07/06/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: AI in 2025, Emerald AI helping relieve grid stress, new Hut8 mining data center, Quantum Data Center Alliance
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] Mary Meeker (investment firm Bond), renowned for her insightful annual "Internet Trends" reports, has released a new 340-slide report focusing on the impact of Artificial Intelligence in 2025. The entire report is a worthwhile read, but slides 119-129 focus on data centers. “With prefabricated modules, streamlined permitting, and vertical integration across electrical, mechanical, and software systems, new data centers are going up at speeds that resemble consumer tech cycles more than real estate development. But beneath that velocity lies a capital model that’s anything but simple. CapEx is driven by land, power provisioning, chips, and cooling infrastructure – especially as AI workloads push thermal and power limits far beyond traditional enterprise compute. OpEx, by contrast, is dominated by energy costs and systems maintenance, particularly for high-density training clusters that operate near constant load.”
[Link] How AI Factories Can Help Relieve Grid Stress. Washington, D.C. startup Emerald AI has launched, as a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for startups and an NVentures portfolio company. In addition to a $24.5 million VC funding round and an impressive team, the company is also backed by an array of notable individual investors, including Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, AI pioneer Professor Fei-Fei Li, and Kleiner Perkins Chairman John Doerr. Emerald AI is focused on transforming energy-intensive AI data centers into flexible assets that support electric grid reliability. Its core product, the Emerald AI Conductor software platform, orchestrates AI workloads in real time, allowing data centers to dynamically adjust their power consumption based on grid conditions without compromising compute performance.
[Link] Hut8 announced the initial energization of its 205 MW Vega, Texas facility, powered behind-the-meter by a wind farm and front-of-the-meter by the ERCOT grid. The Vega site features a proprietary, rack-based, direct-to-chip liquid cooling system designed in-house by Hut 8, which allows for densities of up to 180 kW/rack.
[Link] A report commissioned by the SubOptic Association estimates that the submarine capacity industry will need to spend $3 billion to upgrade its repair and maintenance fleet over the next 15 years. The study said that 1.6 million kilometers in new cable systems will be put into the water between now and 2040, roughly twice as much as the volume being taken out of service.
[Link] NTT Data, Cisco, and friends seek ways to network quantum computers. The Quantum Datacenter Alliance (QDA) is working on creating networks for the future quantum data center.
[Link] SpeQtral, a pioneer in satellite-based quantum communication technologies, and Thales Alenia Space, the joint company between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), today announced the signing of a new collaboration agreement, extending their strategic partnership for the development and demonstration of quantum communications between space and Earth. This new agreement aims to organize joint experiments involving SpeQtral’s quantum satellites, currently in development, and the first quantum ground station designed by Thales Alenia Space.
[Link] Blaize secures $56M Edge AI Deployment across Southeast Asia’s Smart Infrastructure. Initial deployment starts in Q2 2025 with continued expansion through 2026.
]
Follow me on X for more links and news.
Coinbase is the easiest (and best) place to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Use my referral link to sign up.
No AI was harmed in the making of this post.