Get ONMINE

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

USA Crude Oil Stocks Rise by Almost 4 Million Barrels

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.9 million barrels from the week ending August 29 to the week ending September 5, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. That report was released on September 10 and included data for […]

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.9 million barrels from the week ending August 29 to the week ending September 5, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report.

That report was released on September 10 and included data for the week ending September 5. It showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 424.6 million barrels on September 5, 420.7 million barrels on August 29, and 419.1 million barrels on September 6, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 405.2 million barrels on September 5, 404.7 million barrels on August 29, and 380.0 million barrels on September 6, 2024, the report revealed.

Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.686 billion barrels on September 5, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were up 15.9 million barrels week on week and up 27.3 million barrels year on year, the report showed.

“At 424.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about three percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest weekly petroleum status report.

“Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 1.5 million barrels from last week and are at the five year average for this time of year. Both finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week,” it added.

“Distillate fuel inventories increased by 4.7 million barrels last week and are about nine percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.5 million barrels from last week and are 12 percent above the five year average for this time of year,” it continued.

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.8 million barrels per day during the week ending September 5, according to the report, which highlighted that this was 51,000 barrels per day less than the previous week’s average.

“Refineries operated at 94.9 percent of their operable capacity last week,” the EIA said in the report.

“Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 9.6 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production decreased by 25,000 barrels per day last week, averaging 5.2 million barrels per day,” it added.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.3 million barrels per day last week, the report noted. It pointed out that this was a decrease of 471,000 barrels per day from the previous week.

“Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.4 million barrels per day, 0.5 percent less than the same four-week period last year,” the EIA said in its report.

“Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 681,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 217,000 barrels per day,” it added.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 20.9 million barrels a day, up by two percent from the same period last year, the EIA stated in its report.

“Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.9 million barrels a day, down by 0.6 percent from the same period last year,” the EIA added.

“Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.8 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by two percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 4.9 percent compared with the same four-week period last year,” the EIA went on to state in the report.

Analyst Take

Ole R. Hvalbye, Commodities Analyst at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB), highlighted in a report sent to Rigzone on Thursday by the SEB team that, according to the EIA’s latest weekly petroleum status report, “U.S. commercial crude inventories posted a counter-seasonal build last week, rising by 3.9 million barrels to 424.6 million barrels”.

“This marks the largest weekly increase since early 2024 and pulls inventories to just three percent below the five-year seasonal average, easing some of the tightness seen in prior weeks,” he added.

“The build contrasts with the 2.4 million barrel draw from two weeks ago and comes despite high refinery runs (94.9 percent utilization) and lower import volumes. Still, at 424.6 million barrels, crude inventories remain below the 2015-2022 seasonal norm of ~442 million barrels,” Hvalbye went on to state.

In the SEB report, Hvalbye pointed out that gasoline inventories rose by 1.5 million barrels, “bringing levels exactly in line with the five-year average”.

“Both finished gasoline and blending components saw increases, signaling steady output and likely softening retail demand after the peak driving season,” he added.

“The most notable move was in diesel: distillate inventories jumped by 4.7 million barrels on the week, easing some of the persistent tightness in middle distillates. Still, stocks are a large nine percent below the five-year seasonal average and remain on the lower end of the historical range,” he continued.

“Total commercial petroleum inventories (crude + products, excl. SPR) jumped by 15.4 million barrels on the week – the largest combined build in over 12 months. Total inventories now stand at approximately 1,281 million barrels, reflecting a counter-seasonal and temporary loosening in the broader U.S. balance,” Hvalbye went on to state.

Looking at demand, Hvalbye highlighted in the SEB report that the EIA’s ‘‘‘products supplied’ metric – a gauge for implied consumption – remained resilient”.

“Over the past four weeks, total product demand averaged 20.9 million barrels per day, up two percent year on year. Jet fuel led the growth, up 4.9 percent, followed by diesel at two percent. Gasoline demand softened slightly, down 0.6 percent year on year, in line with seasonal cooling,” he added.

