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EIA: US crude oil inventories up 3 million bbl

US crude oil inventories for the week ended Sept. 18, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 3.0 million bbl from the previous week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). At 426.4 million bbl, US crude oil inventories are about 2% above the 5-year average for this time of year, the […]

US crude oil inventories for the week ended Sept. 18, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 3.0 million bbl from the previous week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

At 426.4 million bbl, US crude oil inventories are about 2% above the 5-year average for this time of year, the EIA report indicated.

Gasoline inventories decreased 1.7 million bbl, 6% below the 5-year average. Distillate inventories decreased 400,000 million bbl, 12% below the 5-year average.

Propane-propylene inventories decreased 1.2 million bbl, 20% above the 5-year average. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased by 0.1 million bbl for the week.

US crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.8 million b/d for the week ended Sept. 18, which was 519,000 b/d less than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 94% of capacity.

Gasoline output averaged 9.6 million b/d, and distillate production decreased to 5.2 million b/d.

Crude oil imports decreased 1.2 million b/d to 5.9 million b/d. The 4-week average of 6.6 million b/d is 5.3% above the year-ago level. Gasoline imports averaged 401,000 b/d; distillate imports averaged 85,000 b/d.

Over the past four weeks, total product supplied averaged 20.6 million b/d, up 0.5% year over year. The 4-week average for gasoline product supplied decreased 0.8% year over year to 8.8 million b/d, while the 4-week average for distillate product supplied increased 0.3% to 3.6 million b/d. The 4-week average for jet fuel product supplied increased 6.2% year over year.

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Lenovo expands virtualization portfolio for AI

On the services front, Lenovo is restructuring its infrastructure deployment offerings around three defined service levels: Standard Deploy, Premier Deploy, and Premier Deploy Plus. The options are designed to allow customers to select a deployment model based on multiple factors, including project complexity, business criticality, internal IT capabilities and the

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EIA: US crude oil inventories up 3 million bbl

US crude oil inventories for the week ended Sept. 18, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 3.0 million bbl from the previous week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). At 426.4 million bbl, US crude oil inventories are about 2% above the 5-year average for this time of year, the EIA report indicated. Gasoline inventories decreased 1.7 million bbl, 6% below the 5-year average. Distillate inventories decreased 400,000 million bbl, 12% below the 5-year average. Propane-propylene inventories decreased 1.2 million bbl, 20% above the 5-year average. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased by 0.1 million bbl for the week. US crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.8 million b/d for the week ended Sept. 18, which was 519,000 b/d less than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 94% of capacity. Gasoline output averaged 9.6 million b/d, and distillate production decreased to 5.2 million b/d. Crude oil imports decreased 1.2 million b/d to 5.9 million b/d. The 4-week average of 6.6 million b/d is 5.3% above the year-ago level. Gasoline imports averaged 401,000 b/d; distillate imports averaged 85,000 b/d. Over the past four weeks, total product supplied averaged 20.6 million b/d, up 0.5% year over year. The 4-week average for gasoline product supplied decreased 0.8% year over year to 8.8 million b/d, while the 4-week average for distillate product supplied increased 0.3% to 3.6 million b/d. The 4-week average for jet fuel product supplied increased 6.2% year over year.

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TotalEnergies, Amni take FID on $1.108-billion Ima gas project

TotalEnergies EP Nigeria Ltd. has taken final investment decision (FID) to develop Ima gas field, which straddles the OML 112 and OML 117 offshore licenses in Nigeria, with partner Amni International Petroleum Development Co. Ltd. (Amni), targeting gas resources discovered alongside the original Ima oil accumulation. The project has an estimated development cost of US$1.108 billion and independently confirmed gross reserves of about 1.28 tcf of non-associated gas. At plateau, it is designed to produce about 350 MMscfd (more than 60,000 boe/d) for at least 8 years, Amni said Sept. 23. The shallow-water Ima gas field near Bonny Island will be developed through a single platform tied to Nigeria LNG (TotalEnergies, 15%) by a 22-km pipeline, with power supplied from shore, no flaring, and permanent methane detection and monitoring. First gas is targeted for October 2028. Once on stream, the field is expected to supply about one-third of the gas required for the Nigeria LNG Train 7 expansion, which is expected to increase liquefaction capacity to 30 million tonnes/year (tpy) from 22 million tpy, TotalEnergies said in a separate release. The FID follows a 2024 heads of terms agreement and completion of technical, commercial, and contractual work, including front-end engineering design (FEED) and execution of project agreements, AMNI said. The project will now move into engineering, procurement, and construction. The decision marks another step in TotalEnergies’ gas strategy in Nigeria. “After the Ubeta project sanctioned in 2024 and expected to start-up next year, Ima demonstrates again our ability to unlock new low-cost and low-emissions gas resources, following the incentives introduced by the Nigerian Government for non-associated gas developments,” said Nicolas Terraz, president of exploration and production at TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies operates the project with a 40% interest. Amni holds 60%. Amni’s Nigerian portfolio contains more than 60 million bbl of oil

