One option for electric vehicle fires? Let them burn.

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

One option for electric vehicle fires? Let them burn.

In the fall of 2024, a trucking company in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, temporarily stored a storm-damaged Tesla at its yard. A few weeks later, the car burst into flames that grew out of control within seconds, some shooting out 30 feet. A local fire company tried in vain to squelch the blaze, spraying more than 2,000 gallons of water on the vehicle. Eventually, the firefighters requested help from a fire company in neighboring Bristol Township, led by volunteer fire chief Howard McGoldrick. He’d been fighting fires since 1989, but this conflagration was unusual: It was a chemical fire in a lithium-ion battery, meaning it provided its own heat, fuel, and oxygen. And it was incredibly challenging to extinguish. McGoldrick was encountering fires like this more and more often. The previous year, he says, several rowhouses were badly burned after overcharged lithium-ion batteries in racing drones ignited inside. In another nearby incident, old lithium-ion biomedical devices at a scrapyard got soaked in a rainstorm and combusted. The Tesla fire felt like a breaking point. “We were like, ‘Okay, this is just too many incidents in a short amount of time,’” McGoldrick recalls. He went in search of someone who could help his company get better at responding to fires in lithium-ion batteries. He found Patrick Durham. Durham is the owner of (and mustache behind) StacheD Training, one of a growing number of private companies helping first responders learn how to deal with lithium-ion battery safety, including electric-vehicle fires. Although there isn’t solid data on the frequency of EV battery fires, it’s no secret to EV makers that these fires are happening. Yet the manufacturers offer no standardized steps on how to fight them or avoid them in the first place, leaving first responders scrambling to search through each car’s emergency response guide—something that’s hard to do when you’re standing in front of an immolating vehicle. In this void, Durham offers a wealth of resources to first responders, from easy-to-follow video tutorials to hours-long in-person workshops. In 2024 alone, Durham says he trained approximately 2,000 first responders around the country. As more people buy EVs, in part to help address climate change, the need for this training has only grown; in less than two years, Durham’s YouTube channel has attracted almost 30,000 subscribers. (The US doesn’t currently collect data on the frequency or causes of EV fires, but this year the US Fire Administration and the Fire Safety Research Institute are rolling out a new data collection system for fire departments.) A circumspect man with a shaved head, brown eyes, and a thick horseshoe mustache framing his mouth, Durham previously worked as a mechanical engineer developing battery boxes for EVs. He is also a volunteer firefighter, and in 2020 he offered his first training on fires in lithium-ion batteries to his local department. From there, his reputation spread by word of mouth. Today, StacheD Training is Durham’s full-time work. He’s also the captain of his local volunteer fire department in Troy, Michigan. As more EVs hit the road, what worries Durham most isn’t just the growing likelihood of battery fires—it’s their intensity. “The severity of the fire is significant compared to a regular vehicle fire,” he says. “The traditional car fires that you and I grew up with—the majority of those always start in the engine compartment,” says Jim Stevenson, a fire chief from rural Michigan who has taken Durham’s training. “So we basically get there, we pop the car hood, and then we put out the fire from there, and if it gets into the inner compartment of the car? Not a big deal. You spray it down with the hose, and it’s out in no time.” With EV fires, Stevenson says, “it’s just a completely different monster.” SHAWN HAZEN An EV battery is essentially a tightly packed array of thousands of cells, each of which ranges from approximately the size and shape of an AA battery to the size of a legal envelope, depending on the battery model. If a single cell gets damaged–such as by getting crushed, overcharged, or waterlogged–that cell can heat uncontrollably in a process called thermal runaway. It will release so much heat and flammable gas that it generates its own fire, which spreads to the other cells. Older lithium-ion battery packs exploded “like a pipe bomb” when that happened, Durham says; today’s battery packs have release valves so that during thermal runaway they avoid an explosion by instead spewing flames in what Durham describes as “essentially a blowtorch.” The location of an EV’s battery—underneath the car, between its axles, within a protective case—complicates things further. The batteries are much safer from collision damage than they would be under the hood, but they are also much harder to reach and douse if they ignite. The result? Fires such as one at an Illinois Rivian plant in 2024, where one EV caught fire and approximately 50 cars parked nearby ended up burning. Or one in Hollywood, Florida, in 2023, where a Tesla was accidentally driven off a dock and burst into flames even though it was underwater. Durham worries that if an EV battery catches fire in a high-speed crash, it will burn so intensely that first responders won’t be able to save anyone inside the vehicle. Putting out a fire in an internal-combustion car might take as little as 30 minutes and a few hundred gallons of water, he notes, while an electric car battery fire could take upwards of 4,000 gallons of water and many hours to extinguish—and much more for commercial trucks. Indeed, when a Tesla Semi drove off Interstate 80 in Northern California in 2024 and burst into flames, first responders had to douse it with 50,000 gallons of water and close the highway for 15 hours. What’s more, with EVs, it’s never entirely clear whether the fire is truly out. Cars may ignite, or reignite, weeks or even months after the battery is damaged or a battery fire is initially suppressed. Durham points to one salvaged Tesla in California that burst into flames 308 days after it had flooded in a Florida hurricane. The vehicle hadn’t initially ignited, but saltwater intrusion into the battery pack eventually corroded it enough to produce a chemical fire leading to thermal runaway. According to Durham, the simple truth is that the best way to manage EV fires right now is to let them burn—while making sure to protect the surrounding area, including other vehicles and people’s homes. Allowing the fire to run its course will ideally also destroy any cells that might otherwise ignite later. This goes against firefighters’ instincts. When they respond to EV fires, they will spray water “because they want to do something to fix the problem,” he says. [But] … it’s not really doing anything.” Stevenson worries about how bystanders will perceive first responders waiting out a blaze. “It’s going to be ugly,” he says, “because the public’s going to see us standing on the side [of the] road just watching it burn, which looks bad for us.” But at the same time, he adds, “we don’t have [an] actual way of getting to the battery to knock it out.” For now, Durham’s training focuses on the options that first responders do have with EV fires. An important if simple one is using a fire blanket to cover a vehicle and prevent the blaze from spreading as it burns out. Although they hadn’t yet received Durham’s training, that’s exactly what McGoldrick and his crew did when they responded to the burning Tesla last fall: After the facility used a forklift to move the burning car to an isolated part of the yard, first responders covered it with a fire blanket. The car reignited several times over the next few days, McGoldrick says, “but it was contained. We just put it in the middle of an open lot and basically let it go.” It’s a significant cultural shift that first responders need to make, Durham says, and there’s another one, too: being extra-vigilant about the personal protective equipment they wear from the first moment they arrive at a burning EV. There isn’t yet enough information to compare the toxicity of EV fires and those in gas-powered cars, but Durham warns that first responders could inhale high levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals from burning EVs. Overall, Durham says, he is not against EVs, but he thinks there needs to be a change in attitude to handle them safely. When an EV battery catches fire, he says, “until that battery has been removed from the vehicle and shredded and fully recycled, it’s always going be a hazard.” Maya L. Kapoor is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about climate change, biodiversity, and environmental justice.