“Summing up, the report offers a short-term relief for inventories – especially in diesel – though underlying fundamentals remain relatively tight versus historical norms,” Hvalbye went on to note in the SEB report.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

Shape
Shape
Stay Ahead

Explore More Insights

More Articles

Stay ahead with more perspectives on cutting-edge power, infrastructure, energy,  bitcoin and AI solutions. Explore these articles to uncover strategies and insights shaping the future of industries.

Shape

HomeLM: A foundation model for ambient AI

Capabilities of a HomeLM What makes a foundation model like HomeLM powerful is its ability to learn generalizable representations of sensor streams, allowing them to be reused, recombined and adapted across diverse tasks. This fundamentally differs from traditional signal processing and machine learning pipelines in RF sensing, which are typically

Read More »

Cisco’s Splunk embeds agentic AI into security and observability products

AI-powered observability enhancements Cisco also announced it has updated Splunk Observability to use Cisco AgenticOps, which deploys AI agents to automate telemetry collection, detect issues, identify root causes, and apply fixes. The agentic AI updates help enterprise customers automate incident detection, root-cause analysis, and routine fixes. “We are making sure

Read More »

Saudis Set to Boost Oil Exports

Saudi Arabia’s oil exports are set to jump this month as the twin impact of higher production and easing local demand from peak summer levels frees up supply, adding to concerns the market is headed for a surplus. The amount of crude available for export will increase by about half a million barrels a day in September from the previous month, according to analytics firm Kpler. Supply is expected to increase further later this year and into 2026 as Saudi Arabia adds more output and starts a massive new natural gas project that will free oil for overseas sales. The kingdom’s local demand for crude typically rises during the summer because of the need for air conditioning, but the elevated consumption has been key this year as it kept much of the production increases away from global markets. That cushion is now likely to fall away just as Riyadh and others in the OPEC+ alliance agreed to press on with output increases despite widespread forecasts for a surplus. Saudi Arabia’s use of its crude oil to generate electricity rose in August to the highest since at least 2009 to more than 900,000 barrels a day, according to Kpler. That’s forecast to drop by a third in September and ease to below 400,000 barrels a day in October, according to the analytics firm.  At the same time, the kingdom’s production quota has been rising as it leads OPEC+ efforts to fast-track the return of previously halted output. The producers group is counting on sustained demand to support prices, but some of that may ease as strong summer consumption wanes. “We expect global oil demand to have set a peak for the year in August, with temperatures in the Middle East slowly declining, and a peak in travel in the northern hemisphere,” said Giovanni Staunovo, an

Read More »

California legislation would expand wildfire fund, regional energy markets

Dive Brief: California lawmakers released three new or rewritten bills on Wednesday that could turn the California Independent System Operator into an independent regional entity, extend the state’s popular carbon market program and provide additional funds for its ailing wildfire liability insurance program. The three bills, billed as a package of legislation intended to combat rising energy costs and climate change, have won the support of a broad coalition of advocacy groups. But some of the state’s utility executives have criticized key components of the package. All three bills need just one final vote before the legislative session ends on Friday to advance to the governor’s desk. Dive Insight: Policy experts say it’s not uncommon for California lawmakers to release new bill language mere days before the end of the session — typically after months of backroom negotiations with stakeholders. But Independent Energy Producers Association CEO Jan Smutny-Jones said the number of significant, last-minute energy bills this year is unusual. California lawmakers are still mulling at least three bills with significant implications for state and regional energy policy. And language related to two of these measures, a proposed $18 billion replenishment of the state’s ailing Wildfire Fund and an effort to extend its popular cap-and-trade carbon emissions program through 2045, remained unavailable until both measures were incorporated into existing bill files on Wednesday morning. SB 254, an existing bill that originally addressed funding mechanisms for transmission and wildfire mitigation projects, now contains provisions to raise additional revenue for the state’s Wildfire Fund, which many experts fear could face a shortfall should the state experience another catastrophic fire in the near future. The Wildfire Fund pays legal claims brought against California utilities in the event those utilities are found to be responsible for starting a wildfire. The independent system operator proposal

Read More »

