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GB Energy pledges £4m for Scotland

The UK’s £8.3 billion energy firm has announced plans to allocate £4 million to support community-owned energy projects in Scotland. The joint fund with the Scottish Government will give communities chance to apply for from the scheme. The funding pot targets local clean energy projects – from community-led onshore wind, to solar on rooftops and […]

The UK’s £8.3 billion energy firm has announced plans to allocate £4 million to support community-owned energy projects in Scotland.

The joint fund with the Scottish Government will give communities chance to apply for from the scheme.

The funding pot targets local clean energy projects – from community-led onshore wind, to solar on rooftops and hydropower in rivers – generating profits which could be reinvested into community projects or take money off people’s bills, a statement from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said.

GB Energy said the investment is part of its £8m community energy generation growth fund, with the remaining funding coming from the Scottish Government.

The community fund was announced when the body announced its first major investment, allocating £180m to support rooftop solar for around 200 schools in England, alongside a further £100m for nearly 200 NHS sites.

It also said £9.3m funding would be allocated to devolved governments to use for renewable energy schemes on either public sector buildings or new community projects, including £4.85m for Scotland, £2.88m for Wales and £1.62m for Northern Ireland.

Minister for Energy Michael Shanks, who is expected to deliver a speech via video at the All Energy conference in Glasgow, said: “This is our clean energy superpower mission in action – putting communities in the driving seat of energy generation and making sure people profit.

“Great British Energy wants to kickstart a community energy revolution, empowering our towns and villages to become mini energy producers and reinvest profits back into the local community.”

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Network data hygiene: The critical first step to effective AI agents

Many network teams manage some 15 to 30 different dashboards to track data across all the components in an environment, struggling to cobble together relevant information across domains and spending hours troubleshooting a single incident. In short, they are drowning in data. Artificial intelligence tools—and specifically AI agents—promise to ease

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Key takeaways from IBM Think partner event

The first week of May means flowers from April showers and that it’s time for IBM Think in Boston. The first day of the event has historically been the Partner Plus day, which is devoted to content for IBM partners, which include ISVs, technology partners and resellers. The 2025 keynote

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LandBridge Posts Higher Revenue

LandBridge Company LLC has reported $44 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2025, up from $36.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 and $19 million for the corresponding quarter a year prior. The company attributed the sequential increase to increases in surface use royalties of $6.8 million,

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Tallgrass Secures Shipping Deals for Planned Permian Gas Pipeline

Tallgrass said Tuesday it has signed anchor shipper precedent agreements for a planned Permian Basin pipeline that would carry up to 2.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The firm transport commitments “financially justify construction of the pipeline project, subject to customary regulatory and corporate conditions and approvals, with a target in-service date in late 2028”, the Kansas City-based energy transport infrastructure company said in an online statement. Tallgrass said it would launch an open season for more shippers to subscribe and for the company to determine the pipeline’s ultimate capacity. The pipeline is planned to pick up gas from different points in the Permian for transport to the Rockies Express Pipeline, Tallgrass’ gas pipeline stretching about 1,700 miles from Colorado’s Blanco County to Ohio’s Monroe County. Tallgrass is also eyeing other delivery points. “The new pipeline project is unique in that it will enable affordable and plentiful natural gas to access markets across the U.S., including multiple major markets that are key hubs of activity for industrial, agricultural, and technological development and innovation, from reshoring, policies to promote U.S. agriculture, and AI-driven power demand”, Tallgrass said. “Upon in-service, natural gas from the project will also be able to reach markets across Tallgrass’ approximately 800-mile decarbonization pipeline network, so that consumers of new natural-gas-fired power generation and industrial consumers of natural gas will have an immediate and financially viable opportunity to supply their growing energy demand while decarbonizing through CO2 capture and sequestration and the use of clean hydrogen”. CO2 Pipeline Project Tallgrass is converting a natural gas pipeline that operated for over a decade to transport CO2 to its sequestration site being developed in Wyoming. The converted pipeline is planned to transport over 10 million tons a year of CO2 from industries in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. Tallgrass expects the converted

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Sweden’s CorPower to build UK’s largest wave energy array in Orkney

