Get ONMINE

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

How Much Oil is the USA Producing Right Now?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, the U.S. will produce 13.45 million barrels of crude oil, including lease condensate, per day in the second quarter of this year. Of this total, 11.23 million barrels will come from Lower 48 states, excluding […]

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, the U.S. will produce 13.45 million barrels of crude oil, including lease condensate, per day in the second quarter of this year.

Of this total, 11.23 million barrels will come from Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, the EIA showed in its STEO. The Federal Gulf of America will produce 1.81 million barrels per day of the total and Alaska will produce 0.41 million barrels per day, the STEO pointed out.

The EIA’s latest STEO highlighted that U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter of this year. The Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 11.09 million barrels per day of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.82 million barrels per day, and Alaska provided 0.44 million barrels per day, the STEO showed.

In the second quarter of 2024, the U.S. produced 13.23 million barrels of crude oil per day, with 11.01 million barrels coming from the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, 1.80 million barrels coming from the Federal Gulf of America, and 0.42 million barrels coming from Alaska, the EIA’s April STEO outlined.

In the first quarter of last year, U.S. crude oil production averaged 12.94 million barrels per day, according to the EIA’s latest STEO, which pointed out that the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 10.73 million barrels of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.78 million barrels, and Alaska provided 0.43 million barrels.

Future Projections

The EIA’s April STEO projects that U.S. crude oil production will average 13.51 million barrels per day overall in 2025 and 13.56 million barrels per day overall in 2026.

This STEO forecasts that output will come in at 13.56 million barrels per day in the third quarter of this year, 13.66 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter, 13.67 million barrels per day in the first quarter of next year, 13.64 million barrels per day in the second quarter, 13.46 million barrels per day in the third quarter, and 13.48 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The EIA expects the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, to provide 11.28 million barrels per day of the 2025 total and 11.29 million barrels per day of the 2026 total, the STEO shows. The Federal Gulf of America is expected to provide 1.80 million barrels of the 2025 total and 1.83 million barrels of the 2026 total, and Alaska is expected to provide 0.42 million barrels of this year’s total and 0.44 million barrels of next year’s total, the STEO outlined.

In its latest STEO, the EIA highlighted that U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.21 million barrels per day in 2024. Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, contributed 11.02 million barrels to this total, the Federal Gulf of America contributed 1.77 million barrels, and Alaska contributed 0.42 million barrels, the April STEO showed.

USA vs Rest of World

According to the EIA’s latest STEO, the world’s total crude oil production will come in at 76.52 million barrels per day in the second quarter of this year.

The EIA’s projected U.S. second quarter crude oil production figure of 13.45 million barrels per day is 17.57 percent of the EIA’s total projected crude oil production figure for the second quarter of 2025.

In its April STEO, the EIA projects that the globe will produce 77.08 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2025 and 77.82 million barrels per day in 2026. The STEO highlighted that total world crude oil production averaged 76.23 million barrels per day last year.

The EIA’s projected 2025 U.S. crude oil production figure of 13.51 million barrels per day is 17.52 percent of its total projected crude oil output figure for this year. Its projected 2026 U.S. crude oil production figure of 13.56 million barrels per day is 17.42 percent of its total projected crude oil output figure for next year.

A quarterly breakdown included in the EIA’s latest STEO showed that the EIA sees global crude oil production averaging 77.08 million barrels per day in the third quarter of this year, 77.75 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter, 77.87 million barrels per day in the first quarter of next year, 77.59 million barrels per day in the second quarter, 77.70 million barrels per day in the third quarter, and 78.10 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter of next year.

13 Million Barrels Per Day or More

A data page on the EIA website showing monthly U.S. field production of crude oil, which was last updated on March 31, 2025, and which includes data from January 1920 to January 2025, showed that monthly U.S. field production of crude oil has averaged 13 million barrels per day or more on 17 occasions.

Five of those were in 2023, 11 were in 2024, and one was in 2025, according to the data page, which revealed that the highest monthly U.S. field production of crude oil figure was seen in December 2024, at 13.451 million barrels per day.