A local fire company tried in vain to squelch the blaze, spraying more than 2,000 gallons of water on the vehicle. Eventually, the firefighters requested help from a fire company in neighboring Bristol Township, led by volunteer fire chief Howard McGoldrick. He’d been fighting fires since 1989, but this conflagration was unusual: It was a chemical fire in a lithium-ion battery, meaning it provided its own heat, fuel, and oxygen. And it was incredibly challenging to extinguish.

McGoldrick was encountering fires like this more and more often. The previous year, he says, several rowhouses were badly burned after overcharged lithium-ion batteries in racing drones ignited inside. In another nearby incident, old lithium-ion biomedical devices at a scrapyard got soaked in a rainstorm and combusted.

The Tesla fire felt like a breaking point. “We were like, ‘Okay, this is just too many incidents in a short amount of time,’” McGoldrick recalls. He went in search of someone who could help his company get better at responding to fires in lithium-ion batteries. He found Patrick Durham.

Durham is the owner of (and mustache behind) StacheD Training, one of a growing number of private companies helping first responders learn how to deal with lithium-ion battery safety, including electric-vehicle fires.

Although there isn’t solid data on the frequency of EV battery fires, it’s no secret to EV makers that these fires are happening. Yet the manufacturers offer no standardized steps on how to fight them or avoid them in the first place, leaving first responders scrambling to search through each car’s emergency response guide—something that’s hard to do when you’re standing in front of an immolating vehicle.

