05/26/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Geospatial Intelligence Symposium, NVIDIA at Computex, video of the Stargate project, Crusoe, 500MW Finland data center, Quantum Computing, DigitalBridge to be acquired?
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
My rabbit hole of the week was reading about the 2025 GEOINT (Geospatial Intelligence) Symposium held last week in St. Louis. There were a lot of interesting stories and information from the event.
The USGIF (United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation) site has daily recaps of the three days of talks and topics discussed.
[Link] The national security lead for OpenAI demonstrated some of the geospatial capabilities of OpenAI’s new o-series “reasoning” models, which the AI organization says are capable of “complex problem solving, coding, and scientific reasoning.”
[Link] Network Innovations announced the launch of Argus, a software-defined platform that transforms how organizations deploy, secure, and scale communications across terrestrial, wireless, and satellite environments. This includes Network Innovations’ own VSAT network, third-party satellite networks (Starlink, OneWeb), 5G/LTE, private LTE, and terrestrial transport.
[Link] Satellite data imagery company Iceye entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Safran.AI to develop advanced multi-sensor Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for geospatial intelligence customers in the government sector.
[Link] Maxar has launched a real-time monitoring solution designed to protect energy assets and enhance operational efficiency, offering advanced surveillance and analytics for the energy sector. The new technology aims to help companies quickly detect threats and optimize their operations.
[Link] NVIDIA was at the Computex 2025 event in Taipei last week and had numerous announcements. Some that caught my eye:
CEO Jensen Huang keynote: still finding time to finish watching this - but it is an hour and 42 minutes FULL of all of the technological advancements the company has been making.
[Link] NVLink Fusion unveiled - new silicon that lets industries build semi-custom AI infrastructure with the vast ecosystem of partners building with NVIDIA NVLink, the world’s most advanced and widely adopted computing fabric. NVLink Fusion features a high-bandwidth interconnect with up to 1.8 TB/s bidirectional bandwidth (900 GB/s per direction) for up to 72 GPUs per rack, enabling seamless integration of NVIDIA GPUs with third-party CPUs and custom ASICs.
[Link] NVIDIA RTX PRO Servers xpeed trillion-dollar enterprise IT industry transition to AI factories. Major industry players like Foxconn, Cadence, and Lilly are among the first to adopt this validated design, partnering with NVIDIA to build next-generation data centers that integrate advanced GPU, networking, and AI software solutions.
[Link] NVIDIA announced NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5, the first update to NVIDIA’s open, generalized, fully customizable foundation model for humanoid reasoning and skills; NVIDIA Isaac GR00T-Dreams, a blueprint for generating synthetic motion data; and NVIDIA Blackwell systems to accelerate humanoid robot development.
[Link] NVIDIA announced the opening of the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT), which hosts ABCI-Q — the world’s largest research supercomputer dedicated to quantum computing.
[Link] Bloomberg Originals video: Inside OpenAI's Stargate Megafactory with Sam Altman | The Circuit.
[Link] Crusoe, Blue Owl Capital Inc., and Primary Digital Infrastructure, an advisory and data center investment platform, announced the second phase of a $15 billion joint venture to fund the 1.2 gigawatt AI data center in Abilene, Texas. Forbes recently ran a profile piece on Crusoe, its founders, and its role in the $500 billion Project Stargate.
[Link] A report from IJGlobal suggests alternative investment management firm 26North is in advanced talks to acquire DigitalBridge.
[Link] Doma plans 1.5GW of data centers in Thailand.
[Link] Investment firm Bain Capital has launched Hscale, a new EMEA hyperscale data center operator, with 100 MW under construction, and targeting 1 GW.
[Link] FCDC Corp is planning to build a massive 500MW data center near Rovaniemi in Lapland, Finland, with construction expected to begin in 2027 and operations starting in 2029. The company is also pursuing several other data center projects across Finland, including a 100MW facility in Lahti and collaborations with Verne on a 70MW project in Mäntsälä.
[Link] AT&T will acquire Lumen’s mass markets fiber-to-the-home business for a total consideration of $5.75 billion in cash. Lumen will retain infrastructure critical to its enterprise strategy.
[Link] Juniper, LuxQuanta, lyntia, and Merqury Cybersecurity announced that they have partnered to demonstrate a private quantum-secured connection between on-premises data centers and Amazon Web Services. The four companies are part of a broader initiative designed to protect critical data transmissions against future quantum-enabled cyber threats.
[Link] Telegeography - data gravity. As Telegeography explains, data gravity emerges in locations where robust combinations of network infrastructure, extensive data center capacity, cloud availability, and rich peering ecosystems already exist. Every quarter, they assess the top 10 cities with a Market Connectivity Score—an interactive tool in their Data Center Research Service that tracks 45 different data points for every city: data center power, number of ASNs peering locally, cloud onramps, and more.
[Link] A new study from Google Quantum AI estimates that breaking RSA-2048 encryption (RSA cryptographic algorithm using a key length of 2048 bits) could be achieved in under a week using fewer than one million noisy qubits, which is drastically less than previous resource estimates.
[Link] TechCrunch has a nice article on the nuclear fission startups backed by Big Tech. Kairos Power, Oklo, Saltfoss, TerraPower, and X-Energy.
[Link] XL Batteries and Prometheus Hyperscale announced a multi-year agreement to deploy on-site long-duration energy storage systems at data centers. XL Batteries will deliver and commission a 333 kilowatt demonstration-scale standalone Organic Flow Battery at Prometheus’ facility in 2027.
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