A data page on the EIA site showing annual U.S. field production of crude oil, which was also last updated on March 31, 2025, and which includes data from 1859 to 2024, showed that annual U.S. field production of crude oil averaged 13.209 million barrels per day in 2024. Prior to this, annual U.S. field production of crude oil had never averaged 13 million barrels per day or more, the data revealed. The closest it came to an annual average of 13 million barrels per day was in 2023, at 12.935 million barrels per day, the data showed.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

Shape
Shape
Stay Ahead

Explore More Insights

More Articles

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

Shape

18 essential commands for new Linux users

[jdoe@fedora ~]$ ls -ld /home/jdoedrwx——. 1 jdoe jdoe 106 Apr 3 14:39 /home/jdoe As you may have suspected, “r” stands for read, “w” means write and “x” is for execute. Note that no permissions are available for other group members and anyone else on the system. Each user will be

Read More »

What are GPUs? Inside the processing power behind AI

AI and generative AI Today’s increasingly sophisticated AI technologies — notably large language models (LLMs) and generative AI — require lots of speed, lots of data and lots of compute. Because they can perform simultaneous calculations and handle vast amounts of data, GPUs have become the powerhouse behind AI (e.g.,

Read More »

Energy UK urges Labour government to ‘unleash the potential of nuclear energy’

Trade body Energy UK is urging the government to “seize the moment and unleash the potential of nuclear energy” as part of efforts to decarbonise the country’s electricity. Energy UK said the nuclear industry in the UK is at a “pivotal time”, with four of the country’s five power plants nearing the end of their operational lives. At the same time, French firm EDF is building a reactor at Hinkley Point C, which will be the first new nuclear power plant in the UK for over 30 years when complete. A final investment decision on the Sizewell C reactor is also due in the spring, alongside further updates on the UK government’s small modular reactor (SMR) competition. State-owned Great British Nuclear (GBN) is overseeing the SMR contest, with four companies developing reactor designs that could be operational by the mid-2030s. UK needs to expand nuclear, Energy UK says In a report, Energy UK said the nuclear sector will require further expansion to meet a forecast increase in electricity demand. The trade body said nuclear can provide a “stable source of clean power” to complement increasing wind and solar generation. The industry can also support economic growth and provide jobs in the regions where plants are located, Energy UK said. The UK nuclear sector currently employs around 64,000 people, while indirectly supporting a further 210,000. © Supplied by AltradHinkley Point C nuclear power station. Somerset, England. The Hinkley Point C project alone supports nearly 23,500 jobs, with £5.3bn spent across businesses in the south west of England. According to the report, building Sizewell C could lead to the creation of 70,000 jobs and a £4.4bn boost to the UK construction sector in the east of England. Energy UK said the UK should utilise the “highly skilled workforce and active supply chain” developed

Read More »

Energy UK urges Labour government to ‘unleash the potential of nuclear energy’

Trade body Energy UK is urging the government to “seize the moment and unleash the potential of nuclear energy” as part of efforts to decarbonise the country’s electricity. Energy UK said the nuclear industry in the UK is at a “pivotal time”, with four of the country’s five power plants nearing the end of their operational lives. At the same time, French firm EDF is building a reactor at Hinkley Point C, which will be the first new nuclear power plant in the UK for over 30 years when complete. A final investment decision on the Sizewell C reactor is also due in the spring, alongside further updates on the UK government’s small modular reactor (SMR) competition. State-owned Great British Nuclear (GBN) is overseeing the SMR contest, with four companies developing reactor designs that could be operational by the mid-2030s. UK needs to expand nuclear, Energy UK says In a report, Energy UK said the nuclear sector will require further expansion to meet a forecast increase in electricity demand. The trade body said nuclear can provide a “stable source of clean power” to complement increasing wind and solar generation. The industry can also support economic growth and provide jobs in the regions where plants are located, Energy UK said. The UK nuclear sector currently employs around 64,000 people, while indirectly supporting a further 210,000. © Supplied by AltradHinkley Point C nuclear power station. Somerset, England. The Hinkley Point C project alone supports nearly 23,500 jobs, with £5.3bn spent across businesses in the south west of England. According to the report, building Sizewell C could lead to the creation of 70,000 jobs and a £4.4bn boost to the UK construction sector in the east of England. Energy UK said the UK should utilise the “highly skilled workforce and active supply chain” developed

Read More »

How Much Oil is the USA Producing Right Now?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, the U.S. will produce 13.45 million barrels of crude oil, including lease condensate, per day in the second quarter of this year. Of this total, 11.23 million barrels will come from Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, the EIA showed in its STEO. The Federal Gulf of America will produce 1.81 million barrels per day of the total and Alaska will produce 0.41 million barrels per day, the STEO pointed out. The EIA’s latest STEO highlighted that U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter of this year. The Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 11.09 million barrels per day of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.82 million barrels per day, and Alaska provided 0.44 million barrels per day, the STEO showed. In the second quarter of 2024, the U.S. produced 13.23 million barrels of crude oil per day, with 11.01 million barrels coming from the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, 1.80 million barrels coming from the Federal Gulf of America, and 0.42 million barrels coming from Alaska, the EIA’s April STEO outlined. In the first quarter of last year, U.S. crude oil production averaged 12.94 million barrels per day, according to the EIA’s latest STEO, which pointed out that the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 10.73 million barrels of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.78 million barrels, and Alaska provided 0.43 million barrels. Future Projections The EIA’s April STEO projects that U.S. crude oil production will average 13.51 million barrels per day overall in 2025 and 13.56 million barrels per day overall in 2026. This