Swedish firm CorPower Ocean is set to build the UK’s largest wave energy array at a test site in the Orkney Islands. The Scottish government made the announcement at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow. As part of the berth agreement, CorPower will deploy a 5 MW wave array at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) by 2029. The project will be located at EMEC’s grid-connected Billia Croo wave energy test site and will consist of 14 wave energy converters (WECs) operating for up to 15 years. The wave array mark’s CorPower’s second project at EMEC after it tested its C3 WEC at the Scapa Flow test site in 2018 in partnership with Wave Energy Scotland. Since then, the Stockholm-headquartered firm has demonstrated its C4 WEC device off the coast of Portugal. Speaking at All-Energy in 2024, CorPower head of business development Anders Jansson said the company had wanted to continue its testing at EMEC. However, he said CorPower made the decision to move its testing from Scotland to Portugal after Brexit impacted access to EU research funding. © Supplied by CorPowerA CorPower wave energy converter in Portugal. Ahead of building the wave array at EMEC, CorPower will build three more WECs to its fleet for a small wave farm demonstration project before developing the 5 MW array. The Scottish government said CorPower will produce the hull and other subsystems for its Billia Croo array project in Orkney, alongside using local vessels during deployment. Scotland wave and tidal energy ambitions SNP deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said Scotland is in a “prime position” for the development and deployment wave and tidal stream energy. “This new project will create skilled jobs in Orkney, support a developing supply chain while reinforcing Scotland’s global leadership in marine renewables,” Forbes said. Jansson said the company

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Electrification and net zero coming ‘no matter your politics’, ScottishPower chief says

The UK will need to invest heavily in renewable energy and upgrading the grid to meet growing electricity demand despite a growing political pushback against net zero efforts, the chief of executive of ScottishPower has said. Speaking at the opening of the All-Energy conference in Glasgow, Keith Anderson said UK electricity demand is set to double “no matter your politics”. His comments come after a swathe of electoral victories by Reform UK in local elections in England which have raised alarm bells in the clean energy sector. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also said it will be “impossible” for the UK to meet its net zero by 2050 target. But Anderson said the UK needs to continue its energy transition investments because of the “overwhelming consensus” that electrification is becoming “unstoppable”. “Electrification of our economy is critical for energy security, national security, economic growth, the health and wealth of our country, and net zero will come as a result of that electrification,” he said. © Image: SP Energy NetworksA ScottishPower employee standing near grid transmission infrastructure. “No matter your politics, electricity demand will double. “Britain needs the right infrastructure to support it, or we get left behind.” Alongside calls for the UK government to abandon the possible introduction of zonal electricity pricing, Anderson hit out at suggestions that net zero is “doomed to fail”. He said the UK “still has a brilliant pipeline of opportunities” despite a recent announcement that Danish developer Orsted will not proceed with its Hornsea 4 offshore wind project. ‘Go big or go home’ on AR7 Amid these setbacks, he said the UK needs to “go big or go home” in the upcoming seventh Contracts for Difference (CfD) allocation around (AR7). “To hit the clean power 2030 targets, [AR7] has to be the most successful auction

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Tenaz Closes Acquisition of NOBV, Widens Q1 Net Loss

Tenaz Energy Corp. has completed the acquisition of 100 percent of the shares of NAM Offshore B.V. (NOBV) from Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij B.V., a joint venture between Shell PLC and ExxonMobil Corporation. Tenaz has assumed the operatorship of NOBV, the company said in a news release. NOBV has been renamed Tenaz Energy Netherlands B.V. (TEN). The base consideration for the transaction was EUR 165 million, prior to closing adjustments and contingent payments, according to an earlier statement. The transaction has an effective date of January 1, 2024. The acquired assets include substantially all of NAM’s offshore exploration and production business, including associated pipeline infrastructure and onshore processing in the Netherlands. The acquisition does not include NAM’s assets in the Ameland area. As a result of free cash flow and other purchase price adjustments from the effective date of January 1, 2024 until May 1, 2025, Tenaz received approximately EUR 15 million cash at closing, the company said. The acquired assets produced approximately 11,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), consisting of 99 percent natural gas, for the first four months of 2025. Production for full-year 2025, including both the four-month pre-closing and eight-month post-closing periods, is expected to be approximately 10,000 boepd, the company said. Tenaz said it plans to invest $55 million to $61 million in the acquired assets for the remainder of 2025, with production benefits beginning primarily in 2026. Approximately 75 percent of the capital expenditures for the acquired assets will fund drilling and workover activities, with the remainder for facilities projects and maintenance capital. Tenaz updated its production and capital guidance reflecting its expected contribution for the eight-month period following closing. On an annual average basis for 2025, TEN will add approximately 6,100 to 6,400 boepd to its annual guidance range, resulting in updated guidance

