Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

US Government Study Supports Further RE Expansion on Federal Lands

An inter-agency study has found that federal lands in the contiguous United States could further support hundreds more gigawatts of renewable energy (RE) generation even when assuming limited siting. The study by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), conducted in cooperation with the agriculture, defense and interior departments, found there is […]

An inter-agency study has found that federal lands in the contiguous United States could further support hundreds more gigawatts of renewable energy (RE) generation even when assuming limited siting.

The study by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), conducted in cooperation with the agriculture, defense and interior departments, found there is technical potential for 5,750 gigawatts (GW) of utility photovoltaic (UPV) installations on 44 million acres of developable federal land across the contiguous U.S. The term refers to the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia and excludes Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories.

For onshore wind, the technical potential — the maximum amount of available resource based on the amount of federal land administered, suitability of the land for RE development, and the energy resource availability — is 875 GW on 43 million acres.

Meanwhile the technical potential for hydrothermal is 130 GW on 12 million acres while that for enhanced geothermal is 975 GW on 27 million acres.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has the highest technical potential of all federal land administrators, followed by the Forest Service and the Defense Department. 

“DOE, FWS [Fish and Wildlife Service], and other federal land administrators have relatively modest RE technical potential”, stated the report published on NREL’s website.

“When modeling a limited-siting case, we estimate the technical potential on federal lands to decline by 70 percent (to 1,750 GW) for UPV and by 96 percent (to 70 GW) for wind, compared to the reference siting case”, the report said.

Out of seven scenarios presented in the report, the three central scenarios estimate 51–84 GW of solar, wind and geothermal capacity are deployed onshore the contiguous U.S. by 2035, when the country should have achieved 100 percent clean power as targeted. The scenarios are based on various factors including technology costs, performance assumptions, siting constraints and transmission interconnectedness.

“That level of deployment by 2035, which could entail authorizing such projects by around 2030, is enough to provide up to about 10 percent of the reliable, renewable energy needed to reach net-zero emissions in the electricity sector”, the DOE said in an online statement.

The Interior Department has already permitted over 30 GW of clean energy projects on federal lands, surpassing its congressionally authorized goal of 25 GW goal and ahead of the 2025 target date, the DOE said. The permitted capacity is enough to power more than 15 million homes, it said.

The combined capacity of UPV, wind and geothermal ranges from 26 GW in the lowest estimate to 270 GW in the most optimistic deployment projection.

In most scenarios, less than two million acres would be developed for renewable energy by 2035, of which less than 815,000 acres would be disturbed.

“For context, during fiscal year 2023, 20.5 million acres of federal lands were under lease for oil and gas development, of which about 12.3 million acres were actively used for production”, the report said.

NREL used a geospatial model to calculate the technical potential for RE sources. To help ensure the model follows realistic assumptions, NREL sought expertise from the BLM, the FWS, the Forest Service, the Defense Department and the DOE.

“The participation of the partner federal agencies is needed for this study given their expertise on suitability for RE development on lands administered by these agencies, as well as their role in reviewing projects on lands managed by other agencies, and their expertise on other resource or land use considerations that might preclude or foster RE development”, the report explained.

After determining the technical potential, NREL used a power sector model to identify what energy technologies to build and where across the seven scenarios.

Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said, “DOE is a data-driven agency and the data shows that the nation’s growing energy demand can be met with cleaner, cheaper, more resilient power”.

To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com

Shape
Shape
Stay Ahead

Explore More Insights

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

3 hidden benefits of Dedicated Internet Access for enterprises

Reliable Internet connectivity is crucial for businesses to function efficiently and remain competitive in today’s digital world. While standard broadband connections may work for basic tasks, they often struggle to meet the demands of modern businesses. Activities like video conferencing, using cloud applications, or transferring large amounts of data require

Read More »