In this void, Durham offers a wealth of resources to first responders, from easy-to-follow video tutorials to hours-long in-person workshops. In 2024 alone, Durham says he trained approximately 2,000 first responders around the country. As more people buy EVs, in part to help address climate change, the need for this training has only grown; in less than two years, Durham’s YouTube channel has attracted almost 30,000 subscribers. (The US doesn’t currently collect data on the frequency or causes of EV fires, but this year the US Fire Administration and the Fire Safety Research Institute are rolling out a new data collection system for fire departments.)

A circumspect man with a shaved head, brown eyes, and a thick horseshoe mustache framing his mouth, Durham previously worked as a mechanical engineer developing battery boxes for EVs. He is also a volunteer firefighter, and in 2020 he offered his first training on fires in lithium-ion batteries to his local department. From there, his reputation spread by word of mouth. Today, StacheD Training is Durham’s full-time work. He’s also the captain of his local volunteer fire department in Troy, Michigan.

As more EVs hit the road, what worries Durham most isn’t just the growing likelihood of battery fires—it’s their intensity. “The severity of the fire is significant compared to a regular vehicle fire,” he says.

“The traditional car fires that you and I grew up with—the majority of those always start in the engine compartment,” says Jim Stevenson, a fire chief from rural Michigan who has taken Durham’s training. “So we basically get there, we pop the car hood, and then we put out the fire from there, and if it gets into the inner compartment of the car? Not a big deal. You spray it down with the hose, and it’s out in no time.” With EV fires, Stevenson says, “it’s just a completely different monster.”

An EV battery is essentially a tightly packed array of thousands of cells, each of which ranges from approximately the size and shape of an AA battery to the size of a legal envelope, depending on the battery model. If a single cell gets damaged–such as by getting crushed, overcharged, or waterlogged–that cell can heat uncontrollably in a process called thermal runaway. It will release so much heat and flammable gas that it generates its own fire, which spreads to the other cells.

Older lithium-ion battery packs exploded “like a pipe bomb” when that happened, Durham says; today’s battery packs have release valves so that during thermal runaway they avoid an explosion by instead spewing flames in what Durham describes as “essentially a blowtorch.” The location of an EV’s battery—underneath the car, between its axles, within a protective case—complicates things further. The batteries are much safer from collision damage than they would be under the hood, but they are also much harder to reach and douse if they ignite.

The result? Fires such as one at an Illinois Rivian plant in 2024, where one EV caught fire and approximately 50 cars parked nearby ended up burning. Or one in Hollywood, Florida, in 2023, where a Tesla was accidentally driven off a dock and burst into flames even though it was underwater.

Durham worries that if an EV battery catches fire in a high-speed crash, it will burn so intensely that first responders won’t be able to save anyone inside the vehicle. Putting out a fire in an internal-combustion car might take as little as 30 minutes and a few hundred gallons of water, he notes, while an electric car battery fire could take upwards of 4,000 gallons of water and many hours to extinguish—and much more for commercial trucks. Indeed, when a Tesla Semi drove off Interstate 80 in Northern California in 2024 and burst into flames, first responders had to douse it with 50,000 gallons of water and close the highway for 15 hours.

What’s more, with EVs, it’s never entirely clear whether the fire is truly out. Cars may ignite, or reignite, weeks or even months after the battery is damaged or a battery fire is initially suppressed. Durham points to one salvaged Tesla in California that burst into flames 308 days after it had flooded in a Florida hurricane. The vehicle hadn’t initially ignited, but saltwater intrusion into the battery pack eventually corroded it enough to produce a chemical fire leading to thermal runaway.

According to Durham, the simple truth is that the best way to manage EV fires right now is to let them burn—while making sure to protect the surrounding area, including other vehicles and people’s homes. Allowing the fire to run its course will ideally also destroy any cells that might otherwise ignite later.

This goes against firefighters’ instincts. When they respond to EV fires, they will spray water “because they want to do something to fix the problem,” he says. [But] … it’s not really doing anything.”

Stevenson worries about how bystanders will perceive first responders waiting out a blaze. “It’s going to be ugly,” he says, “because the public’s going to see us standing on the side [of the] road just watching it burn, which looks bad for us.” But at the same time, he adds, “we don’t have [an] actual way of getting to the battery to knock it out.”

