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ATH 3X: BTC – HASHRATE – DIFFICULTY!

W50 ’24 | 12.9-15.24 | Issue CX | Block Height 874955 Welcome to the latest issue of the Vibe Check, your weekly source at the intersection of Bitcoin, Energy, and Bitcoin Mining. Grab a ☕ and start the week with all the metrics and stories that shake and bake the Bitcoin Mining industry. Subscribe and […]

W50 ’24 | 12.9-15.24 | Issue CX | Block Height 874955

Welcome to the latest issue of the Vibe Check, your weekly source at the intersection of Bitcoin, Energy, and Bitcoin Mining.

Grab a ☕ and start the week with all the metrics and stories that shake and bake the Bitcoin Mining industry.

Subscribe and share with your friends, colleagues, and family!

W50 ‘24 Vibe Check

  • The Overview Vibe

  • Weekly Industry Metrics

  • Headlines & News

  • The Media Vibe

  • Energy Corner

  • The Meme Vibe

The Overview Vibe

BOOM! ALL TIME HIGH! We got ATH BTC as price kicked ~$106K in the balls, ATH hashrate as the network tapped ~805 EH/s, and to the dismay of miners, ATH Difficulty of 108.52 T! Sheesshhh!!! Hashprice marginally stepped up as new and old miners continued to ramp up in response to the BTC price trajectory. I am sure somewhere in the world an S9 is on 30% of the day and making enough $$$ to buy a cold beer at each difficulty adjustment.

Both the private and public sectors were bang-bang this week was filled with YUGE debt and equity announcements. MARA announced buying over 11K BTC for ~$1.1B with their latest debt proceeds. RIOT and CLSK followed suit with their own debt offering announcements. RIOT will buy more BTC to HODL while CLSK will use the funds to pay down past debt facilities.

While debt capital is back in MEGA-vogue, not all pureplay miners use funds to make their best Microstrategy impression. While RIOT and MARA lean on fixed-income markets to chase LONG VOL with a YUGE HODL, CLSK looks to keep cleaning up their balance sheet to chase EBITDA fundamentals for all those value investor homies. Whether it is HPC, MSTR Vol, or cash flow vibes, if BTC continues to rip, the market may not care as long as these tickers go to the MOON!

While the public capital markets got spicey, the private HPC markets ESTAN CALIENTE! Flare gas mitigation turned AI infrastructure gigante Crusoe Energy raised their $660M Series D at a $2.8B valuation to hypercharge their growth. 2023 BTC mining growth startup Arkon Energy’s AI subsidiary Nscale raised a $155M Series A to expand their footprint from Norway to North America and Europe. In another spin-out, DCG has spun out Foundry’s self-mining business into Fortitude Mining, which is currently the size of HIVE or Bit Digital from a revenue perspective. Following recent layoffs at Foundry, it may seem that parent-co DCG is looking to slice and dice business segments and push them individually into the market as the BULL RAGES ON!!

As Santa preps for Christmas, I hope all of y’all are consolidating UTXOs and reviewing your custody setup. Remember to call your mom, stay hydrated, and sign up for the Fold Card App (Referral link here) to stack sats during all your holiday shopping! Keep orange pilling y’all!

Bitcoin/Mining Metrics

  • BTC price2: ~$103,207.43 @ EOW. +3.18% WOW.

  • Hash price1: $63.85 PH/Day @ EOW. +2.31% WOW.

  • Network Hashrate (SMA 7 Day)1: ~805 EH/s @ EOW. +6.48% WOW.

  • Difficulty1: 108.52 T @ EOW. +4.43% WOW.

  • ASIC Retail Price (s19/m30 family)1: $3.53/TH/s @ EOW. 0.00% WOW.

Sources: Hashrate Index1, Bitbo2

Weekly Hashprice – Block Height 874945 – Hashrate Index

Weekly Hashrate – Block Height 874945 – Hashrate Index

Mempool Stats – Block Height 874945 – mempool.space

Mining Stats – Block Height 874945 – mempool.space

Headlines & News

The Media Vibe

Energy Corner

The Meme Vibe

Subscribe and keep your eye out for the development of the Vibe Check throughout 2024!

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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.

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Quantum networking advances on Earth and in space

“Currently, the U.S. government is not investing in such testbeds or demonstrations, ensuring it will be a follower and not a leader in the development of technical advances in the field,” said a report released last year by the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, a global association of more than 250

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Who wins in networking in 2025 and beyond?

