data centers

Tech giants hide $2.13T in AI data center debt off their balance sheets

Microsoft, Google Alphabet Inc., Amazon Amazon.com, Inc., Meta, and Oracle have accumulated an estimated $2.13 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt tied to AI data center construction, far exceeding their combined reported liabilities of $1.35 trillion, according to an investigation building on…

Nvidia shares slide as $750B in AI deals fuel financing fears

Nvidia is advancing more than $750 billion in AI-related deals, a breakneck expansion that has intensified warnings from investors and analysts about the risks of "circular financing" — arrangements in which the chipmaker bankrolls the very companies buying its products.

Gartner raises 2026 global IT spending forecast to $6.37T

Global IT spending is on track to reach $6.37 trillion in 2026, a 14.2% increase from 2025, as enterprises and hyperscalers pour unprecedented sums into artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to the latest quarterly forecast from Gartner released Monday.

Bitcoin miners rush to AI as mining difficulty falls 20% from peak

Bitcoin's mining difficulty continued its downward trajectory in July 2026, with the network adjusting lower as major mining companies accelerate their pivot toward artificial intelligence infrastructure. The latest adjustment, which took effect around July 11, brought difficulty down approximately 5%…

Nvidia commits over $3B this week to US, Korea AI buildout

Nvidia unleashed a wave of manufacturing and infrastructure commitments this week totaling more than $3 billion, marking its most aggressive push yet to broaden the physical footprint behind the AI boom.

Nvidia and SK Group announce $500B AI partnership

Nvidia and South Korea's SK Group announced plans for a partnership valued at more than $500 billion on Thursday, encompassing large-scale AI data centers and next-generation memory development. The deal, signed as letters of intent at an AI Summit in…

Arm-based servers overtake x86 as top AI platform

A tectonic shift in data center architecture has reached a milestone: Arm-based rack-scale GPU servers have surpassed x86 systems as the dominant accelerated computing platform, according to new data from IDC published this week.

OpenAI raises compute spending target to $750B by 2030

OpenAI has increased its projected spending on computing infrastructure to approximately $750 billion through 2030, up from an earlier estimate of roughly $600 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal News Corp. The revised figure reflects the artificial intelligence company's…

Nvidia launches Spectrum-6 Ethernet for gigascale AI factories

Nvidia used SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles to announce that its Spectrum-6 Ethernet networking platform is arriving at the world's largest AI data centers, while separately disclosing a 9.3% stake in cloud operator Nebius Group through a regulatory filing released…

Nvidia showcases Vera CPU architecture at SIGGRAPH 2026

Nvidia is using SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles to expand on the technical underpinnings of its Vera CPU, the company's first fully custom data center processor and its most direct challenge yet to AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and Intel…

Big Tech’s hidden AI debt hits $1.65T, Nikkei finds

Off-balance-sheet obligations at the five largest US cloud computing companies have swelled eightfold in four years to an estimated $1.65 trillion, driven by opaque financing arrangements for artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to a new analysis published Monday by the Nikkei…

Z.AI builds 1GW data center with no Nvidia chips inside

Z.AI, the Chinese AI company formerly known as Zhipu, has completed construction of a 1-gigawatt data center that runs exclusively on domestically produced chips, according to Bloomberg, marking what may be the clearest evidence yet that Beijing's push to replace…

Foxconn lands first SpaceX AI server order worth $52B

SpaceX is negotiating with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide data center capacity worth billions of dollars for running artificial intelligence models, according to an exclusive report by The Wall Street Journal published on July 17. The discussions, which…

Prysmian signs €5.5 billion Molex deal for data center cables

Prysmian signed a long-term agreement worth up to €5.5 billion ($6.3 billion) with Molex, a subsidiary of privately held Koch Inc., for the supply of optical cables used inside data centers, the Italian cable maker announced on Monday.