Trump Order Offers a Chance to Revive Keystone XL Pipeline

President Donald Trump appears to have opened the door for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the controversial oil conduit that even its former developer doesn’t want to build.  A Biden administration executive order that revoked Trump’s March 2019 permit for the pipeline was among the directives rescinded by the newly elected president Monday. The decision appears to have put Keystone XL back in play — even if it may now be little more than symbolic.  It’s unlikely that the multibillion-dollar 1,200-mile project to build the pipeline from Canada to Nebraska would proceed anytime soon — if ever. South Bow Corp., the oil pipeline business spun off from TC Energy Corp., hasn’t indicated interest in a revival.  “We’ve moved on from Keystone XL,” South Bow’s chief executive officer, Bevin Wirzba, told Bloomberg last June. Former President Joe Biden revoked Trump’s permit allowing Keystone to cross the US-Canada border hours after taking office in January 2021.  Since then, parts of the system — which runs through Alberta, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska — have been dismantled. ‘Virtually all of the permits along the way have expired,” Anthony Swift, a senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. “So it would be starting from ground one to resuscitate the project.” A White House spokesman didn’t comment on the matter.  Trump and other Republicans attacked Biden’s decision to kill the pipeline, blaming the move for increasing gas prices and using it to paint Democrats as anti-oil. The pipeline’s shift in fortunes unfolded despite Trump’s insistence that the US doesn’t need Canadian crude oil.  “We don’t need their oil and gas,” Trump said Thursday in a remote presentation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We have more than anybody.” The case of the Keystone pipeline underscores his zeal to revoke many Biden

Read More »

Oil Falls Recording Weekly Decline Amid Trade War Threats

Oil posted its first weekly decline this year after President Donald Trump threatened trade wars and demanded OPEC+ lower crude prices. West Texas Intermediate settled little changed above $74 a barrel after fluctuating between gains and losses for most of the session. Earlier on Friday, crude extended losses after Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated he’s open to discussing Ukraine and oil prices with Trump. This week, Trump had threatened more penalties on Moscow if Putin doesn’t “make a deal” to end the prolonged war in Ukraine. Recently imposed US sanctions on Russia’s oil have been tightening the global market, and loosening them may increase supplies available to customers in Asia that had been scrambling to seek alternatives. The sanctions were introduced before Trump took office to boost Ukraine’s leverage in possible peace negotiations. Oil markets have been reacting to Trump’s statements since he took office on Monday. The first week of his new term began with tariff threats aimed at Canada, Mexico and China, followed by a pledge that he would ask the OPEC+ producer group to “bring down the cost of oil.” “He just wants the price lower,” Nadia Martin Wiggen, a director at Svelland Capital, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “He wants gasoline prices lower for the consumer, and he wants oil prices just to be lower, at least than what the Biden administration had. On the flip side, he wants producers to keep producing and especially American ones, and that’s where we see him in a tough situation.” Futures in New York fell 4.1% this week, but remain higher for the year amid cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and the Russia sanctions. Some of the strength in crude and freight markets that followed the sanctions has since cooled. One of Trump’s executive orders this week

Read More »

Storm alert! How wild weather can wreak havoc on energy infrastructure

There is no doubt that with climate change comes more extreme weather. In the UK, the Met Office has been naming storms now for ten years. These have been coming with greater regularity, often bringing devastation in their wake. The 2023/24 storm season saw 12 named storms, the greatest number of named storms since the first season in 2015. Storms often cause devastation on the infrastructure that delivers our energy and for the workers responsible for keeping the lights on. Storms can cause billions of pounds of damage and can even put lives at risk. As the UK awaits the impact of Storm Eowyn, which is bringing gusts of up to 100mph across Ireland and Scotland, we have brought together some of significant impacts recent storms have caused. Wind turbine bursts into flames A wind turbine burst into flames as hurricane-force winds battered parts of Scotland in 2011. Firefighters were called as the huge 330ft turbine in North Ayrshire caught fire in the afternoon. However, the blaze died out within minutes of their arrival. North Sea rig floats away Dozens of workers were evacuated after Storm Babet in 2023 caused a North Sea oil rig east of Aberdeen lose anchors amid turbulent waves. Forty-five non-essential staff working aboard the Stena Spey were airlifted to other sites after four out of eight anchors became detached due to the severe weather. WATCH: Wind turbine sheds blades In December 2023, an Ayeshire wind turbine lost its blades and disintegrated as it was battered by Storm Gerrit. An onlooker captured the astonishing moment the 35m turbine at Auchencloigh farm span out of control. Irish Sea oil rig evacuated Last year 30 workers were evacuated from this oil rig in the Irish Sea but it was a preventative measure to ensure their safety. Petrofac (LON:PFC)