‘Green banks’ petition for rehearing in $14B EPA funding freeze case

Nonprofit recipients of $14 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that were frozen by the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year filed a rehearing petition late Wednesday after a U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld the freeze. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan granted an injunction against the freeze in April, ruling that the EPA had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in attempting to revoke the funding, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a stay on that ruling soon after. The plaintiffs named in the rehearing petition include the Climate United Fund, Coalition for Green Capital, Power Forward Communities and the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank. The petition argues that the panel’s opinion contradicts settled jurisprudence and misconstrues the plaintiffs’ constitutional claim.  The appeals court issued its 2-1 ruling upholding the freeze on Sept. 2, saying, “The district court erred in concluding the grantees are likely to succeed on their regulatory, arbitrary and capricious, and constitutional claims.” The majority opinion aligns with the Trump administration’s arguments to freeze GGRF funding disbursed by the Inflation Reduction Act, citing public criticism about the “sheer scale of the grant program and the method of allocating billions of dollars,” and stating, “The month before President Trump’s inauguration, EPA modified the grant agreements — with no apparent consideration from the grantees — to make it more difficult for the government to terminate the grants.” The opinion concludes that the dispute in this case is contractual, not constitutional, and should be heard in the Court of Federal Claims — thus Chutkan lacked the jurisdiction to rule on the issue.  “While the district court had jurisdiction over the grantees’ constitutional claim, that claim is meritless,” the opinion states. “Moreover, the equities strongly favor the

Read More »

As PJM prices rise, flexibility can’t be ignored

Steve Doremus is head of energy markets and market development at Enel North America. For more than a decade, electricity demand across America remained remarkably flat. Grid operators planned around predictable consumption patterns, capacity markets functioned with modest price variations, and the fundamentals of electricity economics felt stable and well-understood. That era is over. S&P Global forecasts unprecedented load growth in the U.S. over the next decade, potentially reaching 5,139 TWh in 2035, 25% more than last year’s demand. This explosion of demand is driven primarily by data centers and the proliferation of artificial intelligence — energy-intensive operations that require massive amounts of electricity around the clock. The surge of electricity demand is already underway and is significantly affecting market prices. PJM Interconnection’s capacity market auction for the 2025-2026 delivery yearcleared record-high prices of $269.92/MW-day for much of the PJM footprint, compared with $28.92/MW-day for the 2024-25 auction — nearly a tenfold increase that represents the highest prices in the market’s history. This was no fluke. Weeks after the first 2025-2026 electricity bills started hitting mailboxes, the 2026-2027 auction results arrived. These results hit the market price cap of $329.17/MW-day, setting yet another record. When capacity costs spike this dramatically, everybody pays attention. The average homeowner or small business owner could be forgiven for not knowing about the PJM capacity auction process — or even about PJM at all. But with prices rising and politicians taking notice, what was once a niche issue for energy wonks is now a mainstream concern. PJM has clearly entered the era of load growth. And the reality is supply is not being built and interconnected fast enough to keep up with it. While much has been said about the drivers of this growth and the need for new generation to meet it, we too often

Read More »

USA Crude Oil Stocks Rise by Almost 4 Million Barrels

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.9 million barrels from the week ending August 29 to the week ending September 5, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. That report was released on September 10 and included data for the week ending September 5. It showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 424.6 million barrels on September 5, 420.7 million barrels on August 29, and 419.1 million barrels on September 6, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 405.2 million barrels on September 5, 404.7 million barrels on August 29, and 380.0 million barrels on September 6, 2024, the report revealed. Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.686 billion barrels on September 5, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were up 15.9 million barrels week on week and up 27.3 million barrels year on year, the report showed. “At 424.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about three percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest weekly petroleum status report. “Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 1.5 million barrels from last week and are at the five year average for this time of year. Both finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week,” it added. “Distillate fuel inventories increased by 4.7 million barrels last week and are about nine percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 1.5 million barrels from last week and are 12 percent above the five year average for this time of year,”

Read More »