Data center opposition intensifies across three continents amid AI boom

Resistance to data center construction is intensifying across three continents, with communities in the United States, Canada, and India mobilizing against projects they say threaten local environments and quality of life — even as governments and tech companies race to…

Meta in talks to lease AI compute to Anthropic in $10B deal

Meta is in advanced negotiations to lease computing power from its AI data centers to Anthropic in a deal reportedly valued at around $10 billion, according to a SemiAnalysis report first published on July 2. The arrangement would mark one…

ABB posts record Q2 orders, raises 2026 outlook again

Shares of ABB India soared nearly 10% on Thursday to hit a fresh 52-week high of Rs 7,924.50, after Swiss parent ABB Ltd reported record quarterly orders and raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance.

Nvidia eyes Mitsubishi Heavy cooling tech for AI data centers

Nvidia is considering adopting Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' cooling systems and energy management technology for its next-generation AI data center facilities, according to a report by Nikkei on Monday.

SoftBank’s Son says AI will need $5 trillion a year by 2040

Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank Group, has declared nuclear fusion the most realistic long-term energy solution for powering AI data centers, outlining a sweeping vision in which artificial intelligence will require infrastructure investments of $5 trillion per year by…

Google to sell its AI chips to outside cloud providers

Alphabet's Google is moving to sell its custom Tensor Processing Units to independent cloud providers for the first time, targeting the fast-growing neocloud market that has long been dominated by Nvidia GPUs, according to a report from The Information published…

Microsoft’s carbon emissions jump 25% amid AI buildout

Microsoft disclosed on Thursday that its greenhouse gas emissions surged 25% in the past year, reaching 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2025, as the company's rapid buildout of AI-powering data centers continues to overwhelm its climate…

Cerebras to invest billions in European AI data centers

Cerebras Systems, the California-based AI chip maker, announced on Thursday a major expansion of its European infrastructure, pledging to invest "several billion dollars" to scale its data center operations across the continent by the end of 2027.

Meta to build C$13 billion data center in Alberta

Meta Platforms announced Wednesday it will build its first data center in Canada, a 1-gigawatt facility in Sturgeon County, Alberta, northeast of Edmonton, representing a total investment of C$13 billion (approximately US$9.17 billion).

TSMC plans 30-fold expansion of photonic chip capacity by 2028

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited is planning a dramatic expansion of its photonic integrated circuit manufacturing capacity, with output projected to grow from roughly 500 wafers per month to at least 25,000 wafers per month by 2028, according to…

Huawei to debut Atlas 950 AI supernode in China at Shanghai conference

Huawei will showcase its Atlas 950 SuperPoD — described as the industry's largest AI computing super node — at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, scheduled to run from July 17 to 20.

Perplexity to deploy Nvidia’s Vera CPU for AI agents

AI search startup Perplexity confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to use Nvidia's new Vera central processing unit, lending an early customer endorsement to the chipmaker's push into the data center CPU market long held by Intel and AMD Advanced…

Nvidia’s flagship AI rack delayed to 2028, report says

Nvidia's next-generation Kyber NVL144 rack-scale AI system has been pushed back more than 12 months to 2028, semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis reported on July 6, just three months after CEO Jensen Huang showcased the architecture at GTC 2026.

KAIST study: AI agents use 136.5 times more power than chatbots

A first-of-its-kind study from South Korea's Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has quantified the energy cost of AI agents, finding that these autonomous systems consume up to 136.5 times more electricity per query than conventional generative AI chatbots…

Nvidia launches revenue-sharing model with AI cloud startups

Nvidia has unveiled a new business model that allows AI cloud providers to deploy its GPU infrastructure through revenue-sharing and credit-support arrangements, marking a shift from the chipmaker's traditional hardware sales approach toward recurring income tied to downstream cloud services.

AI’s trillion-dollar debt binge reshapes private bond market

The artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout, now requiring trillions in capital, has spilled into one of Wall Street's oldest corners: the private placement bond market, where tech companies are selling debt directly to insurance firms hungry for yield.