For now, Durham’s training focuses on the options that first responders do have with EV fires. An important if simple one is using a fire blanket to cover a vehicle and prevent the blaze from spreading as it burns out. Although they hadn’t yet received Durham’s training, that’s exactly what McGoldrick and his crew did when they responded to the burning Tesla last fall: After the facility used a forklift to move the burning car to an isolated part of the yard, first responders covered it with a fire blanket. The car reignited several times over the next few days, McGoldrick says, “but it was contained. We just put it in the middle of an open lot and basically let it go.”

It’s a significant cultural shift that first responders need to make, Durham says, and there’s another one, too: being extra-vigilant about the personal protective equipment they wear from the first moment they arrive at a burning EV. There isn’t yet enough information to compare the toxicity of EV fires and those in gas-powered cars, but Durham warns that first responders could inhale high levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals from burning EVs.

Overall, Durham says, he is not against EVs, but he thinks there needs to be a change in attitude to handle them safely. When an EV battery catches fire, he says, “until that battery has been removed from the vehicle and shredded and fully recycled, it’s always going be a hazard.”

Maya L. Kapoor is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about climate change, biodiversity, and environmental justice.

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.

Ruckus makes some noise with preconfigured switches for AV-over-IP networks

As it turns out, that same ICX core platform family that was originally developed by Foundry Networks two decades ago is still very much alive and well in Ruckus today. “Customers have been on the ICX platform for decades,” Giordano said. “What we’ve been able to do successfully is cross-sell

Four new vulnerabilities found in Ingress NGINX

NGINX is a reverse proxy/load balancer that generally acts as the front-end web traffic receiver and directs it to the application service for data transformation. Ingress NGINX is a version used in Kubernetes as the controller for traffic coming into the infrastructure. It takes care of mapping traffic to pods

Chevron eyeing 7-10% output growth, more efficiency gains in 2026

Offshore holdings drive growth in 2026. Wirth noted that 2025 acquisitions and project startups are the main drivers of an expected rise of about 200,000 boe/d. Roughly 125,000 boe/d of that is forecast to come from Guyana while the Gulf of Mexico should provide 60,000 boe/d more than in 2025

ConocoPhillips CEO on mergers and acquisitions: “Been there, done that”

While reporting fourth-quarter earnings of more than $1.4 billion of net profits on total revenues of $14.2 billion, executives pointed out that the former Marathon assets have contributed to growing their Lower 48 reserves to more than 2 decades worth of production. During the fourth quarter, total production in the Lower

WTI, Brent Gain as Talks Ease Conflict Fears

Oil edged marginally higher after a choppy session as investors assessed the status of nuclear talks between the US and Iran. West Texas Intermediate settled above $63 a barrel, with markets reacting sharply to headlines tied to the meeting. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the talks had a “good start,” even as the Wall Street Journal reported that Tehran stood by its refusal to end enrichment of nuclear fuel, a major sticking point for the US. The escalation in the Middle East, which provides about a third of the world’s crude, has added a risk premium to benchmark oil prices. Traders have weighed the geopolitical tensions against an outlook for oversupply. Still, futures in New York notched their first weekly retreat since mid-December as the US-Iran talks helped allay concerns over a broader conflict in the region. Prices also extended gains after data showed US consumer sentiment unexpectedly improved to the highest in six months, calming some concerns over an economic slowdown in the country that could lead to weaker oil demand. Meanwhile, in trilateral negotiations with the US, Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange prisoners for the first time in five months as they sought to end their four-year conflict. Talks were making progress, with results expected “in the coming weeks,” President Donald Trump’s special envoy said. Saudi Arabia cut prices for buyers in Asia by less than expected, signaling confidence in demand for its barrels, although prices have still been reduced to the lowest levels since late 2020. Oil Prices WTI for March delivery settled 0.4% higher at $63.55 a barrel in New York. Brent for April settlement rose 0.7% to close at $68.05 a barrel. What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on the Rigzone Energy Network. The Rigzone Energy