Sapphire Raises $18 Million to Boost Manufacturing Capacity

Sapphire Technologies Inc., a power generation equipment manufacturer, has secured $18 million in Series C financing. The round included investments from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI), as well as existing investors Equinor Ventures, Cooper and Company, and Energy Capital Ventures, Sapphire said in a media release. The capital will be used to enhance capacity at Sapphire Technologies’ new manufacturing facility in Cypress, California. The company said the funds will also be put toward supporting the growth of the installed base of FreeSpin In-line Turboexpanders in key regions like Japan, as well as broadening market reach into new applications. Turboexpanders are designed to convert energy lost during pressure reduction processes into clean electricity, Sapphire explained. In the energy sector, many assets, such as natural gas wells and transmission pipelines, often require pressure reduction before they can be used, it said. By incorporating turboexpanders into these processes, companies can generate carbon-free electricity, it said. “Japan is one of the most important global markets for Sapphire”, Freddie Sarhan, CEO of Sapphire Technologies, said. “We are deepening our commitment to our Japanese clients. This partnership will accelerate the deployment of waste pressure power generation equipment across natural gas infrastructure, supporting the world’s surging energy demand”. “Technologies such as FreeSpin have the potential to play a meaningful role in the energy transition by converting existing pressure into electricity without additional fuel or direct emissions”, Ricky Sakai, Senior Vice President for Investment and Business Development at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, Inc., said. “Our investment supports the next phase of field deployments in key markets, intending to add dependable capacity where demand is growing and lowering carbon intensity”. To contact the author, email [email protected] WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are

Read More »

Data Center Jobs: Engineering, Construction, Commissioning, Sales, Field Service and Facility Tech Jobs Available in Major Data Center Hotspots

Each month Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Pkaza, posts some of the hottest data center career opportunities in the market. Here’s a look at some of the latest data center jobs posted on the Data Center Frontier jobs board, powered by Pkaza Critical Facilities Recruiting. Looking for Data Center Candidates? Check out Pkaza’s Active Candidate / Featured Candidate Hotlist (and coming soon free Data Center Intern listing). Data Center Critical Facility Manager Impact, TX There position is also available in: Cheyenne, WY; Ashburn, VA or Manassas, VA. This opportunity is working directly with a leading mission-critical data center developer / wholesaler / colo provider. This firm provides data center solutions custom-fit to the requirements of their client’s mission-critical operational facilities. They provide reliability of mission-critical facilities for many of the world’s largest organizations (enterprise and hyperscale customers). This career-growth minded opportunity offers exciting projects with leading-edge technology and innovation as well as competitive salaries and benefits. Electrical Commissioning Engineer New Albany, OH This traveling position is also available in: Richmond, VA; Ashburn, VA; Charlotte, NC; Atlanta, GA; Hampton, GA; Fayetteville, GA; Cedar Rapids, IA; Phoenix, AZ; Dallas, TX or Chicago, IL. *** ALSO looking for a LEAD EE and ME CxA Agents and CxA PMs. *** Our client is an engineering design and commissioning company that has a national footprint and specializes in MEP critical facilities design. They provide design, commissioning, consulting and management expertise in the critical facilities space. They have a mindset to provide reliability, energy efficiency, sustainable design and LEED expertise when providing these consulting services for enterprise, colocation and hyperscale companies. This career-growth minded opportunity offers exciting projects with leading-edge technology and innovation as well as competitive salaries and benefits.  Data Center Engineering Design ManagerAshburn, VA This opportunity is working directly with a leading mission-critical data center developer /

Read More »

Modernizing Legacy Data Centers for the AI Revolution with Schneider Electric’s Steven Carlini

As artificial intelligence workloads drive unprecedented compute density, the U.S. data center industry faces a formidable challenge: modernizing aging facilities that were never designed to support today’s high-density AI servers. In a recent Data Center Frontier podcast, Steven Carlini, Vice President of Innovation and Data Centers at Schneider Electric, shared his insights on how operators are confronting these transformative pressures. “Many of these data centers were built with the expectation they would go through three, four, five IT refresh cycles,” Carlini explains. “Back then, growth in rack density was moderate. Facilities were designed for 10, 12 kilowatts per rack. Now with systems like Nvidia’s Blackwell, we’re seeing 132 kilowatts per rack, and each rack can weigh 5,000 pounds.” The implications are seismic. Legacy racks, floor layouts, power distribution systems, and cooling infrastructure were simply not engineered for such extreme densities. “With densification, a lot of the power distribution, cooling systems, even the rack systems — the new servers don’t fit in those racks. You need more room behind the racks for power and cooling. Almost everything needs to be changed,” Carlini notes. For operators, the first questions are inevitably about power availability. At 132 kilowatts per rack, even a single cluster can challenge the limits of older infrastructure. Many facilities are conducting rigorous evaluations to decide whether retrofitting is feasible or whether building new sites is the more practical solution. Carlini adds, “You may have transformers spaced every hundred yards, twenty of them. Now, one larger transformer can replace that footprint, and power distribution units feed busways that supply each accelerated compute rack. The scale and complexity are unlike anything we’ve seen before.” Safety considerations also intensify with these densifications. “At 132 kilowatts, maintenance is still feasible,” Carlini says, “but as voltages rise, data centers are moving toward environments where

