The report, by Gartner senior director analyst Will Sommer, is titled to say capital write-downs could exceed $4 trillion by 2032, and forecasts that 80 percent of GPU-as-a-service providers will not survive as independent companies beyond 2030. Sommer told The Register "Not everyone is in trouble", and Gartner expects hyperscalers to fare better because their businesses extend beyond AI services.
  • It is a named forecaster putting a specific revenue requirement, not a sentiment, against the buildout — and the gap it describes is larger than the revenue it expects to exist.
  • These are Gartner's forecasts, not measured outcomes, and the figures reach to 2032. The Register also cites Bain & Company's estimate that the AI industry needs about $6 trillion in annual revenue by 2031. Gartner's report itself was not opened; the figures come from The Register's account of it.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersFunding

Jefferies: about half of hyperscalers' $2.3 trillion contracted backlog is owed to OpenAI and Anthropic Single source

The Register
  • The Register reports Jefferies estimates about half of the roughly $2.3 trillion contracted backlog at Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Oracle comes from OpenAI and Anthropic, and that the four largest hyperscalers are set to spend between $600 billion and $800 billion this year on datacenters, increasingly debt-funded. Jefferies asks: "Are the four hyperscalers really going to spend $993 billion on capex in 2027?"
  • Citing OpenRouter data, the note says Chinese models processed 76.12 trillion tokens in the week ended 27 September, up from 4.37 trillion in late April, against 14.2 trillion for the top four US providers, and estimates Moonshot AI's open-source Kimi K3 reaches about 95 percent of the performance of Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.
  • The concentration figure is the exposure: if cheap open-weight substitutes take inference volume, the backlog that justifies the capex rests on two customers.
  • On earnings quality, The Register reports Jefferies finding annualized earnings for the four hyperscalers rose $222 billion to $581 billion over the four quarters to 2Q26, while "other non-operating income/loss" grew $224 billion year-on-year to $237 billion, which Jefferies says accounted for all of the increase. These are a sell-side analyst's estimates and projections, not disclosed figures; the Kimi K3 performance comparison is Jefferies' own estimate, and the note itself was not opened.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersOpen WeightsChina

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Microsoft details Maia 300: 288GB of HBM4 per accelerator, 96 to a 167kW rack, and multi-gigawatt deployments from next year Company claim

Microsoft Azure·Data Center Dynamics
  • Each Maia 300 accelerator carries eight HBM4 stacks giving 288GB of capacity and 18 TB/s of bandwidth, with compute dies on TSMC's N2P node and memory-controller and I/O functions on separate dies. A rack holds 96 accelerators in 24 four-accelerator trays inside a 167kW envelope — double Maia 200's accelerator density — delivering 27.6TB of HBM capacity and 1.7 Pbps of aggregate HBM bandwidth; a superpod scales to 128 racks and 12,288 accelerators.
  • Microsoft projects up to 40 percent more tokens per megawatt than leading GPU-based systems, and, in a full 96-accelerator configuration, up to seven times the rack-scale token throughput of Maia 200, plus more than 2.5x performance per watt and 2.5x memory bandwidth. Scott Guthrie, EVP for cloud and AI, said Microsoft will scale the Maia family to "multi-gigawatt deployments" starting next year, making it the "primary inference system" for Microsoft's products and services.
  • Maia 200 is now in production and deployed across the US, Europe and Australia, supporting Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI models and Microsoft's own MAI models — so the inference base Microsoft is moving off Nvidia for already carries paying traffic.
  • The 40 percent figure is an expectation, not a measurement, and Microsoft does not name the GPU systems it is compared against, give an absolute FLOPS number, or give a deployment date beyond 2027. Liquid cooling removes more than 80% of the rack's thermal load; the post defers further detail to Microsoft Ignite on 17–20 November.
MicrosoftChipsDatacentersCompute

NTT Data in final-stage talks to build a 500MW Anthropic data centre in Osaka costing up to 1 trillion yen Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Nikkei Asia reports NTT Data Group is in the final stages of talks with Anthropic over a data centre in Osaka Prefecture with power intake capacity of up to 500 megawatts. Construction alone could cost up to ¥1 trillion ($6.3 billion); adding AI servers with graphics processors would bring the total to several trillion yen. The companies aim to sign by the end of Japan's fiscal year on 31 March 2027, with partial operations as early as 2028.
  • It would be the first facility in Japan dedicated to Anthropic. DCD counts at least 14.8GW of compute capacity Anthropic has contracted since October last year, across Akamai, AWS, CoreWeave, a $50bn partnership with Fluidstack, SpaceX/xAI, Google Cloud, Lambda, Volta Infra, AMD and Microsoft.
  • Power is the binding constraint, not capital: drawing 500MW from the grid would be slow, so the project will first examine on-site generation and fuel cells.
  • No deal has been signed, and both NTT Data and Anthropic declined to comment to Nikkei. The report rests on multiple unnamed sources at one outlet, Nikkei's own page could not be opened from here.
Compute moneyAnthropicDatacentersComputeEnergy

Moody's: data centres could take 30% of Ireland's and 17% of the Netherlands' electricity by 2035 mixedSingle source

The Register
  • Moody's projects that by 2035 data centres could account for 30% of electricity in Ireland and 17% in the Netherlands, with France and the UK at least 5.7%, against a 2025 baseline of a low single-digit share — typically about 2.5% — in most of the largest European markets. Ireland is the outlier and already at 23% in 2025, up from 5% in 2015.
  • Moody's says grid expansion costs and supply-demand imbalances are expected to push energy prices higher, that intervention could become more intrusive — including electricity price caps, additional taxes or levies — and that grid operators, especially transmission networks, may face short-term balance-sheet pressure.
  • Governments are already reaching for conditions rather than bans: Ireland's regulator replaced a moratorium on new data-centre grid connections with a framework requiring operators asking for 10 MVA or more to provide matching generation or storage and meet at least 80% of annual demand through additional Irish renewable projects. The UK government is considering a fee for grid connection requests, and in the US a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge aims to keep data-centre costs off household bills.
  • These are Moody's projections to 2035, not measurements, and the report is relayed by one outlet. The Register does not say what load growth or build-out assumptions the 2035 figures rest on.
EnergyDatacentersCompute

IMF stability report names an AI share correction one of three salient risks to global financial stability mixed

IMF·The Guardian (via AOL)
  • In its twice-yearly Global Financial Stability Report the IMF says "Weaker or less durable investment and profitability in AI could trigger a correction in AI-related asset prices, exacerbated by rising leverage, concentrated exposures, and circular financing arrangements," and that such a reassessment would "sharply reduce investment, trigger equity market corrections, and tighten financial conditions, with global spillovers." An AI crash is one of three "salient risks" it names, alongside rising government borrowing costs and a large cyber-attack — "plausible near-term catalysts for a sharp tightening of financial conditions and market turmoil."
  • On concentration: the "magnificent seven" — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — account for more than 35% of the S&P 500, up from 12% a decade ago, and their combined market capitalisation has risen more than 50% in two years. Athanasios Vamvakidis of the IMF said "the exposure of the rest of the world to US assets, particularly AI, is the highest it has ever been."
  • The Fund is now questioning the premise of the capital expenditure itself, warning of "growing evidence" that the successful rollout of AI "may not require investment on the massive scale being undertaken by 'hyperscaler' firms," and that "potential economic gains may not be as large as expected." It identifies company debt, hedge-fund positions and retail investors borrowing to speculate as leverage that "heighten the potential for forced selling and surges in equity volatility."
  • The report says consequences would be global, with Asian markets most exposed outside the US and the UK and euro area potentially more insulated, though holders of US assets would still be hit. The IMF's own publication page was not readable when checked; the quotations above are from the Guardian's report of the launch, as republished by AOL.
Compute moneyComputeFundingDatacenters

Monday, 12 October 2026

Broadcom and Intel chief executives say capital, not chips or power, may be the biggest constraint on AI Company claim

CNBC
  • Speaking at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said "[what] I think might be the biggest constraint is capital" — a bigger obstacle, CNBC reports, than shortages of semiconductors, memory chips or electricity. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said "if there's any challenge in the front, it's capital and the cost of capital, and then the other part is in the longer run, people want to see the ROI".
  • On supply, Hock Tan said "[in the] last two years we have seen a series of bottlenecks that keep coming out, but then we overcome it. Memory shortage today might not be that way a year from now", and suggested wafer shortages could ease by 2028 or 2029.
  • Both stayed bullish on near-term demand. "There is more demand for compute infrastructure than we can supply," Hock Tan said, adding the imbalance could persist through 2029 and potentially into 2030; Lip-Bu Tan said the industry was unlikely to see a significant slowdown over the next two to three years.
  • Each named a condition. Hock Tan cautioned demand could slow if adoption of advanced models disappoints or capability improvements plateau; Lip-Bu Tan said companies would increasingly need to demonstrate tangible returns through improved efficiency and new business models. These are two chip suppliers' assessments of their own market, not independent analysis, and neither gave figures for the financing gap.
Compute moneyComputeChipsDatacenters

SWI raises €800 million at a €6.1 billion valuation to convert FTX-linked bitcoin mining sites to AI Company claim

CoinDesk·The Energy Mag
  • Euronext Amsterdam-listed SWI Group said it "raised 800 million euros ($894 million) from institutional investors" to expand data-centre and AI computing projects in Europe and the US, with CoinDesk reporting on 12 October at 6:27 a.m. EDT that "the capital increase values it at 6.1 billion euros". The Energy Mag says the round takes SWI's equity fundraising since March above €1 billion and that SWI did not identify the investors.
  • The asset being converted is Genesis Digital Assets, the former FTX-backed miner. SWI "announced the purchase of about 40% of Genesis Digital in June for $500 million, completing the acquisition in August with 70% of the voting rights and renaming the unit SWI Digital". It plans to market sites in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Sweden to hyperscale cloud providers and is selling the unit's Kazakhstan sites. CEO Max-Hervé George told the Wall Street Journal he had "zero interest" in bitcoin mining.
  • The Energy Mag puts SWI's US-focused secured grid connections at approximately 1.2 gigawatts alongside about 2.3 gigawatts of planned capacity at its European AiOnX business, and notes plainly that "those figures describe power access and a development pipeline, rather than operating AI computing capacity". CoinDesk says bitcoin miners have now signed more than $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts.
  • CoinDesk's own photo caption says "SWI Group raised roughly $930 million", contradicting the €800 million/$894 million in its headline and body; the lower figure is used here. The grid-connection figures are the company's own.
Compute moneyDatacentersFundingEnergy

IREN rose about 9% overnight after a report that Anthropic signed an undisclosed multiyear cloud deal with the miner Single source

The Energy Mag
  • The Information reported, citing people familiar with the relationship, that Anthropic had signed a previously undisclosed multiyear cloud-computing agreement with IREN. The Energy Mag says IREN shares rose about 9% in Sunday overnight trading, to about $38 on 11 October evening Eastern Time from Friday's close of $35.19, partially reversing a roughly 16% decline over the preceding week.
  • Financial terms and the precise duration were not available, and it is unclear whether this is the same contract as IREN's 27 August disclosure of a multiyear AI cloud contract with an unnamed leading frontier AI lab — "a distinction that matters in assessing whether it represents additional business beyond IREN's existing disclosures".
  • For scale on IREN's pivot away from mining: it said in August that contracts for its 2026 capacity represented $4 billion in annualized revenue against a $1 billion annualized run rate for operating capacity, and AI cloud revenue reached $128.8 million in the fiscal year ended 30 June, up from $16.4 million, out of $707 million in total revenue. Microsoft is already a major customer under a roughly $9.7 billion five-year agreement announced in November 2025.
  • One outlet has the deal and neither Anthropic nor IREN has commented. The Information's own page could not be opened from here, so the deal's description is as The Energy Mag reports it.
Compute moneyAnthropicDatacentersCompute

Sunday, 11 October 2026

Drone strike halts Yandex's Vladimir data centre, the third Yandex site hit in four days, with 80-plus services down harmfulUpdate

Associated Press (via KSAT)·Al Jazeera·Kyiv Post
  • Yandex said on its Yandex Cloud Telegram channel that "as a result of the drone attack, the infrastructure of Yandex's data center in Vladimir was damaged" and that "operations at the data center have been completely halted. There were no injuries," the Associated Press reports. Al Jazeera quotes Yandex telling users to activate disaster-recovery plans, with the platform in emergency mode and "the remaining resource configuration" considered unstable.
  • Kyiv Post, citing the ASTRA and Crimean Wind Telegram channels, puts the Vladimir site at 40 to 50 megawatts and "designed to house up to 2,880 server racks", and counts more than 80 disrupted services: the Alice voice assistant, Yandex Music, Telemost and Smart Home; Yandex Cloud's Compute Cloud, Object Storage, Managed Kubernetes, PostgreSQL and ClickHouse; and the YandexGPT API, SpeechKit and Vision OCR. AP, citing the Russian outlet Astra, says users in dozens of Russian cities plus Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia could not order taxis or reach banking services.
  • AP calls it the third strike on Yandex facilities in four days. Al Jazeera places the first on Thursday October 8 at the Sasovo hub in Ryazan region, "which houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop Yandex's AI model", and the second on Friday October 9 in Kaluga region, "partly put out of action". Kyiv Post says Vladimir governor Aleksandr Avdeev reported about 80 percent of electrical service restored by Sunday morning after local substations were damaged, and that Yandex has removed its data-centre locations in four Russian regions from its digital map.
  • No Ukrainian claim of responsibility for the Vladimir strike has been reported. The capacity, rack-count and service-count figures come from Telegram channels relayed by Kyiv Post, not from Yandex, which has given no outage duration or user count. Al Jazeera quotes Zelenskyy from Thursday: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion."
DatacentersMilitaryIncidentsCompute