Saudis Cut Key Oil Price for Asian Buyers

Saudi Arabia cut the price of its main oil grade for buyers in Asia to the lowest in years, a further sign that global supplies are running ahead of demand. State oil producer Saudi Aramco will reduce the price of its Arab Light grade by 30 cents a barrel to parity with the regional benchmark for March, according to a price list seen by Bloomberg. That brings pricing for the kingdom’s most plentiful crude blend to the lowest level since late 2020. Still, Aramco’s cut was not as deep as buyers expected, coming in smaller than even the most modest estimate of a reduction in a survey of refiners and traders. That offers a sign that the kingdom has faith in demand for its barrels and Aramco’s Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser has previously said that fears of a glut are overblown. Saudi Arabia’s monthly crude pricing is keenly watched by traders across the globe as it sets the tone for other sellers in the world’s top producing regions. Asia is the biggest market for Middle Eastern crude, with the prices set for refiners determining the profitability of processing and influencing the cost of fuels like gasoline and diesel the world over. Aramco also cut pricing for its Arab Medium and Arab Heavy crude grades to Asia to the lowest levels since mid 2020, while it increased prices for the Extra Light and Super Light blends. That split reflects that dynamic in the Middle East market where prices for the heavier and more sulfurous crudes that are most plentiful in the region have trailed those for the lighter blends. The OPEC+ producers group, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to keep production levels steady during talks on Feb. 1, maintaining an earlier decision to forgo output increases to avoid

Shell to Pause Kazakh Oil and Gas Investments

Shell Plc will pause investment in Kazakhstan as it navigates legal claims from the OPEC+ nation against oil majors that could stretch into the billions of dollars, Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan said. Kazakhstan is pressing multiple western oil companies for compensation across a series of cases both in the Central Asian country’s courts and in international arbitration. This month, it emerged that Shell and partners lost a dispute that could see them pay as much as $4 billion. There is also ongoing litigation about sulfur breaches and project costs. “It does impact our appetite to invest further in Kazakhstan,” Sawan said Thursday during an earnings conference call with analysts. While the company sees plenty of investment opportunities in the future, “we will hold until we have a better line of sight to where things end up.” The setbacks in Kazakhstan come as Shell seeks to ensure future production growth with a healthy inventory of projects. Acquisitions have largely filled the company’s production gap through 2030, buying time to deal with the 2030-2035 period, Sawan said in an interview on Thursday. The Kazakh energy ministry didn’t reply to an emailed request for comment sent outside normal working hours. Sawan didn’t elaborate on whether the pause would apply to new or existing projects. Shell didn’t immediately respond to a request to clarify whether the CEO was talking about new or existing investments. The latest dispute was against the Karachaganak field joint venture led by Italy’s Eni SpA and Shell, over cost deductions. Other partners include Chevron Corp., Lukoil PJSC and KazMunayGas National Co. The venture may still appeal the decision. Last year, the companies proposed settling the dispute by building a plant that would process natural gas from the field for domestic use. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers,

Tankers With Russian Oil Flock to East Asia

More than a dozen tankers loaded with Russian Urals oil are sailing toward Asia or idling along the route, a sign of producers racing to get cargoes closer to China as India pulls back from the trade. These vessels — carrying a combined 10 million to 12 million barrels of oil — are spread across the Indian Ocean, and off the coasts of Malaysia, China and Russia. Five of them are indicating ‘for orders’ or ‘China for orders’ as their status, according to data intelligence firm Kpler, a category that usually means they don’t yet have a specific buyer or discharge port. Another six are signaling Singapore and Malaysia, and are likely heading to a popular spot for ship-to-ship transfers in the South China Sea where they can wait until the crude is bought. Four are floating off Malaysia, China and Russia’s Far East, without indicating a clear destination. Urals — Russia’s flagship crude grade, which is loaded from ports in the Baltic Sea — has become the variety of choice for Indian refiners since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 saw it become heavily discounted. But pressure from Washington has pushed imports lower, reaching an average of 1.2 million barrels a day in January compared with a peak of more than 2 million barrels a day in mid-2024. Indian imports of the crude could be trimmed further after President Donald Trump said on Monday the country would stop buying Russian oil as part of deal to cut trade tariffs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi confirmed the agreement but didn’t comment on oil. Some refiners are holding off purchases while they seek clarification from New Delhi. The big question is where the surplus cargoes of Urals — the bulk of which have gone to India over the last few years — will now end up. China’s