In this third team, we also find vendors most interested and active in the IoT opportunity, two of which are usually not considered enterprise vendors at all: Ericsson and Nokia. Both these companies are actively pursuing new IoT strategies, and while they are surely hoping that broad public-sensor IoT will

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Cisco researchers highlight emerging threats to AI models

Cisco security researchers this week detailed a number of threats they are seeing from bad actors trying to infect or attack AI’s most common component – the large language model. Some techniques used to hide messages or attacks from anti-spam systems are familiar to security specialists: “Hiding the nature of

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Tackling mental health as a young professional

This article is my reaction to the damaging narrative that “student years are the best years of your life”, while also casting light on some of the challenges facing young professionals that may impact their mental health, and discussing how I have personally overcome such barriers. “These will be the best years of your life!” These infamous words have been recited to children and students for decades. Used as a prompt to remind the youth to appreciate what they currently have, and acknowledge that life may not be so straightforward in the ‘real world’ of work, this phrase always comes with good intentions. However, with little over 15 months in full-time employment, I am here to argue against what I believe to be a negative and damaging narrative, and to provide some much healthier insight in order to encourage other young professionals. While I agree that life as a student can be one of month-long vacations, easier flexibility and a generally more relaxed day-to-day schedule, I want to contradict this narrative that the ‘real world’ is nothing more than a place of 9-5s, deadlines and Excel sheets. When I started full time work in September of 2023, this exact narrative had been drilled into my head. The fun was well and truly over, I thought, and the joys of life were going to end before I knew it. I had so much anxiety to enter what appeared to be a very big, and a very bad, world. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and whilst I cannot speak on behalf of my entire generation, I would say that this could be a real deterrent towards young people considering full-time work options after graduation. I believe that, as a whole, we need to raise awareness of the benefits of full-time

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Scotland’s Mocean Energy targets Australia and US for expansion

Scottish wave energy developer Mocean Energy is targeting international expansion in Australia and the US as it looks to secure its first commercial orders in 2025. Founded in 2015, Edinburgh-headquartered Mocean first launched its prototype Blue X wave energy converter (WEC) for testing off the coast of Orkney in 2021. The Blue X later played a key role in the renewables for subsea power (RSP) project, focused on decarbonising power supplies for subsea oil and gas operations. The project involved a subsea battery designed by Aberdeen’s Verlume and North Sea operators including Shell and TotalEnergies. Since the Blue X returned to shore, Mocean has focused on commercialising its prototype with the launch of the Blue Star model. Alongside the Blue Star, Mocean is also developing a larger, second-generation WEC known as Blue Horizon, which it hopes to deploy at utility-scale globally. Speaking to Energy Voice, Mocean Energy co-founder and managing director Cameron McNatt said the company is close to securing its first commercial WEC orders in 2025. But at the same time, Mocean also has its eyes on further international expansion within offshore oil and gas, as well as other sectors of the so-called ‘blue economy’. The company recently secured a partnership with German subsea engineering firm SubCtech, and McNatt sees significant opportunities for the firm Down Under. Mocean Energy’s Australia push In fact, McNatt said Australia is potentially Mocean’s “biggest focus altogether” due to its significant wave resources and the nature of its offshore oil and gas sector. “Particularly the west coast and the south coast of Australia have one of the biggest wave resources in the world,” he said. © Supplied by Mocean EnergyMocean Energy co-founder and managing director Cameron McNatt “I think the interest in Australia is so big because there’s a lot of subsea development down

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NGOs win critical seabed minerals skirmish with Norwegian government