Read More »

USA Crude Oil Inventories Drop 1 Million Barrels WoW

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), decreased by 1.0 million barrels from the week ending January 10 to the week ending January 17, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. Crude oil stocks, excluding the SPR, stood at 411.7 million barrels on January 17, 412.7 million barrels on January 10, and 420.7 million barrels on January 19, 2024, the report revealed. Crude oil in the SPR came in at 394.6 million barrels on January 17, 394.3 million barrels on January 10, and 356.5 million barrels on January 19, 2024, the report showed. 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 1.621 billion barrels on January 17, the report revealed. This figure was down 3.9 million barrels week on week and up 24.2 million barrels year on year, the report outlined. “At 411.7 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about six percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA noted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. “Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 2.3 million barrels from last week and are one percent below the five year average for this time of year,” it added. “Finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 3.1 million barrels last week and are about six percent below the five year average for this time of year,” it continued. “Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 3.7 million barrels from last week and are eight percent above the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA went on to state. In its report, the EIA said U.S. crude

Read More »

Chevron Unlocks New Production in Tengiz Field onshore Kazakhstan

A Chevron Corp.-led consortium has achieved first oil at a third processing plant in the Tengiz oil field, which is now expected to ramp up output to one million barrels of oil equivalent a day. The Future Growth Project (FGP) is designed to raise the onshore field’s crude production by 260,000 barrels per day at full capacity, according to Chevron, which holds a 50 percent stake in the joint venture operating Tengiz. Chevron estimates 25.5 billion barrels of oil in place in Tengiz, which it says is the world’s deepest producing supergiant oilfield and the biggest single-trap producing reservoir. Last year a Wellhead Pressure Management Project (WPMP) was completed to optimize production. FGP and WPMP installed power systems with five Frame 9 gas turbine generators, added four large compression trains, installed a new centralized control center and enhanced sour gas handling and reinjection for long-term pressure maintenance. “This milestone concludes a multiyear project that completely revamped the gathering and processing capacity of one of the world’s largest oil fields that will provide significant economic benefit for the Republic of Kazakhstan”, said Clay Neff, president of Chevron for international exploration and production. The energy giant’s partners in Tengizchevroil LLP, the joint venture operating Tengiz, are United States compatriot Exxon Mobil Corp. with a 25 percent interest, Kazakhstani national oil and gas company JSC NC KazMunayGas (20 percent) and Russia’s Lukoil PJSC (five percent). Tengizchevroil also operates the nearby Korolev field, where Chevron estimates 1.6 billion barrels of oil in place. With total recoverable petroleum of 7.1 billion barrels to 10.9 billion barrels from the two fields, Tengiz and Korolev could satisfy the annual oil demand of entire countries, according to Chevron. “First oil at the Future Growth Project is the latest in a series of development milestones, including in the Gulf

Read More »

‘Interconnection processes must evolve’ to handle DER influx: DOE

Dive Brief: To unlock the full potential of distributed energy resources in the next five to 10 years, utilities and grid operators must improve DER interconnection processes by increasing data access, streamlining study workflows and revising cost allocation approaches, according to a Jan. 16 report from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange, or i2X. DER interconnection challenges are compounded by “significantly different resource availability, technology capabilities and grid impacts” for different technologies, such as wind, solar, small hydropower and energy storage, i2X said in its Distributed Energy Resource Interconnection Roadmap. “Interconnection delays can definitely be a huge impediment for DERs, especially on the nonresidential side … [and] can also be a big reason why developers choose to exit certain states even with seemingly good economic opportunities,” said Hanna Nuttall, a U.S. distributed storage research analyst with Wood Mackenzie. Dive Insight: From 2010 and 2023, the number of U.S. residential rooftop solar PV systems rose from 89,000 to 4.7 million as the capacity of community solar installations grew from 1 GW to 7 GW, according to the i2X road map. Globally, energy storage capacity is expected to quadruple from 2018 to 2030, driven in large part by electric vehicles and related equipment, i2X said. At the same time, interconnection waits are lengthening, even for relatively small DERs. In California, for example, the median interconnection wait for systems between 50 kW and 100 kW increased from about 60 days in 2010 to 100 days in 2022, i2X said. “This is really a problem that can plague systems of any size,” Nuttall said. “Anecdotally, you could have a 100-kW solar system stuck in the queue for years.” The i2X road map defines DERs as systems that meet three criteria:  Interconnected to distribution and sub-transmission systems not under Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Read More »