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QatarEnergy NFE LNG Train 1 to start 1H 2027; Ras Laffan repairs to take 3 years

QatarEnergy expects the 8-million tonne/year (tpy) first train of its 32-million tpy North Field East (NFE) LNG expansion project to begin operations in first-half 2027, Reuters reported, noting that the timing of additional trains would depend on ​the Strait of Hormuz crisis. Speaking at the Qatar Economic Forum Special Edition in New York, QatarEnergy chief executive officer (CEO) and Qatari minister of energy affairs, Saad al-Kaabi, attributed the uncertainty to delays in delivering equipment needed for the expansion caused by the Strait of Hormuz disruption. Regarding damage to Qatar’s natural gas infrastructure sustained during the Iran war and its possible return, al-Kaabi said that repairs to the two LNG trains damaged at Ras Laffan (17% of its production capacity) would take 3 years. A damaged gas-to-liquids (GTL) train is expected to return to service first-quarter 2027. Al-Kaabi expects “a few” NFE trains to start production as 2027 progresses, and output from the 16-million tpy North Field South (NFS) expansion to begin in 2028, according to Reuters. The NFE and NFS projects are part of the overall North Field expansion program that also includes the North Field West project, which together will raise Qatar’s LNG production capacity to 142 million tpy from the current 77 million tpy. Al-Kaabi also thanked Qatar’s neighbors for being willing to allow construction of a gas pipeline across their territories to bypass Hormuz, while noting that doing so would be “redundant” and made “no economic sense” in light of the already underway North Field expansion project. “As for resuming operations,” he added, “Qatar is ready to resume normal operations within a few weeks of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.” More generally, al-Kaabi rejected the notion that the Strait of Hormuz was obsolete, saying that it “carries trade in all products, not only oil and

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ESENTIA to acquire Guadalajara-Manzanillo natural gas pipeline system

ESENTIA Energy Development SAB de CV, Mexico City, has agreed to acquire 100% of the equity interests of Energía Occidente de México S de RL de CV (EOM) from TC Energy Corp., Calgary, for a gross purchase price of $400 million. EOM owns and operates the 313-km Guadalajara-Manzanillo natural gas pipeline system, which runs from the Guadalajara area in Jalisco to Manzanillo, Colima, and is directly interconnected with ESENTIA’s Villa de Reyes-Aguascalientes-Guadalajara (VAG) pipeline system operated by Esentia Pipeline de Occidente S de RL de CV, an indirect subsidiary of ESENTIA. The pipeline transports up to 500 MMcfd of natural gas, connecting imported LNG supply near Manzanillo and continental gas supply near Guadalajara to power plants and industrial customers in Colima and Jalisco. Upon closing, the acquisition will extend ESENTIA’s pipeline network to the Port of Manzanillo on Mexico’s Pacific coast, making the company the only private operator with an integrated natural gas pipeline system connecting the Permian basin in Texas to Mexico’s Pacific coast, the company said in a release Sept. 21. The deal is part of ESENTIA’s strategy to build a cross-border transportation system and would “expand ESENTIA’s ability to serve existing and prospective customers within the combined system’s area of influence, including demand from power generation, industrial customers and potential LNG-related projects,” said Daniel Bustos, chief executive officer. ESENTIA also highlighted construction of its Aguascalientes Compression Station, which is expected to increase capacity on the VAG pipeline system beginning in early 2027. The project is part of the company’s three-phase expansion plan, which includes a total estimated investment of $680 million and an increase of 660 MMcfd in natural gas transportation capacity. For TC Energy, the transaction creates “optionality to redeploy proceeds from a mature asset towards high-value growth opportunities across our North American footprint,” said François

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Energy Department Announces $99 Million for 21 Projects to Advance U.S. Geothermal Energy Development