A year ago, Norway became the first country to back deep sea mineral prospecting in its waters, with a government plan to launch an exploration licenses bidding round this year (2025). Barely 11 months later, last December, the Norwegians suspended activity indefinitely, having been sued by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) – the widely respected Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). It was January 2024 when the Storting (Norwegian parliament) voted in favour of opening about 280,000 sq. km (108,000 square miles) of sea space between Jan Mayen island and the Svalbard archipelago for seabed minerals exploration. It argued that the world needed minerals for the green transition, and that it was necessary to explore the possibility of extracting seabed minerals in a big way from the Norwegian Continental Shelf. Despite the size of the prospective prize, minor political party SV (Socialist Left) tabled a demand that the Oslo government scrap its first licensing round, comprising 386 blocks, in return for support for the budget for 2025, which is also an election year. Clearly spooked, Prime Minster Jonas Gahr Stoere claimed it was a “postponement”. But even before the Storting’s January vote, Norway’s PM had come under pressure from the EU. On November 9 2023, 119 European parliamentarians from 16 European countries called for a halt to Norway’s plans to start deep sea mining in the Arctic. This will have been viewed as deeply hurtful at the Oslo Parliament. An open letter was issued, signed by Members of the European Parliament, as well as national and regional parliaments. It emphasised that the green transition could not be used to justify harming marine biodiversity and the world’s largest natural carbon sink (the ocean), especially when alternatives already exist. Norway’s decision to proceed with deep sea mining, the letter said, could also set a

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Aberdeen’s Well-Safe solutions secures contract extension with Eni

Aberdeen-headquartered well decommissioning specialist Well-Safe Solutions has secured a contract extension with Italian oil major Eni (IT: ENI). As part of the agreement, the Well-Safe Protector rig will deploy to the Dutch sector of the North Sea to decommission selected subsea and platform wells. Well-Safe said Eni recently exercised another 90 day option for the jack-up rig under a newly agreed contract amendment for an undisclosed value. The Protector will execute the work in direct continuation with the previously declared option, which began in November last year. After completing the latest extension, the Protector will move directly onto a contract with Spirit Energy focused on the York field in the UK North Sea. The multi-operator commitments will see the Protector rig under contract until at least August 2025, with additional longer-term options also agreed as part of the Eni deal. The amendment gives Eni increased flexibility, with the option for an additional 120 days work commencing immediately after the Spirit Energy contract. Well-Safe said if Eni exercises these options, it could keep the Protector outside the UK continental shelf until the fourth quarter of 2026. Well-Safe Protector The Protector has been operational in the North Sea continuously since August 2023. In that time, the rig has decommissioned 25 wells across Dutch and UK waters for operators Eni, Ithaca Energy (LON: ITH) and Neptune Energy. Well-Safe Solutions chief executive Phil Milton said well decommissioning continues to make up a considerable portion of overall North Sea decommissioning activity. Milton pointed to recent Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) forecasts which showed an expected 50% increase in well decommissioning across 2024. “Operators around the world are looking for specialist well decommissioning providers with a market-leading track record of delivering safe, efficient well decommissioning operations,” Milton added. “Since the Well-Safe Protector first mobilised in August 2023, it

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Aberdeen wins on even a fraction of the floating offshore wind prize

Much has been said about the “size of the prize” for the supply chain from ambitious plans to install hundreds of vast wind turbines bobbing in the North Sea. Offshore Wind Scotland estimates developers will be splashing out £50 billion to build 25GW of offshore wind capacity, making a whirlwind of cash available for port operators, blade manufacturers, vessel operators – as well as the providers of everything that happens below the waterline. This includes moorings, anchors, cables, connectors and buoyancy systems – not to mention survey, sensing technology and data measuring the movement of the waves and the volume of fish. Luckily, much of the subsea technology that will build the wind farms has largely been developed for that other North Sea energy industry – oil and gas – which pioneered the skills and technology to produce tens of billions of barrels in one of the world’s harshest environments over the last 50 years. This same subsea expertise is thought to be essential to delivering floating offshore wind (FOW) over the next five to ten years. Many supply chain firms grown over decades working in the oil and gas industry are now focused on this prize, although many are also questioning if the targets are feasible. © Supplied by First Marine SolutioFirst Marine Solutions (FMS) managing director Steven Brown. But Steve Brown, managing director of First Marine Solutions, is taking a pragmatic view – even if ambitions are greatly reduced. “If you look at the size of the prize and split it into three, it’s still huge anyway. Divide it by three or four and it still makes loads of sense,” he says. Brown and Martin Suttie, chairman of First Tech Group, spoke to Energy Voice ahead of the Subsea Expo. The group comprises three main separate companies including First

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UK gas policies could lead to increased emissions from imports, report finds