More questions than answers around Trump’s Stargate AI plans

“Leasing has always been the preference over building its own. Oracle has recently increased its focus on cloud services and ramped up its capex, but I’ve not seen evidence that the strategy of leasing rather than building has changed,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director for Synergy Research Group. Ellison appears to be taking the lead in this effort, and he’s the wrong one for this role, argues Rob Enderle, principal analyst with The Enderle Group. “It’s not that he can’t execute, it’s just that he’s been removed from technology for a while. This is probably a huge step too far for him, given his more recent background and level of engagement,” he said. Another question is the role for OpenAI. It still hasn’t figured out how to monetize ChatGPT and the company is bleeding money, requiring a significant cash infusion/investment from Microsoft. ChatGPT partner Microsoft is conspicuously absent from the announcement. This prompted speculation on X that the two companies were parting ways, a rather difficult thing to do given that Microsoft owns a 49% stake in OpenAI. For its part, Microsoft issued a glowing statement stating that their partnership remains in place through 2030 and that OpenAI had made recent contribution to the Azure service. But CEO Satya Nadella did get in a little dig in an interview with CNBC when the issue of funding the $500 billion project. “Look, all I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion,” he said, a reference to a recent promised investment of $80 billion in Microsoft data centers. Another missing player is Nvidia, which is usually involved in everything AI. Oracle has made a significant investment in deploying Nvidia product in its data centers, so you think that they would have been some involvement. But no, all an

Read More »

Data center growth puts unprecedented pressure on power grids

The spike in electricity needs is unprecedented, McKinsey wrote, and will be difficult to meet. In another report released this week, Goldman Sachs also predicts a surge in data center power demand, and expects an increase of 160% by 2030, compared to 2023 levels. Data center builds typically have timelines of 18 to 24 months, gas and renewable power plans have timelines of three to five years, and new transmission development can take seven to ten years. In fact, it’s the power transmission grid that’s often the biggest constraint, the research firm says, more even than the power generation capacity. According to a report by Grid Strategies, construction of new high-voltage transmission lines has actually slowed recently, dropping steadily from a peak of 4,000 miles of new high-voltage lines  in 2012 to just 55 in 2023. To meet demands, the DOE estimates that 115,000 miles will be needed by 2040, doubling current grid capacity. Companies are already planning ahead for shortfalls.

Read More »

US GPU export limits could bring cold war to AI, data center markets

Eighteen countries, including the UK, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, are exempted from the AI export caps. The Biden administration had previously banned the export of some powerful AI chips to China, Russia, and other adversaries in rules from 2022 and 2023. But other countries friendly to the US, including Mexico, Israel, India, and Saudi Arabia, would be subject to the quotas. The export limits would take effect 120 days from the Jan. 13 order, and it’s unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will amend or rewrite the rule, although Trump has targeted China as a primary economic competitor of the US. The cost of AI In addition to cutting off most of the world from large AI chip purchases, the rule will force countries such as China and Russia to pump up their own AI capabilities, ultimately reducing US AI leadership, claims Aible’s Sengupta.

Read More »

Sustainability, grid demands, AI workloads will challenge data center growth in 2025