Saturday, 10 October 2026

Nvidia-backed Firmus cancels a $5 billion Australian IPO and turns to private markets

Data Center Dynamics·ABC News
  • Australian AI cloud firm Firmus has backed out of a planned IPO, blaming volatile market conditions, Data Center Dynamics reports. The company was due to list on October 23 and it had been hoped the listing would raise $5 billion, making it one of the largest in Australian Stock Exchange history; DCD says Firmus had already reduced its initial share price from AU$11 ($7.65) to AU$9 ($6.26) because of weak investor interest at home and abroad.
  • In a statement shared with CNBC, Firmus said "the board therefore concluded that proceeding with the offer was not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders" and that it "will now pursue capital from the private markets and consider alternative public and private market options".
  • Firmus raised $2bn in August from backers including Nvidia and Blackstone at a post-money valuation of more than $10.5 billion, after a $505m equity round in April, and has agreements with Meta and OpenAI to provide data centre capacity in Indonesia and Malaysia. ABC News reports that Nvidia holds a 7.2 per cent stake and that Firmus expects to carry about US$30 billion of debt once its data centres are built, about six times the US$5 billion of operating earnings it forecasts for 2028.
  • DCD says Firmus also pulled its "Project Southgate" collaboration with CDC Data Centres, under which 1.6GW could have been built in Australia and only about 43MW was delivered. DCD notes the cancellation will raise questions about public-market appetite for neoclouds, and that UK-based Nscale and US firm Lambda are planning listings of their own in the coming months.
Compute moneyDatacentersFundingNVIDIACompute

Oxide Computer raises $445 million at a $6 billion valuation as AI compute demand outruns supply Company claim

Oxide Computer·Forbes
  • Forbes reported on October 9 that Oxide "raised $445 million in Series D funding at a $6 billion valuation", with Eclipse Capital leading and Atreides Management and AMD Ventures participating. Oxide's own post names existing investors USIT, Riot Ventures, Jane Street, Friends and Family Capital and Counterpart, and describes AMD as "a new strategic investor".
  • CEO Steve Tuck told Forbes the company is seeing an uptick in demand in part due to the "compute supercycle of AI", and that "it ships 200,000 of its servers every month, up from 10,000 a year ago". Forbes says that, according to a person familiar, "Oxide is profitable with revenue in the hundreds of millions, up from single digit millions 12 months ago".
  • In its own post Oxide says it paid income tax in the spring because "our ordinary operations (selling computers!) generated taxable income", and that it has "a very large order backlog" with demand far exceeding supply, so it must commit substantial cash to components and manufacturing well before the resulting systems reach customers.
  • The revenue and profitability figures are attributed to an unnamed person familiar with the company rather than audited disclosure, and the shipment numbers are the company's own. Oxide sells on-premises rack systems rather than AI accelerators; the AI link in the reporting is demand pressure, not AI silicon.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersFunding

A $366 million Anthropic-linked data centre is filed with Texas regulators in Bastrop County Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • A proposal for a $366 million data centre project, "Project Longhorn - Building One", has been filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Data Center Dynamics reports. It will span some 498,165 sq ft (46,281 sqm) at Earl Callahan Road, near Walter Hoffman Road, in Cedar Creek, Bastrop County, outside Austin. Construction is aiming to begin on November 30, 2026 and be completed by the end of January 2028.
  • At full build-out the project is expected to offer 710MW of "site-rated redundant power using simple-cycle natural gas turbines" that will support 490MW of IT capacity.
  • DCD says representatives for Black Chamber, Pacifico Energy and Anthropic did not respond to BizJournals' request for comment on a 2,842-acre gas-fired electric generation facility to support a major data centre campus in the Cedar Creek area, "which AI lab Anthropic is reportedly in talks to lease".
  • The filing names no tenant and Anthropic's involvement is reported rather than confirmed. In September, Texas Governor Greg Abbott halted all new data centre permits from the state's environmental agency until it completes a large-scale audit of facilities seeking to connect to the ERCOT grid; ERCOT aims to complete the audit by December, and DCD says the new filing suggests the project is moving ahead regardless.
DatacentersEnergyAnthropic

Second Yandex data centre hit by drones within 48 hours, knocking out modules in Kaluga harmfulUpdateSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Yandex said in a statement that "a drone attack damaged part of the infrastructure at Yandex's data center in Kaluga, completely knocking out several modules", and that "as a result, some Yandex services may experience temporary disruptions. The full extent of the damage is currently being assessed." Data Center Dynamics reports the strike, citing Russian state outlet TASS.
  • The attack came within 48 hours of the drone strike on Yandex's Sasovo data centre, which caused a fire and brought operations down at that facility. On Sasovo, Yandex has since said: "The scale of the damage to the infrastructure is still being assessed. For the moment, we cannot confirm whether it is possible to restore the data center equipment in Sasovo." According to Reuters, two of Yandex's three supercomputers are housed at Sasovo.
  • DCD reports that at the time of writing Yandex's status page still listed a power outage at the ru-central1-b availability zone and "increased timings in the Object Storage service" for ru-central1-e, a, b and d. Yandex has five large Russian data centres — in Vladimir, Sasovo, Ivanteevka, Mytishchi and Kaluga Oblast, about 200 miles (322km) south of Moscow, which is about 298 miles (480km) from Sasovo.
  • Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv: "We always respond in mirror-like fashion. You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centers. We are responding. I can't share all the details." The damage assessments are Yandex's own and unverified; DCD notes multiple Ukrainian data centre operators have been struck in recent weeks.
DatacentersIncidentsCompute

Ai2's new GPU scheduler cut p90 debug queue wait from about 2 hours to 30 seconds beneficialCompany claim

Ai2
  • Ai2 says it replaced a priority-based GPU scheduler with a system of GPU time budgets, hierarchical fair-share allocation and a time-slicing contract, across "thousands of NVIDIA H100, B200, and B300 GPUs arranged in clusters ranging in size from 88 to 1024 GPUs" serving "about 150 internal researchers".
  • Over a 30-day test period "teams were delivered 98% of the GPU hours they were owed, and 13 of 15 team allocations received 95%" or more. "Debug workload p90 queue wait time fell from 2 hours to 30 seconds under the new scheduler, against a simulated prediction of 6 hours to 5 minutes from hand-crafted test scenarios."
  • Ai2 says the change also "reduced repairs requiring a human-in-the-loop by 74%", because workloads can be removed and requeued automatically, so unhealthy hosts drain their workloads as they reach minimum runtimes and repair activity can be fully automated. Under the new rules "nothing is free, so any trick to get GPU time draws from the benefiting user's allocation".
  • The figures are Ai2's own measurements of its own cluster and have not been independently verified. Ai2 notes the sample of debug workloads is smaller than for other workload types, which qualifies the headline improvement.
ComputeDatacentersNVIDIA

Thursday, 8 October 2026

WSJ: Broadcom seeks more than $50 billion to finance OpenAI's custom AI chips, with Oracle in parallel talks Single source

Benzinga·Oninvest
  • Both outlets attribute the figure to The Wall Street Journal, citing people with knowledge of the matter: Broadcom is pursuing more than $50 billion to finance custom AI chips it is developing jointly with OpenAI. Benzinga says Broadcom "recently discussed financing with Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone Inc." and that the proposed financing "could support several gigawatts of chip capacity for OpenAI".
  • Per the WSJ as relayed by Benzinga, Broadcom and OpenAI "expect the deal to close by year-end" but "discussions remain preliminary, and the final amount could change". Separately, Oracle "is negotiating with Apollo and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to raise money for a substantial chip purchase".
  • Benzinga says Broadcom and OpenAI introduced Jalapeño in June as OpenAI's first custom processor for LLM inference, and that per the WSJ OpenAI's internal chip programme, Nexus, names processors after peppers, the first two generations being Jalapeño and Serrano.
  • The WSJ article itself was not opened for this edition; both linked pieces are secondhand accounts of it, so this rests on one original source. Broadcom, OpenAI and Oracle did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment, and Benzinga discloses its article "was partially produced with the help of AI tools".
Compute moneyComputeChipsOpenAIFundingDatacenters

Sesterce announces a $10 billion, 600MW AI data centre campus on a former Finnish paper mill Company claim

Data Center Dynamics·Reuters (via Global Banking & Finance Review)
  • DCD says Sesterce "has announced plans for a $10 billion AI data center campus in Jämsä, Finland", on the site of the former Kaipola paper mill, at 200MW in phase one rising to 600MW in phase two, with a stated long-term aim of more than 1GW in Finland. The Reuters wire copy puts the cost at "more than €10 billion ($11.21 billion)" and says first-phase works are planned to start in 2026.
  • DCD reports Sesterce committed to enabling one megawatt of newly built renewable generation on the Finnish grid for every megawatt the campus consumes within 10 years of becoming operational, a closed-loop liquid cooling system supplemented with harvested rainwater and recycled water, and a $10 million community fund for Jämsä.
  • The siting is the pattern worth noting: a paper mill that closed in 2021 already has the grid connection and water access an AI campus needs.
  • Sesterce says it already has an anchor customer but will not name it, and the two sources give different headline costs. Jämsä mayor Jori Reijula called the project "an interesting opportunity… provided it progresses from plans to implementation" — nothing is built, and the renewable commitment is to "enabling" capacity rather than building it.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeEnergyFunding

Drone strike starts fire at Yandex's largest data centre in Sasovo, taking a cloud availability zone offline harmfulSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • DCD, citing the Kyiv Independent and OSINT groups Exilenova+ and ASTRA, says the struck facility is Yandex DC Sasovo in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, and "is Yandex's largest data center facility". It reports "Yandex said that the strike caused a fire at the data center, forcing it to cease operations", and that Yandex Cloud's status dashboard shows a power outage at its ru-central-b availability zone beginning at 1:31am local time and ongoing.
  • DCD says this "is the first major data center to be taken down in Russia during the conflict with Ukraine", and lists Ukrainian facilities damaged by drones including Parkovyi Data Center, MiroHost, Datagroup, Vodafone Ukraine, De Novo, Cosmonova, Omega Telecom and Ukrtelecom.
  • The data centre sits at the Sasta production complex, which DCD says "serves the Russian defence industry, among others". Yandex operates five large data centres in Russia, in Vladimir, Sasovo, Ivanteevka, Mytishchi and Kaluga Oblast.
  • DCD is the only outlet found reporting this, and the facility identification comes from OSINT groups rather than an official statement. No casualty figures, no damage assessment and no attribution of the strike are given, and searches for independent confirmation returned nothing.
DatacentersIncidentsMilitaryCompute

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

SpaceX seeks $40 billion led by Apollo to buy Nvidia chips, the Financial Times reports

Reuters
  • SpaceX plans to raise $40 billion, led by Apollo Global Management, to buy Nvidia AI chips, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter. The company is seeking about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt, with bond fund Pimco among a small group of lenders in talks and the transaction expected to close in 2027.
  • The chips are intended for SpaceX's terrestrial data centres and its planned AI infrastructure in orbit. Musk said the company plans to use Nvidia hardware exclusively for its data centres.
  • SpaceX shares fell 1% in extended trading after the report, while Nvidia's stock rose 0.5%. For scale, the same wire story notes Morgan Stanley estimates AI infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028, and that Musk took SpaceX public in June in a record $86 billion IPO.
  • The figures are from the FT's unnamed sources, not a filing or company statement. SpaceX, Apollo and Nvidia did not respond to Reuters and Pimco declined to comment, so no party has confirmed the amounts on the record.
Compute moneyComputeChipsNVIDIAFundingDatacenters

Lambda raising up to $4 billion at a $14.5 billion valuation as its backlog jumps to $50 billion on an Anthropic deal

TechCrunch
  • Cloud provider Lambda is raising up to $4 billion at a $14.5 billion pre-money valuation, led by Coatue Management and Blackstone, in what TechCrunch reports could be its last private round before a planned 2027 IPO, citing The Wall Street Journal.
  • A letter to investors reviewed by the Journal shows Lambda's backlog grew from $15 billion in June to $50 billion in September. TechCrunch reports that "much of that increase appears to be driven by a $35 billion commitment from one company: Anthropic, which signed a deal with Lambda in late August" — meaning roughly four fifths of the increase traces to a single customer.
  • Lambda closed an additional $1 billion in senior secured fixed-rate financing the week before, on top of the equity raise; TechCrunch notes data-centre buildouts are largely funded by debt.
  • The round is reported as in progress, not closed, and the backlog figures come from a private investor letter rather than a filing. Lambda, Coatue and Blackstone did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. The IPO was reportedly meant to happen this year and has been pushed back.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersFundingAnthropic

Finnish regulator orders Google's Tuike Finland to halt preparatory work at two data-centre sites mixed

AFP via Macau Business
  • The Finnish Supervisory Agency (LVV) ordered work on two of Google's data centre sites halted until mandatory environmental impact assessments are completed, AFP reports. It demanded that Tuike Finland, a company representing Google, "immediately suspend, and no later than 23 October 2026, all preparatory measures that would significantly alter the environment in connection with the planned data centre projects in Muhos and Kajaani".
  • Tuike Finland must explain itself and set out how it intends to proceed by 14 October; if it does not comply, the agency said it may initiate enforcement proceedings.
  • The sites are part of what Google has called its single biggest investment in Europe: a 13-billion-euro ($15-billion) digital infrastructure commitment announced in September, covering the municipalities of Muhos, Vaala, Kajaani and Hamina over the next two years.
  • Hanna Halmeenpaa, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, told AFP at the Muhos site that "nature sites which should be preserved" had been logged in a deforested area of more than 300 hectares (741 acres). The order halts preparatory work pending assessment and does not cancel the projects; no Google response is reported in this account.
DatacentersEnergyGoogle DeepMindCompute

Tuesday, 6 October 2026

AMD's Lisa Su says the company will "substantially increase" supply in 2027 and needs more advanced wafer capacity Company claim

Focus Taiwan
  • Su told reporters in Taipei: "We've been able to increase our supply as we've gone through 2026, and we're going to substantially increase our supply in 2027, but we can definitely use more." Focus Taiwan reports she said meeting computing demand over the next several years "would require additional advanced wafer capacity" and that memory supply "remained constrained across the market".
  • Focus Taiwan reports Su said the US$10 billion Taiwan investment AMD announced in May is progressing as planned and that AMD is increasing that number because demand has continued to rise, without specifying a revised figure. She said AMD has extended its planning horizon with partners from one or two years to three to five.
  • Su said AMD began shipping its Helios AI platform in the third quarter as planned, and that AMD will keep working through suppliers rather than investing directly in manufacturing capacity. All of these are AMD's own statements; the revised Taiwan investment figure was not given.
ChipsComputeDatacenters

Applied Digital secures access to up to 1 GW of potential power capacity in Finland, its first site outside the US Company claim

Applied Digital
  • Applied Digital said on 6 October it has an agreement providing access to "up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of potential power capacity" in Finland, marking its first international development, with initial power anticipated beginning in 2028.
  • CEO Wes Cummins said: "Finland stood out because many of the characteristics that have supported our success in North Dakota are also present in the Nordics — a favorable climate, an attractive energy ecosystem, strong connectivity and the ability to develop at meaningful scale."
  • The company says the agreement was structured to limit initial exposure, that it has begun marketing the site and is in discussions with hyperscale customers, and that "our focus remains firmly on executing the projects in front of us in the United States". The capacity is potential rather than contracted, no customer has been named and no capital figure was given.
DatacentersEnergyCompute

Sunday, 4 October 2026

AWS CEO Garman puts $1 billion in community spending and 100+ data-centre moratoriums on the record mixedUpdateCompany claimSingle source

TechCrunch
  • In a blog post reported by TechCrunch, AWS CEO Matt Garman says that "Over the past three years, Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to communities across the U.S. in which we have a meaningful data center presence", and that "there are more than 100 data center moratoriums currently being considered across the United States". He warns that if they are enacted "the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations."
  • On water, Garman says direct data centre consumption is "0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States", "orders of magnitude less than golf courses, almond farming, and many other industries". On emissions, TechCrunch notes a planned Amazon data centre in Texas "is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is more than any other power plant in the United States"; Garman's answer is that generators "are idle 99.9% of the time (they run roughly 10 hours per year, mostly for required maintenance testing)".
  • This is the fullest set of figures Amazon has put behind the data-centre backlash we covered on 3 October, when AWS said it had stopped using non-disclosure agreements with government agencies on data centre projects.
  • Every figure is Amazon's own and none is independently audited; the water comparison is a share of industrial use, not of total water use. TechCrunch's counterpoints: New York announced a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centres, and "an independent watchdog said recently data centers were the main culprit behind a 76% year-over-year price increase on America's largest electrical grid". We did not open Garman's post itself.
DatacentersEnergyAmazon

Saturday, 3 October 2026

Sharon AI and Lambda raise $1.356bn combined in GPU-backed debt, at 9.95% and 6.78% Company claim

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports Australia's Sharon AI secured a $365m senior secured, GPU-backed SPV debt facility at a fixed price of 9.95 percent, its first in an expected series supporting a planned deployment of 68,000 Nvidia GPUs by mid-2027. Lambda separately secured $1bn in senior secured fixed-rate financing at a 6.78 percent fixed rate — an investment-grade, delayed-draw term loan marketed to insurance companies and fixed-income investors, funding three contracted customer deployments. Combined, $1.356bn.
  • The rate spread is the interesting number: 9.95 percent against 6.78 percent for two neoclouds borrowing against the same asset class in the same week. Lambda's facility is its second institutional credit line after a $926 million facility in August 2026, with J.P. Morgan as sole coordinating lead arranger; Jarden Australia arranged Sharon AI's.
  • DCD reports the debt brings Sharon AI's total raised through debt and equity to $2.6bn over the past 10 months, and quotes CEO James Manning citing customer offtake at "a TCV of over $8.8bn". DCD notes GPU-backed loans remain a relatively new instrument because hardware historically depreciates, and lists CoreWeave and Nscale among others using them.
  • The offtake and total-raised figures are the companies' own, stated in their announcements. DCD does not give maturities for either facility, and the credit ratings behind Lambda's "investment-grade" description are not named.
Compute moneyDatacentersFundingComputeNVIDIA

AWS says it has stopped using non-disclosure agreements with government agencies on data centre projects beneficialUpdateCompany claim

Data Center Dynamics
  • In a blog post published on 2 October, AWS chief executive Matt Garman said the company no longer uses "nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects", per Data Center Dynamics. DCD reports the move comes just over half a year after Microsoft said it would stop asking local governments to sign NDAs, and "just days after" Representative Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, opened an investigation into Amazon, Google, Meta and Oracle over data centre NDAs.
  • Garman's own framing of the stakes, quoted by DCD: "there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country", and "there are widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about data centers to trick us into slowing down".
  • Raskin found that Amazon's former secrecy agreements prevented local officials from disclosing broadly defined "proprietary" or "confidential" information, and that Amazon has used shell companies to conceal its involvement in proposed data centres, DCD reports.
  • Garman's post did not address shell companies or opaque project codenames, and DCD says it has asked AWS whether those practices will continue. This briefing covered Amazon's $1bn "Built Together" community pledge yesterday; the NDA withdrawal and the Raskin investigation are the new facts. We did not open Garman's post or Raskin's letters.
DatacentersAmazonUS Federal PolicyEnergy

Data centre opposition has affected around $42 billion of European investment, STL Partners research says mixedSingle source

CNBC
  • CNBC reports that public opposition has already affected around $42 billion of data centre investments in Europe through delays and cancellations, against around $77 billion in the US, according to research from STL Partners. More than 70 European projects were rejected or restricted between January and April — more than in all of 2025 — per the European Data Center Monitor.
  • The regulatory responses CNBC lists: Scotland has paused planning approvals for new hyperscale data centres; Denmark passed an emergency law that could put data centres at the back of the queue for grid power applications; and Spain proposed rules this summer requiring data centres to source 80% of their electricity from renewables.
  • In South Korea, residents of Seoul's Geumcheon district have called for a data centre building permit to be revoked; officials announced in July plans to require consent from a majority of residents living within 200 metres of proposed sites and a three-stage review system. CNBC says demonstrations had continued for 172 days as of mid-August.
  • The $42 billion and $77 billion figures are a consultancy's estimate of investment "affected", not cancelled, and CNBC does not give STL Partners' methodology or the period covered. Asya Walters of Alvarez & Marsal told CNBC a community's ability "to derail a $10 billion [data center] plan is quite powerful"; CNBC also notes the AI build-out shows little sign of slowing.
DatacentersEnergyEU AI ActLabor

Friday, 2 October 2026

Amazon pledges more than $1bn over five years to data centre communities, against about $220bn of capex this year mixedCompany claim

Amazon·GeekWire
  • GeekWire reports Amazon will spend more than $1 billion over five years in the US communities hosting its data centres under a programme called "Built Together," funding free community college, job training and energy upgrades, on top of more than $1 billion it says it has given communities over the past three years. Amazon also says it will stop using NDAs with government agencies on data centre projects, install lower-emission backup generators at new sites, publish energy and water use each year, and pay enough for power to keep local electricity bills from rising.
  • AWS CEO Matt Garman wrote: "Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country. If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations." GeekWire notes Amazon is projecting about $220 billion in capital expenses this year, so the additional $1 billion over five years "works out to about $200 million a year, or about one-tenth of 1% of this year's projected capital spending."
  • Local consent has become a measurable constraint on the buildout: GeekWire, citing Data Center Watch, says at least 75 data centre projects worth about $130 billion were blocked or delayed in the first three months of the year, and an Economist/YouGov poll in late August found 63% of Americans would oppose a data centre in their community.
  • Garman's post also attributes opposition to "misinformation and outright lies" and points to "widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the U.S. about data centers"; GeekWire notes PolitiFact reported last month that the role of foreign influence in that opposition has been exaggerated, with little sign the accounts reached a wide audience. The pledge is a company commitment with no published allocation by community and no enforcement mechanism.
Compute moneyDatacentersAmazonEnergyCompute

Google puts a TPU in orbit; its peer-reviewed paper says Starship needs about 1,800 flights by 2035 Single source

TechCrunch
  • TechCrunch reports that Google's prototype orbital compute satellite, built by Planet Labs, launched on 1 October on a SpaceX rocket from California — the first time Google has sent one of its advanced chips into space. The satellite supplies "a kilowatt of continuous power" to a TPU and, once commissioned, "will fire up its TPU in 15-minute bursts to avoid straining the satellite's power and thermal management systems."
  • The same day Google released a peer-reviewed version of its orbital data centre white paper, to be published in Joule. TechCrunch reports the paper's authors find SpaceX has achieved a price-reducing "learning curve" of about 20% a year and "believe it's reasonable to expect the company to deliver launch prices close to $200 per kilogram by 2035" — which would require flying 370,000 tons of payload to orbit, about 1,800 launches over the next 10 years, or 180 a year at 200 metric tons per mission.
  • The arithmetic is the story: the company proposing orbital data centres has published the launch cadence its own economics require, and TechCrunch notes Starship "has never flown more than five times in a year." Google envisions "an orbital data center that is a network of 81 satellites flying in close formation, processing in parallel," with a two-satellite demonstration using laser links expected next year.
  • Only TechCrunch's account was opened for this item; the Joule paper itself was not read, so the learning-curve and payload figures are as that report states them. One satellite running a chip in 15-minute bursts is a long way from an 81-satellite formation, and Google has not published a cost per unit of orbital compute.
Google DeepMindDatacentersComputeEnergy

Crusoe files for a $4.8bn two-building data centre campus in Jayton, Texas Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • DCD, citing two filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, reports two data centre buildings in Jayton, Kent County, each spanning 759,260 sq ft (70,540 sqm), with "a total investment in the site of $4.8bn." Construction begins at the end of January 2027 and the buildings are expected to go live in May and July 2029.
  • The buildings are listed as "spur buildings" of Project Hyper, Crusoe's Childress development of three buildings of 806,360 sq ft each at some $2.4bn apiece. DCD writes: "This would bring the full Project Hyper investment across both sites to $12 billion." Two Childress buildings are already under construction, with the third expected this month and all three targeting completion in the first half of 2028.
  • Crusoe is the developer behind the Abilene site used by OpenAI, and announced in July 2026 a 1.4GW campus in Childress with Lancium on 270 acres, with behind-the-meter solar and storage and closed-loop cooling. DCD says previous reports suggest Meta is set to lease capacity in Childress.
  • These are state licensing filings, not signed leases or financing, and DCD does not report a power capacity for Jayton, a confirmed tenant, or whether the $4.8bn is committed. Only one outlet's account was opened.
DatacentersComputeEnergy

Valar Atomics proposes a 456-reactor, 9.6GW nuclear data centre campus on Utah federal land Single sourceUpdate

Data Center Dynamics
  • DCD, citing NPR and the Salt Lake Tribune, reports that Valar Atomics is planning "Project Beehive" on more than 9,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land near Price in Carbon County, some 199 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Per a proposal to federal regulators seen by NPR, the campus would include data centres and "some 456 small nuclear reactors," a nuclear fuel production facility and waste storage, with the reactors potentially totalling 9.6GW of electrical capacity.
  • DCD reports construction could start as soon as the end of the year, with first reactors online in 2028 and full build-out by 2032, and that the Bureau of Land Management's Utah office told NPR: "We are currently reviewing the application for completeness."
  • 9.6GW on one site is roughly the scale of several of the largest existing nuclear plants combined, proposed on federal land by a company whose reactor has not yet generated power commercially.
  • DCD notes plainly that "no company has yet put an SMR into commercial operation." Valar's 5MW Ward 250 design completed only a zero-power fuelled criticality demonstration in June, and the company aims to deploy 25MW reactors at Beehive — a fivefold step from the demonstrated design. This is an application under review, not an approval, and was first reported on 30 September by NPR and the Salt Lake Tribune; only the DCD write-up was opened here.
DatacentersEnergyCompute