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EIA Expects USA Gasoline Price to Drop in 2025 and 2026

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects the U.S. regular gasoline retail price to drop this year and next year, according to its latest short term energy outlook, which was released on May 6. According to that STEO, the EIA sees the U.S. regular gasoline retail price averaging $3.09 per gallon in 2025 and $3.07 per gallon in 2026. The EIA highlighted in the STEO that the U.S. regular gasoline retail price averaged $3.31 per gallon in 2024. In its latest STEO the EIA projected that the U.S. regular gasoline retail price will come in at $3.16 per gallon in the second quarter of this year, $3.12 per gallon in the third quarter, $2.99 per gallon in the fourth quarter, $2.96 per gallon in the first quarter of 2026, $3.16 per gallon in the second quarter, $3.17 per gallon in the third quarter, and $2.96 per gallon in the fourth quarter of next year. In its previous STEO, which was released back in April, the EIA projected that the U.S. regular gasoline retail price would average $3.09 per gallon in 2025 and $3.11 per gallon in 2026. That STEO also pointed out that the U.S. regular gasoline retail price averaged $3.31 per gallon last year. The EIA’s April STEO forecast that the U.S. regular gasoline retail price would come in at $3.10 per gallon in the second quarter of 2025, $3.14 per gallon in the third quarter, $3.01 per gallon in the fourth quarter, $2.99 per gallon in the first quarter of 2026, $3.21 per gallon in the second quarter, $3.22 per gallon in the third quarter, and $3.00 per gallon in the fourth quarter of next year. “We expect gasoline prices across the United States will average $3.14 per gallon over 2Q25 and 3Q25, down nine percent from the

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Kimmeridge Finalizes Glencore Gas Deals

Kimmeridge Energy Management Co. LLC has sealed agreements announced last year to supply Glencore Ltd. with 2 million metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Commonwealth LNG and equivalent natural gas from Kimmeridge Texas Gas LLC (KTG). “Inclusive of agreements with Glencore, Commonwealth has 3 Mtpa of offtake under long-term agreement, with line of sight towards finalizing its commercial book ahead of a targeted final investment decision in Q3 2025 and anticipated first LNG production in 2029”, the parties said in a joint statement Tuesday. The volumes from KTG, which produces in the Escondido, Olmos, Austin Chalk and Eagle Ford formations and sells in the South Texas market, will be supplied at international prices under a netback agreement. “Our partnership with Glencore furthers the transformation of KTG into an integrated natural gas champion that provides reliable, clean energy from wellhead to water”, KTG chief executive David Lawler said. Glencore head for global LNG, gas and power Maxim Kolupaev commented, “Finalizing our agreements with Kimmeridge Texas Gas and Commonwealth marks an important step in advancing our global gas strategy”. The parties announced the initial agreements September 19, 2024. Earlier that year KTG took over Commonwealth LNG after Kimmeridge raised its stake in the project through an acquisition from project founder Paul Varello, who retired following the sale. Earlier this month Commonwealth said it had signed a 20-year offtake agreement with an unnamed “major” Asian customer for 1 MMtpa of LNG. To rise along the Calcasieu River on the Gulf Coast near Cameron, Louisiana, the project has a planned capacity of 9.5 MMtpa, equivalent to about 441.4 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas according to Commonwealth. In February the Department of Energy granted the project a conditional permit to export to countries with no free trade agreement

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AMD targets hosting providers with affordable EPYC 4005 processors