Reduced North Sea investment as a result of UK government policy could lead to millions of tonnes of additional CO2 emissions from imports, according to a report. Edinburgh-based financial analyst firm Gneiss Energy modelled the potential impact of UK government policies relating to the country’s offshore oil and gas sector. Since taking office last year, the UK Labour government has increased the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas firms and pledged not to issue new exploration licences. These policies, combined with a recent court ruling focused on downstream emissions, have raised concerns about the impact on future investment in the North Sea. Without new projects and further investment, domestic UK gas production in the maturing North Sea basin is likely to significantly decrease over the next decade, leading to a greater reliance on imports. According to the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the carbon intensity of UK gas production is almost four times lower than liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports. UK gas and LNG emissions The Gneiss Energy report estimated the emissions impact of reduced UK production on whilst in tandem increasing imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the 2030s. It modelled scenarios ranging from total reliance on UK domestic production to a ‘sunset’ scenario which assumes a 50% reduction in gas supplies from the UK continental shelf (UKCS). In the sunset scenario, UK gas demand is met with increased supply balanced between Norway and LNG imports from countries like the United States, Qatar and Algeria. Gneiss estimates this would lead to 13% higher pre-consumption CO2 emissions compared to the current UK energy mix. © Supplied by National Grid GrainThe Grain LNG terminal on the Isle of Grain. Image: National Grid By contrast, if the UK were to achieve 100% domestic gas supply it would lead to

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Linux containers in 2025 and beyond

The upcoming years will also bring about an increase in the use of standard container practices, such as the Open Container Initiative (OCI) standard, container registries, signing, testing, and GitOps workflows used for application development to build Linux systems. We’re also likely see a significant rise in the use of bootable containers, which are self-contained images that can boot directly into an operating system or application environment. Cloud platforms are often the primary platform for AI experimentation and container development because of their scalability and flexibility along the integration of both AI and ML services. They’re giving birth to many significant changes in the way we process data. With data centers worldwide, cloud platforms also ensure low-latency access and regional compliance for AI applications. As we move ahead, development teams will be able to collaborate more easily through shared development environments and efficient data storage.

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Let’s Go Build Some Data Centers: PowerHouse Drives Hyperscale and AI Infrastructure Across North America

PowerHouse Data Centers, a leading developer and builder of next-generation hyperscale data centers and a division of American Real Estate Partners (AREP), is making significant strides in expanding its footprint across North America, initiating several key projects and partnerships as 2025 begins.  The new developments underscore the company’s commitment to advancing digital infrastructure to meet the growing demands of hyperscale and AI-driven applications. Let’s take a closer look at some of PowerHouse Data Centers’ most recent announcements. Quantum Connect: Bridging the AI Infrastructure Gap in Ashburn On January 17, PowerHouse Data Centers announced a collaboration with Quantum Connect to develop Ashburn’s first fiber hub specifically designed for AI and high-density workloads. This facility is set to provide 20 MW of critical power, with initial availability slated for late 2026.  Strategically located in Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley, Quantum Connect aims to offer scalable, high-density colocation solutions, featuring rack densities of up to 30kW to support modern workloads such as AI inference, edge caching, and regional compute integration. Quantum Connect said it currently has 1-3 MW private suites available for businesses seeking high-performance infrastructure that bridges the gap between retail colocation and hyperscale facilities. “Quantum Connect redefines what Ashburn’s data center market can deliver for businesses caught in the middle—those too large for retail colocation yet underserved by hyperscale environments,” said Matt Monaco, Senior Vice President at PowerHouse Data Centers. “We’re providing high-performance solutions for tenants with demanding needs but without hyperscale budgets.” Anchored by 130 miles of private conduit and 2,500 fiber pathways, Quantum Connect’s infrastructure offers tenants direct, short-hop connections to adjacent facilities and carrier networks.  With 14 campus entrances and secure, concrete-encased duct banks, the partners said the new facility minimizes downtime risks and reduces operational costs by eliminating the need for new optics or extended fiber runs.

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Blue Owl Swoops In As Major Backer of New, High-Profile, Sustainable U.S. Data Center Construction