Read More »

How Much Oil is the USA Producing Right Now?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, the U.S. will produce 13.45 million barrels of crude oil, including lease condensate, per day in the second quarter of this year. Of this total, 11.23 million barrels will come from Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, the EIA showed in its STEO. The Federal Gulf of America will produce 1.81 million barrels per day of the total and Alaska will produce 0.41 million barrels per day, the STEO pointed out. The EIA’s latest STEO highlighted that U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter of this year. The Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 11.09 million barrels per day of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.82 million barrels per day, and Alaska provided 0.44 million barrels per day, the STEO showed. In the second quarter of 2024, the U.S. produced 13.23 million barrels of crude oil per day, with 11.01 million barrels coming from the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, 1.80 million barrels coming from the Federal Gulf of America, and 0.42 million barrels coming from Alaska, the EIA’s April STEO outlined. In the first quarter of last year, U.S. crude oil production averaged 12.94 million barrels per day, according to the EIA’s latest STEO, which pointed out that the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 10.73 million barrels of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.78 million barrels, and Alaska provided 0.43 million barrels. Future Projections The EIA’s April STEO projects that U.S. crude oil production will average 13.51 million barrels per day overall in 2025 and 13.56 million barrels per day overall in 2026. This

Read More »

How Much Oil is the USA Producing Right Now?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released earlier this month, the U.S. will produce 13.45 million barrels of crude oil, including lease condensate, per day in the second quarter of this year. Of this total, 11.23 million barrels will come from Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, the EIA showed in its STEO. The Federal Gulf of America will produce 1.81 million barrels per day of the total and Alaska will produce 0.41 million barrels per day, the STEO pointed out. The EIA’s latest STEO highlighted that U.S. crude oil production averaged 13.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter of this year. The Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 11.09 million barrels per day of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.82 million barrels per day, and Alaska provided 0.44 million barrels per day, the STEO showed. In the second quarter of 2024, the U.S. produced 13.23 million barrels of crude oil per day, with 11.01 million barrels coming from the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, 1.80 million barrels coming from the Federal Gulf of America, and 0.42 million barrels coming from Alaska, the EIA’s April STEO outlined. In the first quarter of last year, U.S. crude oil production averaged 12.94 million barrels per day, according to the EIA’s latest STEO, which pointed out that the Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, provided 10.73 million barrels of that total, the Federal Gulf of America provided 1.78 million barrels, and Alaska provided 0.43 million barrels. Future Projections The EIA’s April STEO projects that U.S. crude oil production will average 13.51 million barrels per day overall in 2025 and 13.56 million barrels per day overall in 2026. This

Read More »

Devon Targets $1B Annual Free Cash Flow Growth by 2026

Devon Energy Corp. said Tuesday it aims to grow its pre-tax free cash flow by $1 billion yearly by 2026, of which 30 percent is expected to be achieved this year. Following the announcement of the “optimization plan”, the Delaware Basin-focused oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) company saw its stock close 5.83 percent higher at $31.2 on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday. “The plan includes actions to achieve more efficient field-level operations and improvements in drilling and completion costs while improving operating margins and corporate costs”, Devon said in an online statement. “This is an opportune time for us to take on this initiative, as we leverage recent leadership changes across the organization, bringing fresh perspectives and new ideas”, new president and chief executive Clay Gaspar said. Gaspar replaced retired Rick Muncrief last month. In January 2025 Devon promoted John Raines as senior vice president for exploration and production asset management and Trey Lowe as senior vice president and chief technology officer. Additionally Tom Hellman was appointed senior vice president for E&P Operations. “Given the challenging market and shifting competitive landscape, this is the right moment to focus internally and improve our profitability”, Gaspar added. “Importantly, this effort will create significant shareholder value by expanding our free cash flow generation and enhancing the durability of our business. “Our organization has been diligently advancing this initiative and has already secured marketing agreements to drive a material margin improvement through year-end 2026. “Concurrently, we have implemented technological advancements, including advanced analytics and process automation, that are further enhancing our operating performance”. The optimization plan targets $300 million in capital efficiency “through design optimization, cycle time reductions, facility standardization and vendor management”, Devon said. The plan also includes $250 million in production optimization. Devon said it plans to use “advanced

Read More »

CIOs could improve sustainability with data center purchasing decisions — but don’t

CIOs can drive change Even though it’s difficult to calculate an organization’s carbon footprint, CIOs and IT purchasing leaders trying to reduce their environmental impact can influence data center operators, experts say. “Customers have a very large voice,” Seagate’s Feist says. “Don’t underestimate how powerful that CIO feedback loop is. The large cloud accounts are customer-obsessed organizations, so they listen, and they react.” While DataBank began using renewable energy years ago, customer demand can push more data center operators to follow suit, Gerson says. “For sure, if there is a requirement to purchase renewable power, we are going to purchase renewable power,” she adds.

