USA Crude Oil Inventories Drop Week on Week

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

USA Crude Oil Inventories Drop Week on Week

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), decreased by two million barrels from the week ending April 25 to the week ending May 2, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. That EIA report was released on May 7 and included data […]

That EIA report was released on May 7 and included data for the week ending May 2. It showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 438.4 million barrels on May 2, 440.4 million barrels on April 25, and 459.5 million barrels on May 3, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 399.1 million barrels on May 2, 398.5 million barrels on April 25, and 367.2 million barrels on May 3, 2024, the report outlined.

Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.612 billion barrels on May 2, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks were up 1.7 million barrels week on week and up 5.7 million barrels year on year, the report revealed.

“At 438.4 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about seven percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest weekly petroleum status report.

“Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.2 million barrels from last week and are about three percent below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased and blending components inventories decreased last week,” it added.

“Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 1.1 million barrels last week and are about 13 percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by one million barrels from last week and are 11 percent below the five year average for this time of year,” it continued.

U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.1 million barrels per day during the week ending May 2, the EIA noted in the report, adding that this was 7,000 barrels per day less than the previous week’s average.

“Refineries operated at 89 percent of their operable capacity last week,” the EIA said in the report.

“Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.7 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased by 41,000 barrels per day last week, averaging 4.7 million barrels per day,” it added.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged six million barrels per day last week, the EIA stated in the report. It highlighted that this was an increase of 557,000 barrels per day from the previous week.

“Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 5.8 million barrels per day, 13.3 percent less than the same four-week period last year,” the EIA stated in its report.

“Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 765,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 117,000 barrels per day,” it added.

Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 19.8 million barrels a day, the EIA said in its report. It pointed out that this was down by 0.6 percent from the same period last year.

“Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.9 million barrels a day, up by 3.5 percent from the same period last year,” the EIA said in the report.

“Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.7 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, up by 3.1 percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was up 16.4 percent compared with the same four-week period last year,” it added.

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Monday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists revealed that they were forecasting that U.S. crude inventories would be up by 2.4 million barrels for the week ending May 2.

“This compares to our early look which anticipated a 5.2 million barrel build,” the Macquarie strategists said in that report.

The EIA also highlighted in its report that the price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil was $59.67 per barrel on May 2, “$4.18 less than a week ago, and $19.98 less than a year ago”.

It went on to state in the report that the national average retail price for regular gasoline increased to $3.147 per gallon on May 5, 2025, “$0.014 above last week’s price, and $0.496 less than the year-ago price”.

“The national average retail diesel fuel price decreased $0.017 to $3.497 per gallon, $0.397 lower than the price one year ago,” the EIA pointed out in the report.

According to the AAA Fuel Prices website, the average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. is $3.145 per gallon and the average price of diesel in the country is $3.532 per gallon, as of May 9.

The EIA’s next weekly petroleum status report is scheduled to be released on May 14. It will include data for the week ending May 9.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

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.

Beyond firewalls: SonicWall pivots to embrace cloud, services, AI

These acquisitions included Solutions Granted in November 2023, which expanded the company’s managed security services portfolio. SonicWall acquired Banyan Security in January 2024, bringing with it cloud-native ZTNA capabilities. “Every firewall going out the door now has cloud native capability,” VanKirk noted. Managed Protection Service Suite brings co-managed services A

Broadcom’s licensing clampdown: Subscription-less VMware users face legal ultimatum

Perhaps most concerning for enterprises, some organizations have reported receiving these legal threats even after completely migrating away from VMware technologies. One user on Reddit described receiving a cease-and-desist letter despite having already transitioned entirely to Proxmox, raising questions about Broadcom’s tracking capabilities and enforcement criteria. The notices universally include

Quantum computing gets an error-correction boost from AI innovation

The RIKEN team, including Nori, Clemens Gneiting, and Yexiong Zeng, developed a deep learning method to optimize GKP states, making them easier to produce while maintaining robust error correction. “Our AI-driven method fine-tunes the structure of GKP states, striking an optimal balance between resource efficiency and error resilience,” said Zeng

Broadcom allegedly sends demand letters to perpetual VMware license holders

Broadcom has sent cease-and-desist letters to VMware perpetual license holders whose support contracts have expired, according to a report in Ars Technica. The letters state that users suspected of unauthorized use of patches, bug fixes, and updates released after the expiration of the support agreement may be subject to review.