According to Pinkesh Kotecha, chairman and MD of Ishan Technologies, AMD’s 4th Gen EPYC processors stood out because they offer the right combination of high performance, energy efficiency, and security. “Their high core density and ability to optimize performance per watt made them ideal for managing data-intensive operations like real-time analytics and high-frequency transactions. Additionally, AMD’s strong AI roadmap and growing portfolio of AI-optimised solutions position them as a forward-looking partner, ready to support our customers’ evolving AI and data needs. This alignment made AMD a clear choice over alternatives,” Kotecha said. By integrating AMD EPYC processors, Ishan Technologies’ Ishan Cloud plans to empower enterprises across BFSI, ITeS, and manufacturing industries, as well as global capability centers and government organizations, to meet India’s data localization requirements and drive AI-led digital transformation. “The AMD EPYC 4005 series’ price-to-performance ratio makes it an attractive option for cloud hosting and web services, where cost-efficient, always-on performance is essential,” said Manish Rawat, analyst, TechInsights. Prabhu Ram, VP for the industry research group at CMR, said EPYC 4005 processors deliver a compelling mix of performance-per-watt, higher core counts, and modern I/O support, positioning it as a strong alternative to Intel’s Xeon E-2400 and 6300P, particularly for edge deployments. Shah of Counterpoint added, “While ARM-based Ampere Altra promises higher power efficiencies and is ideally adopted in more cloud and hyperscale data centers, though performance is something where x86-based Zen 5 architecture excels and nicely balances the efficiencies with lower TDPs, better software compatibilities supported by a more mature ecosystem.”

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Shell’s immersive cooling liquids the first to receive official certification from Intel

Along with the certification, Intel is offering a Xeon processor single-phase immersion warranty rider. This indicates Intel’s confidence in the durability and effectiveness of Shell’s fluids. Yates explained that the rider augments Intel’s standard warranty terms and is available to data center operators deploying 4th and 5th generation Xeon processors in Shell immersion fluids. The rider is intended to provide data center operators confidence that their investment is guaranteed when deployed correctly. Shell’s fluids are available globally and can be employed in retrofitted existing infrastructure or used in new builds. Cuts resource use, increases performance Data centers consume anywhere from 10 to 50 times more energy per square foot than traditional office buildings, and they are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Largely due to the explosion of AI, data center energy consumption is expected to double from 415 terawatt-hours in 2024 to around 945 TWh by 2030. There are several other technologies used for data center cooling, including air cooling, cold plate (direct-to-chip), and precision cooling (targeted to specific areas), but the use of immersion cooling has been growing, and is expected to account for 36% of data center thermal management revenue by 2028. With this method, servers and networking equipment are placed in cooling fluids that absorb and dissipate heat generated by the electronic equipment. These specialized fluids are thermally conductive but not electrically conductive (dielectric) thus making them safe for submerging electrical equipment.

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Cisco joins AI infrastructure alliance

“The addition of Cisco reinforces AIP’s commitment to an open-architecture platform and fostering a broad ecosystem that supports a diverse range of partners on a non-exclusive basis, all working together to build a new kind of AI infrastructure,” the group said in a statement.  Separately, Cisco announced AI initiatives centered in the Middle East region. Last week, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins visited Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain. This week, Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and chief product officer, is in Saudi Arabia, where he is participating in President Trump’s state visit to the region, according to Cisco. Related new projects include:  An initiative with HUMAIN, Saudi Arabia’s new AI enterprise to help build an open, scalable, resilient and cost-efficient AI infrastructure: “This landmark collaboration will set a new standard for how AI infrastructure is designed, secured and delivered – combining Cisco’s global expertise with the Kingdom’s bold AI ambitions. The multi-year initiative aims to position the country as a global leader in digital innovation,” Cisco stated. A collaboration with the UAE-basedG42 to co-develop a secure AI portfolio and AI-native services: Cisco and G42 will work together to assess the potential to co-develop and jointly deploy AI-powered cybersecurity packages, as well as a reference architecture that integrates Cisco’s networking, security, and infrastructure solutions specifically designed for high-performance computing. This collaboration aims to help customers build and secure AI-ready data centers and develop AI workloads effectively, according to the companies. Interest in Qatar’s digital transformation: Qatar’s Ministry of Interior and Cisco signed a letter of intent to collaborate on Qatar’s digital transformation, AI, infrastructure development and cybersecurity.