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced more than $99 million for 21 projects selected to advance geothermal energy development across the United States. The projects will conduct field-scale tests of next-generation geothermal technologies and exploration drilling to characterize and potentially confirm promising geothermal resources.  Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the Energy Department is advancing American geothermal innovation to unlock the nation’s abundant domestic energy resources. Geothermal can provide reliable, around-the-clock power to help meet growing demand while strengthening U.S. energy security. “These projects will empower American innovators to unlock the tremendous geothermal resources beneath our feet,” said DOE Under Secretary of Energy Kyle Haustveit. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re advancing next-generation geothermal technologies that can lower costs, strengthen American energy dominance, and turn more of our vast domestic geothermal resources into reliable and affordable power.” The 21 projects will advance geothermal development in two key areas. Five projects will conduct field-scale enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) tests to validate technologies under real-world conditions, while 16 additional projects will conduct exploration drilling to identify and characterize promising next-generation geothermal resources. Together, these efforts will help reduce technical and development risk and provide the information needed to support future commercial projects and investment.   Data generated by these projects will be publicly available through DOE’s Geothermal Data Repository (GDR), giving industry, researchers, and other stakeholders access to information from the field tests and geothermal exploration activities. Making these data available can extend the value of the projects beyond individual sites by helping inform future technology development and geothermal exploration across the industry.  Learn more about the selected projects here.  Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the

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INA commissions new delayed coker at Rijeka refinery

Croatia’s INA Industrija Nafte DD has started up a new delayed coking unit (DCU) at its 90,000-b/d Rijeka refinery along the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, marking a major milestone in the refinery’s upgrading project. Following mechanical completion and commissioning, INA introduced feedstock into the DCU on Sept. 1, beginning production, majority owner MOL Group said in a release Sept. 21. The unit has operated continuously since startup and has reached about 70% of design capacity, the company said. The DCU—which  converts heavy refinery residues into higher-value products—has produced all key products at required quality and is anticipated to increase diesel production by as much as 30% from the same crude volume. MOL Group said the new DCU unit—once fully operable—also will eliminate Croatia’s need to import vacuum gas oil (VGO). The Rijeka refinery upgrade represents an investment of nearly €700 million, which is included in a combined €1.3-billion joint investment by INA and MOL Group in refining and logistics modernization during the past 12 years. “The start-up of the new unit went really well,” said Zsuzsanna Ortutay, president of INA’s management board, adding that the DCU would improve the sustainability and profitability of INA’s refining business while supporting energy supply in Croatia and the surrounding region. INA  plans to increase throughput and optimize process performance at the new unit gradually, with stable operation anticipated by yearend, followed by final plant performance testing and project closeout activities. Rijeka DCU project background INA awarded a lump-sum, turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction contract for the project to Maire Tecnimont SPA subsidiary KT-Kinetics Technology SPA in December 2019. The contract covered a new delayed coking complex with coke handling and ship-loading facilities, a sour-water stripper, and amine recovery units. It also included modifications to the existing hydrocracker, sulfur recovery unit, utilities, and

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Roundtable: Redefining Critical Infrastructure

Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with

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How Communities Can Plan for AI Data Centers Before the Projects Arrive

The collision between AI infrastructure development and community opposition has become one of the defining data center stories of 2026. Developers are pursuing larger campuses, more power and compressed delivery schedules as AI accelerates demand for computing capacity. Meanwhile, local planning boards, elected officials and residents are increasingly being asked to make decisions about facilities whose scale, energy requirements and technological purpose may be unlike anything previously contemplated in their comprehensive plans. That gap is where Ilissa Miller believes much of the conflict begins. Miller, founder and CEO of iMiller Public Relations and a board member of the Open Infrastructure Exchange (OIX), joined the Data Center Frontier Show to discuss the OIX Digital Infrastructure Framework, an effort designed to give municipalities a more systematic way to think about data centers and other digital infrastructure before an individual development application lands in front of them. The idea is straightforward: communities routinely create long-range plans defining where homes, commercial development, industry and other land uses should go. Digital infrastructure should be part of that process as well. “Our vision for the framework was to help solve the problem by empowering communities to think about digital infrastructure,” Miller said, so municipalities can incorporate it into their comprehensive master plans and maintain control over how land is ultimately used. That distinction is key. The framework is not intended to convince communities to approve data centers. Nor does it prescribe what a town or county should decide. Instead, Miller said, it is meant to help public officials ask the right questions early enough to make those decisions deliberately. The Data Center May Not Be in the Plan One of the industry’s recurring problems is deceptively basic: many municipalities never anticipated data centers when writing their zoning codes and comprehensive plans. A parcel might already be

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Executive Roundtable: AI Infrastructure Under Pressure