USA EIA Lowers WTI Oil Price Forecasts

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) lowered its West Texas Intermediate (WTI) spot average price forecasts for 2025 and 2026 in its latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released on May 6. According to that STEO, the EIA now sees the WTI spot price averaging $61.81 per barrel this year and $55.24 per barrel next year. In its previous STEO, which was released in April, the EIA projected that the WTI spot price would average $63.88 per barrel in 2025 and $57.48 per barrel in 2026. Both STEOs highlighted that the WTI spot price came in at $76.60 per barrel in 2024. The EIA’s latest STEO forecast that the WTI spot price will average $60.85 per barrel in the second quarter of 2025, $58 per barrel in the third quarter, $57 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $56 per barrel across the first and second quarters of next year, $55 per barrel in the third quarter, and $54 per barrel in the fourth quarter of 2026. This STEO pointed out that the WTI spot price averaged $71.85 per barrel in the first quarter of 2025. In its April STEO, the EIA projected that the WTI spot price would come in at $62.33 per barrel in the second quarter of 2025, $61.67 per barrel in the third quarter, $60 per barrel in the fourth quarter, $59 per barrel in the first quarter of 2026, $58 per barrel in the second quarter, $57 per barrel in the third quarter, and $56 per barrel in the fourth quarter. This STEO also highlighted that the WTI spot price averaged $71.85 per barrel in the first quarter of 2025. Back in its March STEO, the EIA forecast that the WTI spot price average would come in at $70.68 per barrel in 2025 and

ConocoPhillips Sells $1.3B Worth of Assets

ConocoPhillips has divested non-core assets in the United States Lower 48 including stakes in the Ursa and Europa fields for $1.3 billion year-to-date, according to its quarterly results published Thursday. These count toward a divestiture goal of $2 billion that the oil and gas major earlier said it expects to complete in the first half of 2025. The completed portion consisted of around $600 million of deals reached at year-end 2024 plus the Ursa and Europa sales, completed this month with a price of about $700 million. ConocoPhillips sold its 15.96 percent stake in Ursa and 1 percent interest in Europa – located in the Gulf of America – to co-venturer Shell PLC. The assets contributed 8,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day last year to ConocoPhillips’s production, according to its announcement of the agreement February 21, 2025. For Q1 2025 ConocoPhillips reported $2.85 billion in net profit, up from $2.55 billion for Q1 2024. The increase was driven by higher volumes, which offset lower prices and $2.75 billion in depreciation, depletion and amortization. Earnings per share adjusted for nonrecurring items landed at $2.09. That beat the $2.06 Zacks Consensus Estimate, which averages projections by brokerage analysts. Production averaged 2.39 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (MMboed), compared to 1.9 MMboed in Q1 2024. Crude oil production totaled 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd), up from 944,000 bpd in Q1 2024. Natural gas liquids totaled 402,000 bpd, up from 279,000 bpd in Q1 2024. Bitumen also increased from 129,000 bpd in Q1 2024 to 143,000 bpd in Q1 2025. Natural gas rose from 3.3 billion cubic feet a day (Bcfd) to 4.07 Bcfd. The production growth was partly due to the acquisition of Marathon Oil Corp., completed last November for $22.5 billion. ConocoPhillips also put onstream new wells in the contiguous

RWE, SSE and Equinor benefit from Crown Estate’s 4.7 GW offshore wind expansion

The Crown Estate (TCE) will proceed with an expansion programme to add 4.7 GW of offshore wind capacity across seven projects in England and Wales. The TCE announcement comes just days after Danish developer Ørsted announced it would discontinue construction of its massive 2.4 GW Hornsea 4 project. Ørsted’s decision has put pressure on the Labour government, which is relying on a massive expansion of offshore wind capacity to meet its clean power by 2030 target. TCE said amending the existing seabed rights across the fixed-bottom offshore wind projects could generate enough energy to power four million homes. All seven projects have existing grid connections and infrastructure, which will enable “swift deployment”, TCE added. The projects include five developments in English waters in the North Sea and one off the coast of northern Wales in the East Irish Sea. TCE managing director Gus Jaspert said delivering the capacity increase programme will help to “further decrease the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels”. “Our purpose is to create lasting and shared prosperity for the nation,” Jaspert said. The Equinor-operated Sheringham Shoal off the coast of North Norfolk. “Offshore wind enables us to do that as a driver of economic growth through jobs creation and supply chain development.” TCE said it undertook an extensive assessment of potential environmental impacts to marine habitats and species, and recommended the programme should proceed “on the basis of a derogation”. Energy secretary Ed Miliband agreed to this recommendation, TCE said, with compensation measures set to address any adverse environmental impacts. “Balancing the needs of energy and nature is an important responsibility we carefully consider, and we’re confident in the environmental compensation measures which will accompany the delivery of the programme,” Jaspert said. Offshore wind capacity increase German firm RWE will be among the main benefactors of the

Occidental Completes $1.3B Sale of DJ Basin, Permian Assets

Occidental Petroleum Corp. divested non-core proved and unproved royalty and mineral stakes in the DJ Basin for about $900 million and certain non-core Permian Basin assets for around $400 million in the first quarter (Q1), the hydrocarbons and chemicals producer said in its quarterly report. To keep debt manageable, Houston, Texas-based Occidental launched a $4.5 billion-$6 billion asset sale program when it announced its merger with CrownRock LP late 2023. Occidental completed its $12.4 billion purchase of CrownRock in Q3 2024. Occidental said in its annual report for 2024 it had achieved its near-term debt repayment goal of $4.5 billion in Q4 that year. In its latest quarterly statement, for the January-March 2025 period, it said it has made $2.3 billion of debt repayments so far this year. In its initial announcement of the DJ Basin and Permian divestments to undisclosed buyers on February 18, Occidental said, “The transactions announced today continue to high-grade our portfolio and accelerate the progress toward achieving both our medium-term balance sheet deleveraging target and shareholder return pathway”. “Occidental will continue to advance deleveraging via free cash flow and divestitures”, it said in that announcement. At the end of Q1 2025 it owed $1.56 billion in current maturities from long-term debt. Occidental accrued total current liabilities of $9.62 billion. Meanwhile it had current assets of $9.72 billion including $2.61 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Occidental logged $860 million in adjusted net profit attributable to shareholders for Q1 2025, up from $792 million for the prior three-month period mainly thanks to higher domestic realized commodity prices. Partially offsetting that was a decrease in sales volumes from 1.46 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (MMboed) to 1.39 MMboed. Adjusted net income per share was $0.87 diluted, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 73 cents. Oil and gas

Ukrainian Parliament Ratifies Natural Resources Deal With USA

Ukraine’s parliament ratified a deal with the US over access to the country’s natural resources, lending its full support to attempts by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to improve ties with Donald Trump. Ukraine and the US reached the accord a week ago after long negotiations that led Washington to drop its insistence on getting back billions of dollars in aid delivered to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s invasion more than three years ago. A total of 338 lawmakers in Kyiv on Thursday voted in support of ratifying the agreement, which was designed to grant the US privileged access to new investment projects in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Parliament has ratified the historic Economic Partnership Agreement between Ukraine and the United States. This document is not merely a legal construct — it is the foundation of a new model of interaction with a key strategic partner. pic.twitter.com/pIkMG1gUVu — Yulia Svyrydenko (@Svyrydenko_Y) May 8, 2025 The deal, seen as one of the key elements to gain favor from Trump as he pushes to end Russia’s war, would let the US tap licensing proceeds generated from the future development of Ukraine’s aluminum, graphite, oil, natural gas and other deposits. With Russia pressing along the more than 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) frontline, Kyiv has been keen to get back into Trump’s good graces after his administration sought a quick ceasefire that would favor Moscow. The deal stipulated the possibility of the US using future military aid shipments as contributions to a joint investment fund. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed. MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR Bloomberg

‘We need the government to listen to us’: North Sea jobs crisis deepens

Pleas for the government to listen to the offshore energy industry were made at an emergency conference called to address a rapid decline in employment. Russell Borthwick said government promises to preserve energy industry jobs have been “broken” and that “we do not have years we have months” to reverse the decline in investment and jobs. “In the past fortnight alone nearly 600 jobs are being put at risk across this region,” he said pointing to Harbour Energy’s recent announcement it will cut 250 jobs from its Aberdeen-based workforce, amounting to 25% of its employees in Scotland. Pointing to other areas of the country where job losses have elicited public responses from government, the chamber demanded an emergency summit with both Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer and and First Minister of Scotland John Swinney to “prevent further job losses and accelerate green job energy creation”. The group has also called for the removal of the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) before the start of the next financial year. In autumn budget, the government confirmed the tax would be in place until 2030 although AGCC said there is still time for the industry to call for it to be removed in a government fiscal consultation which will end 28 May. “This region has effectively suffered 25 Grangemouths in the last two years but no one is saying or doing anything about it,” said Borthwick. “These are flashing red warning lights for UK energy security, for it’s industrial base and, most importantly, for it’s clean energy ambitions.” Kerry Smyth. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson The panel of speakers at the conference included Kerry Smyth, technical support manager for late life operations at Harbour. Smyth, who manages a team of engineers at the firm, said many of her colleagues were feeling sad and “really worried

Tech CEOs warn Senate: Outdated US power grid threatens AI ambitions

The implications are clear: without dramatic improvements to the US energy infrastructure, the nation’s AI ambitions could be significantly constrained by simple physical limitations – the inability to power the massive computing clusters necessary for advanced AI development and deployment. Streamlining permitting processes The tech executives have offered specific recommendations to address these challenges, with several focusing on the need to dramatically accelerate permitting processes for both energy generation and the transmission infrastructure needed to deliver that power to AI facilities, the report added. Intrator specifically called for efforts “to streamline the permitting process to enable the addition of new sources of generation and the transmission infrastructure to deliver it,” noting that current regulatory frameworks were not designed with the urgent timelines of the AI race in mind. This acceleration would help technology companies build and power the massive data centers needed for AI training and inference, which require enormous amounts of electricity delivered reliably and consistently. Beyond the cloud: bringing AI to everyday devices While much of the testimony focused on large-scale infrastructure needs, AMD CEO Lisa Su emphasized that true AI leadership requires “rapidly building data centers at scale and powering them with reliable, affordable, and clean energy sources.” Su also highlighted the importance of democratizing access to AI technologies: “Moving faster also means moving AI beyond the cloud. To ensure every American benefits, AI must be built into the devices we use every day and made as accessible and dependable as electricity.”

Networking errors pose threat to data center reliability

Still, IT and networking issues increased in 2024, according to Uptime Institute. The analysis attributed the rise in outages due to increased IT and network complexity, specifically, change management and misconfigurations. “Particularly with distributed services, cloud services, we find that cascading failures often occur when networking equipment is replicated across an entire network,” Lawrence explained. “Sometimes the failure of one forces traffic to move in one direction, overloading capacity at another data center.” The most common causes of major network-related outages were cited as: Configuration/change management failure: 50% Third-party network provider failure: 34% Hardware failure: 31% Firmware/software error: 26% Line breakages: 17% Malicious cyberattack: 17% Network overload/congestion failure: 13% Corrupted firewall/routing tables issues: 8% Weather-related incident: 7% Configuration/change management issues also attributed for 62% of the most common causes of major IT system-/software-related outages. Change-related disruptions consistently are responsible for software-related outages. Human error continues to be one of the “most persistent challenges in data center operations,” according to Uptime’s analysis. The report found that the biggest cause of these failures is data center staff failing to follow established procedures, which has increased by about 10 percentage points compared to 2023. “These are things that were 100% under our control. I mean, we can’t control when the UPS module fails because it was either poorly manufactured, it had a flaw, or something else. This is 100% under our control,” Brown said. The most common causes of major human error-related outages were reported as:

Liquid cooling technologies: reducing data center environmental impact

“Highly optimized cold-plate or one-phase immersion cooling technologies can perform on par with two-phase immersion, making all three liquid-cooling technologies desirable options,” the researchers wrote. Factors to consider There are numerous factors to consider when adopting liquid cooling technologies, according to Microsoft’s researchers. First, they advise performing a full environmental, health, and safety analysis, and end-to-end life cycle impact analysis. “Analyzing the full data center ecosystem to include systems interactions across software, chip, server, rack, tank, and cooling fluids allows decision makers to understand where savings in environmental impacts can be made,” they wrote. It is also important to engage with fluid vendors and regulators early, to understand chemical composition, disposal methods, and compliance risks. And associated socioeconomic, community, and business impacts are equally critical to assess. More specific environmental considerations include ozone depletion and global warming potential; the researchers emphasized that operators should only use fluids with low to zero ozone depletion potential (ODP) values, and not hydrofluorocarbons or carbon dioxide. It is also critical to analyze a fluid’s viscosity (thickness or stickiness), flammability, and overall volatility. And operators should only use fluids with minimal bioaccumulation (the buildup of chemicals in lifeforms, typically in fish) and terrestrial and aquatic toxicity. Finally, once up and running, data center operators should monitor server lifespan and failure rates, tracking performance uptime and adjusting IT refresh rates accordingly.

Cisco unveils prototype quantum networking chip

Clock synchronization allows for coordinated time-dependent communications between end points that might be cloud databases or in large global databases that could be sitting across the country or across the world, he said. “We saw recently when we were visiting Lawrence Berkeley Labs where they have all of these data sources such as radio telescopes, optical telescopes, satellites, the James Webb platform. All of these end points are taking snapshots of a piece of space, and they need to synchronize those snapshots to the picosecond level, because you want to detect things like meteorites, something that is moving faster than the rotational speed of planet Earth. So the only way you can detect that quickly is if you synchronize these snapshots at the picosecond level,” Pandey said. For security use cases, the chip can ensure that if an eavesdropper tries to intercept the quantum signals carrying the key, they will likely disturb the state of the qubits, and this disturbance can be detected by the legitimate communicating parties and the link will be dropped, protecting the sender’s data. This feature is typically implemented in a Quantum Key Distribution system. Location information can serve as a critical credential for systems to authenticate control access, Pandey said. The prototype quantum entanglement chip is just part of the research Cisco is doing to accelerate practical quantum computing and the development of future quantum data centers. The quantum data center that Cisco envisions would have the capability to execute numerous quantum circuits, feature dynamic network interconnection, and utilize various entanglement generation protocols. The idea is to build a network connecting a large number of smaller processors in a controlled environment, the data center warehouse, and provide them as a service to a larger user base, according to Cisco. The challenges for quantum data center network fabric

Zyxel launches 100GbE switch for enterprise networks

Port specifications include: 48 SFP28 ports supporting dual-rate 10GbE/25GbE connectivity 8 QSFP28 ports supporting 100GbE connections Console port for direct management access Layer 3 routing capabilities include static routing with support for access control lists (ACLs) and VLAN segmentation. The switch implements IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging, port isolation, and port mirroring for traffic analysis. For link aggregation, the switch supports IEEE 802.3ad for increased throughput and redundancy between switches or servers. Target applications and use cases The CX4800-56F targets multiple deployment scenarios where high-capacity backbone connectivity and flexible port configurations are required. “This will be for service providers initially or large deployments where they need a high capacity backbone to deliver a primarily 10G access layer to the end point,” explains Nguyen. “Now with Wi-Fi 7, more 10G/25G capable POE switches are being powered up and need interconnectivity without the bottleneck. We see this for data centers, campus, MDU (Multi-Dwelling Unit) buildings or community deployments.” Management is handled through Zyxel’s NebulaFlex Pro technology, which supports both standalone configuration and cloud management via the Nebula Control Center (NCC). The switch includes a one-year professional pack license providing IGMP technology and network analytics features. The SFP28 ports maintain backward compatibility between 10G and 25G standards, enabling phased migration paths for organizations transitioning between these speeds.

Engineers rush to master new skills for AI-driven data centers

According to the Uptime Institute survey, 57% of data centers are increasing salary spending. Data center job roles that saw the highest increases were in operations management – 49% of data center operators said they saw highest increases in this category – followed by junior and mid-level operations staff at 45%, and senior management and strategy at 35%. Other job categories that saw salary growth were electrical, at 32% and mechanical, at 23%. Organizations are also paying premiums on top of salaries for particular skills and certifications. Foote Partners tracks pay premiums for more than 1,300 certified and non-certified skills for IT jobs in general. The company doesn’t segment the data based on whether the jobs themselves are data center jobs, but it does track 60 skills and certifications related to data center management, including skills such as storage area networking, LAN, and AIOps, and 24 data center-related certificates from Cisco, Juniper, VMware and other organizations. “Five of the eight data center-related skills recording market value gains in cash pay premiums in the last twelve months are all AI-related skills,” says David Foote, chief analyst at Foote Partners. “In fact, they are all among the highest-paying skills for all 723 non-certified skills we report.” These skills bring in 16% to 22% of base salary, he says. AIOps, for example, saw an 11% increase in market value over the past year, now bringing in a premium of 20% over base salary, according to Foote data. MLOps now brings in a 22% premium. “Again, these AI skills have many uses of which the data center is only one,” Foote adds. The percentage increase in the specific subset of these skills in data centers jobs may vary. The Uptime Institute survey suggests that the higher pay is motivating workers to stay in the

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