09/07/2025 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Honeywell invests in Quantinuum, Amazon in New Zealand and OpenAI in India, US utilities set to add 116 gigawatts of large load capacity
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
Events this week:
Yotta 2025 (Sept.8-10 in Vegas): I really wish I could go to this. The sessions, the speakers…. it looks amazing.
Hey Scott — Apple Event Tuesday, 9/9. These are always over-hyped… but I think this year might actually be different, and have some really cool new hardware.
[Link] Honeywell announced an approximately $600 million equity capital raise for Quantinuum, at a pre-money equity valuation of $10 billion. Quanta Computer, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), and QED Investors have joined existing shareholders JP Morgan Chase, Mitsui, Amgen, Cambridge Quantum Holdings, Serendipity Capital, and Honeywell. Quantinuum will work with NVIDIA as a founding collaborator on breakthroughs at the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center. The company recently announced partnerships and collaborations with RIKEN, SoftBank Corp., Infineon, and STFC Hartree Center, as well as expansions into New Mexico, Qatar, and Singapore.
[Link] IonQ, in collaboration with Element Six, has developed quantum-grade synthetic diamond films compatible with standard semiconductor manufacturing, enabling scalable production of diamond-based quantum devices like memories and photonic interconnects. This breakthrough advances IonQ’s roadmap toward fault-tolerant quantum systems and quantum networking, with potential applications in quantum sensing and hybrid on-chip systems.
[Link] Amazon to Invest $4.4B in New Zealand Data Centers. Amazon has formally launched cloud services in New Zealand and dusted off a plan first announced in 2021 to invest more than NZ$7.5 billion ($4.4 billion) in data centers in the South Pacific nation.
[Link] Port KC announced a $100 billion hyperscale data center campus, dubbed "Project Kestrel," to be built on 379 acres in Kansas City’s Northland at the KCI-29 industrial site. The campus will feature six data centers totaling 1.8 million square feet, designed to support cloud computing and tech industries.
[Link] A potential data center project in Red Cedar, Dunn County, Wisconsin (proposed by Balloonist LLC in July), could see $1.6 billion in investment.
[Link] Launceston, Tasmania - Australia's island state: Launceston City Council has given the green light to an "AI Factory" - a massive data center project expected to inject $2.1 billion into the local economy and create up to 100 jobs.
[Link] OpenAI is scouting local partners to set up a data center in India with at least 1 gigawatt capacity, Bloomberg News reported last Monday, citing unidentified sources. The location and timeline of OpenAI’s proposed India project remain uncertain, Bloomberg reported, adding that CEO Sam Altman may announce the facility during his visit to the country in September.
[Link] Elea Data Centers partnered with the City of Rio and Oracle to develop digital infrastructure initiatives. The area planned for the installation of Rio AI City, headed by Elea, will have an initial capacity of 1.5 GW by 2027 and can reach 3.2 GW by 2032, with a clean energy supply and infrastructure of unprecedented size in Brazil.
[Link] EXA Infrastructure announced Project Visegrád, a landmark fibre deployment designed to transform connectivity across Central Europe.
Prometheus Hyperscale partnerships
[Link] ENGIE North America and Prometheus Hyperscale have partnered to co-develop AI-ready, liquid-cooled data centers at ENGIE’s renewable energy and battery storage sites in and around Dallas, Texas, with the first sites expected to be operational in 2026.
[Link] Prometheus Hyperscale and Conduit Power have partnered to provide reliable hybrid gas and battery power solutions for AI data centers co-located at ENGIE’s carbon-free energy facilities in Texas, aiming to enhance sustainability and speed-to-market. The collaboration will deploy up to 300MW of power for each of Prometheus’s hyperscale data centers, with the first facility expected online in 2026 and more planned for 2027.
[Link] There's a great Cadence article about a SXSW panel called 'From Cages to the Real World: The Dawn of Physical AI' that I thought was really interesting. It had an amazing panel also: Dr. Anirudh Devgan (president and CEO of Cadence), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web), Tye Brady (chief roboticist at Amazon), and Dr. Andrea Thomaz (CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics). “Dr. Devgan explained the phases of AI development. He mentioned that we are currently transitioning from the infrastructure AI phase, dominated by data centers and computational tools like GPUs, plus "agentic AI," which comprises the digital systems we experience today. The next step, physical AI, has the potential to unlock massive markets and industries valued at trillions of dollars.”