BP, KOC Sign ETSA Extension

In a statement sent to Rigzone on Thursday, BP announced that it and Kuwait Oil Company have signed an extension of the Enhanced Technical Services Agreement (ETSA) between the companies. The agreement “paves the way for both companies to collaboratively progress Kuwait’s most strategic asset fields”, BP noted in the statement. BP added that the deal enables it to “bring expertise in enhanced oil recovery to the Greater Burgan oil field and develop local capabilities with Kuwait Oil Company to manage the development of South and East Kuwait fields through 50 secondment opportunities of BP’s technical experts”. Rigzone asked BP to disclose the deal’s value. A BP spokesperson was unable to do so. The ETSA was originally signed in 2016 for a period of 10 years, the statement highlighted, adding that it will now extend through to March 2029. BP Executive Vice President, Gas & Low Carbon Energy, William Lin, noted in the statement, “BP’s commitment to Kuwait dates back to our participation in the discovery of the Greater Burgan oil field in the 1930s, and we appreciate the trust placed in our expertise in giant oil and gas fields to continue to help develop this important strategic asset”. “This is another example of the deep relationships we’ve formed across governments, partners, and supply chains in the regions where we operate. We look forward to continuing our strong collaboration with Kuwait and to working with KOC to help support the country’s long-term energy resilience,” he added. BP notes on its website that it was one of the founders of the original Kuwait Oil Company, which it highlighted first discovered oil at Burgan in 1938. “Exportation of KOC began in 1946, in which the first export of Kuwait crude was loaded on to the bp vessel ‘Fusilier’,” BP’s site adds. BP

IPAA Promotes Naatz to Chief Policy Officer

In a statement sent to Rigzone on Thursday, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) announced that Dan Naatz has been promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer. As Chief Policy Officer, Naatz will lead IPAA’s policy priorities and oversee all government relations and advocacy efforts, the organization said in the statement, adding that he will focus “on the issues most critical to independent producers across regulatory, legislative, and permitting environments”. “He will also continue to build consensus across IPAA’s diverse membership and strengthen partnerships with aligned organizations,” the IPAA noted. Naatz also serves as Corporate Secretary on the IPAA board of directors, the statement highlighted. Prior to joining the IPAA in 2003, Naatz spent 12 years on Capitol Hill working for the late Senator Craig Thomas in various capacities, the IPAA pointed out in its statement. “Dan has led IPAA’s advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill, securing meaningful wins for independent oil and natural gas producers on issues including methane regulation, federal leasing, and permitting reform,” the statement said. “His decades of leadership and judgment have strengthened IPAA’s voice in Washington at a critical time for IPAA members,” it added. A bio on Naatz hosted on the IPAA website states that, “for more than two decades, Dan has been the public face for independent oil and natural gas producers in Washington, representing the industry in congressional hearings on Capitol Hill, roundtables, coalition meetings, and with federal regulating agencies”. “IPAA actively engages with agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Interior (DOI), Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in support of rules and timelines that are technically feasible and cost-effective, so producers can do what they do best: provide reliable and affordable energy for Americans,” the bio page adds. IPAA President and CEO Edith Naegele said in the IPAA statement, “IPAA

Nvidia’s $100 Billion OpenAI Bet Shrinks and Signals a New Phase in the AI Infrastructure Cycle

One of the most eye-popping figures of the AI boom – a proposed $100 billion Nvidia commitment to OpenAI and as much as 10 gigawatts of compute for the company’s Stargate AI infrastructure buildout – is no longer on the table. And that partial retreat tells the data center industry something important. According to multiple reports surfacing at the end of January, Nvidia has paused and re-scoped its previously discussed, non-binding investment framework with OpenAI, shifting from an unprecedented capital-plus-infrastructure commitment to a much smaller (though still massive) equity investment. What was once framed as a potential $100 billion alignment is now being discussed in the $20-30 billion range, as part of OpenAI’s broader effort to raise as much as $100 billion at a valuation approaching $830 billion. For data center operators, infrastructure developers, and power providers, the recalibration matters less for the headline number and more for what it reveals about risk discipline, competitive dynamics, and the limits of vertical circularity in AI infrastructure finance. From Moonshot to Measured Capital The original September 2025 memorandum reportedly contemplated not just capital, but direct alignment on compute delivery: a structure that would have tightly coupled Nvidia’s balance sheet with OpenAI’s AI-factory roadmap. By late January, however, sources indicated Nvidia executives had grown uneasy with both the scale and the structure of the deal. Speaking in Taipei on January 31, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on reports of friction, calling them “nonsense” and confirming Nvidia would “absolutely” participate in OpenAI’s current fundraising round. But Huang was also explicit on what had changed: the investment would be “nothing like” $100 billion, even if it ultimately becomes the largest single investment Nvidia has ever made. That nuance matters. Nvidia is not walking away from OpenAI. But it is drawing a clearer boundary around

