10/20/2024 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: OCP Summit, Apple, DOE, Nuclear, Motivair, Quantum Computing
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
My apologies for the abbreviated format this week: too much news, too little time.
Compute! & OCP Global Summit
[Link] NVIDIA contributes Blackwell platform design to Open Hardware Ecosystem, accelerating AI infrastructure innovation. The company announced that it contributed foundational elements of its NVIDIA Blackwell accelerated computing platform design to the Open Compute Project and broadened NVIDIA Spectrum-X support for OCP standards.
[Link] Supermicro's liquid-cooled SuperClusters for AI data centers powered by NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 and NVIDIA HGX B200 systems, deliver a new paradigm of energy-efficient exascale computing.
[Link] Dell introduced new integrated rack-scalable systems, server, storage, and data management innovations to the Dell AI Factory, powering high-density computing and AI workloads at scale.
[Link] Vertiv announced that it is releasing a complete 7MW reference architecture of the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 platform, co-developed with NVIDIA, that will enable customers to transform traditional data center architectures into AI factories capable of powering AI applications across the enterprise.
[Link] The Iowa project that started in 2017 has one building completed. In the Des Moines suburb of Waukee Apple has confirmed that the first building is up and running.
[Link] Crusoe Energy Systems, Blue Owl Capital, and Primary Digital Infrastructure, announced a $3.4 billion joint venture to fund purpose-built data center capacity at the previously announced Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, Texas. Blue Owl’s Real Estate platform and Primary Digital Infrastructure will jointly sponsor the 206 MW 998,000 square foot data center being designed, built, and operated by Crusoe.
[Link] The U.S. DOE announced nearly $2 billion for 38 projects, deployed through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program. The GRIP funding will go toward protecting the grid against growing threats of extreme weather, lowering electricity costs for communities, and increasing capacity to meet load growth stemming from the recent rise of manufacturing, data centers, and electrification.
Nuclear
[Link] Oklo, an advanced fission power technology and nuclear fuel recycling company, announced that the U.S. Department of Energy has approved the Conceptual Safety Design Report (CSDR) for the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility at Idaho National Laboratory. This approval is a key milestone as Oklo advances toward its goal of utilizing recovered nuclear material to fuel its first commercial Aurora powerhouse.
[Link] Kairos Power and Google have signed a Master Plant Development Agreement, creating a path to deploy a U.S. fleet of advanced nuclear power projects totaling 500 MW by 2035.
[Link] Dominion Energy Virginia has partnered Amazon to explore the advancement of small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology in the state of Virginia.
[Link] STACK Infrastructure announced it has successfully implemented the use of the advanced biofuel HVO100 (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) as a standby power source for a new data center on its OSL04 campus in Holtskogen (Oslo), Norway.
[Link] DataBank announced a $2.0 billion equity raise led by AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest superannuation fund, which committed $1.5 billion.
[Link] Lightmatter Raises $400M Series D; Quadruples Valuation to $4.4B as Photonics Leader for Next-Gen AI Data Centers.
[Link] Schneider Electric announced it has signed an agreement to acquire a controlling interest in Motivair, a company specializing in liquid cooling and advanced thermal management solutions for high-performance computing systems.
[Link] QuEra Computing announced an investment in QuEra by Google Quantum AI. The investment marks a significant milestone in QuEra’s journey to develop and make available useful, scalable, and fault-tolerant quantum computers and affirms the recent significant technical progress made by the company.
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