Read More »

Copper-to-optics technology eyed for next-gen AI networking gear

Broadcom’s demonstration and a follow-up session explored the benefits of further developing CPC, such as reduced signal integrity penalties and extended reach, through channel modeling and simulations, Broadcom wrote in a blog about the DesignCon event. “Experimental results showed successful implementation of CPC, demonstrating its potential to address bandwidth and signal integrity challenges in data centers, which is crucial for AI applications,” Broadcom stated. In addition to the demo, Broadcom and Samtec also authored a white paper on CPC that stated: “Co-packaged connectivity (CPC) provides the opportunity to omit loss and reflection penalties from the [printed circuit board (PCB)] and the package. When high speed I/O is cabled from the top of the package advanced PCB materials are not necessary. Losses from package vertical paths and PCB routing can be transferred to the longer reach of cables,” the authors stated. “As highly complex systems are challenged to scale the number of I/O and their reach, co- packaged connectivity presents opportunity. As we approach 224G-PAM4 [which uses optical techniques to support 224 Gigabits per second data rates per optical lane] and above, system loss and dominating noise sources necessitate the need to re-consider that which has been restricted in the back of the system architect’s mind for years: What if we attached to the package?” At OFC, Samtec demonstrated its Si-FlyHD co-packaged cable assemblies and Samtec FlyoverOctal Small Form-factor Pluggable (OSFP) over the Samtec Eye Speed Hyper Low Skew twinax copper cable. Flyover is Samtec’s proprietary way of addressing signal integrity and reach limitations of routing high-speed signals through traditional printed circuit boards (PCBs). “This evaluation platform incorporates Broadcom’s industry-leading 200G SerDes technology and Samtec’s co-packaged Flyover technology. Si-Fly HD CPC offers the industry’s highest footprint density and robust interconnect which enables 102.4T (512 lanes at 200G) in a 95 x

Read More »

The Rise of AI Factories: Transforming Intelligence at Scale

AI Factories Redefine Infrastructure The architecture of AI factories reflects a paradigm shift that mirrors the evolution of the industrial age itself—from manual processes to automation, and now to autonomous intelligence. Nvidia’s framing of these systems as “factories” isn’t just branding; it’s a conceptual leap that positions AI infrastructure as the new production line. GPUs are the engines, data is the raw material, and the output isn’t a physical product, but predictive power at unprecedented scale. In this vision, compute capacity becomes a strategic asset, and the ability to iterate faster on AI models becomes a competitive differentiator, not just a technical milestone. This evolution also introduces a new calculus for data center investment. The cost-per-token of inference—how efficiently a system can produce usable AI output—emerges as a critical KPI, replacing traditional metrics like PUE or rack density as primary indicators of performance. That changes the game for developers, operators, and regulators alike. Just as cloud computing shifted the industry’s center of gravity over the past decade, the rise of AI factories is likely to redraw the map again—favoring locations with not only robust power and cooling, but with access to clean energy, proximity to data-rich ecosystems, and incentives that align with national digital strategies. The Economics of AI: Scaling Laws and Compute Demand At the heart of the AI factory model is a requirement for a deep understanding of the scaling laws that govern AI economics. Initially, the emphasis in AI revolved around pretraining large models, requiring massive amounts of compute, expert labor, and curated data. Over five years, pretraining compute needs have increased by a factor of 50 million. However, once a foundational model is trained, the downstream potential multiplies exponentially, while the compute required to utilize a fully trained model for standard inference is significantly less than

Read More »

Google’s AI-Powered Grid Revolution: How Data Centers Are Reshaping the U.S. Power Landscape

Google Unveils Groundbreaking AI Partnership with PJM and Tapestry to Reinvent the U.S. Power Grid In a move that underscores the growing intersection between digital infrastructure and energy resilience, Google has announced a major new initiative to modernize the U.S. electric grid using artificial intelligence. The company is partnering with PJM Interconnection—the largest grid operator in North America—and Tapestry, an Alphabet moonshot backed by Google Cloud and DeepMind, to develop AI tools aimed at transforming how new power sources are brought online. The initiative, detailed in a blog post by Alphabet and Google President Ruth Porat, represents one of Google’s most ambitious energy collaborations to date. It seeks to address mounting challenges facing grid operators, particularly the explosive backlog of energy generation projects that await interconnection in a power system unprepared for 21st-century demands. “This is our biggest step yet to use AI for building a stronger, more resilient electricity system,” Porat wrote. Tapping AI to Tackle an Interconnection Crisis The timing is critical. The U.S. energy grid is facing a historic inflection point. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, more than 2,600 gigawatts (GW) of generation and storage projects were waiting in interconnection queues at the end of 2023—more than double the total installed capacity of the entire U.S. grid. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has revised its five-year demand forecast, now projecting U.S. peak load to rise by 128 GW before 2030—more than triple the previous estimate. Grid operators like PJM are straining to process a surge in interconnection requests, which have skyrocketed from a few dozen to thousands annually. This wave of applications has exposed the limits of legacy systems and planning tools. Enter AI. Tapestry’s role is to develop and deploy AI models that can intelligently manage and streamline the complex process of

Read More »

Podcast: Vaire Computing Bets on Reversible Logic for ‘Near Zero Energy’ AI Data Centers

The AI revolution is charging ahead—but powering it shouldn’t cost us the planet. That tension lies at the heart of Vaire Computing’s bold proposition: rethinking the very logic that underpins silicon to make chips radically more energy efficient. Speaking on the Data Center Frontier Show podcast, Vaire CEO Rodolfo Rossini laid out a compelling case for why the next era of compute won’t just be about scaling transistors—but reinventing the way they work. “Moore’s Law is coming to an end, at least for classical CMOS,” Rossini said. “There are a number of potential architectures out there—quantum and photonics are the most well known. Our bet is that the future will look a lot like existing CMOS, but the logic will look very, very, very different.” That bet is reversible computing—a largely untapped architecture that promises major gains in energy efficiency by recovering energy lost during computation. A Forgotten Frontier Unlike conventional chips that discard energy with each logic operation, reversible chips can theoretically recycle that energy. The concept, Rossini explained, isn’t new—but it’s long been overlooked. “The tech is really old. I mean really old,” Rossini said. “The seeds of this technology were actually at the very beginning of the industrial revolution.” Drawing on the work of 19th-century mechanical engineers like Sadi Carnot and later insights from John von Neumann, the theoretical underpinnings of reversible computing stretch back decades. A pivotal 1961 paper formally connected reversibility to energy efficiency in computing. But progress stalled—until now. “Nothing really happened until a team of MIT students built the first chip in the 1990s,” Rossini noted. “But they were trying to build a CPU, which is a world of pain. There’s a reason why I don’t think there’s been a startup trying to build CPUs for a very, very long time.” AI, the

Read More »

Pennsylvania’s Homer City Energy Campus: A Brownfield Transformed for Data Center Innovation

The redevelopment of the Homer City Generating Station in Pennsylvania represents an important transformation from a decommissioned coal-fired power plant to a state-of-the-art natural gas-powered data center campus, showing the creative reuse of a large brownfield site and the creation of what can be a significant location in power generation and the digital future. The redevelopment will address the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing technologies, while also contributing to Pennsylvania’s digital advancement, in an area not known as a hotbed of technical prowess. Brownfield Development Established in 1969, the original generating station was a 2-gigawatt coal-fired power plant located near Homer City, Indiana County, Pennsylvania. The site was formerly the largest coal-burning power plant in the state, and known for its 1,217-foot chimney, the tallest in the United States. In April 2023, the owners announced its closure due to competition from cheaper natural gas and the rising costs of environmental compliance. The plant was officially decommissioned on July 1, 2023, and its demolition, including the iconic chimney, was completed by March 22, 2025. ​ The redevelopment project, led by Homer City Redevelopment (HCR) in partnership with Kiewit Power Constructors Co., plans to transform the 3,200-acre site into the Homer City Energy Campus, via construction of a 4.5-gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant, making it the largest of its kind in the United States. Gas Turbines This plant will utilize seven high-efficiency, hydrogen-enabled 7HA.02 gas turbines supplied by GE Vernova, with deliveries expected to begin in 2026. ​The GE Vernova gas turbine has been seeing significant interest in the power generation market as new power plants have been moving to the planning stage. The GE Vernova 7HA.02 is a high-efficiency, hydrogen-enabled gas turbine designed for advanced power generation applications. As part of GE Vernova’s HA product line, it

Read More »

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

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

Read More »

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

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

Read More »

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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

Read More »

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

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

Read More »
More Articles