Billions in green financing
[Link] DC BLOX announced it has closed $1.15 billion in green loan financing for the construction of a data center campus in Douglas County, Georgia, designed to meet the demands of cloud and AI workloads. The funds will support the development of a 120 MW data center and include campus expansion to support an additional 80 MW, available as early as 2027.
[Link] Aligned Data Centers company ODATA announced a $1.02 billion green financing focused on sustainable data center infrastructure investments in Latin America.
Energy News:
[Link] Wood Mackenzie study reveals utilities are preparing for unprecedented capacity growth driven by data centers. US utilities have committed to adding 116 gigawatts of large load capacity—equivalent to 15.5% of the nation's current peak electricity demand—marking what industry analysts are calling an unprecedented shift in power infrastructure planning, according to a new Wood Mackenzie report.
[Link] Twenty-nine startups join the Google for Startups Accelerator: AI for Energy. I’ve only started looking through the list - but there are a lot of good ideas here.
[Link] Google X's Tapestry project, previously focused on transmission grid challenges, has reached a significant milestone by deploying its AI tools on a distribution network for the first time. Vector, New Zealand's largest distribution utility, is now using Tapestry's grid management tools across its entire network for daily operations. The partnership centers on two key technologies: Grid Aware, an AI-powered asset inspection tool that has dramatically reduced Vector's inspection times from 45 minutes to just five minutes per asset, and a grid planning tool that simulates future scenarios for resilience planning.
[Link] Oklo announced plans to design, build, and operate a fuel recycling facility in Tennessee as the first phase of an advanced fuel center through investment totaling up to $1.68 billion and aiming to create more than 800 high-quality jobs. The initial investment will be for the construction of a facility to recycle used nuclear fuel into fuel for fast reactors like Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse and will be the first of its kind in the U.S., establishing a clean, reliable energy supply.
[Link] The strategic implications of Grok’s upcoming major AI update for xAI and its competitors. AI development in 2025 revolves around balancing performance with efficiency. xAI's July release of Grok 4 achieves both goals, surpassing GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro in testing while pioneering multi-agent architecture for complex problem-solving. From the Stanford HAI 2025 AI Index Report: “Driven by increasingly capable small models, the inference cost for a system performing at the level of GPT-3.5 dropped over 280-fold between November 2022 and October 2024. At the hardware level, costs have declined by 30% annually, while energy efficiency has improved by 40% each year.”
[Link] NANO Nuclear Energy announced a ten-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) under the U.S. Department of Energy. This partnership aims to advance NANO Nuclear’s development of its KRONOS MMR and LOKI MMR microreactors by leveraging INL’s expertise and facilities. The agreement will support reactor design, materials testing, regulatory licensing, and commercialization efforts.
[Link] California is set to become the first state in the U.S. to manage power outages using artificial intelligence, and announce the launch of OATI Genie – a generative AI platform purpose-built for the energy industry. California Independent System Operator (CAISO) will announce a pilot program with OATI Genie to streamline outage management and deliver real-time insights for grid operators.
[Link] Factor This news roundup: Arevon Energy Secures $250M for Kelso Solar Project; Encore Renewable Energy Powers Up Vermont’s First Storage System; and LS Energy Solutions Launches 200 MW Big Rock Storage in California.
[Link] In Christine, Texas, San Miguel Electric Cooperative (SMECI) and Sage Geosystems have launched the world’s first Pressure Geothermal System, a 3-MW/4–6-hour energy storage pilot completed in just 12 months. Located in Atascosa County, the project, SMECI Well #1, aims to provide long-duration, dispatchable storage for ERCOT’s South Load Zone, addressing surging demand from data centers and variable renewable generation. Set for grid interconnection in December 2025, it marks a significant step in transitioning SMECI’s lignite-based baseload to cleaner energy, supported by a $1.4 billion USDA grant for 400 MW of solar and 200 MW of battery storage by 2027.
Sage Geosystems and Meta recently partnered to deliver 150 MW of geothermal power.
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