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 Onsite Engineer – Critical FacilitiesCharleston, SC This is NOT a traveling position. Having degreed engineers seems to be all the rage these days. I can also use this type of candidate in following cities: Ashburn, VA; Moncks Corner, SC; Binghamton, NY; Dallas, TX or Indianapolis, IN. Our client is an engineering design and commissioning company that is a subject matter expert in the data center space. This role will be onsite at a customer’s data center. They will provide onsite design coordination and construction administration, consulting and management support for the data center / mission critical facilities space with the 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. Electrical Commissioning Engineer Ashburn, VA This traveling position is also available in: New York, NY; White Plains, NY; Richmond, VA; Montvale, NJ; Charlotte, NC; Atlanta, GA; Hampton, GA; New Albany, OH; Cedar Rapids, IA; Phoenix, AZ; Salt Lake City, UT; Dallas, TX; Kansas City, MO; Omaha, NE; Chesterton, IN 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

Operationalizing AI at Scale: Google Cloud on Data Infrastructure, Search, and Enterprise AI

The AI conversation has been dominated by model announcements, benchmark races, and the rapid evolution of large language models. But in enterprise environments, the harder problem isn’t building smarter models. It’s making them work reliably with real-world data. On the latest episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, Sailesh Krishnamurthy, VP of Engineering for Databases at Google Cloud, pulled back the curtain on the infrastructure layer where many ambitious AI initiatives succeed, or quietly fail. Krishnamurthy operates at the intersection of databases, search, and AI systems. His perspective underscores a growing reality across enterprise IT: AI success increasingly depends on how organizations manage, integrate, and govern data across operational systems, not just how powerful their models are. The Disconnect Between LLMs and Reality Enterprises today face a fundamental challenge: connecting LLMs to real-time operational data. Search systems handle documents and unstructured information well. Operational databases manage transactions, customer data, and financial records with precision. But combining the two remains difficult. Krishnamurthy described the problem as universal. “Inside enterprises, knowledge workers are often searching documents while separately querying operational systems,” he said. “But combining unstructured information with operational database data is still hard to do.” Externally, customers encounter the opposite issue. Portals expose personal data but struggle to incorporate broader contextual information. “You get a narrow view of your own data,” he explained, “but combining that with unstructured information that might answer your real question is still challenging.” The result: AI systems often operate with incomplete context. Vector Search Moves Into the Database Vector search has emerged as a bridge between structured and unstructured worlds. But its evolution over the past three years has changed how enterprises deploy it. Early use cases focused on semantic search, i.e. finding meaning rather than exact keyword matches. Bug tracking systems, for example, began

Transmission at the Breaking Point: Why the Grid Is Becoming the Defining Constraint for AI Data Centers

Regions in a Position to Scale California (A- overall)California continues to lead in long-term, scenario-based transmission planning. CAISO’s most recent transmission plan identifies $4.8 billion in new projects to accommodate approximately 76 gigawatts of additional capacity by 2039, explicitly accounting for data center growth alongside broader electrification. For data center developers, California’s challenge is less about planning quality and more about execution. Permitting timelines, cost allocation debates, and political scrutiny remain significant hurdles. Plains / Southwest Power Pool (B- overall, A in regional planning)SPP stands out nationally for embracing ultra-high-voltage transmission as a backbone strategy. Its recent Integrated Transmission Plans approve more than $16 billion in new projects, including multiple 765-kV lines, with benefit-cost ratios exceeding 10:1. This approach positions the Plains region as one of the most structurally “AI-ready” grids in North America, particularly for multi-gigawatt campuses supported by wind, natural gas, and emerging nuclear resources. Midwest / MISO (B overall)MISO’s Long-Range Transmission Planning framework aligns closely with federal best practices, co-optimizing generation and transmission over long planning horizons. While challenges remain—particularly around interregional coordination—the Midwest is comparatively well positioned for sustained data center growth. Regions Facing Heightened Risk Texas / ERCOT (D- overall)Texas has approved massive new transmission investments, including 765-kV projects tied to explosive load growth in the Permian Basin. However, the report criticizes ERCOT’s planning for remaining largely siloed and reliability-driven, with limited long-term scenario analysis and narrow benefit assessments. For data centers, ERCOT still offers speed to market, but increasingly with risks tied to congestion, price volatility, and political backlash surrounding grid reliability. Southeast (F overall)The Southeast receives failing grades across all categories, with transmission development remaining fragmented, utility-driven, and largely disconnected from durable regional planning frameworks. As AI data centers increasingly target the region for its land availability and tax incentives, the lack of