Matt Vincent is Editor in Chief of Data Center Frontier, where he leads editorial strategy and coverage focused on the infrastructure powering cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and the digital economy. A veteran B2B technology journalist with more than two decades of experience, Vincent specializes in the intersection of data centers, power, cooling, and emerging AI-era infrastructure. Since assuming the EIC role in 2023, he has helped guide Data Center Frontier’s coverage of the industry’s transition into the gigawatt-scale AI era, with a focus on hyperscale development, behind-the-meter power strategies, liquid cooling architectures, and the evolving energy demands of high-density compute, while working closely with the Digital Infrastructure Group at Endeavor Business Media to expand the brand’s analytical and multimedia footprint. Vincent also hosts The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, where he interviews industry leaders across hyperscale, colocation, utilities, and the data center supply chain to examine the technologies and business models reshaping digital infrastructure. Since its inception he serves as Head of Content for the Data Center Frontier Trends Summit. Before becoming Editor in Chief, he served in multiple senior editorial roles across Endeavor Business Media’s digital infrastructure portfolio, with coverage spanning data centers and hyperscale infrastructure, structured cabling and networking, telecom and datacom, IP physical security, and wireless and Pro AV markets. He began his career in 2005 within PennWell’s Advanced Technology Division and later held senior editorial positions supporting brands such as Cabling Installation & Maintenance, Lightwave Online, Broadband Technology Report, and Smart Buildings Technology. Vincent is a frequent moderator, interviewer, and keynote speaker at industry events including the HPC Forum, where he delivers forward-looking analysis on how AI and high-performance computing are reshaping digital infrastructure. He graduated with honors from Indiana University Bloomington with a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives in southern New Hampshire with

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California joins US states clamping down on data center gold rush

“Dismissing fears around water consumption, for example, by showing a spreadsheet at a local planning committee meeting, doesn’t resolve concerns for a community that is already suspicious,” he said. Community opposition “is real, and it’s everywhere,” and the new strategic pillar for data center builders and operators is social outreach, Kimball noted. Those proposing data centers must be able to provide credible answers about usage and community impacts, listen to concerns, and commit to transparency. Most enterprises aren’t building gigawatt campuses, he pointed out, but they are paying the price downstream in colocation availability, lead times, pricing, and other factors. Predictability is the big question, supply is already tight, and every delayed project removes capacity factored into forecasts.

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Communities are blocking data centers before they’re even proposed

“Dismissing fears around water consumption, for example, by showing a spreadsheet at a local planning committee meeting, doesn’t resolve concerns for a community that is already suspicious,” he said. Community opposition “is real, and it’s everywhere,” and the new strategic pillar for data center builders and operators is social outreach, Kimball noted. Those proposing data centers must be able to provide credible answers about usage and community impacts, listen to concerns, and commit to transparency. Most enterprises aren’t building gigawatt campuses, he pointed out, but they are paying the price downstream in colocation availability, lead times, pricing, and other factors. Predictability is the big question, supply is already tight, and every delayed project removes capacity factored into forecasts.

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Data Centre West 2026: Alberta Moves From Data Center Ambition to Execution

Firm Power Is an Architecture That brought the morning back to its recurring problem: What counts as available power? During the “Solving for Power” panel, moderator Lillian Kasa of Metlen Energy & Metals argued that data centers cannot operate on announcements. They need reliable electricity delivered on a schedule and backed by a commercial structure that can be financed. Margarita Patria of Charles River Associates made the distinction even sharper. Firm power is not merely generation. It is generation, transmission and fuel availability working together. Todd Detling of FortisAlberta added an important Alberta-specific qualification. Despite perceptions that the province had substantial transmission capacity available for new development, FortisAlberta is encountering constraints, particularly around the Edmonton and Calgary fringes. At the distribution level, the demand is already material. Detling said FortisAlberta has connected nearly 80 MW of data center load over the past several years, has approximately another 80 MW in the build queue, and has received roughly 300 MW in additional requests. Those smaller increments matter in a market dominated rhetorically by gigawatt announcements. They are another indication that developers are searching for power pathways they can execute now. AI Is Not Just a Bigger Load Tesla’s Sean Jones added another technical wrinkle: AI training loads can change extremely quickly. Data center power planning traditionally focuses heavily on annual consumption, peak demand and hourly load. GPU clusters can create significant changes at the second or even sub-second level. Jones described AI training demand falling from full load to around 30% in less than a second. That kind of movement can be difficult for onsite turbines and reciprocating generators to follow and potentially disruptive to the grid. Battery energy storage is therefore taking on a different role. The familiar data center battery story is backup power. The emerging AI story is

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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