Thursday, 1 October 2026

Micron reports $54.23bn quarter and $133.19bn year, and says memory demand will exceed supply through 2028

Micron (SEC 8-K Ex-99.1)·CNBC
  • Micron reported fiscal Q4 2026 revenue of $54.23 billion, against $41.46 billion the prior quarter and $11.32 billion a year earlier, with GAAP net income of $37.70 billion, or $32.87 per diluted share, and operating cash flow of $43.97 billion against $5.73 billion a year earlier. Full-year revenue was $133.19 billion against $37.38 billion, with GAAP net income of $84.97 billion and a GAAP gross margin of 86.8% in the fourth quarter.
  • CNBC reports adjusted EPS of $33.42 against $31.61 expected and revenue of $54.23 billion against $51.07 billion expected on LSEG consensus, with first-quarter guidance of about $61.5 billion of revenue and $38.15 adjusted EPS against expectations of $57 billion and $35.40. CNBC puts Q4 DRAM revenue up 343% year over year at $39.8 billion, 73% of total sales, says Micron is investing $250 billion in two new HBM campuses, and reports chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra describing work with Nvidia on the industry's "first custom HBM implementation".
  • Mehrotra is quoted in the release: "Micron delivered record fiscal 2026 results, and we expect an even stronger fiscal 2027." These are one supplier's results in one quarter; the guidance is the company's own, and the memory prices behind the margin are a cost borne by everyone else building AI infrastructure.
Compute moneyChipsComputeEarningsDatacenters

JERA, Dell and RHAELM sign an MoU for a $15bn, 400MW off-grid AI data centre at a Chiba power station Single source

JERA
  • JERA, Dell Technologies and UK-based RHAELM signed a memorandum of understanding on 1 October for AI infrastructure in Japan, starting with a project at JERA's Chiba Thermal Power Station supported by 400 MW of generation and targeting operations around 2028. JERA puts total capital deployment across all development phases at US$15 billion, or 2.3 trillion yen.
  • The structure is behind-the-meter: JERA supplies the land adjacent to its power station and round-the-clock generation along with LNG procurement, shipping, import and regasification; RHAELM leads project delivery; Dell supplies standardised rack-scale AI infrastructure through its Dell AI Factory platform. The parties describe an ambition for multi-gigawatt-scale capacity in the 2030s and a model deployable at other JERA sites.
  • This is a memorandum of understanding, not a final investment decision, and the $15 billion is a figure for all phases rather than committed spend. JERA global chief executive Yukio Kani says JERA "is uniquely positioned to power Japan's AI ambitions" and wants to "create a model that can be deployed at scale".
Compute moneyDatacentersEnergyComputeFunding

Wednesday, 30 September 2026

Jefferies report: advanced packaging capacity caps US AI datacentre additions in the low 20s of gigawatts for 2027 Single source

The Register
  • The Register, on a Jefferies note citing analytics firm SynMax: "SynMax estimates that US deployments will rise from roughly 11 GW of gross capacity in 2025 to 16-18 GW in 2026, above its previous forecast of 14-16 GW. It puts the practical upper limit for 2027 in the low 20s of gigawatts."
  • On the bottleneck: "SynMax estimates that existing advanced packaging capacity could support accelerators drawing the equivalent of roughly 13 GW of gross power", and "Two additional packaging projects expected to come online in 2027 could support another 6 GW, taking the practical ceiling into the low 20s unless capacity expands faster than forecast."
  • SynMax tracks land clearing and construction by weekly satellite imagery and finds new-project clearing "has plateaued, leaving visible activity well short of the pace required to deliver the more than 80 GW implied by some announced project pipelines and chip demand models for 2028". The Register notes a prior Jefferies report found only half the US capacity scheduled for 2026 was under construction, with work yet to begin on as much as 80 percent of the 2028 pipeline.
  • The Jefferies note is not public, so this is The Register's reading of a document we cannot link, and the numbers are forecasts and satellite-derived estimates rather than reported capacity.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeChipsEnergy

Tuesday, 29 September 2026

Samsung and five affiliates invest $1 billion in Helix, the KKR- and Nvidia-backed AI infrastructure company

Samsung Newsroom·CNBC
  • Samsung says Samsung Electronics, Samsung C&T, Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI, Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance are investing a combined USD 1 billion in Helix Digital Infrastructure, with Samsung Electronics putting in USD 500 million. The release is dated Korea on September 29, 2026.
  • Samsung says Helix launched in June 2026 and covers "hyperscale data center development and operations, power generation (covering both baseload and flexible energy sources), transmission and distribution infrastructure, and fiber-optic networks". It is led by Adam Selipsky, former chief executive of Amazon Web Services, and leverages KKR's infrastructure business of about 170 dedicated professionals. Founding investors are KKR, the Kuwait Investment Authority, NVIDIA and Vistra.
  • CNBC reports the investment is in addition to the more than $10 billion already committed to the company, according to KKR, and that Samsung Electronics shares rose 2.13% on Tuesday morning while the Kospi fell 0.53%.
  • Samsung says power availability is "currently the greatest bottleneck in AI infrastructure" and that Helix plans to secure energy capacity through direct investments and partnerships with energy developers including Vistra. No specific projects, sites or megawatt figures were disclosed.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeEnergyNVIDIA

Monday, 28 September 2026

Russian drones strike Kyivstar's Kyiv headquarters and a Vodafone Ukraine data centre over the weekend harmfulSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reported on 28 September that Russian drones struck the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile carrier, over the weekend. Kyivstar confirmed the attack to Interfax Ukraine and reported no injuries or casualties.
  • DCD says it is the third time this month Kyivstar has been targeted, after a 11 September drone attack on a Kyivstar office in the capital and a second strike on another Kyivstar building. Citing Reuters, DCD reports one of Vodafone Ukraine's data centres was also attacked over the weekend; Vodafone had not publicly commented.
  • Earlier this month Russia claimed responsibility for an attack on the De Novo data centre in Kyiv, which DCD calls "one of the country's largest data centers". Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha is quoted from a post on X last week: "Russia has targeted major Ukrainian data centers, seeking to disrupt the flow of information."
  • This is physical targeting of compute and network infrastructure, not a cyber operation, and DCD reports no damage assessment or downtime figures for either site. The Vodafone strike is relayed from Reuters rather than confirmed by the operator.
DatacentersMilitaryIncidents

VSMC opens its first 300mm fab in Singapore, sold out before volume production starts in Q1 2027 Company claim

GlobeNewswire (VSMC)·Focus Taiwan (CNA)
  • VSMC, the joint venture in which Focus Taiwan reports "VIS holds 60 percent and NXP 40 percent", opened its first 300mm fab in Tampines, Singapore on 28 September. The release says volume production begins in the first quarter of 2027, capacity reaches approximately 44,000 12-inch wafers per month by 2029, the fab runs 130nm to 40nm processes, the first sample lot yielded above 99%, and headcount reaches around 1,600 at full capacity.
  • Focus Taiwan reports "The fab's current capacity is already fully booked by global customers", that VIS chairman Fang Leuh said demand for power management and analog chips "particularly for industrial applications and data centers, continues to outpace supply", and that VIS is evaluating building an adjacent fab. Current headcount is about 1,000.
  • The AI link is packaging: Focus Taiwan reports the plant also makes interposers used in advanced packaging for customers including Nvidia, Google and Broadcom, alongside mixed-signal, power management and analog parts. NXP CEO Rafael Sotomayor said VSMC "enhances our geographic resilience, supply control, and cost competitiveness".
  • These are mature nodes, not leading-edge logic; the capacity is relevant to power delivery and packaging around AI systems rather than to accelerator supply. The sold-out claim and the yield figure are the companies' own.
ChipsComputeNVIDIADatacenters

Sunday, 27 September 2026

CNBC: Treasury yields at their highest since 2007 raise the cost of a $4.1 trillion AI debt buildout

CNBC
  • CNBC reported on 27 September that the 10-year Treasury yield "sits near 5.17%, up about 1 percentage point since the start of the year", with yields reaching their highest levels since 2007 this week, against JPMorgan Chase's June estimate that "$4.1 trillion in AI-related debt will be issued through 2030".
  • SoftBank "raised $11.1 billion in a junk-bond sale this week, with yields as high as 9.75% for the 7-year tranche". CoreWeave rose almost 8% for the week while Oracle fell 7% for the week and about 30% this year; CoreWeave's latest quarterly filing says that as of June, every 100-basis-point rate increase "could result in a $30 million jump in its interest expense" on its floating-rate debt.
  • Lenders are narrowing the field. Riley Thompson, a vice president at Mitsubishi HC Capital America, told CNBC: "Instead of a roster of 50 neoclouds, there's probably 20 that the market's truly interested in." A senior private credit investor told CNBC that neocloud deals will be harder to finance because the companies have less cushion to absorb costs.
  • CNBC also reports 69% of respondents to a recent NBC News Decision Desk Poll, powered by SurveyMonkey, oppose the construction of AI data centres in their local area, and that Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered a temporary halt to all data-centre environmental permits on Monday. Other market participants quoted expect issuance to continue regardless; none of the figures are a forecast of default.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeFundingEarningsUS State Policy

CNBC: Chinese prefabricated data-centre suppliers target the US buildout as Washington weighs component bans

CNBC
  • S.K. Lee, a global vice president at Singapore-registered Brightray, told CNBC on 26 September: "We can see very big potential in the U.S. market. The China market is equally important, but we can see that there's a stronger demand in the U.S." Brightray's sole manufacturer is the Chinese firm PrefabDC, and it says its prefabricated data centres can cut construction time by at least half against a US average of about two to three years.
  • CNBC, citing data published by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, reports the US had 5,427 AI data centres in 2025 against China's 449. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are estimated to spend around $765 billion combined this year on AI infrastructure, a figure JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently said could reach $1 trillion next year; the Chinese government has outlined plans to invest $295 billion in data centres over the next five years.
  • CNBC reports the Trump administration "is considering bans on Chinese open-weight AI models as well as new types of Chinese data center components", against a US supply chain that Wood Mackenzie's Benjamin Boucher says depends on China for electrical equipment and faces long domestic lead times.
  • The demand claim is one supplier's characterisation of its own market. CNBC does not report order volumes, contract values or any US customer by name, and the reported bans are under consideration, not announced.
DatacentersChinaExport ControlsComputeOpen Weights

ZipRecruiter data: mean minimum salary for data-centre jobs up 125.1% year over year to nearly $208,000 beneficial

CNBC
  • Nicole Bachaud, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told CNBC on 26 September that "the mean minimum salary for data center jobs spiked by 125.1% year-over-year to nearly $208,000", which she attributes to "highly specialized, top-tier engineering roles… pulling the overall average up drastically".
  • Postings for welders and pipefitters are "up 164% year over year" on Bachaud's data, with Houston and Birmingham seeing particularly robust growth. Maria Flynn of Jobs for the Future told CNBC an apprentice-level technician can take home $40,000 to $60,000, with experienced electricians "commanding north of $100,000".
  • Justin Sinkovich of Columbia College Chicago told CNBC: "Amazon committed $12 billion to a new data center with 540 new on-site jobs, including 1,700 electricians, technicians, and security personnel. Meta's Hyperion project in Louisiana is $27 billion", arguing these roles "cannot be offshored or conducted remotely".
  • Bachaud cautions the welder and pipefitter figure "could be partly the result of a small sample size", and CNBC notes many construction jobs are temporary and that state and local moves to slow development could reverse the trend. These are job postings and salary floors, not filled positions or paid wages.
LaborDatacentersEnergy

Saturday, 26 September 2026

Nscale secures $3.36 billion in convertible notes led by Third Point, with $1 billion from Nvidia, before its US listing Company claimSingle source

TechCrunch
  • TechCrunch reported on 25 September that the British neocloud secured $3.36 billion structured as a convertible note, led by hedge fund Third Point, with $2.36 billion available immediately and a further $1 billion from existing investor Nvidia arriving in mid-November. The notes convert into equity once the IPO completes.
  • Nscale filed its IPO paperwork last week and is expected to be valued at $35 billion on the NYSE, according to the Financial Times as cited by TechCrunch, while Bloomberg's figure for the raise is $3 billion.
  • Since being spun out of Australian cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy two years ago, Nscale "has amassed over $103 billion worth of contracts, according to its IPO filing". It is developing campuses including in Norway and West Virginia.
  • The contract backlog and the valuation expectation are company and filing figures, not booked revenue. The Financial Times and Bloomberg figures are as TechCrunch relays them; those pages were not opened here.
Compute moneyFundingDatacentersNVIDIACompute

SemiAnalysis puts China's datacentre capacity at over 24GW at end-2026 against 56GW in the US Single source

SemiAnalysis
  • SemiAnalysis's 25 September piece, drawing on a new China datacentre model built from "1,000+ datacenter facilities across over 60 players", puts China at "over 24GW" of capacity at the end of 2026 against "56GW of capacity as of 2026YE" for the US, making China the second-largest market globally and larger than EMEA and the rest of Asia combined.
  • Beyond delivered capacity it counts "~20GW of dated pipeline and another ~30GW of announced projects".
  • ByteDance accounts for "roughly a fifth of delivered datacenter capacity in China" and leases rather than self-builds most of it, which SemiAnalysis calls the single most important customer for wholesale colocation players. In the second quarter of 2026 "the combined capex of Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu reached $20B", double the year-earlier figure.
  • These are one research firm's estimates built from tracked facilities rather than official statistics, and no independent capacity audit is available. The comparison mixes a modelled Chinese figure with a US figure from the same model.
ChinaDatacentersComputeEnergy

Musk gives a Colossus 2 timetable: 220,000 more GB300s next week and the same again in November and late December Company claimSingle source

Bloomberg
  • Bloomberg reported on 25 September that the Memphis-area Colossus 2 cluster currently has "110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s", and that Musk said in a post on X that "220,000 GB300s are due to be operational next week", "another 220,000 expected in November", and an additional 220,000 may come online late December "if we get lucky".
  • Bloomberg notes the company "previously said it plans to equip its Memphis facility with 1 million graphics processing units by 2026", describing xAI as the SpaceX unit.
  • All of the chip counts and dates come from Musk's own post; Bloomberg reports them without independent confirmation, and the article gives no power-supply figure for the additional capacity.
  • The report does not say how much of the existing installation is running, or what the incremental power draw of the three tranches would be.
Compute moneyxAIComputeChipsNVIDIADatacenters

Crusoe abandons a $1.25 billion order for 29 Boom Superpower turbines for its AI data centres Single source

TechCrunch
  • TechCrunch reported on 25 September that Crusoe had agreed to spend $1.25 billion on 29 of Boom Supersonic's 42-megawatt Superpower turbines, with first deliveries due to begin in 2027, and that the deal has fallen apart. Boom's Superpower turbine shares about 80% of its parts with the Symphony engine being developed for Boom's supersonic jet.
  • Boom chief executive Blake Scholl wrote on X: "The TL/DR is that turbines are no longer part of Crusoe's near term primary power mix at Abilene/etc., so a launch partnership just didn't make sense." He added that Boom "will be delivering about 250MW of Superpowers next year to other sites, and we're targeting 1GW in 2028".
  • Crusoe confirmed to TechCrunch it is no longer doing business with Boom, with spokesperson Andrew Schmitt saying: "While Boom has been a great partner, the partnership isn't the right fit today." Crusoe's initial 1.2 gigawatt Abilene data centre built for Oracle and OpenAI is grid-powered with a gas-turbine plant for backup only, and it is building a 900 megawatt Abilene data centre for Microsoft powered by on-site gas turbines.
  • Neither company gave a reason beyond the power-mix explanation, and neither said whether any money changed hands. Crusoe recently raised $3.9 billion.
DatacentersEnergyCompute

Applied Digital names Brookwood, Alabama as the site of its $3.2 billion Delta Forge 2 AI data centre Company claimSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reported on 25 September that the $3.2 billion project will sit on a 1,300-acre site near Brookwood in Tuscaloosa County. Applied Digital had disclosed in June that it had secured a customer for a new 210MW data centre without naming the location.
  • Applied Digital says the project will support up to 1,000 construction jobs and create 100 permanent roles, will span 1.2 million sq ft (111,483 sqm) at full build-out, and that operations are expected to begin in 2028.
  • The company is committing $270 million in community benefits payments to the Tuscaloosa County Economic Development Authority over 20 years, alongside an estimated $131m in tax revenue for the area.
  • The end user is not named; Applied Digital describes it only as an "investment grade hyperscaler". The jobs, capacity and benefit figures are the company's own.
DatacentersComputeEnergy

Kansas City Fed president asks whether the AI build-out is becoming a too-big-to-fail ecosystem Single source

Reuters
  • Reuters reported from Washington on 25 September that Kansas City Fed president Jeff Schmid said: "Where we have to start to really synthesize what's happening in the AI and the data center build-out is are we moving to a too-big-to-fail AI ecosystem."
  • On the opacity of the sector he said: "You worry a little bit about how do we understand what's inside. ... Is there anything systemic?"
  • Reuters frames the remarks against the public bailouts of major financial institutions during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis, which were driven by those institutions' size and influence on the broader economy.
  • These are one regional Fed president's questions rather than a Federal Reserve position or any supervisory action, and the report carries no figures on the build-out. The Reuters original was reached through a syndicated copy.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersUS Federal PolicyFunding

Friday, 25 September 2026

Akamai announces $11.6 billion, seven-year Anthropic commitment and a warrant for up to about 5% of its stock Company claim

Akamai
  • Akamai says it has "$11.6 billion of contractual commitment over seven years" from Anthropic, with potential expansion of "up to an additional $9 billion, which represents a total potential commitment of approximately $20 billion".
  • Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant covering "7.7 million shares of Akamai's common stock on an as-converted basis, or up to approximately 5% of Akamai's common stock outstanding, at an exercise price of $111.33 per share". About 2% of shares outstanding is expected to vest on the announced $11.6 billion commitment, with the rest vesting on expansion milestones.
  • Akamai estimates total capital expenditures related to the $11.6 billion commitment at approximately $5.5 billion, including an anticipated increase of approximately $1.7 billion in 2026 capex. CEO Tom Leighton said Anthropic "chose Akamai's capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale".
  • These are Akamai's figures in its own release. Anthropic has not published its side of the agreement, and Akamai does not break out how much of the $11.6 billion is committed versus contingent in each year.
Compute moneyAnthropicComputeDatacentersFunding

Oracle sends a force majeure notice to Blue Owl over the 2.5GW Project Jupiter campus in New Mexico

Data Center Dynamics
  • Citing Bloomberg, DCD reports Oracle sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl Capital "in an effort to shield itself from potential increased costs"; should the 2.5GW campus fail to come online in 2028 as planned, Oracle is seeking to delay payments rather than forfeit its tenancy.
  • The 1,400-acre campus is to span four data centre buildings, built by Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets, which previously announced plans to invest up to $165 billion in the project. Oracle was named as tenant in January 2026; Blue Owl acquired Stack Infrastructure in 2024.
  • DCD says the biggest setback was state officials' rejection in July of a natural gas pipeline extension to feed the campus. Oracle had asked federal regulators to fast-track review so the pipeline could enter service by August 15, warning that missing the window would incur much higher costs; an initial application was denied in March.
  • Without acknowledging the Bloomberg report, Oracle posted on X: "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward." The notice itself has not been published.
Compute moneyDatacentersEnergyCompute

DOE commits $1.9 billion to 31 grid projects in 26 states, making over 23GW of capacity available

US Department of Energy
  • The Department of Energy said on 24 September it intends to help fund 31 grid-improvement projects across 26 states under its SPARK initiative. "The projects will receive $5.25 billion in total, $1.9 billion in federal funding from DOE and $3.35 billion in recipient cost-share funding", benefiting approximately 100 million Americans.
  • Recipients are expected to "reconductor or rebuild more than 1,500 miles of transmission lines and deploy Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs) across nearly 21,000 miles. Together, these efforts will make over 23 gigawatts of additional electricity capacity available."
  • Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the investments "will get more out of the infrastructure we already have, move more electricity across the grid, and help deliver affordable, reliable, and secure power". Assistant Secretary Catherine Jereza's quote in the same release puts the figure at "more than 20 gigawatts".
  • The DOE release does not mention data centres or AI anywhere; it is framed around consumer electricity costs and grid reliability. Data Center Dynamics reported the programme as speeding data-centre connections — that framing is the outlet's, not the department's.
EnergyDatacentersUS Federal Policy

Google to fly four Trillium TPUs on a Planet satellite aboard SpaceX Transporter-18 next week Company claim

Google·Quartz
  • Google says a Project Suncatcher prototype satellite, developed with the satellite imaging company Planet, will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Quartz reports the launch is next week and that the purpose is to gather data on how TPU hardware performs under launch stress, radiation and thermal swings, not to run an operational orbital data centre.
  • Google says its Trillium TPUs "can survive a radiation total ionizing dose greater than what they would receive during a five-year space mission", tested in a proton beam at UC Davis's Crocker Nuclear Laboratory while running AI workloads, and that chips can experience 50 to 100 times the force of gravity during launch.
  • Google says satellites in low Earth orbit can generate up to eight times more solar power than on Earth. The next milestone, planned for 2027, puts two satellites in orbit to test high-bandwidth laser links; the full architecture envisages clusters of 81 satellites flying within a one-kilometre radius at around 650 kilometres altitude.
  • Quartz notes low Earth orbit already holds roughly 44,870 tracked objects, mostly debris, and that experts say the concept is years from commercial viability given launch costs and production bottlenecks. Google has published no power, cooling or cost figures for an orbital cluster.
ChipsComputeGoogle DeepMindDatacenters

Fervo reaches first power at Cape Station, the first utility-scale enhanced geothermal project to export electricity beneficialCompany claim

GlobeNewswire·Data Center Dynamics
  • Fervo Energy announced on 24 September the "first greenfield Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) project synchronized to the grid and exporting electricity (First Power)" at Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah.
  • Phase I is approximately 100 MW made up of three 33-megawatt GeoBlocks. The first is expected to reach contractual commercial operation by October 1, 2026 and the remaining two by January 1, 2027. DCD reports a further 400MW stage under construction for 2028 and an eventual output of approximately 900MW.
  • DCD reports the project is tied to a long-term power purchase agreement signed with Google earlier this year under which Google offtakes 396MW. Google led Fervo's $462 million Series B last year; Fervo completed an IPO in May at a $10 billion valuation.
  • First power is one 33MW GeoBlock synchronised to the grid, not the full 100MW phase or the 900MW figure. The capacity factors and delivered output that matter for data-centre load have not been published.
EnergyDatacentersGoogle DeepMind

Thursday, 24 September 2026

SoftBank raises roughly $11 billion in junk bonds at its highest-ever dollar yields to fund OpenAI commitments Single source

Japan Times
  • The Japan Times, carrying Bloomberg on 24 September, reports SoftBank Group "raised roughly $11 billion in debt, spread across dollars and euros, making the Japanese conglomerate the biggest corporate junk-bond borrower in the world".
  • The dollar tranches: "$1 billion of 3.5-year bonds at a yield of 8.625% and $4.5 billion of 5.5-year securities at a yield of 9.25%", with "the longer-dated $4.5 billion 7.5-year tranche priced to yield 9.75%". The report says these "are the highest-ever for SoftBank dollar bonds". SoftBank also sold "€1 billion ($1.14 billion) of euro-denominated notes in two parts, with maturities of four and six years", the longer tranche at 8%, "also a record for the tenor in the currency".
  • The report says SoftBank "has been active in debt markets this year to help fund commitments nearing $65 billion to ChatGPT creator OpenAI", and that orders for the $10 billion dollar portion had exceeded $30 billion as of late afternoon Wednesday in Asia, letting SoftBank cut yields from initial talk.
  • The Japan Times frames the sale as "a litmus test for how debt investors are thinking about financing artificial intelligence". Demand was strong but the pricing is the most expensive SoftBank has paid; the piece notes benchmark US Treasury rates hit two-decade highs the same day, so the yields are not attributable to AI risk alone.
Compute moneyComputeFundingOpenAIDatacenters

Brookings paper puts US AI infrastructure investment at $10.3 trillion through 2032, averaging 3.63% of GDP

Brookings Institution
  • "Financing the AI Buildout", published by Brookings on 23 September and written by Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh of Columbia University, projects $10.3 trillion of US AI infrastructure investment between 2025 and 2032, an average of 3.63% of US GDP a year.
  • The paper states that "the projected buildout would be larger relative to the economy than the major U.S. canal, railroad, electrification, highway, and telecommunications investment booms".
  • Its argument is about financing structure rather than size: it says risk is shifting from transparent corporate balance sheets into "joint ventures, private credit, securitization, special-purpose vehicles, lease commitments, loan guarantees", which depend on "uncertain AI demand, rapid technological change, timely access to power and hardware, and the continued credit quality of a small number of [data center] tenants".
  • Van Nieuwerburgh concludes that "the most important policy contribution at this stage may therefore be to improve measurement and transparency while the capital structure of the industry is still evolving". This is a projection presented at a Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference, not an outturn, and the conference draft has not been through journal peer review.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersFundingUS Federal Policy

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

European Commission proposes mandatory energy and water efficiency ratings for data centres above 500kW beneficialSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports the European Commission has submitted a proposal requiring data centres across Europe to disclose energy and water efficiency metrics, creating a common rating scheme covering data centres with capacity exceeding 500kW and also covering support for grid balancing services, waste heat recovery and use of renewable generation.
  • The proposal is subject to a two-month scrutiny period by the European Parliament and the Council, which may object but not amend. First ratings are expected sometime in 2027, with a first review by the end of 2028. The Commission has separately opened a call for evidence and consultation on minimum performance standards, closing in December.
  • DCD reports the EU aims to triple data centre capacity over the next five to seven years, and cites forecasts of growth from approximately 9.2GW at present to more than 17GW in 2030. It notes the proposal follows reports that several large operators used a secrecy provision in EU law to block public access to environmental information about their sites.
  • This is a proposal at the start of a scrutiny period, not a rule in force, and DCD is the only outlet we could open on it. We did not read the Commission's own text, and the report does not state what the ratings will require operators to publish.
DatacentersEnergyEU AI Act

Google signs Georgia Power deal to fund nuclear uprates adding 96MW at the Vogtle and Hatch plants Single source

Data Center Dynamics
  • Data Center Dynamics reports Google has signed an agreement with Georgia Power under which it will support power uprates at two nuclear plants — Plant Vogtle, a 4.5-4.8GW site in Burke County, and Plant Hatch, a 1.84GW site near Baxley — adding 96MW of generation capacity to the Georgia grid.
  • Georgia Power filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission this week for a new nuclear uprate tariff structure and an extended power uprate for Hatch Units 1 and 2; an uprate for Vogtle Units 1 and 2 was approved last year in the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan. Google participates through a subscription-based programme under the new tariff and receives low-carbon credits tied to the added capacity.
  • Lucia Tian, Google's director of advanced energy technologies, is quoted saying data centres "serve as a proof point for how we can unlock the significant opportunity to bring online new nuclear power through expanding the capacity of the existing nuclear fleet" — that is, uprating existing reactors rather than building new ones.
  • The Public Service Commission must approve the uprates before they can be completed, so none of the 96MW is committed yet. DCD is the only outlet we could open on this, and the report does not say what Google pays.
EnergyDatacentersCompute

Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Newsom signs seven California data-centre laws on water disclosure, grid costs and environmental review Single source

Office of Governor Gavin Newsom
  • The governor's office announced on 21 September that seven bills were signed: AB 1577 (data centers: reporting), AB 2383 (electricity: data centers), AB 2469 (data centers: water use disclosures), AB 2619 (water resources: data center), SB 886 (California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act), SB 887 (CEQA: environmental leadership development projects: data centers: geothermal power plant projects) and SB 1168 (data centers: rate structures).
  • Per the release, the laws require data centres to "provide information to local governments and water suppliers about water use, supply, efficiency and drought planning", to "pay their fair share of grid update costs, while preventing cost shifts to low-income customers", and make them "ineligible for blanket environmental exemptions".
  • Newsom is quoted: "With these laws, we are ensuring that Californians remain in the driver's seat — and that those profiting from data centers aren't doing so at our expense."
  • The release contains no numerical thresholds — no megawatt floor for which facilities are covered, no water or electricity figures, and no compliance dates. Those sit in the bill texts, which we did not open for this edition.
US State PolicyDatacentersEnergy

Alibaba unveils Zhenwu V900 accelerator and targets more than 20GW of data-centre capacity by 2032 Company claim

Alibaba Cloud·CNBC
  • Alibaba's release says the Zhenwu V900 from its T-Head unit "delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890 (released in May)", featuring "216 GB of GPU memory and 1,200 GB/s of inter-chip bandwidth" with native FP8 and FP4 support, and is "scheduled for mass production and commercial release in Q1 2027".
  • CEO Eddie Wu is quoted in the release: "our target is that by 2032, the global data center capacity operated by Alibaba Cloud will surpass 20GW". Alibaba says its upgraded supernode server "can support a supernode cluster comprising up to 500,000 cards", and that T-Head's Zhenwu chips already serve "over 650 customers".
  • CNBC reports the announcements came at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou and notes the context: Nvidia outlined support for up to 2 gigawatts of AI infrastructure in Australia by 2027 earlier this month, and Meta unveiled a 1-gigawatt Alberta data centre in July expected to cost about $9 billion.
  • The performance multiple, memory and bandwidth figures are Alibaba's own and unverified; no benchmark results against Nvidia parts were published. The 20GW target is for 2032 and the chip is not in mass production until Q1 2027. Alibaba also announced a 2027 CPU roadmap, with the Yitian 730 claimed at "up to a 40% increase in SPECint2017/GHz performance over Yitian 710's".
China distillation and export controlsChipsChinaDatacentersComputeExport Controls

Texas governor orders the state environmental regulator to issue no data-centre permits until grid and water audits finish mixedUpdateSingle source

The Texas Tribune
  • The Texas Tribune reports that on 21 September Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt all environmental permit approvals for data-centre projects until audits by ERCOT and the Texas Water Development Board are complete.
  • Abbott is quoted: "Simply put, Texans must come first. Data centers must pay their own way, protect our grid and water and complete the ERCOT and TWDB audits. Until they do, TCEQ will issue no permits sought by data center projects."
  • The review seeks data on electricity usage and generation capacity, water consumption and cooling, tax incentives received, local community impacts and facility ownership. The Tribune reports only 28% of data centres responded to a state-mandated water usage survey, prompting Abbott to direct penalties for non-compliance.
  • This extends an existing posture rather than starting one — the underlying audits and a grid-connection moratorium were ordered in August, and only the environmental-permit halt is new. The Tribune does not report how many pending projects are affected or give a date by which the audits must conclude.
DatacentersUS State PolicyEnergyCompute

Nscale IPO filing shows Microsoft and Anthropic are 85% of $103 billion contract value, with only $2.6 billion active UpdateSingle source

Quartz
  • Quartz, citing Bloomberg's reading of the S-1, reports Microsoft and Anthropic together account for 85% of Nscale's $103 billion in total contract value — $87.7 billion combined. Microsoft agreements since late 2025 are worth about $43.8 billion through 2033; an August agreement with Anthropic is worth $44.6 billion for a planned eight-gigawatt facility in West Virginia.
  • The gap between backlog and business is the story: "Only $2.6 billion of the $103 billion in total contract value was active as of the end of August." Nscale has not secured financing for the Anthropic deal, and Quartz reports Anthropic can walk away if Nscale misses defined milestones or performance levels. Nscale targets 2028 for the facility's first two gigawatts.
  • For the first six months of 2026 Nscale posted a $1.02 billion net loss against $140.6 million in revenue, a 1,252% jump from $10.4 million a year earlier, with $56.4 billion in remaining performance obligations. Nvidia has guaranteed approximately $860 million in lease obligations and took $1 billion in convertible notes or non-voting shares in a $3.1 billion financing package announced the previous week.
  • The S-1 was filed the previous week; the customer-concentration breakdown was reported inside this window. Quartz's figures are attributed to Bloomberg and CNBC rather than read from the filing, and we did not open the S-1.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeAnthropicMicrosoftFunding

Bloomberg: Armenian data centre to reach 300MW and 70,000 Nvidia chips after export licences advanced peace talks mixedSingle source

Bloomberg (via Yahoo Finance)
  • Bloomberg reports that in August a San Francisco startup called Firebird began operations of a data centre in Armenia "that's set to reach 300 megawatts and more than 70,000 cutting-edge Nvidia Corp. chips by the end of next year". A fifth of its computing power is reserved for domestic use, with the remainder allocated to foreign firms including Perplexity AI; the complex is in Hrazdan, about 45 kilometers outside Yerevan.
  • The export licences were a diplomatic instrument: "President Donald Trump's team promised permission for Nvidia exports in order to advance conversations with Armenia on the way to a historic US-brokered accord with Azerbaijan, according to people involved in the talks." Bloomberg notes the role of Nvidia chips in that deal was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
  • The scale of the shift is visible against the baseline: in 2024, after more than six months of talks, an Armenian state university project secured export licences for 64 Nvidia H100 accelerators. Bloomberg reports Firebird has now secured more than double the number of Nvidia processors the US licensed for export to Saudi Arabia's Humain.
  • Bloomberg reports the White House and Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment, and the State Department referred export-licence questions to Commerce. The named officials' account of the licence-for-diplomacy link comes from unnamed people involved in the talks.
China distillation and export controlsExport ControlsNVIDIADatacentersUS Federal Policy

Monday, 21 September 2026

European Commission adopts an EU-wide sustainability rating scheme for data centres above 500 kW

European Commission
  • The European Commission says it "proposed today a common rating scheme for data centres" to increase transparency on energy use; the scheme "will cover individual data centres with a capacity above 500 kW" and also covers waste-heat reuse, added clean generation capacity and flexibility.
  • The Delegated Regulation "is now subject to 2-month scrutiny period by the European Parliament and the Council before entering into force". Parliament and Council may object but "cannot propose changes to the text". The first sustainability labels for individual data centres "are expected to be displayed in 2027", with a first review of the scheme foreseen by end-2028.
  • The Commission cites the International Energy Agency: data centres consumed "around 68 TWh of the EU's electricity in 2024 alone" and, "driven by artificial intelligence, this is expected to virtually double to 114 TWh by 2030 - reaching more than 3% of overall electricity demand in the EU". The EU wants to triple its data centre capacity over the next five to seven years.
  • The Commission also opened a call for evidence and public consultation on minimum performance standards for data centres in Europe, closing 14 December 2026. The rating scheme is a transparency measure: the press release does not set any efficiency threshold a data centre must meet.
DatacentersEnergy

Spain's Sánchez launches a 12-month IA360 plan and says the AI industry cannot regulate itself

Reuters (via Daily Maverick)·La Moncloa
  • Reuters reports: "Artificial intelligence cannot be self-regulated by those who control the technology, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday," speaking at an event on AI regulation in Madrid.
  • Sánchez said his government would reinforce its defensive cybersecurity measures to respond to what he described as "aggressive" frontier AI models, and set out a 12-month roadmap that includes a proposed AI gigafactory and new models developed with the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre for climate, health and energy uses.
  • On data centres, Sánchez said they must "meet high environmental and energy standards while protecting data autonomy and benefiting local communities", and said: "We must develop this technology not behind citizens' backs ... but in a way that people see it as an opportunity rather than a tool for depleting their scarce resources."
  • The La Moncloa page confirms the event as "IA360: Plan para un despliegue responsable de la IA", closed by Sánchez with First Vice-President Carlos Cuerpo opening. It is an event listing and carries no plan details; the substance above is from the Reuters wire copy. Reuters reports the remarks followed calls from US AI lab leaders to slow development.
Pacing the frontierSpainDatacentersCompute

Data Center Watch: 45 US data centre projects worth $68 billion blocked or delayed in the second quarter mixedSingle source

Communications Today·Data Center Watch
  • Bloomberg, carried by Communications Today, reports that between April and June 2026 local opposition blocked or delayed 45 US data centre projects representing roughly $68 billion — more than half of the large projects newly tracked in the quarter.
  • The same reporting counts 843 opposition groups across 49 states, with Hawaii the exception, and says around 30 statehouses have introduced or adopted rules on data centre siting, electricity and water. One Tennessee petition drew more than 500,000 Change.org signatures, over a third of all signatures on the platform that quarter.
  • The comparison baseline is the previous quarter: Data Center Watch's own Q1 2026 page records "at least 75 data center projects" worth about $130 billion blocked or delayed in January–March, and more than 300 state data centre bills filed in the first six weeks of 2026.
  • The research is from Data Center Watch, a project of the AI intelligence company 10a Labs. The Q2 figures are not yet posted on Data Center Watch's own site; Bloomberg's page was not reachable from here, so the Q2 numbers above come from the syndicated copy linked.
DatacentersEnergyUS State Policy

OData to install Aligned's DeltaFlow liquid cooling in Brazil and Mexico in a $630 million project Single source

DatacenterDynamics
  • DatacenterDynamics reports OData is installing DeltaFlow, a liquid cooling system designed by parent company Aligned Data Centers with the vendor Munters, at its SP04 data centre in Brazil and its QR03 facility in Mexico.
  • "The project will cost $630 million across the two sites, and phase one installation and testing is already underway at both facilities," DCD reports.
  • The sites already run Aligned's air cooling system Delta Cubed; DeltaFlow adds hybrid air and liquid cooling, which DCD says caters for high-density AI racks. DeltaFlow is manufactured at Munters' factory in Araucária, Paraná state, Brazil.
  • Only one outlet has this, and the report gives no megawatt or rack-density figures for either site.
DatacentersEnergy

Google-sponsored Texas battery pilot shifted 9.2GWh to improve hourly carbon-free matching beneficialSingle sourceCompany claim

DatacenterDynamics
  • DatacenterDynamics reports results from a three-month Google-sponsored battery storage pilot in Texas run by Quintrace, esVolta and LevelTen Energy: "According to the companies, during the pilot, the batteries charged and discharged a total of 9.2GWh during the respective windows."
  • The pilot used hourly time-stamped Granular Certificates to allocate solar energy to grid-connected batteries and shift it to hours when Google's consumption exceeded its renewable supply. Google contracted to time-shift environmental attributes it already owned "without tolling the batteries or assuming any merchant or dispatch risk".
  • The assets were esVolta's Anole project (240MW/480MWh) in Seagoville, Texas and its Burksol project (100MW/200MWh) in Dickens County, Texas; Quintrace provided the verification software and LevelTen managed registry accounts to prevent double-counting.
  • The figures are from the participating companies, not an independent auditor, and DCD reports the pilot was designed to demonstrate feasibility rather than to measure emissions savings.
EnergyDatacentersGoogle DeepMind

Sunday, 20 September 2026

FT: technology companies provided as much as $300 billion in guarantees financing AI data centres and chips Single source

Seeking Alpha
  • Seeking Alpha, summarising the Financial Times, reports: "Technology companies have provided as much as $300 billion in guarantees to finance artificial intelligence data centers and chips during the past year, helping support the construction boom without immediately recording most of the exposure as debt."
  • The mechanism described is a guarantee of minimum asset values through special-purpose arrangements, which lets a company add AI capacity without immediately booking the liability. Seeking Alpha writes that such guarantees "can obscure potential liabilities if demand fails or equipment devalues", and that losses could rise if AI hardware becomes obsolete quickly or the industry overbuilds.
  • The Financial Times article itself could not be opened from here, so only the figures printed on the Seeking Alpha page are reported. Company-level breakdowns circulating in other summaries of the FT piece are not included because they were not read in the original, and one summary is the source for the $300 billion figure.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeFunding

Saturday, 19 September 2026

Virginia governor signs Executive Order 22, ending by-right approval for data centres above 25 megawatts mixed

Office of the Governor of Virginia·Cardinal News
  • Governor Abigail Spanberger signed Executive Order 22 on September 18 alongside a Data Center Accountability Framework that bans non-disclosure agreements for data centre projects across executive branch agencies and employees under the governor's supervision, and ends by-right approval for facilities exceeding 25 megawatts.
  • The framework also directs an expedited data centre noise regulation, a review of diesel and other backup generation, standards for energy efficiency, water use and land impacts, and allocation of a more equitable share of transmission and generation costs to data centres and other large-load customers.
  • The order establishes Virginia's first artificial intelligence task force, covering workforce displacement, data privacy and cybersecurity.
  • Cardinal News reports the order stops short of a moratorium or removing the data centre sales tax exemption; State Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas is quoted saying "The governor is finally feeling the heat but still ignoring the fire". Most of the framework needs the 2027 General Assembly session to become law.
US State PolicyDatacentersEnergyLabor

FT: OpenAI presentation forecasts $278 billion of negative free cash flow between 2026 and 2030 Single source

Reuters (via The Star)
  • Reuters, reporting the Financial Times' account of a company presentation, says OpenAI expects to burn through $278 billion in cash between 2026 and 2030 as it ramps up spending on computing power and infrastructure.
  • The FT is reported as saying OpenAI forecasts spending about $856 billion on computing power and infrastructure by the end of 2030, its largest expense category, while revenue rises tenfold from $36 billion this year to $350 billion in 2030, with cumulative revenue of about $840 billion through the end of the decade.
  • The FT says OpenAI raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation but is on track to exhaust that cash by 2028, and reported earlier in the week that OpenAI held investor talks that could value it at about $1.2 trillion.
  • The figures come from a document seen by one newspaper, not from OpenAI. Reuters says OpenAI could not immediately be reached for comment outside regular business hours.
Compute moneyOpenAIComputeDatacentersFunding

Nscale files to list on the NYSE with a $1.02 billion half-year loss on $140.6 million of revenue

CNBC
  • CNBC reports the AI cloud provider Nscale filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NSCL, with a $1.02 billion net loss on $140.6 million in revenue in the six months ended June 30, 2026, against a $368.9 million loss a year earlier on $10.4 million of revenue — growth of 1,252%.
  • CNBC says the prospectus points to $56.4 billion in remaining performance obligations, that one unnamed customer accounted for over half of revenue in the first half of 2026, and that Nvidia agreed to guarantee up to $860 million of Nscale's obligations on a Texas data centre lease.
  • As of August 31 CNBC reports Nscale held 25,000 active GPUs and 461,000 active or contracted, with five active and 12 contracted data centre sites, line of sight to 10 gigawatts of computing power, and more than $8 billion in debt excluding a financing arrangement with Dell.
  • OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft have all struck deals with Nscale, CNBC reports. Investors valued the company at $14.6 billion in March; the filing does not set a price range or a target valuation.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersNVIDIAFundingChips

Friday, 18 September 2026

Crusoe raises $3.9 billion at a $30.9 billion valuation for data centres and truckable modular "AI factories" Company claim

TechCrunch·Crusoe
  • Crusoe said on Thursday it raised $3.9 billion in a Series F that puts its valuation at $30.9 billion, co-led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners, with Founders Fund, GIC, Nvidia, the Qatar Investment Authority, Radical Ventures and TPG also participating.
  • TechCrunch reports the money will fund existing projects including the Abilene, Texas site used by OpenAI, plus smaller modular units called Spark that "can be transported by truck and connected to large power sources almost anywhere", manufactured at Crusoe's own facilities.
  • The round comes 10 months after Crusoe raised $1.38 billion at a $10 billion valuation last October. TechCrunch cites Bloomberg reporting of a $13 billion five-year cloud contract with the trading firm Jane Street, and Axios reporting that Crusoe has met bankers about a possible IPO.
  • Crusoe's contracted-value and capacity figures are the company's own. The eight-year-old company was founded in 2018 as a crypto mining operation powered by flared natural gas.
Compute moneyDatacentersFundingComputeNVIDIAOpenAI

CoreWeave launches a $3.0 billion convertible note offering and a 35 million-share at-the-market programme

CoreWeave·Quartz
  • CoreWeave said on Thursday it intends to offer "$3.0 billion aggregate principal amount of its convertible senior notes due 2033" in a private offering to qualified institutional buyers, with initial purchasers granted an option for up to $500 million more. The notes mature on 1 April 2033 and pay interest in cash semi-annually.
  • Alongside the debt, Quartz reports CoreWeave filed an 8-K disclosing an equity distribution agreement with banks including Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Securities and Morgan Stanley, under which it may sell up to 35 million shares of Class A common stock through an at-the-market programme, with sales agents receiving a commission of up to 2% of the sale price.
  • CoreWeave says part of the proceeds will fund capped call transactions, a hedge meant to limit dilution if the notes convert, with the remainder for general corporate purposes. It says no shares will be sold under the equity programme until at least 30 days after the note purchase agreement is signed.
  • Quartz reports CoreWeave shares fell more than 2% ahead of Thursday's opening bell, and that as of Wednesday's close the stock had advanced more than 16% year to date, according to CNBC. The interest rate and conversion terms were not set at announcement.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeFunding

CNBC: Anthropic and OpenAI are now pursuing 20-30 MW data centre deals in the UK, the Nordics and the US Single source

CNBC
  • CNBC reported on 18 September that both labs, which have signed multi-hundred-megawatt and gigawatt deals over the past year, "are now also looking for compute capacity deals for much smaller deployments of 20-30 MW".
  • Four people familiar with the conversations said Anthropic "has sounded out agreements within that range across the U.K. and the Nordics"; two said OpenAI had been exploring the same scale in the Nordics, and one cited talks involving both companies about US capacity at that size.
  • An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC: "We're building a diversified compute portfolio to meet growing demand for AI around the world… We don't comment on specific commercial discussions." Anthropic did not comment.
  • CNBC restates that Anthropic's roughly $45 billion Nscale deal covers around 460 MW in West Virginia. The smaller deals are described as conversations, not signed agreements, and rest on anonymous sources at a single outlet.
Compute moneyAnthropicOpenAIDatacentersComputeUK

Thursday, 17 September 2026

House passes Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3 to shift data-centre grid costs onto operators mixed

NBC News
  • The House passed the bill 417-3 on Wednesday under suspension of the rules, which required support from two-thirds of voting lawmakers. The only opposition came from Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
  • The Evans-Castor bill "would create a federal standard for state utility regulators to consider when they create rules for large, high-power data centers to cover the costs of power generation, transmission lines and other infrastructure upgrades needed to power those facilities", according to Rep. Gabe Evans. NBC News reports it was "the only legislation related to artificial intelligence that was scheduled for a vote this week", in the House's final week before the 3 November midterms.
  • NBC News cites its own NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey finding that nearly 70% of respondents oppose building AI data centers in their neighborhoods, with 45% strongly opposed. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who voted yes, told NBC News: "it is truly the bare minimum. In fact, it's kind of pathetic that all we're going to do is make them pay their own energy costs."
  • The bill does not address model safety: NBC News notes it "doesn't address any of the recent warnings from AI researchers". Its fate is unclear — "it's unclear what the Senate will do with the bill, if anything. It has its own set of data-center bills, but it hasn't moved any."
US Federal PolicyDatacentersEnergy

Ten banks provide a $22 billion chip loan to Blackstone and Alphabet's Crux AI to buy Google TPUs Single source

Sharecafe / Bloomberg
  • A consortium of 10 banks is providing US$22 billion of debt to Crux AI, the cloud venture formed by Blackstone and Alphabet, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday. Named lenders include Goldman Sachs Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Barclays, BNP Paribas SA and Bank of Nova Scotia.
  • The debt is "specifically earmarked for the purchase of Google's custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)" and "will be secured by the intrinsic value of these highly specialised chips, alongside Crux AI's anticipated customer contracts" — a structure that puts chip residual values, not the parents' balance sheets, behind the loan.
  • The venture, first announced in May, has Blackstone "committing an initial US$5 billion in equity" aimed at bringing 500 megawatts of data centre capacity online by 2027, with further expansion planned.
  • The figures are Bloomberg's, sourced to people familiar with the matter; representatives from Blackstone, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, BNP, Barclays, Bank of Nova Scotia and Sumitomo Mitsui "did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment". No closing date or pricing has been disclosed.
Compute moneyComputeChipsDatacentersFundingGoogle DeepMind

Generac issues Amazon a warrant for 1,693,745 shares against up to $8 billion of data-centre generators

SEC EDGAR·CNBC
  • Generac's Form 8-K, reporting an event dated September 16, 2026, says it issued an Amazon subsidiary "a warrant… to acquire up to 1,693,745 shares of common stock of the Company… at an exercise price of $200.9266 per share", exercisable "on or before September 16, 2033".
  • "307,954 Warrant Shares vested immediately with the remaining balance vesting over the term of the Warrant in multiple tranches contingent upon aggregate gross payments, net of certain offsets, received by the Company and its global affiliates from or on behalf of Amazon and its affiliates for backup power generators for Amazon data centers, up to a total of $8 billion." A long-term supply agreement was executed the same day, and "Initial deliveries of backup generators are expected to total $2.4 billion in 2027 and 2028."
  • CNBC reports the warrants are worth up to about $340 million and that Generac shares "soared more than 40% in extended trading on Wednesday". CNBC notes Amazon took warrants for as much as $4 billion of Qualcomm stock a week earlier under a custom AI chip deal — the same equity-linked supply structure applied twice inside a fortnight.
  • Portions of both the warrant and the transaction agreement "have been redacted in accordance with Item 601(b)(10)(iv) of Regulation S-K", so the vesting tranches beyond the first are not public. The $8 billion is a ceiling on payments, not a committed order.
Compute moneyAmazonDatacentersEnergyCompute

Emerald AI, Google and Nvidia launch an alliance for data centres that cut power when the grid is strained Company claim

NVIDIA
  • Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA announced the AI Energy Management Alliance on 16 September, described by NVIDIA as "a first-of-its-kind coalition advancing data centers that dynamically manage their electricity use in response to grid conditions". The stated trade is faster interconnection in return for verifiable flexibility: the principles call for "creating faster, risk-adjusted pathways for customers that make credible and verifiable flexibility commitments".
  • NVIDIA says the alliance is "technology-neutral and performance-based", judging "the measurable service a facility can deliver — including response speed, duration, predictability and behavior during an emergency — rather than the specific hardware or software used". Its principles also call for defining "ride-through, curtailment and contingency-response obligations before a facility connects" and allocating interconnection costs to reflect actual system impacts.
  • The framing is explicitly about the constraint: "Power has become a defining constraint on the expansion of U.S. AI infrastructure", and traditional interconnection processes "were designed around facilities with flat, static electricity demand".
  • The launch announces principles and membership, not commitments: no member has pledged a specific curtailment volume, no utility or grid operator has agreed to a faster interconnection queue, and NVIDIA's post names no launch partners and gives no figures for the flexibility it describes.
NVIDIADatacentersEnergyCompute

Wednesday, 16 September 2026

AWS says it cannot restore its Bahrain region or one UAE availability zone after Iranian strikes harmful

Data Center Dynamics·Tom's Hardware
  • Data Center Dynamics reports AWS provided a status update this week on its Middle East (UAE) me-central-1 and Middle East (Bahrain) me-south-1 regions. On the UAE it said: "After a thorough assessment, we have determined that we are unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in the mec1-az2 availability zone", while recovery continues for mec1-az1 and mec1-az3.
  • On Bahrain: "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple availability zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand. After a thorough assessment, we have determined that we are unable to restore access to the resources and data hosted exclusively in this region."
  • AWS said it is "working on replacing the affected infrastructure and will provide an update on the restoration of our services in the coming months", and will share its Bahrain plans in early 2027. DCD reports the facilities were damaged "in early March at the outbreak of the US-Israel bombing of Iran", and that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed a second attack on the Bahrain region in July. AWS opened Bahrain in 2019 and the UAE region in 2022.
  • Customer data held only in those zones is stated by AWS to be unrecoverable. Neither report gives a number of affected customers, a volume of data lost, or a cost.
DatacentersComputeAmazonIncidents

BloombergNEF nearly doubles its forecast: US data centres to drive 18 billion cubic feet of gas a day by 2035 harmfulSingle source

TechCrunch
  • TechCrunch, published 15 September at 11:29 a.m. PDT and citing a new BloombergNEF report, says US data centres "could consume about 18 billion cubic feet per day" of natural gas by 2035 — "nearly double the amount the organization predicted just nine months ago".
  • The split: onsite-powered data centres "will consume 2.9 billion to 3.4 billion cubic feet per day by 2035. That's about as much as all data centers consume today." Grid-connected ones are forecast to drive "an additional 15 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas consumption by the power sector", which TechCrunch says is "five times more demand growth through 2035 than from all other grid-connected sectors combined".
  • On emissions, TechCrunch cites the IEA figure that burning one cubic foot of gas releases the equivalent of 60 grams of carbon dioxide, and says the added demand "will generate 1 million metric tons more greenhouse gas pollution daily. That's about 12% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions today."
  • This is a forecast, not a measurement. TechCrunch notes it "takes into account that not all announced data center projects will be completed". The BNEF report itself is not public and was not opened; the figures are as TechCrunch reports them.
DatacentersEnergyCompute

Pennsylvania-commissioned study: PJM loss-of-load could reach 13.20 days a year by 2030 on data-centre growth harmfulSingle source

Utility Dive
  • Utility Dive, on 15 September, reports a study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and produced by Synapse Energy Economics, Mondre Energy and Aspen Technologies. PJM's planning criterion is a Loss of Load Expectation of 0.1 days a year — roughly one event every 10 years.
  • In the study's reference scenario for 2030, modelled LOLE is 0.59, "nearly six times worse than the PJM planning criterion". In the worst-case 2030 scenario it reaches 13.20 — "over 100 times worse than PJM's planning criterion", or "more than 13 days with loss of load events per year".
  • The report attributes the reliability shortfall across scenarios largely to surging data-centre additions, and Utility Dive reports only a no-new-data-centre scenario meets PJM adequacy targets through 2030. Pennsylvania's energy exports are projected to fall from about 91 TWh in 2025 to about 69 TWh by 2035 and 38 TWh by 2040 under the reference scenario.
  • These are modelled scenarios commissioned by a state regulator, not PJM's own planning numbers, and PJM's response is not in the report. Utility Dive is the only outlet in this window with the figures.
DatacentersEnergyUS State Policy

Nvidia says Lambda got 24% more token throughput from the same power budget using DSX MaxLPS Company claimSingle source

NVIDIA
  • Nvidia, in a 15 September post tied to the AI Infra Summit, says Lambda tested DSX MaxLPS on a five-rack cluster and, "by running 19 nodes within the same power budget as 16 nodes at full power, Lambda achieved 24% more cluster-wide token throughput — from roughly 4 million tokens per second to 5 million. Performance per watt improved by 23%."
  • Nvidia projects further: "Based on NVIDIA's projections, DSX MaxLPS can enable up to 40% more GPU capacity for next-generation Vera Rubin NVL72 AI factories within the same megawatt power budget in suitable deployment environments."
  • On grid response, Nvidia says its Eos AI factory runs Emerald AI's Conductor in Silicon Valley Power's Flexible Load Interconnect Program, and that an automated response achieved a 40% power demand reduction in under a minute, taking consumption from four megawatts to three. It says the first dedicated DSX Flex commercial deployment will be "the Manassas, Virginia, facility: a 96-megawatt Vera Rubin AI factory at NVIDIA's AI Factory Research Center".
  • Every figure here is Nvidia's, in a post promoting its own power-management software; the Vera Rubin number is explicitly a projection, not a measurement, and Nvidia states the condition "in suitable deployment environments".
NVIDIADatacentersEnergyCompute

Tuesday, 15 September 2026

Trump calls AI risk a "HOAX", attacks Amodei, and says the only guardrail AI needs is a "STRONG AND SMART" president Update

CNBC·NBC News
  • NBC News reports Trump "posted in support of AI more than a half-dozen times Monday on Truth Social". CNBC quotes him writing: "I'm right now breaking another Hoax — That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!" and "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China."
  • NBC News quotes him writing that the only control needed is "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT", and naming "Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'". CNBC quotes a further post: "Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?"
  • CNBC reports Trump also wrote "We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!", and that the posts followed Amodei's weekend essay "We Must Pace the Frontier". CNBC reports Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's posts.
  • CNBC notes any AI regulation by Congress appears unlikely before the 3 November midterms, with House members due to leave Washington on Thursday and stay in their districts through October. No executive action was announced alongside the posts.
The push to regulate frontier AI (US)US Federal PolicyAnthropicDatacentersChina

Trump phones Jensen Huang live on stage at the All-In Summit; Huang answers "We're not going to let that happen, sir" Update

TechCrunch·NBC News
  • TechCrunch, publishing on 14 September at 2:51 PM PDT, reports that Trump called Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang while Huang was on stage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday morning, and that Huang put the president on speakerphone for the audience. The panel had been discussing Dario Amodei's call to slow the pace of capability gains.
  • TechCrunch quotes Trump saying "We're not going to let that happen. It's a hoax", and Huang replying "You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir."
  • NBC News, publishing at 7:06 PM EDT on 14 September, quotes Trump on the call: "The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world", "The whole thing is a hoax" and "Data centers are great, and they make people wealthy". NBC quotes Huang saying "We're going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America."
  • Neither report carries a White House readout or an Nvidia statement beyond what was said on stage. TechCrunch separately noted Nvidia's stock is up 33% over the past year but fell a few percentage points on the day.
Pacing the frontierUS Federal PolicyNVIDIADatacenters

SemiAnalysis measures Vera Rubin NVL72 at up to 7x Blackwell's token throughput per megawatt Company claimSingle source

SemiAnalysis
  • SemiAnalysis, publishing on 14 September, writes: "At GTC 2026, Jensen presented this graph that VR NVL72 achieved 3x performance per MW compared to Blackwell on O(1-3 Trillion) parameter model around 200 TPS. But when compared to the real world performance of Rubin already on prelease software, we are already seeing up to 7x better token throughput per megawatt."
  • It reports that in the realistic 60–100 tokens-per-second operating range, "Vera Rubin achieves between 1.4x and 3x the throughput per TCO compared to the latest and greatest GB300 TRTLLM configuration", and that "Vera Rubin achieves approximately 61% higher maximum P90 interactivity than GB300 Dynamo TRTLLM, reaching 276.24 versus 171.53 P90 TPS". It adds that with the open-source SGLang stack, "GB300 can achieve similar interactivity as Vera Rubin".
  • SemiAnalysis models "$159.5 billion in annual revenue and $149.9 billion in modeled profit per all-in utility GW" at 75 TPS and 60% utilisation, about "39% more revenue and 42% more modeled profit" than GB300 Dynamo SGLang, and says the rack tested is "the production SKU of 2300W TDP & 1.5TB of CPU LPDDR5X per compute tray".
  • The measurements are on pre-release software, and SemiAnalysis thanks "Jensen Huang, Ian Buck, Nick Comly, Kedar Potdar, Rohit Nagraj, and the Mainland China TensorRTLLM Team" for help with the software bring-up and for verifying the benchmark results, so this is not an arm's-length test.
NVIDIAComputeChipsDatacenters

Oracle cut staff again on Monday, weeks after adding $700 million to its 2026 restructuring plan harmfulSingle source

The Register
  • The Register, publishing on 14 September at 21:46 UTC, reports that employees discovered the latest round of Oracle layoffs on Monday when they lost access to corporate systems such as email and Slack, because notifications were not consistently sent to personal addresses. Those who reached their accounts saw: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change."
  • The Register reports severance of four weeks of pay plus one additional week per year of employment, and says some of those cut had more than 20 years' tenure. Oracle declined to comment on the layoffs.
  • The cuts follow a filing in which Oracle added roughly $700 million to its 2026 restructuring plan, taking total estimated restructuring costs to about $2.8 billion. The Register reports first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $19.3 billion and net income of $4.76 billion, with about 30% year-over-year growth.
  • Oracle has not said how many people were cut in this round, or which teams and regions were affected, so the scale is not established.
Compute moneyLaborDatacentersCompute

Monday, 14 September 2026

Samsung and SK hynix reject KEPCO's proposal to prepay five years of electricity bills for chip clusters mixedSingle source

The Korea Herald
  • The Korea Herald, publishing at 09:51 on 14 September and citing industry sources, reports that state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. proposed Samsung Electronics prepay 20 trillion won ($14.8 billion) and SK hynix prepay 5 trillion won — roughly five years of electricity bills based on last year's payments — and that both companies rejected it after internal reviews.
  • The prepayment would have helped expand power infrastructure for the semiconductor clusters under construction in Yongin, just south of Seoul, and in the southwestern Honam region.
  • The paper reports KEPCO's total debt stood at 210.7 trillion won as of the end of June, with daily interest expenses of 11.5 billion won, and says the decision reflects concern about committing that much money upfront when it is uncertain whether the AI-driven semiconductor boom will continue.
  • The report rests on unnamed industry sources relayed by Yonhap; neither company nor KEPCO is quoted, and the article does not say how the power infrastructure will be funded instead.
Compute moneyChipsEnergyDatacentersCompute

Saturday, 12 September 2026

Nscale adds former OpenAI deployment chief Fidji Simo to its board while seeking up to $3.5bn before a fall IPO

TechCrunch
  • TechCrunch reported on 11 September at 9:46 am PDT that the UK-based AI data centre company Nscale has appointed Fidji Simo to its board, and that per Bloomberg it is pursuing up to $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing ahead of a planned autumn listing.
  • Simo left OpenAI in July 2026 as CEO of AGI deployment — described by TechCrunch as "essentially the No. 2 executive at the AI lab" — citing health reasons, and continues to advise part-time. She was previously chair and CEO of Instacart through its 2023 IPO and spent over a decade at Meta.
  • She joins a board that includes Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg; the CEO is Josh Payne. The company was founded two years ago.
  • The $3.5 billion figure is attributed to Bloomberg rather than to Nscale, and no IPO filing or date has been confirmed.
Compute moneyDatacentersComputeOpenAIFunding

Friday, 11 September 2026

Pentagon in talks to lend AI cloud firm Fluidstack $5bn, which would be its Office of Strategic Capital's largest loan to date

Tech Startups (reporting WSJ)
  • The Wall Street Journal reported on 11 September, followed by Reuters, that the Department of Defense is in talks to lend $5 billion to AI cloud startup Fluidstack through its Office of Strategic Capital, which lends to companies in areas deemed critical to national security. It would be by far the office's largest loan.
  • The reported purpose is not a new AI data centre but strengthening US manufacturing capacity and supply chains for the components data centres depend on — an industrial-policy move aimed at reducing foreign supplier dependence in AI infrastructure.
  • This is talks, not a signed agreement. Neither the Pentagon nor Fluidstack commented, and the WSJ sourced the story to people familiar with the matter. The underlying WSJ and Reuters reports are paywalled or blocked to automated retrieval; the figures here are as relayed by Tech Startups.
  • Watch for an OSC announcement confirming terms, and for which components are named — that would reveal where the government judges the AI supply chain to be most fragile.
Compute moneyPentagonDatacentersComputeUS Federal PolicyFunding

Oracle Q1 FY27: cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% to $7.4bn, remaining performance obligations reach $664bn, capex $28.5bn

Oracle Investor Relations
  • Oracle reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 results on 10 September: total revenue $19.3 billion, up 30%; total cloud revenue $11.6 billion, up 62%; cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% to $7.4 billion. GAAP EPS was $1.56 (up 55%) and non-GAAP EPS $1.92 (up 30%). Capital expenditure for the quarter was $28.5 billion.
  • Remaining performance obligations — contracted revenue not yet recognised — reached $664 billion, up $209 billion year over year. That backlog is the clearest single number for how much AI compute demand has been contracted rather than merely forecast.
  • Quarterly capex of $28.5 billion against quarterly revenue of $19.3 billion is the figure to watch: Oracle is spending more each quarter than it takes in, on the expectation that RPO converts. Conversion timing, not demand, is the risk.
  • The press release does not attribute quotes to named executives on AI or GPU supply, and does not break out GPU delivery volumes.
Compute moneyComputeDatacentersEarningsChips

Michigan township residents confront officials over a $1.2bn AI data center tied to Los Alamos nuclear stockpile modelling mixed

404 Media
  • At a 10 September town hall in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, residents confronted officials over a proposed 220,000-square-foot, $1.2 billion hyperscale data centre being developed by the University of Michigan with Los Alamos National Laboratory. 404 Media compares its profile to OpenAI's 1.4-gigawatt Barn project in nearby Saline Township.
  • Los Alamos acknowledged the facility would support computational research related to nuclear modernisation — modelling and simulation to assess the safety and reliability of the US nuclear stockpile — while denying that weapons production, testing or plutonium storage would take place on site.
  • Township supervisor Brenda Stumbo said "it started with a lie" and reported residents selling homes; township attorney Douglas Winters described the site as a "high-value target." A data centre worker at the meeting said the facility ranks "at the very top" against average US sites and that such facilities "don't belong in residential areas next to schools."
  • This is the AI buildout's siting politics arriving at a specific address, with a national-security workload attached. No power draw, water use or construction timeline figures were published, and the project's approval status is not stated.
DatacentersEnergyIncidentsUS State PolicyMilitary