From Row-Level CDUs to Facility-Scale Cooling: DCX Ramps Liquid Cooling for the AI Factory Era

Enter the 8MW CDU Era The next evolution arrived just days later. On Jan. 20, DCX announced its second-generation facility-scale unit, the FDU V2AT2, pushing capacity into territory previously unimaginable for single CDU platforms. The system delivers up to 8.15 megawatts of heat transfer capacity with record flow rates designed to support 45°C warm-water cooling, aligning directly with NVIDIA’s roadmap for rack-scale AI systems, including Vera Rubin-class deployments. That temperature target is significant. Warm-water cooling at this level allows many facilities to eliminate traditional chillers for heat rejection, depending on climate and deployment design. Instead of relying on compressor-driven refrigeration, operators can shift toward dry coolers or other simplified heat rejection strategies. The result: • Reduced mechanical complexity• Lower energy consumption• Improved efficiency at scale• New opportunities for heat reuse According to DCX CTO Maciek Szadkowski, the goal is to avoid obsolescence in a single hardware generation: “As the datacenter industry transitions to AI factories, operators need cooling systems that won’t be obsolete in one platform cycle. The FDU V2AT2 replaces multiple legacy CDUs and enables 45°C supply water operation while simplifying cooling topology and significantly reducing both CAPEX and OPEX.” The unit incorporates a high-capacity heat exchanger with a 2°C approach temperature, N+1 redundant pump configuration, integrated water quality control, and diagnostics systems designed for predictive maintenance. In short, this is infrastructure built not for incremental density growth, but for hyperscale AI facilities where megawatts of cooling must scale as predictably as compute capacity. Liquid Cooling Becomes System Architecture The broader industry implication is clear: cooling is no longer an auxiliary mechanical function. It is becoming system architecture. DCX’s broader 2025 performance metrics underscore the speed of this transition. The company reported 600% revenue growth, expanded its workforce fourfold, and shipped or secured contracts covering more than 500 MW

AI Infrastructure Scales Out and Up: Edge Expansion Meets the Gigawatt Campus Era

The AI infrastructure boom is often framed around massive hyperscale campuses racing to secure gigawatts of power. But an equally important shift is happening in parallel: AI infrastructure is also becoming more distributed, modular, and sovereign, extending compute far beyond traditional data center hubs. A wave of recent announcements across developers, infrastructure investors, and regional operators shows the market pursuing a dual strategy. On one end, developers are accelerating delivery of hyperscale campuses measured in hundreds of megawatts, and increasingly gigawatts, often located where power availability and energy economics offer structural advantage, and in some cases pairing compute directly with dedicated generation. On the other, providers are building increasingly capable regional and edge facilities designed to bring AI compute closer to users, industrial operations, and national jurisdictions. Taken together, these moves point toward a future in which AI infrastructure is no longer purely centralized, but built around interconnected hub-and-spoke architectures combining energy-advantaged hyperscale cores with rapidly deployable edge capacity. Recent developments across hyperscale developers, edge specialists, infrastructure investors, and regional operators illustrate how quickly this model is taking shape. Sovereign AI Moves Beyond the Core On Feb. 5, 2026, San Francisco-based Armada and European AI infrastructure builder Nscale signed a letter of intent to jointly deploy both large-scale and edge AI infrastructure worldwide. The collaboration targets enterprise and public sector customers seeking sovereign, secure, geographically distributed AI environments. Nscale is building large AI supercomputer clusters globally, offering vertically integrated capabilities spanning power, data centers, compute, and software. Armada specializes in modular deployments through its Galleon data centers and Armada Edge Platform, delivering compute and storage into remote or infrastructure-poor environments. The combined offering addresses a growing challenge: many governments and enterprises want AI capability deployed within their own jurisdictions, even where traditional hyperscale infrastructure does not yet exist. “There is

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.

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

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

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

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE