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Energy

63 items across 37 editions. First seen Fri 11 Sep, last seen Fri 30 Oct. Traced across 4 weekly reviews.

How this story has evolved

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

Week of 19–25 October 2026

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".

Week of 5–11 October 2026

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, 23 October 2026

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

Thursday, 22 October 2026

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

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

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

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

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

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

Friday, 16 October 2026

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

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

EU Joint Research Centre: AI use across ten strategic sectors rose from 7% of firms in 2021 to 18% in 2025

European Commission Joint Research Centre
  • The JRC reports that across the ten Apply AI Strategy strategic sectors, AI use rose from 7% of firms in 2021 to 18% in 2025, against 8% to 20% for the whole EU economy excluding those sectors. Energy went from 18% to 34% and electronics from 12% to 30%.
  • The JRC names cultural and creative sectors, media, energy and electronic communications as leading, "respectively 38%, 34% and 30%", and says the lowest uptake is in mobility, tourism and agri-food. The dominant barriers it reports are scarcity of specialised skills and regulatory uncertainty including data protection and privacy concerns.
  • The strategic sectors the EU is writing its Apply AI Strategy around are adopting AI more slowly than the rest of its economy, not faster.
  • The JRC item lists four leading sectors against three percentages, so the mapping of 38%, 34% and 30% to named sectors is ambiguous as published, and the 34% given for energy elsewhere in the item conflicts with the 30% shown for the third sector. The data are Eurostat ICT enterprise survey figures for 2021–2025, with sectors classified by NACE; no figures are given for the lowest-uptake sectors.
EU AI ActLaborEnergy

Tuesday, 13 October 2026

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

Monday, 12 October 2026

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

Saturday, 10 October 2026

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

Friday, 9 October 2026

Anthropic commits $150 million over three years to the US Genesis Mission's scientific research projects beneficialCompany claim

Anthropic
  • Anthropic says it will give $150 million over the next three years to the Genesis Mission, which it describes as "a federal initiative to accelerate scientific and technological discovery through AI", in the form of Claude, Claude Code and API credits for several hundred research projects.
  • The company names NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation among more than 15 Genesis Mission agencies, and says it will partner with agencies and national laboratories on priorities including fusion energy and quantum computing, alongside training, onboarding and technical support.
  • The announcement was made at the Science: A New Golden Age Summit hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC. Anthropic says its Department of Energy partnership was first announced last December and that Claude Science launched earlier in 2026.
  • The commitment is in credits and services rather than cash, and the post states no compute figures and names no specific research results.
AnthropicAI For ScienceUS Federal PolicyEnergy

Thursday, 8 October 2026

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

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

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

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

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

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

Sunday, 27 September 2026

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

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

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

Friday, 25 September 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TotalEnergies signs a three-year AI partnership with Mistral worth more than €100 million mixedSingle source

Data Center Dynamics
  • DCD reports that TotalEnergies has partnered with Mistral "to develop a new generation of frontier AI models to support TotalEnergies' geosciences experts in exploring, characterizing, and developing oil and gas reservoirs". The partnership runs for an initial three years and represents "an investment of more than €100 million ($115.3m)", including a joint scientific laboratory.
  • TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said: "Exploration and reservoir engineering are among the areas where artificial intelligence can create the greatest value for our activities. By combining a century of geoscience data, the expertise of our teams and Mistral's capabilities, we aim to develop a new generation of tools capable of supporting our experts in analyzing the most complex data and in their decision-making."
  • Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch framed it as a European sovereignty case: the project "demonstrates the ability of our models to support complex industrial processes" and "highlights the strength of Europe's industrial ecosystem and the importance for large enterprises of adopting state-of-the-art, customizable AI solutions that protect and respect their intellectual property".
  • No model, benchmark, timeline or headcount is disclosed, and DCD reports no measured result. DCD notes Mistral raised €3 billion ($3.48bn) in a September Series D at a €21bn ($24.4bn) post-money valuation. Only one outlet carried the terms.
MistralEnergyAI For Science

Wednesday, 16 September 2026

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

Dutch inference-chip startup Euclyd raises over €200 million in a Series A co-led by Samsung Company claim

Euclyd (PR Newswire)·CNBC
  • Euclyd announced on 15 September that it raised over €200 million in a Series A co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and Innovation Industries, with EIFO, imec.xpand, the Brabant Development Agency and Quadri also participating. Peter Wennink, former president and chief executive of ASML, joins as chairman.
  • CNBC reports the same round as "$231 million" and says chief executive Bernardo Kastrup told it the Eindhoven company is designing an inference system with an architecture different from GPUs, covering both processor and memory. CNBC notes: "Euclyd's systems have yet to be proven at scale in commercial deployments."
  • Kastrup told CNBC the company aims to begin rolling out physical chip systems in 2028, with thousands of enterprise customers served by 2030, and said of Samsung: "They are one of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world… they know the supply chain, they have a huge network."
  • Euclyd's release names its products as "craftwerk" agentic AI silicon and a "craftwerk station CWS" low-power exascale AI factory, but discloses no performance figures, no benchmark comparison against Nvidia parts and no deployment dates.
Compute moneyChipsComputeFundingEnergy

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

Friday, 11 September 2026

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