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Cato Networks introduces AI-powered policy analysis engine

Cato Networks this week announced a new policy analysis engine for its cloud-based secure access service edge platform that the company says will optimize and improve SASE policies, reduce risk, simplify compliance, and reduce manual maintenance efforts. Cato Autonomous Policies is built into the Cato SASE Cloud Platform and can provide enterprises with AI-driven recommendations to eliminate security exposure, tighten access controls, and improve network performance. The first use case of the policy engine is designed for firewall as a service (FWaaS) environments in which “firewall rule bloat” is present, Cato explained in a statement. The bloat comes from organizations accumulating thousands of rules that were designed to protect the environment, but after becoming outdated or misconfigured, actually lead to increased risk. “Most enterprises rely on a mix of firewalls deployed in data centers, branch offices, and cloud environments. Over time, rule sets grow, become inconsistent, and are filled with redundant, outdated, or conflicting entries,” wrote Demetris Booth, product marketing director at Cato Networks, in a blog post on the product news. “As a result, security policies become hard to manage, even harder to audit, and often misaligned with zero-trust principles. AI-driven firewall policy management is necessary for modern enterprises to streamline and optimize security operations.”

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Riverbed bolsters network acceleration for AI’s performance bottlenecks

“Enterprises are worried about bad actors capturing encrypted traffic and saving copies for when quantum computing advances can break the encryption, providing the bad actors with free access to data. It’s a real concern,” Frey explains. “Post-quantum cryptography is a way to get ahead of that now.” Riverbed also introduced the SteelHead 90 series of network acceleration appliances, which the company says will provide resilient network performance to customers. The series includes: SteelHead 8090, which delivers up to 60 Gbps of data movement over a WAN. It supports multiple 100 Gigabyte network interfaces to pull data from the LAN. SteelHead 6090, which delivers up to 20 Gbps of data movement over a WAN, targeted for mid-scale data centers. SteelHead 4090 and 2090, which support mid-sized data center and edge use cases, with 500 Mbps and 200 Mbps of accelerated traffic, as well as up to 10 Gbps of total traffic processing for quality of service (QoS) and application classification use cases. Riverbed SteelHead Virtual, is a software-only version designed for virtualization environments and private cloud deployments, which is compatible with VMWare ESXI, KVM, and Microsoft Hyper-V. “For customers that are familiar with Riverbed, this is a big change in performance. We’ve gone from moving one appliance at 30 Gbps to 60 Gbps. We want to make sure that whether it’s new AI projects or existing data projects, we have ubiquitous availability across clouds,” says Chalan Aras, senior vice president and general manager of Acceleration at Riverbed. “We’re making it less expensive to move data—we are about half the price of traditional data movement methods.” With this announcement, Riverbed also unveiled its Flex licensing subscription offering. According to Riverbed, Flex makes it possible for enterprises to transfer licenses from hardware to virtual to cloud devices at no cost. Enterprises can reassign

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Kyndryl and Microsoft expand partnership to streamline cloud operations

Kyndryl and Microsoft broadened their existing partnership to bring together Microsoft’s adaptive cloud approach and Kyndryl Distributed Cloud services to help customers better develop, manage and secure hybrid cloud operations.  Microsoft says its AI-infused adaptive cloud approach, which leverages Microsoft Azure Arc, Azure Local and Azure Cloud, enables customers to link distributed hybrid, multicloud, edge, and IoT resources under a single, secure application and data platform. The model uses customer data and an AI engine to offer predictive analytics, automated workflows, and threat detection and response to manage the environment, according to Microsoft.  Kyndryl will deliver the adaptive cloud approach to its customers through its Distributed Cloud services, which also use AI to improve automation, optimize workloads, enhance application performance, and reduce operational complexity. Kyndryl Distributed Cloud services create a mesh of interconnected resources and data from the data center to the edge in a multicloud environment, according to Kyndryl. Use cases include data center and edge modernization to support digital twins, AI video, robotic process automation, predictive maintenance, IoT data streams, asset tracking, and anomaly detection. 

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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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