data-centers
AI data-centre expansion meets contract risk and a $1.07m generator fine News
Oracle’s planned 2.45-GW New Mexico campus faces power and permitting uncertainty, while New Jersey fined DataOne $1.07 million for operating 62 unpermitted natural-gas generators at an AI-oriented facility.
Jensen Huang says Nvidia puts in one and 100 comes back, but the 100 is not an investment return News
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told a Goldman Sachs conference on 10 September 2026 that its customer investments are not circular because we put in one and 100 comes back in, but he gave no units and the nearest figure was $100 billion of contracted offtake, not a 100-fold return.
Nvidia's own filing shows $108.5 billion in guarantees for its customers' data centres, the heart of its 'central bank of AI' nickname News
Nvidia's latest quarterly filing shows it has guaranteed up to $108.5 billion of data-centre buildouts for customers, including $105 billion backing an OpenAI campus in Ohio, and holds $99 billion in equity investments, figures at the centre of an Economist analysis calling Nvidia 'the central bank of AI' as the US Justice Department reportedly probes its Groq deal.
Google will take half of a Finnish nuclear plant's output for 22 years News
Fortum and Google signed a 22-year agreement on 9 September 2026 under which Google will buy up to half the output of Finland's Loviisa nuclear plant, which supplies about a tenth of the country's electricity, supporting a life extension without which the plant could not operate beyond 2030.
Dylan Patel says Anthropic and OpenAI took about 30% of this year's new compute, and have 40-50% of next year's already signed News
In an August 25 interview, SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel said OpenAI and Anthropic went from roughly 2 gigawatts each at the start of 2026 to above 5 by year-end, absorbing about 30% of all compute added this year, with 40-50% of next year's already under contract.
The US tracks 521 gigawatts of AI-adjacent grid demand, slightly more than its average power output News
A live tracker of the US AI data-center buildout now maps 1,547 facilities across 46 states and 521.6 gigawatts of demand across seven grid markets, a figure that sits just above the roughly 506 gigawatt annual average of total US electricity generation.
The startup reactor behind the AI power story ran at zero power News
Valar Atomics' Ward 250 reached criticality in June under a Department of Energy pilot program, but the DOE record describes a zero-power demonstration and calls it the second such reactor in the program, not the first of anything.
NVIDIA lines up six financiers to mobilize 500 billion dollars News
NVIDIA announced agreements with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to build independent financing platforms intended to mobilize more than 500 billion dollars of third-party capital for AI compute infrastructure.
Virginia orders Dominion to bill data centers for the power lines built to serve them News
The Virginia State Corporation Commission ordered Dominion Energy on July 31 to design, within 90 days, a tariff that charges large data-center customers directly for the substations and transmission lines built solely for them, rather than spreading those costs across every ratepayer.
Nashville voted 27-5 to take a data-center site by eminent domain News
Nashville's Metro Council gave final approval on August 5 to acquiring a 23-acre South Nashville property next to the city zoo by eminent domain if negotiation fails, blocking a planned data center that developer DC Blox bought for 23 million dollars in July.
EPA Says an Off-Grid Plant Built for One Data Center Escapes the Acid Rain Program News
An EPA guidance memorandum states that a fossil-fuel power plant with no physical connection to the utility grid, built to serve only an adjacent private data center, falls outside the federal Acid Rain Program and its permit, allowance, and monitoring requirements.
Meta's AI build swallowed 98% of its cash flow in a single quarter News
Meta reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $60.80 billion, up 28%, but $31.08 billion of capital spending left just $784 million in free cash flow, and the company narrowed 2026 capex guidance upward to $130-145 billion.
NVIDIA Is Reportedly in Talks to Guarantee $250 Billion of OpenAI's Ohio Buildout News
The Wall Street Journal reports NVIDIA is discussing a roughly $250 billion credit guarantee for the lease and construction debt behind OpenAI's planned 10-gigawatt Ohio campus, a backstop that reportedly excludes the chips themselves.
The '$1.65tn hidden AI debt' story, checked against the actual filings News
A Nikkei Asia estimate that five US tech giants carry $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI-related obligations is real as an estimate and grounded in verifiable filings of forward leases and purchase commitments, but it is not a hidden or auditable debt total, and much of the buildout's risk has been shifted to private-credit investors through project-finance vehicles.
New York just froze new hyperscale data centers for a year News
Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order creating what her office calls the nation's first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, halting discretionary state environmental permits for up to a year while New York writes new development standards.
Voters removed a Senate president over a data center News
Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, the longest-serving in state history, lost his first-ever primary challenge after becoming the face of a fast-tracked data center approval.
NVIDIA Starts Taking a Share of Its Cloud Partners' Revenue, Not Just Selling Them Chips News
NVIDIA announced a new arrangement where it earns a share of the cloud revenue its partners generate from NVIDIA-supported data center capacity, on top of its usual chip sales, with first partners Sharon AI and Firmus building campuses totaling hundreds of thousands of GPUs.
NVIDIA's warm-water fix for AI's thirsty data centers News
A new NVIDIA cooling design claims to use almost no water inside the data center, though critics say that's only part of AI's water bill.