Land and Expand: DPO, Microsoft, JLL and BlackChamber, Prologis, Core Scientific, Overwatch Capital

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Land and Expand: DPO, Microsoft, JLL and BlackChamber, Prologis, Core Scientific, Overwatch Capital

Land and Expand is a periodic feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center developers and operators about which we’ve been reading lately. DPO to Develop $200 Million […]

Land and Expand is a periodic feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center developers and operators about which we’ve been reading lately.

DPO to Develop $200 Million AI Data Center in Wisconsin Rapids; Strategic Partnership with Billerud’s CWPCo Unlocks Hydroelectric Power for High-Density AI Compute

Digital Power Optimization (DPO) is moving forward with plans to build a $200 million high-performance computing (HPC) data center in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. The project, designed to support up to 20 megawatts (MW) of artificial intelligence (AI) computing, leverages an innovative partnership with Consolidated Water Power Company (CWPCo), a subsidiary of global packaging leader Billerud.

DPO specializes in developing and operating data centers optimized for power-dense computing. By partnering with utilities and independent power producers, DPO colocates its facilities at energy generation sites, ensuring direct access to sustainable power for AI, HPC, and blockchain computing. The company is privately held.

Leveraging Power Infrastructure for Speed-to-Energization

CWPCo, a regulated utility subsidiary, has operated hydroelectric generation assets since 1894, reliably serving industrial and commercial customers in Wisconsin Rapids, Biron, and Stevens Point. Parent company Billerud is a global leader in high-performance packaging materials, committed to sustainability and innovation. The company operates nine production facilities across Sweden, the USA, and Finland, employing 5,800 people in over 19 countries.

The data center will be powered by CWPCo’s renewable hydroelectric assets, tapping into the utility’s existing 32 megawatts of generation capacity. The partnership grants DPO a long-term land lease—extending up to 50 years—alongside interconnection rights to an already-energized substation and a firm, reliable power supply.

“AI infrastructure is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and access to power-dense sites is critical,” said Andrew Webber, CEO of Digital Power Optimization. “With our agreements in place, we’re able to move quickly, avoiding the long lead times associated with greenfield development. Our model of repurposing underutilized energy assets positions us to bring capacity online significantly faster than traditional hyperscale projects.”

Webber emphasized that the sustained demand for high-density AI rack space will continue well into the 2030s, making speed-to-market a competitive advantage.

A Model for Sustainable Growth in Digital Infrastructure

The Wisconsin Rapids project represents a new approach to energy-efficient digital infrastructure. By integrating directly with CWPCo’s existing hydroelectric generation, the project maximizes renewable energy utilization while diversifying the utility’s customer base.

“This partnership allows us to optimize our energy resources while creating new economic opportunities for the region,” said Martin Burkhardt, Director of CWPCo. “The ability to attract cutting-edge technology while leveraging our existing assets is a win-win for both our company and the Wisconsin Rapids community.”

Supporting the Buildout

DPO has enlisted Stantec, a global leader in sustainable engineering and design, to provide consulting and engineering services. The company is actively working with city and state officials to finalize permitting ahead of construction.

The pre-development phase has been backed by a consortium led by Salutem Capital, a New York-based family office with a strong investment focus on AI, digital infrastructure, and transformative technologies.

“The AI revolution is fueling massive demand for advanced compute capacity, and DPO is proving its ability to execute in this space,” said Justin and Cameron Adelipour, Managing Partners at Salutem Capital. “This project is a testament to DPO’s strategic vision and ability to deliver next-generation infrastructure solutions.”

DPO expects to bring the facility online in 2026, reinforcing Wisconsin Rapids as an emerging hub for AI-driven digital infrastructure.

Microsoft Pauses $3.3 Billion Wisconsin Data Center Amid Strategic Review

In May 2024, Microsoft unveiled an ambitious $3.3 billion investment to transform Southeast Wisconsin into a hub for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. This initiative included the construction of a state-of-the-art data center campus in Mount Pleasant, aimed at bolstering the company’s AI and cloud infrastructure. The project was poised to create approximately 2,300 construction jobs by 2025 and establish 2,000 permanent positions over time.

However, by January 2025, Microsoft announced a strategic pause on portions of the development. The company stated that it was reassessing its plans for the second phase of the Mount Pleasant data center to evaluate the scope and consider recent technological advancements that might influence the facility’s design. Despite this pause, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to the project, emphasizing that the first phase remained on track for completion within the year.

Local officials in Mount Pleasant expressed confidence that the temporary halt would not impact the overall scope or nature of the project. Sean Ryan, a spokesperson for the village, noted, “We have no reason to believe this will affect the overall scope or nature of Microsoft’s project.”

Such news developments underscore the dynamic nature of the data center industry, where rapid technological advancements necessitate continual reassessment and adaptation of infrastructure projects to meet evolving demands.

JLL Secures Over $1.2 Billion in Construction Financing for BlackChamber Group’s Northern Virginia Data Center Expansion

JLL’s Capital Markets group has arranged more than $1.2 billion in construction financing to support The BlackChamber Group’s continued expansion in Northern Virginia, the world’s largest data center market. The funds will drive the development of four hyperscale powered shell campuses, collectively designed to deliver over 740 megawatts of capacity.

The financing is part of BlackChamber’s broader Northern Virginia development strategy, which encompasses eight campuses with a combined potential of nearly 1.5 gigawatts of capacity across more than six million square feet. JLL’s Capital Markets Debt Advisory team, led by Jamie Leachman, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, and Drake Greer, Senior Director within JLL’s National Data Center Capital Markets team, advised BlackChamber on the transactions.

The BlackChamber Group is a purpose-built, vertically integrated data center developer and SEC-registered investment adviser headquartered in Washington, D.C. Designed to serve as an optimized real estate partner for the world’s leading hyperscale technology firms, BlackChamber brings deep industry expertise and a proven track record of delivering scalable, high-performance data center solutions.

“Against a dynamic and challenging market backdrop, JLL leveraged its relationships, creativity, and expertise to drive seamless and unrelenting execution with a variety of different lenders, ultimately delivering value-accretive and strategically beneficial financing solutions,” said Conley Patton, Managing Partner at BlackChamber.

Unyielding Demand for Data Center Capacity in Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia’s data center market continues to outpace global competitors, with more than 4.6 gigawatts of capacity as of the first half of 2024. The region saw an unprecedented 1.3 gigawatts of absorption in 2024, closing the year with a vacancy rate of just 0.4%. With over 5.8 gigawatts of additional development in the pipeline, the market remains at the forefront of digital infrastructure expansion.

“We are seeing incredible demand for data centers, with a consistent appetite from Cloud, AI, and Enterprise tenants,” said Leachman. “This demand has driven increased attention from a variety of capital sources.”

JLL’s Greer added that BlackChamber’s recent financing activity underscores the evolving nature of data center capital markets. “What was once a niche alternative asset class has become a primary focus for institutional capital. The diversity of lenders in these transactions—including bank balance sheets, infrastructure funds, and private credit vehicles backed by insurance capital—demonstrates the strong investment appetite for data centers.”

JLL’s Capital Markets group provides a full spectrum of financial solutions for real estate and infrastructure investors. Its National Data Center Capital Markets team, led by Senior Managing Director Carl Beardsley, continues to be a key advisor in facilitating large-scale data center financing transactions.

Prologis Charts Ambitious 10 GW Data Center Expansion Over the Next Decade; Industrial REIT Eyes Long-Term Growth in Digital Infrastructure

Prologis, the global leader in logistics and industrial real estate, is making a major push into the data center sector, outlining a plan to develop 10 gigawatts of capacity over the next ten years. The company’s expansion strategy builds upon its growing pipeline of data center projects, reflecting its deepening commitment to digital infrastructure.

A Growing Data Center Pipeline

During a recent earnings call, Prologis President Dan Letter provided an update on the company’s expanding data center footprint. Prologis currently has 1.4 gigawatts of secured power for data center development and an additional 1.6 gigawatts in advanced stages of procurement. The company has also submitted applications for another 1.5 gigawatts, bringing its near-term pipeline to 4.5 gigawatts.

“But all in, it’s 10 GW over the next ten years,” Letter said. “And that doesn’t even touch upon the universe of opportunities. This is coming from a portfolio of 6,000 buildings and 15,000 acres of land that we own or control. So the universe of opportunities is much greater than that.”

Strategic Partnerships and Monetization Considerations

Prologis entered the data center space during the COVID-19 pandemic and has frequently partnered with Skybox Datacenters to build facilities that are then leased or sold to hyperscalers and other operators.

One of the latest examples is the sale of a powered shell data center in Elk Grove, Illinois. Initially developed as a logistics asset, the site was converted into a powered shell before Prologis secured a build-to-suit turnkey transaction with a hyperscaler last fall. The project was ultimately sold to asset manager HMC Capital.

“Elk Grove started out being a powered shell and ended up being a turnkey,” said CEO Hamid Moghadam. “That will maybe increase the capital spend by a factor or two.”

As the company scales its data center business, it is actively considering how to structure its long-term investment strategy in the sector.

“We have not yet made the decision as to what we’re going to do with the capitalization of our data center business long term,” Moghadam said. “The current thinking is that we are a developer, and that we’ll monetize and sell these assets upon completion. And we use the capital that they generate as a way of expanding our core logistics business. That’s the strategy today.”

He noted that Prologis may consider expanding its strategy to include fund management, either through a dedicated fund or by integrating data center investments into its existing open-end funds. However, he emphasized that the company has no plans to hold a 100% interest in data centers on its balance sheet due to the capital-intensive nature of the asset class.

“One thing we will not do is hold 100 percent interest in data centers on our balance sheet because the capital requirements of that are going to be—even for us—pretty significant,” he said.

Leadership and Industry Expertise

Prologis’ data center initiatives are led by industry veteran Chris Curtis, co-founder of Compass Datacenters, who joined the company last year to drive its digital infrastructure expansion. With a deep bench of expertise and a robust development pipeline, Prologis is positioning itself as a key player in the future of hyperscale and powered shell data center development.

Prologis’ deep real estate portfolio and strategic approach to monetizing digital infrastructure place it in a strong position to support hyperscale expansion while fueling its core logistics business. As data center demand continues to surge, the company’s long-term strategy and development pipeline will be closely watched by industry stakeholders.

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Nvidia launches research center to accelerate quantum computing breakthrough

The new research center aims to tackle quantum computing’s most significant challenges, including qubit noise reduction and the transformation of experimental quantum processors into practical devices. “By combining quantum processing units (QPUs) with state-of-the-art GPU technology, Nvidia hopes to accelerate the timeline to practical quantum computing applications,” the statement added.

Keysight network packet brokers gain AI-powered features

The technology has matured considerably since then. Over the last five years, Singh said that most of Keysight’s NPB customers are global Fortune 500 organizations that have large network visibility practices. Meaning they deploy a lot of packet brokers with capabilities ranging anywhere from one gigabit networking at the edge,

Adding, managing and deleting groups on Linux

$ sudo groupadd -g 1111 techs In this case, a specific group ID (1111) is being assigned. Omit the -g option to use the next available group ID (e.g., sudo groupadd techs). Once a group is added, you will find it in the /etc/group file. $ grep techs /etc/grouptechs:x:1111: Adding

Server spending is at unprecedented levels as enterprises rush to adopt AI

The non-x86 growth is largely being fueled by high demand for Nvidia Blackwell chips, Fernandez explained, as well as moves by the Chinese government to support local manufacturers such as Huawei, which is now one of the main suppliers of ARM processors for the Chinese market. “We’re thinking the ARM

Global Oil Demand Makes Strong Start to 2025

Global oil demand has made a strong start to 2025, analysts at Standard Chartered Bank, including Commodities Research Head Paul Horsnell, said in a report sent to Rigzone by Horsnell on Thursday. “Based on a variety of national sources and the 19 March Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) release, we estimate that demand averaged 102.77 million barrels per day in January, a year on year increase of 2.19 million barrels per day,” the Standard Chartered Bank analysts said in the report. “This is in line with the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimate for January that put demand at 102.74 million barrels per day and growth at 1.85 million barrels per day,” they added. In the report, the Standard Chartered Bank analysts noted that January is usually the seasonal low point for global demand and said they expect demand “to move above 105.0 million barrels per day for the first time in June before reaching a 2025 high of 105.6 million barrels per day in August”. “Our forecast for 2025 demand growth stands at 1.41 million barrels per day. After weakening in H2-2024, our forecast is now back where it stood at its initiation in January 2024,” they added. “While the main downside risk to demand comes from U.S. tariff policy and the economic uncertainty it creates, for now demand-side fundamentals appear robust despite negative sentiment,” they continued. The Standard Chartered Bank analysts stated in the report that they expect global demand to exceed supply by 0.9 million barrels per day in the second quarter and by 0.5 million barrels per day in the third quarter. Rigzone has contacted the Trump transition team and the White House for comment on Standard Chartered Bank’s report. At the time of writing, neither have responded to Rigzone. In a research note sent to

Voyager Midstream Acquires Phillips 66 Stake in Panola NGL Pipeline

Voyager Midstream Holdings LLC has completed the purchase of a non-operating stake in a Texas natural gas liquid (NGL) pipeline from Phillips 66. The 254-mile Panola Pipeline, operated by Enterprise Products Partners LP, transports Y-Grade NGLs from Panola County to fractionation facilities in Mont Belvieu city. “Voyager’s interest in the Panola Pipeline is a strategic fit with the company’s existing footprint in East Texas and North Louisiana”, Houston, Texas-based Voyager said in an online statement, referring to assets also acquired from Phillips 66. Voyager chief executive Will Harvey commented, “Panola Pipeline is a critical NGL pipeline connecting the major East Texas gas processing complexes and Gulf Coast demand markets”. “We are excited to work alongside our partners in Panola Pipeline to safely transport liquids to satisfy growing demand for NGLs along the Gulf Coast”, Harvey added. Voyager did not disclose the financial details of the transaction. It said that in conjunction with the acquisition, it has entered into a credit facility with the Bank of Oklahoma. “This credit facility, along with existing equity commitments from Pearl, provides Voyager with substantial flexibility and capital to continue growing its business in support of its customers”, it said. Pearl Energy Investments launched Voyager in 2023 as a platform for the acquisition and development of crude oil, natural gas and produced water infrastructure across key basins in North America. Voyager operates about 550 miles of natural gas pipelines and associated compression. It also has 400 million cubic feet a day of cryogenic gas processing capacity and 12,000 barrels per day of liquid fractionation capacity. It also operates Carthage Hub, a gas trading and delivery hub capable of handling over 1 billion cubic feet per day. Carthage Hub interconnects multiple markets across the United States including LNG markets in Texas and Louisiana. All of these

BP makes first divestment of target $20bn asset sale

Energy firm BP has sold a stake worth $1 billion (£733m) in the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) to Apollo as part of the first tranche of a $20bn asset sale target. The US asset manager will take a 25% non-operated stake in BP Pipelines (TANAP) (BP TANAP) which itself holds BP’s 12% interest in TANAP, owner and operator of the pipeline that carries natural gas from Azerbaijan across Turkey. The sale comes after BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss unveiled plans to review assets for a potential sale including its core lubricants business, Castrol and its solar business, BP Lightsource. The $20bn target was announced alongside a “fundamental reset” for the firm as it turns focus to its traditional oil and gas production business. The deal marks the second such sale agreed with US fund manager, Apollo. Last year Apollo snapped up another $1bn BP-owned stake in Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). TANAP, running for approximately 1,120 miles (1,800km) across Turkey, is the central section of the Southern Gas Corridor project (SGC) pipeline system. The SGC transports gas from the BP-operated Shah Deniz gas field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea to markets in Europe, including Italy and Greece. It connects to TAP at the Greek-Turkish border, which crosses Northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore in Southern Italy to connect to the Italian natural gas network. BP said the deal allows it to “monetise” its interest in TANAP while retaining control of the asset. BP executive vice president for gas and low carbon energy William Lin said: “This unlocks capital from our global portfolio while retaining our role in this strategic asset for bringing Azerbaijan gas to Europe. BP and Apollo will continue to explore further strategic cooperation and mutually beneficial opportunities.” Apollo partner Skardon Baker

‘First Major Project’ for GB Energy Announced

A release posted on the UK government website on Friday announced that the “first major project” for Great British Energy (GB Energy) “is to put rooftop solar panels on around 200 schools and 200 NHS sites, saving hundreds of millions on their energy bills”. Hundreds of schools, NHS trusts and communities across the UK will benefit from new rooftop solar power and renewable schemes to save money on their energy bills, thanks to a total GBP 200 million ($258.6 million) investment from the UK government and Great British Energy, the release stated. “In England around GBP 80 million ($103.4 million) in funding will support around 200 schools, alongside GBP 100 million ($129.3 million) for nearly 200 NHS sites, covering a third of NHS trusts, to install rooftop solar panels that could power classrooms and operations, with potential to sell leftover energy back to the grid,” the release noted. The first panels are expected to be in schools and hospitals by the end of summer 2025, according to the release. The release stated that local authorities and community energy groups will also be supported by nearly GBP 12 million ($15.5 million) to help build local clean energy projects. A further GBP 9.3 million ($12.0 million) will power schemes in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland including community energy or rooftop solar for public buildings, the release added. “Great British Energy’s first major project will be to help our vital public institutions save hundreds of millions on bills to reinvest on the frontline,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in the release. “Great British Energy will provide power for pupils and patients,” he added. “Parents at the school gate and patients in hospitals will experience the difference Great British Energy can make. This is our clean energy superpower mission in action, with lower bills

Raymond James Sees Biggest Crop of New Oil Projects in a Decade

A flurry of oil projects from Brazil to Saudi Arabia are set to come online this year, providing the biggest infusion of new crude production in more than a decade. Fresh oil field output is expected to total about 2.9 million barrels a day in 2025, up from about 800,000 barrels last year, according to data from Raymond James. That’s the most in data stretching back to 2015. Among the largest projects are the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan and Bacalhau in Brazil, as well as the Berri and Marjan expansions in Saudi Arabia. The projections for this year and next are subject to delays, and could change. Global oil forecasters have been projecting a supply overhang for 2025 as countries including Guyana and Brazil bring on new output and OPEC+ plans to start reviving idled output in April. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump’s trade policies have fanned concerns about reduced global energy demand. The US Energy Information Administration projects supply will exceed demand by 100,000 barrels a day this year, and the International Energy Agency sees a surplus of 600,000 barrels a day. While Raymond James didn’t provide full forecasts for production and consumption, the firm projects that supply will outstrip demand by 280,000 barrels a day toward the end of 2025. “Investors have not fully grasped just how much new supply from projects is on deck in 2025,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. What do you think? We’d love to hear from you, join the conversation on the Rigzone Energy Network. The Rigzone Energy Network is a new social experience created for you and all energy professionals to Speak Up about our industry, share knowledge, connect with peers and industry insiders and engage in a professional community that will empower your career in energy. MORE FROM THIS

Net zero cannot be ‘in isolation’ from fossil fuels, industry chief to say

The drive for net zero cannot be “in isolation from the hydrocarbon sector”, the head of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) will say today. Rain Newton-Smith is due to speak at the group’s annual lunch in Edinburgh, alongside First Minister John Swinney, where she will laud the oil and gas industry as “the bridge” to net zero. But the business boss will also lament government action which has hit the fossil fuels industry. The speech comes at a time when the idea of net zero is becoming unpopular with the Conservatives and a surging Reform UK – which has made opposing them a key plank of their offering to the public. “Despite the voices being raised against net zero, the fact is Scotland is sitting on a goldmine of green energy,” Newton-Smith is expected to say. “The numbers don’t lie. The opportunities are there. “Since 2022, Scotland’s net-zero sector has grown 20% and created 16,000 more jobs while average UK growth has near-flatlined. “So, let me be crystal clear. Business is behind net zero. Business is invested in our energy transition. And we’re behind the plans to go further. “But we can’t see net zero in isolation from the hydrocarbon sector. “Especially in Scotland. Oil and gas are still tens of thousands of jobs here. From the latest data it still makes up over 10% of Scotland’s GDP. “It will still be a part of the energy mix and the bridge to net zero, for some time yet. The infrastructure, the investment, the skills and knowledge of these industries will be mission critical for the transition. “But too often, they have been left out of the picture, hit by repeated tax changes and uncertainty. “On one hand, we need clear timelines and funding for net-zero commitments government has already

PEAK:AIO adds power, density to AI storage server

There is also the fact that many people working with AI are not IT professionals, such as professors, biochemists, scientists, doctors, clinicians, and they don’t have a traditional enterprise department or a data center. “It’s run by people that wouldn’t really know, nor want to know, what storage is,” he said. While the new AI Data Server is a Dell design, PEAK:AIO has worked with Lenovo, Supermicro, and HPE as well as Dell over the past four years, offering to convert their off the shelf storage servers into hyper fast, very AI-specific, cheap, specific storage servers that work with all the protocols at Nvidia, like NVLink, along with NFS and NVMe over Fabric. It also greatly increased storage capacity by going with 61TB drives from Solidigm. SSDs from the major server vendors typically maxed out at 15TB, according to the vendor. PEAK:AIO competes with VAST, WekaIO, NetApp, Pure Storage and many others in the growing AI workload storage arena. PEAK:AIO’s AI Data Server is available now.

SoftBank to buy Ampere for $6.5B, fueling Arm-based server market competition

SoftBank’s announcement suggests Ampere will collaborate with other SBG companies, potentially creating a powerful ecosystem of Arm-based computing solutions. This collaboration could extend to SoftBank’s numerous portfolio companies, including Korean/Japanese web giant LY Corp, ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), and various AI startups. If SoftBank successfully steers its portfolio companies toward Ampere processors, it could accelerate the shift away from x86 architecture in data centers worldwide. Questions remain about Arm’s server strategy The acquisition, however, raises questions about how SoftBank will balance its investments in both Arm and Ampere, given their potentially competing server CPU strategies. Arm’s recent move to design and sell its own server processors to Meta signaled a major strategic shift that already put it in direct competition with its own customers, including Qualcomm and Nvidia. “In technology licensing where an entity is both provider and competitor, boundaries are typically well-defined without special preferences beyond potential first-mover advantages,” Kawoosa explained. “Arm will likely continue making independent licensing decisions that serve its broader interests rather than favoring Ampere, as the company can’t risk alienating its established high-volume customers.” Industry analysts speculate that SoftBank might position Arm to focus on custom designs for hyperscale customers while allowing Ampere to dominate the market for more standardized server processors. Alternatively, the two companies could be merged or realigned to present a unified strategy against incumbents Intel and AMD. “While Arm currently dominates processor architecture, particularly for energy-efficient designs, the landscape isn’t static,” Kawoosa added. “The semiconductor industry is approaching a potential inflection point, and we may witness fundamental disruptions in the next 3-5 years — similar to how OpenAI transformed the AI landscape. SoftBank appears to be maximizing its Arm investments while preparing for this coming paradigm shift in processor architecture.”

Nvidia, xAI and two energy giants join genAI infrastructure initiative

The new AIP members will “further strengthen the partnership’s technology leadership as the platform seeks to invest in new and expanded AI infrastructure. Nvidia will also continue in its role as a technical advisor to AIP, leveraging its expertise in accelerated computing and AI factories to inform the deployment of next-generation AI data center infrastructure,” the group’s statement said. “Additionally, GE Vernova and NextEra Energy have agreed to collaborate with AIP to accelerate the scaling of critical and diverse energy solutions for AI data centers. GE Vernova will also work with AIP and its partners on supply chain planning and in delivering innovative and high efficiency energy solutions.” The group claimed, without offering any specifics, that it “has attracted significant capital and partner interest since its inception in September 2024, highlighting the growing demand for AI-ready data centers and power solutions.” The statement said the group will try to raise “$30 billion in capital from investors, asset owners, and corporations, which in turn will mobilize up to $100 billion in total investment potential when including debt financing.” Forrester’s Nguyen also noted that the influence of two of the new members — xAI, owned by Elon Musk, along with Nvidia — could easily help with fundraising. Musk “with his connections, he does not make small quiet moves,” Nguyen said. “As for Nvidia, they are the face of AI. Everything they do attracts attention.” Info-Tech’s Bickley said that the astronomical dollars involved in genAI investments is mind-boggling. And yet even more investment is needed — a lot more.

IBM broadens access to Nvidia technology for enterprise AI

The IBM Storage Scale platform will support CAS and now will respond to queries using the extracted and augmented data, speeding up the communications between GPUs and storage using Nvidia BlueField-3 DPUs and Spectrum-X networking, IBM stated. The multimodal document data extraction workflow will also support Nvidia NeMo Retriever microservices. CAS will be embedded in the next update of IBM Fusion, which is planned for the second quarter of this year. Fusion simplifies the deployment and management of AI applications and works with Storage Scale, which will handle high-performance storage support for AI workloads, according to IBM. IBM Cloud instances with Nvidia GPUs In addition to the software news, IBM said its cloud customers can now use Nvidia H200 instances in the IBM Cloud environment. With increased memory bandwidth (1.4x higher than its predecessor) and capacity, the H200 Tensor Core can handle larger datasets, accelerating the training of large AI models and executing complex simulations, with high energy efficiency and low total cost of ownership, according to IBM. In addition, customers can use the power of the H200 to process large volumes of data in real time, enabling more accurate predictive analytics and data-driven decision-making, IBM stated. IBM Consulting capabilities with Nvidia Lastly, IBM Consulting is adding Nvidia Blueprint to its recently introduced AI Integration Service, which offers customers support for developing, building and running AI environments. Nvidia Blueprints offer a suite pre-validated, optimized, and documented reference architectures designed to simplify and accelerate the deployment of complex AI and data center infrastructure, according to Nvidia. The IBM AI Integration service already supports a number of third-party systems, including Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow environments.

Nvidia’s silicon photonics switches bring better power efficiency to AI data centers

Nvidia typically uses partnerships where appropriate, and the new switch design was done in collaboration with multiple vendors across different aspects, including creating the lasers, packaging, and other elements as part of the silicon photonics. Hundreds of patents were also included. Nvidia will licensing the innovations created to its partners and customers with the goal of scaling this model. Nvidia’s partner ecosystem includes TSMC, which provides advanced chip fabrication and 3D chip stacking to integrate silicon photonics into Nvidia’s hardware. Coherent, Eoptolink, Fabrinet, and Innolight are involved in the development, manufacturing, and supply of the transceivers. Additional partners include Browave, Coherent, Corning Incorporated, Fabrinet, Foxconn, Lumentum, SENKO, SPIL, Sumitomo Electric Industries, and TFC Communication. AI has transformed the way data centers are being designed. During his keynote at GTC, CEO Jensen Huang talked about the data center being the “new unit of compute,” which refers to the entire data center having to act like one massive server. That has driven compute to be primarily CPU based to being GPU centric. Now the network needs to evolve to ensure data is being fed to the GPUs at a speed they can process the data. The new co-packaged switches remove external parts, which have historically added a small amount of overhead to networking. Pre-AI this was negligible, but with AI, any slowness in the network leads to dollars being wasted.

Critical vulnerability in AMI MegaRAC BMC allows server takeover

“In disruptive or destructive attacks, attackers can leverage the often heterogeneous environments in data centers to potentially send malicious commands to every other BMC on the same management segment, forcing all devices to continually reboot in a way that victim operators cannot stop,” the Eclypsium researchers said. “In extreme scenarios, the net impact could be indefinite, unrecoverable downtime until and unless devices are re-provisioned.” BMC vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, including hardcoded credentials, have been of interest for attackers for over a decade. In 2022, security researchers found a malicious implant dubbed iLOBleed that was likely developed by an APT group and was being deployed through vulnerabilities in HPE iLO (HPE’s Integrated Lights-Out) BMC. In 2018, a ransomware group called JungleSec used default credentials for IPMI interfaces to compromise Linux servers. And back in 2016, Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) Serial-over-LAN (SOL) feature which is part of Intel’s Management Engine (Intel ME), was exploited by an APT group as a covert communication channel to transfer files. OEM, server manufacturers in control of patching AMI released an advisory and patches to its OEM partners, but affected users must wait for their server manufacturers to integrate them and release firmware updates. In addition to this vulnerability, AMI also patched a flaw tracked as CVE-2024-54084 that may lead to arbitrary code execution in its AptioV UEFI implementation. HPE and Lenovo have already released updates for their products that integrate AMI’s patch for CVE-2024-54085.

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