Read More »

Google Backs Advanced Nuclear at TVA’s Clinch River as ORNL Pushes Quantum Frontiers

Inside the Hermes Reactor Design Kairos Power’s Hermes reactor is based on its KP-FHR architecture — short for fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor. Unlike conventional water-cooled reactors, Hermes uses a molten salt mixture called FLiBe (lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride) as a coolant. Because FLiBe operates at atmospheric pressure, the design eliminates the risk of high-pressure ruptures and allows for inherently safer operation. Fuel for Hermes comes in the form of TRISO particles rather than traditional enriched uranium fuel rods. Each TRISO particle is encapsulated within ceramic layers that function like miniature containment vessels. These particles can withstand temperatures above 1,600 °C — far beyond the reactor’s normal operating range of about 700 °C. In combination with the salt coolant, Hermes achieves outlet temperatures between 650–750 °C, enabling efficient power generation and potential industrial applications such as hydrogen production. Because the salt coolant is chemically stable and requires no pressurization, the reactor can shut down and dissipate heat passively, without external power or operator intervention. This passive safety profile differentiates Hermes from traditional light-water reactors and reflects the Generation IV industry focus on safer, modular designs. From Hermes-1 to Hermes-2: Iterative Nuclear Development The first step in Kairos’ roadmap is Hermes-1, a 35 MW thermal demonstration reactor now under construction at TVA’s Clinch River site under a 2023 NRC license. Hermes-1 is not designed to generate electricity but will validate reactor physics, fuel handling, licensing strategies, and construction techniques. Building on that experience, Hermes-2 will be a 50 MW electric reactor connected to TVA’s grid, with operations targeted for 2030. Under the agreement, TVA will purchase electricity from Hermes-2 and supply it to Google’s data centers in Tennessee and Alabama. Kairos describes its development philosophy as “iterative,” scaling incrementally rather than attempting to deploy large fleets of units at once. By

Read More »

NVIDIA Forecasts $3–$4 Trillion AI Market, Driving Next Wave of Infrastructure

Whenever behemoth chipmaker NVIDIA announces its quarterly earnings, those results can have a massive influence on the stock market and its position as a key indicator for the AI industry. After all, NVIDIA is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, valued at $4.24 trillion—ahead of Microsoft ($3.74 trillion), Apple ($3.41 trillion), Alphabet, the parent company of Google ($2.57 trillion), and Amazon ($2.44 trillion). Due to its explosive growth in recent years, a single NVIDIA earnings report can move the entire market. So, when NVIDIA leaders announced during their August 27 earnings call that Q2 2026 sales surged 56% to $46.74 billion, it was a record-setting performance for the company—and investors took notice. Executive VP & CFO Colette M. Kress said the revenue exceeded leadership’s outlook as the company grew sequentially across all market platforms. She outlined a path toward substantial growth driven by AI infrastructure. Foreseeing significant long-term growth opportunities in agentic AI and considering the scale of opportunity, CEO Jensen Huang said, “Over the next 5 years, we’re going to scale into it with Blackwell [architecture for GenAI], with Rubin [successor to Blackwell], and follow-ons to scale into effectively a $3 trillion to $4 trillion AI infrastructure opportunity.” The chipmaker’s Q2 2026 earnings fell short of Wall Street’s lofty expectations, but they did demonstrate that its sales are still rising faster than those of most other tech companies. NVIDIA is expected to post revenue growth of at least 42% over the next four quarters, compared with an average of about 10% for firms in the technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. On August 29, two days after announcing their earnings, NVIDIA stocks slid 3% and other chip stocks also declined. This came amid a broader sell-off after server-maker Dell, a customer of those chipmakers,