With the global demand for data centers continuing to surge ahead, fueled by the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and digital services, it is unsurprising that we are seeing aggressive investment strategies, beyond those of the existing hyperscalers. One of the dynamic players in this market is Blue Owl Capital, a leading asset management firm that has made significant strides in the data center sector. Back in October 2024 we reported on its acquisition of IPI Partners, a digital infrastructure fund manager, for approximately $1 billion. This acquisition added over $11 billion to the assets Blue Owl manages and focused specifically on digital infrastructure initiatives. This acquisition was completed as of January 5, 2025 and IPI’s Managing Partner, Matt A’Hearn has been appointed Head of Blue Owl’s digital infrastructure strategy. A Key Player In Digital Infrastructure and Data Centers With multi-billion-dollar joint ventures and financing initiatives, Blue Owl is positioning itself as a key player in the digital infrastructure space. The company investments in data centers, the implications of its strategic moves, and the broader impact on the AI and digital economy highlights the importance of investment in the data center to the economy overall. With the rapid growth of the data center industry, it is unsurprising that aggressive investment fund management is seeing it as an opportunity. Analysts continue to emphasize that the global data center market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.2% from 2023 to 2030, reaching $517.17 billion by the end of the decade. In this rapidly evolving landscape, Blue Owl Capital has emerged as a significant contributor. The firm’s investments in data centers are not just about capitalizing on current trends but also about shaping the future of digital infrastructure. Spreading the Wealth In August 2024, Blue Owl

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Global Data Center Operator Telehouse Launches Liquid Cooling Lab in the UK to Meet Ongoing AI and HPC Demand

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Flexential Partners with Lonestar to Support First Lunar Data Center

Flexential, a leading provider of secure and flexible data center solutions, this month announced that it has joined forces with Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. to support the upcoming launch of Freedom, Lonestar’s second lunar data center. Scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket via Intuitive Machines, this mission is a critical step toward establishing a permanent data center on the Moon. Ground-Based Support for Lunar Data Storage Flexential’s Tampa data center will serve as the mission control platform for Lonestar’s lunar operations, providing colocation, interconnection, and professional services. The facility was chosen for its proximity to Florida’s Space Coast launch operations and its ability to deliver low-latency connectivity for critical functions. Flexential operates two data centers in Tampa and four in Florida as part of its FlexAnywhere® Platform, comprising more than 40 facilities across the U.S. “Flexential’s partnership with Lonestar represents our commitment to advancing data center capabilities beyond conventional boundaries,” said Jason Carolan, Chief Innovation Officer at Flexential. “By supporting Lonestar’s space-based data center initiative, we are helping to create new possibilities for data storage and disaster recovery. This project demonstrates how innovative data center expertise can help organizations prepare for a resilient future with off-world storage solutions.” A New Era of Space-Based Resiliency The growing demand for data center capacity, with U.S. power consumption expected to double from 17 GW in 2022 to 35 GW by 2030 (according to McKinsey & Company), is driving interest in space-based solutions. Storing data off-planet reduces reliance on terrestrial resources while enhancing security against natural disasters, warfare, and cyber threats. The Freedom data center will provide resiliency, disaster recovery, and edge processing services for government and enterprise customers requiring the highest levels of data protection. The solar-powered data center leverages Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) edge

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Why DeepSeek Is Great for AI and HPC and Maybe No Big Deal for Data Centers

In the rapid and ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), the emergence of DeepSeek’s R1 model has sent ripples across industries. DeepSeek has been the data center industry’s topic of the week, for sure. The Chinese AI app surged to the top of US app store leaderboards last weekend, sparking a global selloff in technology shares Monday morning.  But while some analysts predict a transformative impact within the industry, a closer examination suggests that, for data centers at large, the furor over DeepSeek might ultimately be much ado about nothing. DeepSeek’s Breakthrough in AI and HPC DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, this month unveiled its R1 model, claiming performance on par with, or even surpassing, leading models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude-3.5-Sonnet. Remarkably, DeepSeek developed this model at a fraction of the cost typically associated with such advancements, utilizing a cluster of 256 server nodes equipped with 2,048 GPUs. This efficiency has been attributed to innovative techniques and optimized resource utilization. AI researchers have been abuzz about the performance of the DeepSeek chatbot that produces results similar to ChatGPT, but is based on open-source models and reportedly trained on older GPU chips. Some researchers are skeptical of claims about DeepSeek’s development costs and means, but its performance appears to challenge common assumptions about the computing cost of developing AI applications. This efficiency has been attributed to innovative techniques and optimized resource utilization.  Market Reactions and Data Center Implications The announcement of DeepSeek’s R1 model led to significant market reactions, with notable declines in tech stocks, including a substantial drop in Nvidia’s valuation. This downturn was driven by concerns that more efficient AI models could reduce the demand for high-end hardware and, by extension, the expansive data centers that house them. For now, investors are re-assessing the

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

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

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

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

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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

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

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

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