Cloud training for AI models Uptime believes that most AI models will be trained in the cloud rather than on dedicated enterprise infrastructure, as cloud services provide a more cost-effective way to fine-tune foundation models for specific use cases. The incremental training required to fine-tune a foundation model can be done cost-effectively on cloud platforms without the need for a large, expensive on-premises cluster. Enterprises can leverage on-demand cloud resources to customize the foundation model as needed, without investing the capital and operational costs of dedicated hardware. “Because fine-tuning requires only a relatively small amount of training, for many it just wouldn’t make sense to buy a huge, expensive dedicated AI cluster for this purpose. The foundation model, which has already been trained by someone else, has taken the burden of most of the training away from us,” said Dr. Owen Rogers, research director for cloud computing at Uptime. “Instead, we could just use on-demand cloud services to tweak the foundation model for our needs, only paying for the resources we need for as long as we need them.” Data center collaboration with utilities Uptime expects new and expanded data center developers will be asked to provide or store power to support grids. That means data centers will need to actively collaborate with utilities to manage grid demand and stability, potentially shedding load or using local power sources during peak times. Uptime forecasts that data center operators “running non-latency-sensitive workloads, such as specific AI training tasks, could be financially incentivized or mandated to reduce power use when required.” “The context for all of this is that the [power] grid, even if there were no data centers, would have a problem meeting demand over time. They’re having to invest at a rate that is historically off the charts. It’s not just

Read More »

UK Government’s Bold AI Plan: A Game-Changer for Data Centers and Economic Growth?

The UK government has presently announced its comprehensive “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” positioning artificial intelligence as a cornerstone for economic growth and public service transformation over the next decade. The bold initiative, spearheaded by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, aims to make Britain a global leader in AI development and adoption, with significant implications for the data center industry.   Britain’s ambitious AI roadmap taps into the growing synergy between artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. With dedicated AI Growth Zones and a focus on sustainable energy, the UK is setting the stage for an AI-driven economy that aligns with the next generation of data center demands. The data center industry should watch these developments closely, as they signal opportunities for long-term growth in a rapidly evolving market.   AI Infrastructure Prioritization Meets Major Private Sector Investments    The UK government plan introduces “AI Growth Zones,” areas designed to streamline planning approvals for data centers and enhance access to energy infrastructure.  These zones will focus on de-industrialized regions, providing a dual benefit of revitalizing local economies and accelerating the rollout of AI infrastructure. The first such zone will be established in Culham, Oxfordshire, leveraging local expertise in sustainable energy research, including fusion technologies.   Leading tech firms, including Vantage Data Centers, Nscale, and Kyndryl, have committed £14 billion to AI infrastructure development under the plan, creating 13,250 jobs across the UK, according to a press release.  Vantage Data Centers alone plans to invest over £12 billion to establish one of Europe’s largest campuses in Wales and additional facilities nationwide, generating 11,500 jobs.   Plan Harnesses AI for Both Public, Private Sectors  A significant component of the plan is a proposed 20x increase in public compute capacity by 2030, starting with the development of a new supercomputer to support AI innovation. Alongside this supercharging of

Read More »

Prologis and Skybox Advance Warehouse Conversion Strategy with Illinois Data Center Sale

Prologis, among the global leaders in industrial real estate, has taken another major step into the data center market with the sale of a newly developed turnkey data center in Illinois. With the deal for the sale announced last December, partnering with Skybox Datacenters, Prologis had initially converted one of its existing warehouses into a 32 megawatt (MW) facility, demonstrating as far back as 2021 the growing appeal of adaptive reuse for digital infrastructure. As reported by Data Center Dynamics’ Dan Swinhoe: “Skybox said the facility was located in the Elk Grove village area of the city. Images shared by Skybox and Prologis suggest it was Chicago 1, the data center the two companies completed in early 2022 […] DCD reached out for more information. Prologis confirmed Chicago 1 has been sold; the powered shell has been completed, with the turnkey development is in process. The facility spans 190,000 sq ft on a ten-acre site.” The converted facility’s buyer, HMC Capital, sees this acquisition as a marquee asset for its newly launched DigiCo Infrastructure REIT, which targets high-quality data center investments across the United States and Australia. The deal highlights the rapid evolution of Prologis’ data center strategy and the increasing convergence of industrial real estate and digital infrastructure. Prologis’ Growing Presence in Data Centers Prologis is no stranger to data center development, having been featured in prior DCF coverage for its strategic moves into the rapidly burgeoning sector. The Illinois project reflects Prologis’ focus on unlocking higher-value uses for its vast portfolio of warehouses.  According to Dan Letter, President of Prologis, “Warehouse conversions in key markets offer a compelling growth opportunity while delivering outsized returns to our investors and meeting customer demand for digital infrastructure.” To support this strategy, Prologis has aggressively scaled its power procurement capabilities, securing 1.6

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 »