06/01/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Nuclear Energy, U.S. DOE, the next flagship supercomputer at NERSC, a 1.5GW project for Arizona, and quantum-accelerated AI servers.
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] President Trump has signed four executive orders aimed at expediting the process of nuclear reactor approvals, increasing domestic production of uranium, and supporting the rollout of ‘next generation’ reactor technologies. Executives from companies involved in nuclear energy development, including Constellation Energy, Oklo, and General Matter, attended the signing ceremony.
[Link] Nano Nuclear Energy announced that it has filed six new utility patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office related to its ZEUS microreactor. As CEO James Walker explained their products last year: “ZEUS”, a solid core battery reactor, and “ODIN”, a low-pressure coolant reactor, each representing advanced developments in clean energy solutions that are portable, on-demand capable, and advanced nuclear microreactors. Nano also recently closed a $105 Million Common Stock Private Placement.
[Link] NuScale announced that it has received design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its uprated 250 MWt (77 Megawatt electrical output) NuScale Power Modules. ENTRA1 Energy is NuScale’s partner and independent power plant development platform.
[Link] California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has significantly increased its forecast for data center power consumption in its territory, now expecting high-performance computing resources to require approximately 8.7 gigawatts of electricity over the next decade. At the end of 2024, PG&E predicted that such cloud storage and AI hubs would require approximately 5.5 GW, highlighting the rapid expansion of the sector.
[Link] PG&E and Smart Wires have announced a partnership to deploy advanced power flow control technology in San Jose, boosting grid capacity by over 100 megawatts. The project, expected to be completed by late 2025, will utilize SmartValve devices to dynamically redirect power, mitigate thermal overloads, and provide a scalable, cost-effective solution until a new transmission line is constructed in 2032.
[Link] The installed renewable energy capacity globally will more than triple from an estimated 3.42TW at the end of 2024 to 11.2TW by 2035, a new report forecasts. GlobalData’s Renewable Energy report states that capacity will grow at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 11% over the period, which, although lower than the CAGR of 16% between 2015 and 2024 remains strong.
[Link] U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced a new contract with Dell to develop NERSC-10, the next flagship supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The Dell system will be powered by NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin platform, and engineered to support large-scale high-performance computing workloads like those in molecular dynamics, high-energy physics, and AI training and inference. The new system will be named after Jennifer Doudna, the Berkeley Lab-based biochemist who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in recognition of her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR.
[Link] Arizona Land Consulting (ALC) has purchased about 2,000 acres in Buckeye, west of Phoenix, Arizona, aiming to develop a massive data center with a potential capacity of up to 1.5GW. The project, estimated to cost $25 billion at full build-out, is backed by Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital.
[Link] The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order on May 31, 2025, under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to safeguard electric grid reliability in the PJM region. DOE’s order states that PJM shall, in coordination with Constellation Energy, run specified units at the Eddystone Generating Station, when PJM deems necessary, past their planned retirement date of May 31, 2025.
[Link] GridCARE has emerged from stealth, closing on a highly oversubscribed $13.5 million Seed financing round led by Xora, a deep technology venture capital firm backed by Temasek. GridCare hopes to be a one-stop power partner for AI infrastructure developers.
[Link] LG Electronics, through its innovation arm LG NOVA, has announced a collaboration between its new venture PADO AI Orchestration Inc., and MARA, a leading energy technology company. The partnership aims to revolutionize energy management for data centers by developing advanced power load balancing solutions.
[Link] Quantum-accelerated AI Servers. Sygaldry Technologies, launched by Rigetti Computing founder Chad Rigetti and former Strangeworks Chief Strategy Officer Idalia Friedson, is building what it calls quantum-accelerated AI servers, according to Bloomberg TV. The goal is to combine classical infrastructure with quantum processors in a way that gives AI developers faster training, faster inference and better efficiency for models ranging from large language models to diffusion networks.
[Link] CoreWeave is partnering with Edged data centers and MERLIN Properties to host one of the first large-scale NVIDIA Hopper training and inference supercomputers in Spain at the new ultra-efficient data center in Barcelona. The 22 MW facility is designed to deliver cutting-edge AI compute power while maintaining a 1.15 PUE, operating with 100% renewable power, and consuming zero water for cooling, resulting in annual savings of over 438 million liters.
[Link] Microsoft announced the general availability of Malaysia West, strategically located in Greater Kuala Lumpur. The new region will be an AI-ready hyperscale cloud infrastructure with three availability zones.
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