Read More »

Cologix and Lambda Debut NVIDIA HGX B200 AI Clusters in Columbus, Ohio

In our latest episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, we explore how powerhouse AI infrastructure is moving inland—anchored by the first NVIDIA HGX B200 cluster deployment in Columbus, Ohio. Cologix, Lambda, and Supermicro have partnered on the project, which combines Lambda’s 1-Click Clusters™, Supermicro’s energy-efficient hardware, and Cologix’s carrier-dense Scalelogix℠ COL4 facility. It’s a milestone that speaks to the rapid decentralization of AI workloads and the emergence of the Midwest as a serious player in the AI economy. Joining me for the conversation were Bill Bentley, VP Hyperscale and Cloud Sales at Cologix, and Ken Patchett, VP Data Center Infrastructure at Lambda. Why Columbus, Why Now? Asked about the significance of launching in Columbus, Patchett framed the move in terms of the coming era of “superintelligence.” “The shift to superintelligence is happening now—systems that can reason, adapt, and accelerate human progress,” Patchett said. “That requires an entirely new type of infrastructure, which means capital, vision, and the right partners. Columbus with Cologix made sense because beyond being centrally located, they’re highly connected, cost-efficient, and built to scale. We’re not chasing trends. We’re laying the groundwork for a future where intelligence infrastructure is as ubiquitous as electricity.” Bentley pointed to the city’s underlying strengths in connectivity, incentives, and utility economics. “Columbus is uniquely situated at the intersection of long-haul fiber,” Bentley said. “You’ve got state tax incentives, low-cost utilities, and a growing concentration of hyperscalers and local enterprises. The ecosystem is ripe for growth. It’s a natural geography for AI workloads that need geographic diversity without sacrificing performance.” Shifting—or Expanding—the Map for AI The guests agreed that deployments like this don’t represent a wholesale shift away from coastal hyperscale markets, but rather the expansion of AI’s footprint across multiple geographies. “I like to think of Lambda as an AI hyperscaler,”

Read More »

Aalo Atomics Breaks Ground on XMR Reactor, Eyes AI Data Center Integration at INL

Nuclear + Data Centers: A Convergence Trend Aalo’s announcement adds to a growing list of nuclear startups that explicitly reference data centers as their first commercial market. Oklo has positioned its Aurora powerhouse as a plug-in solution for AI campuses, Kairos is developing fluoride salt-cooled reactors with potential colocation applications, and Last Energy is pitching its compact 20 MW units for industrial and IT workloads. Hyperscalers are also signaling interest in firm, carbon-free nuclear. Google has backed advanced nuclear at TVA’s Clinch River, Microsoft signed a 20-year offtake deal with Helion for fusion, and Amazon has explored options for long-duration nuclear and hydrogen power. Each of these moves reflects the same reality: AI-scale power demand is colliding with clean energy commitments, and nuclear is increasingly viewed as a credible path forward. Against this backdrop, Aalo’s XMR strategy — factory-built modules, simplified siting, and direct adjacency to compute campuses — positions it as part of a portfolio of experimental approaches. The next three years will be pivotal in showing whether these concepts can advance beyond demonstration to commercial deployment. Regulatory Pathways and Challenges The U.S. Department of Energy has accelerated advanced reactor testing at Idaho National Lab through its Reactor Pilot Program and NRIC initiatives. These test beds allow projects like Aalo-X, Oklo Aurora, and MARVEL to move quickly from design to hardware, bypassing some of the lengthy steps of traditional NRC licensing. However, there remains a sharp distinction between DOE demonstration projects and true commercial operation. While the DOE can authorize on-site testing, selling power into the grid — or even into an adjacent commercial data center — still requires NRC approval. Industry observers note the tension between data center timetables, which measure deployments in months, and nuclear licensing cycles, which span years. Aalo is betting that its modular design,

Read More »

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs).  In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

Read More »

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

Read More »

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

Read More »

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

Read More »
More Articles