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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SATORP halts processing activities at Jubail refinery

Saudi Aramco Total Refinery & Petrochemicals Co.—a joint venture of Saudi Aramco (62.5%) and TotalEnergies SE (37.5%)—has temporarily shuttered units at its 460,000 b/d full-conversion refinery complex at Jubail, on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast, following disruptions resulting from the ongoing war in the Middle East. In an Apr. 10 update

AI demand is so high, AWS customers are trying to buy out its entire capacity

Marquee names like Anthropic and Uber are “putting AWS’s efficiency claims to the test,” he noted; on the other hand, customers like Cohere and Stability AI prefer Nvidia’s mature tooling framework and “superior chip designs,” citing AWS service and availability issues. Moor’s Kimball pointed out that another factor to consider

Intel secures Google cloud and AI infrastructure deal

“Scaling AI requires more than accelerators – it requires balanced systems. CPUs and IPUs are central to delivering the performance, efficiency and flexibility modern AI workloads demand,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel in a statement. Google does offer custom Armv9-based Axion processors as an alternative to x86 based instances

Broadcom strikes chip deals with Google, Anthropic

Anthropic said this week that the AI startup’s annual revenue run rate has now crossed $30 billion, up from about $9 billion the previous year. “We are making our most significant compute commitment to date to keep pace with our unprecedented growth,” said Krishna Rao, CFO of Anthropic, in a

BW Energy granted 25-year extension of license offshore Gabon

BW Energy Gabon has received approval from the Ministry of Oil and Gas of the Gabonese Republic to extend the Dussafu Marin production license offshore Gabon, West Africa. The license period has been extended to 2053 from 2028, inclusive of three 5-year option periods from 2038 onwards. The prior contract was until 2038 inclusive of two 5-year option periods from 2028 onwards. The extra time “provides long-term visibility for production, investments, and reserve development” of the operator’s “core producing asset,” the company said in a release Apr. 7. Ongoing license projects include MaBoMo Phase 2, with planned first oil in second-half 2026, and the Bourdon development following its discovery last year. The timeline also “strengthens the foundation for future infrastructure‑led growth opportunities across the adjacent Niosi and Guduma licenses, both operated by BW Energy,” the company continued. The Dussafu Marin permit is a development and exploitation license with multiple discoveries and prospects lying within a proven oil and gas play fairway within Southern Gabon basin. To the northwest of the block is the Etame-Ebouri Trend, a collection of fields producing from the pre-salt Gamba and Dentale sandstones, and to the north are Lucina and M’Bya fields which produce from the syn-rift Lucina sandstones beneath the Gamba. Oil fields within the Dussafu Permit include Moubenga, Walt Whitman, Ruche, Ruche North East, Tortue, Hibiscus, and Hibiscus North. BW Energy Gabon is operator at Dussafu (73.50%) with partners Panoro Energy ASA (17.5%) and Gabon Oil Co. (9%). Dussafu.

Santos plans development of North Slope’s Quokka Unit

Santos Ltd. has started development planning in the Quokka Unit on Alaska’s North Slope after further delineating the Nanushuk reservoir. The Quokka-1 appraisal well spudded on Jan. 1, 2026, about 6 six miles from the Mitquq-1 discovery well drilled in 2020. It was drilled to 4,787 ft TD and encountered a high-quality reservoir with about 143 ft of net oil pay in the Nanushuk formation, demonstrating an average porosity of 19%. Following a single stage fracture stimulation, the well achieved a flow rate of 2,190 bo/d. Reservoir sands correlated between the two discoveries, coupled with fluid analyses, confirm the presence of high‑quality, light‑gravity oil, supporting strong well performance and improved pricing relative to Pikka oil. Together with additional geological data, these results underpin the potential for a two‑drill‑site development with production capacity comparable to Pikka phase 1, the company said. Rate and resource potential for the two-drill-site development is being evaluated. Resource estimation is ongoing and appraisal results will be evaluated as part of the FY26 contingent resource assessment. In FY25, Santos reported 2C contingent resources of 177 MMboe for the Quokka Unit. Based on these results, Santos has started development planning, including the initiation of key permitting activities. Santos is operator of the Quokka Unit (51%) with partner Repsol (49%).

Fluor, Axens secure contracts for US grassroots refinery project

Fluor Corp. and Axens Group have been awarded key contracts for America First Refining’s (AFR) proposed grassroots refinery at the Port of Brownsville, Tex., advancing development of what would be the first new US refinery to be built in more than 50 years. Fluor will execute front-end engineering and design (FEED) for the project, while Axens will serve as technology licensor of core refining process technologies to be used at the site, the service providers said in separate Apr. 7 releases. The AFR refinery is designed to process more than 60 million bbl/year—or about 164,400 b/d—of US light shale crude into transportation fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Contract details Without disclosing a specific value of its contract, Fluor said the scope of its FEED study will cover early-stage engineering and design required to define project execution, cost, and schedule based on a complex that will incorporate commercially proven technologies to improve efficiency and emissions performance while processing domestic shale crude. As technology licensor, Axens said it will deliver process technologies for key refining units at the site, including those for: Naphtha, diesel hydrotreating. Continuous catalytic reforming. Isomerization. Alongside supporting improved fuel-quality specifications, the unspecified technologies to be supplied for the refinery will also help to reduce overall energy consumption at the site. Axens—which confirmed its involvement since 2017 in working with AFR on early-stage development of the project—said this latest licensing agreement will also cover engineering support, equipment, catalysts, and services across the refinery’s process configuration. Project background, commercial framework Upon first announcing the project in March 2026, AFR said the proposed development came alongside an already signed 20-year offtake agreement with a global integrated oil company covering 1.2 billion bbl of US light shale crude, as well as capital investment to support construction. As part of the

EIA: US crude inventories up 3.1 million bbl

US crude oil inventories for the week ended Apr. 3, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 3.1 million bbl from the previous week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). At 464.7 million bbl, US crude oil inventories are about 2% above the 5-year average for this time of year, the EIA report indicated. EIA said total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 1.6 million bbl from last week and are about 3% above the 5-year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories increased while blending components inventories decreased last week. Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 3.1 million bbl last week and are about 5% below the 5-year average for this time of year. Propane-propylene inventories increased by 600,000 bbl from last week and are 71% above the 5-year average for this time of year, EIA said. US crude oil refinery inputs averaged 16.3 million b/d for the week ended Apr. 3, which was 129,000 b/d less than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 92% of capacity. Gasoline production decreased, averaging 9.4 million b/d. Distillate fuel production increased, averaging 5.0 million b/d. US crude oil imports averaged 6.3 million b/d, down 130,000 b/d from the previous week. Over the last 4 weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.6 million b/d, 9.1% more than the same 4-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports averaged 571,000 b/d. Distillate fuel imports averaged 152,000 b/d.

Oil prices plunge as Iran war tensions ease amid tentative Hormuz reopening

Crude oil prices plunged sharply on Apr. 7 after US President Donald Trump announced a conditional 2-week ceasefire agreement with Iran, contingent on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restoring safe passage for energy shipments. Both Brent and WTI crude oil fell towards $95/bbl, marking their largest single-day decline since 2020. Under the agreement, Iran signaled willingness to halt attacks on shipping and allow transit through Hormuz while broader negotiations continue. The US also indicated it would assist in clearing a backlog of tankers and stabilizing maritime traffic. Benchmark crude prices initially surged above $110/bbl in early April amid fears of prolonged supply disruption after Iran effectively restricted traffic through the strait—a corridor responsible for roughly 20% of global oil flows. The blockade, triggered by escalating US-Iran hostilities, caused tanker traffic to collapse and stranded millions of barrels of crude and refined products in the region. Despite the price correction, analysts caution that supply disruptions and infrastructure damage will continue to constrain markets. The conflict has already impaired regional energy assets, including LNG infrastructure in Qatar, and forced producers across the Middle East to curtail output or delay exports. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) warned that fuel prices may remain elevated for months even if flows normalize, citing logistical bottlenecks, depleted inventories, and continued geopolitical uncertainty. “In theory, the 10–13 million b/d of crude oil and product supply stranded behind the Strait should now be gradually released. Whether the pre-March status quo will be re-established depends entirely on whether the truce can be turned into a permanent peace during the negotiations in Pakistan,” said Tamas Varga, analyst, PVM Oil Associates. “What appears evident, at least for now, is that the current quarter, the April–June period, will be the tightest, as the scarcity of available oil, both crude and refined

EIA: Brent crude to reach $115/bbl in second-quarter 2026

Global oil markets have entered a period of acute volatility, with prices expected to surge into second-quarter 2026 as war-driven supply disruptions in the Middle East constrain flows through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s April Short-Term Energy Outlook. The agency estimates that Brent crude averaged $103/bbl in March and will climb further to a quarterly peak of about $115/bbl in second-quarter 2026, reflecting a sharp tightening in global supply following widespread production shut-ins across key Gulf producers. The disruption stems from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that typically carries nearly 20% of global oil supply. The US-Iran war in the region has forced producers including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE to curtail output significantly. EIA estimates that crude production shut-ins averaged 7.5 million b/d in March and will rise to a peak of 9.1 million b/d in April. In this outlook, EIA assumes the conflict does not persist past April and that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz gradually resumes. Under those assumptions, EIA expects production shut-ins will fall to 6.7 million b/d in May and return close to pre-conflict levels in late 2026. The scale of the outage has rapidly flipped the market from prior expectations of oversupply into a pronounced deficit, with global inventories drawing sharply during the second quarter. Despite an assumption that the conflict does not persist beyond April, the agency warns that supply chains will take months to normalize, keeping a geopolitical risk premium embedded in prices through late 2026. EIA forecasts the Brent crude oil price will fall below $90/bbl in fourth-quarter 2026 and average $76/bbl in 2027, about $23/bbl higher than in its February STEO forecast. This price forecast is highly dependent on EIA’s assumptions of both the

OpenAI puts part of Stargate project on hold over runaway power costs

OpenAI has postponed plans to open one of the data centers central to its Stargate project. It announced its plan to open the data center in the UK with great fanfare last September, when it was regarded as a major boost for the country’s nascent AI industry, as well as proving a step up for OpenAI’s international credentials. At the time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said, “The UK has been a longstanding pioneer of AI, and is now home to world-class researchers, millions of ChatGPT users, and a government that quickly recognized the potential of this technology.” All of that has been quietly forgotten. The plans for the data center in Northumberland, in the Northeast of England, have been put on hold, with the project ready to be revived when the conditions are ripe for major infrastructure investment, according to a report by the BBC.

Neoclouds gain momentum in a supply-constrained world

And since they used the same hardware, both neoclouds and traditional cloud providers are subject to the same shortage problem. Component suppliers are reporting significant shortages due to demand for AI data centers and Synergy sees neoclouds also experiencing delays just like traditional cloud providers. “Demand is currently outstripping supply,” said Dinsmore. “It will take a while before that starts to come into more balance.” Among neoclouds, CoreWeave stands out as the most direct challenger to traditional hyperscale cloud providers. Meanwhile, OpenAI and Anthropic represent a distinct but increasingly important category, and that is platform-centric providers offering cloud-like access to foundational models and AI development environments. Synergy says that as demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, neoclouds are positioning themselves as focused alternatives to traditional hyperscale providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

What is AI networking? How it adds intelligence to your infrastructure

The end goal is to make networks more reliable, efficient and performant. Enterprises are already seeing notable results when AI is applied to IT operations, including shorter deployment times, a decrease in trouble tickets, and faster time to resolution. With the help of AI, networks will become more autonomous and self-healing (that is, able to address issues without the need for human intervention). In fact, Tier 1 and Tier 2 infrastructure is moving toward ‘no human in the loop,’ Nick Lippis, co-founder and co-chair of enterprise user community ONUG, recently told Network World. In time, humans will only need to step in for policy exceptions and high-risk decisions. “Layering in AI capabilities makes LAN management applications easier to use and more accessible across an organization,” Dell’Oro Group analyst Sian Morgan said. Gartner predicts that, by 2030, AI agents will drive most network activities, up from “minimal adoption” in 2025. The firm emphasizes that leaders who overlook the AI networking shift “risk higher MTTR [meantime to repair], rising costs, and growing security exposure.” The core components of AI networking It’s important to note that the use of AI and machine learning (ML) in network management is not new. AI for IT operations (AIOps), for instance, is a common practice that uses automation to improve broader IT operations. AI networking is specific to the network itself, covering domains including multi-cloud software, wired and wireless LAN, data center switching, SD-WAN and managed network services (MNS). The incorporation of generative AI, in particular, has brought AI networking to the fore, as enterprise leaders are rethinking every single aspect of their business, networking included.

Aria Networks raises $125M and debuts its approach for AI-optimized networks

That embedded telemetry feeds adaptive tuning of Dynamic Load Balancing parameters, Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification (DCQCN) and failover logic without waiting for a threshold breach or a manual intervention. The platform architecture is layered. At the lowest levels, agents react in microseconds to link-level events such as transceiver flaps, rerouting leaf-spine traffic in milliseconds. At higher layers, agents make more strategic decisions about flow placement across the cluster. At the cloud layer, a large language model-based agent surfaces correlated insights to operators in natural language, allowing them to ask questions about specific jobs or alert conditions and receive context-aware responses. Karam argued that simply bolting an LLM onto an existing architecture does not deliver the same result. “If you ask it to do anything, it could hallucinate and bring down the network,” he said. “It doesn’t have any of the context or the data that’s required for this approach to be made safe.” Aria also exposes an MCP server, allowing external systems such as job schedulers and LLM routers to query network state directly and integrate it into their own decision-making. MFU and token efficiency as the target metrics Traditional networking is often evaluated in terms of bandwidth and latency. Aria is centering its platform around two metrics: Model FLOPS Utilization (MFU) and token efficiency. MFU is defined as the ratio of achieved FLOPS per accelerator to the theoretical peak. In practice, Karam said, MFU for training workloads typically runs between 33% and 45%, and inference often comes in below 30%. “The network has a major impact on the MFU, and therefore the token efficiency, because the network touches every aspect, every other component in your cluster,” Karam said.

New v2 UALink specification aims to catch up to NVLink

But given there are no products currently available using UALink 1.0, UALink 2.0 might be viewed as a premature launch Need to play catch up David Harold, senior analyst with Jon Peddie Research, was guarded in his reaction. “While 2.0 is a significant step forward from 1.0, we need to bear in mind that even 1.0 solutions aren’t shipping yet – they aren’t due until later this year. So, Nvidia is way ahead of the open alternatives on connectivity, indeed ahead of the proprietary or Ethernet based solutions too,” he said. What this means, he added, is that non-Nvidia alternatives are currently lagging in the market. “They need to play catch up on several fronts, not just networking. … I can’t think of a single shipping product that meaningfully has advantages over a Nvidia solution,” he said. “Ultimately UALink remains desirable since it will enable heterogeneous, multi-vendor environments but it’s quite a way behind NVLink today. ” There are plenty of signs that organizations will find it hard to break free of the Nvidia dominance, however. A couple of months ago, RISC-V pioneer SiFive signed a deal with Nvidia to incorporate Nvidia NVLink Fusion into its data center products, a departure for RISC companies. According to Harold, other companies could be joining it. “Custom ASIC company MediaTek is an NVLink partner, and they told me last week that they are planning to integrate it directly into next-generation custom silicon for AI applications,” he said. “This will enable a wider range of companies to use NVLink as their high-speed interconnect.” Other options And, Harold noted, Nvidia is already looking at other options. “Nvidia is now shifting to look at the copper limit for networking speed, with an interest in using optical connectivity instead,” said Harold.

Nvidia’s SchedMD acquisition puts open-source AI scheduling under scrutiny

Is the concern valid? Dr. Danish Faruqui, CEO of Fab Economics, a US-based AI hardware and datacenter advisory, said the risk was real. “The skepticism that Nvidia may prioritize its own hardware in future software updates, potentially delaying or under-optimizing support for rivals, is a feasible outcome,” he said. As the primary developer, Nvidia now controls Slurm’s official development roadmap and code review process, Faruqui said, “which could influence how quickly competing chips are integrated on new development or continuous improvement elements.” Owning the control plane alongside GPUs and networking infrastructure such as InfiniBand, he added, allows Nvidia to create a tightly vertically integrated stack that can lead to what he described as “shallow moats, where advanced features are only available or performant on Nvidia hardware.” One concrete test of that, industry observers say, will be how quickly Nvidia integrates support for AMD’s next-generation chips into Slurm’s codebase compared with how quickly it integrates its own forthcoming hardware and networking technologies, such as InfiniBand. Does the Bright Computing precedent hold? Analysts point to Nvidia’s 2022 acquisition of Bright Computing as a reference point, saying the software became optimized for Nvidia chips in ways that disadvantaged users of competing hardware. Nvidia disputed that characterization, saying Bright Computing supports “nearly any CPU or GPU-accelerated cluster.” Rawat said the comparison was instructive but imperfect. “Nvidia’s acquisition of Bright Computing highlights its preference for vertical integration, embedding Bright tightly into DGX and AI Factory stacks rather than maintaining a neutral, multi-vendor orchestration role,” he said. “This reflects a broader strategic pattern — Nvidia seeks to control the full-stack AI infrastructure experience.”

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