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Macquarie Strategists Forecast USA Crude Inventory Build

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Monday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists revealed that they are forecasting that U.S. crude inventories will be up by 1.2 million barrels for the week ending February 28. “This compares to a 2.3 million barrel draw realized for the week ending February 21, with […]

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Monday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists revealed that they are forecasting that U.S. crude inventories will be up by 1.2 million barrels for the week ending February 28.

“This compares to a 2.3 million barrel draw realized for the week ending February 21, with the crude balance realizing moderately tighter than we had anticipated amidst surprisingly strong crude runs,” the strategists stated in the report.

“For this week’s balance, from refineries, we model crude runs up slightly (+0.1 million barrels per day). Among net imports, we model a modest increase, with exports lower (-0.3 million barrels per day) and imports up minimally on a nominal basis,” they added.

The strategists noted in the report that the timing of cargoes remains a source of potential volatility in this week’s crude balance.

“From implied domestic supply (prod.+adj.+transfers), we look for a bounce (+0.3 million barrels per day) this week. Rounding out the picture, we anticipate no change in SPR [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] stocks again this week,” the strategists said in the report.

“Among products, we look for builds in gasoline (+1.3 million barrels) and jet (+0.3 million barrels), with a distillate draw (-1.2 million barrels),” they added.

“We model implied demand for these three products at ~14.5 million barrels per day for the week ending February 28,” they went on to state.

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, decreased by 2.3 million barrels from the week ending February 14 to the week ending February 21, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report at the time of writing.

That EIA report was released on February 26 and included data for the week ending February 21. It showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 430.2 million barrels on February 21, 432.5 million barrels on February 14, and 447.2 million barrels on February 23, 2024. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 395.3 million barrels on February 21 and February 14, and 360.3 million barrels on February 23, 2024, that report revealed.

Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.605 billion barrels on February 21, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were down 2.2 million barrels week on week and up 16.6 million barrels year on year, the report outlined.

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team on February 24, Macquarie strategists revealed that they were forecasting that U.S. crude inventories would be up by 0.6 million barrels for the week ending February 21.

The next EIA weekly petroleum status report is scheduled to be released on March 5. It will include data for the week ending February 28.

The EIA’s weekly petroleum status report states that it provides timely information on supply and selected prices of crude oil and principal petroleum products.

“It provides the industry, press, planners, policymakers, consumers, analysts, and State and local governments with a ready, reliable source of current information,” the report notes.

The EIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment, according to the EIA’s website, which describes the EIA as the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy.

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SolarWinds buys Squadcast to speed incident response

Squadcast customers shared their experiences with the technology. “Since implementing Squadcast, we’ve reduced incoming alerts from tens of thousands to hundreds, thanks to flexible deduplication. It has a direct impact on reducing alert fatigue and increasing awareness,” said Avner Yaacov, Senior Manager at Redis, in a statement. According to SolarWinds,

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Tariffs won’t impact IT organizations, for now anyway

The idea behind tariffs is to increase domestic manufacturing, but Almassy notes the United Stated doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity or capability that Taiwan does. TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries have some fabs here but they are not building the most leading edge technologies. “Those are all in Taiwan at the

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Macquarie Strategists Forecast USA Crude Inventory Build

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Monday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists revealed that they are forecasting that U.S. crude inventories will be up by 1.2 million barrels for the week ending February 28. “This compares to a 2.3 million barrel draw realized for the week ending February 21, with the crude balance realizing moderately tighter than we had anticipated amidst surprisingly strong crude runs,” the strategists stated in the report. “For this week’s balance, from refineries, we model crude runs up slightly (+0.1 million barrels per day). Among net imports, we model a modest increase, with exports lower (-0.3 million barrels per day) and imports up minimally on a nominal basis,” they added. The strategists noted in the report that the timing of cargoes remains a source of potential volatility in this week’s crude balance. “From implied domestic supply (prod.+adj.+transfers), we look for a bounce (+0.3 million barrels per day) this week. Rounding out the picture, we anticipate no change in SPR [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] stocks again this week,” the strategists said in the report. “Among products, we look for builds in gasoline (+1.3 million barrels) and jet (+0.3 million barrels), with a distillate draw (-1.2 million barrels),” they added. “We model implied demand for these three products at ~14.5 million barrels per day for the week ending February 28,” they went on to state. U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the SPR, decreased by 2.3 million barrels from the week ending February 14 to the week ending February 21, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report at the time of writing. That EIA report was released on February 26 and included data for the week ending February 21. It showed that crude oil stocks,

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Aberdeen’s Xodus expands with acquisition of Daymark

Aberdeen-headquartered Xodus Group has expanded its North American footprint buying up Daymark Energy Advisors. The value of the deal was undisclosed, but it adds 40 people across 23 USA states and two Canadian provinces to Xodus’ global operations. The addition of the Worcester, Massachusetts-based consultancy will bolster Xodus’ advisory capability on power networks, including technical challenges, regulatory frameworks and the market pricing dynamics associated with transmission and distribution (T&D) of electricity from source to demand. Daymark, which was employee-owned, will also add knowledge of battery storage and onshore wind and solar, as well as sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), Daymark chief executive Marc Montalvo, who took on the leadership role at the 45-year old firm ten years ago, is expected to remain with the firm as it integrates with Xodus. A spokesman for Xodus said Montalvo will be “an integral part of the Daymark team as we complete the integration and will be key to our plans to grow this capability globally”. Xodus, which is owned by energy services giant Subsea 7, currently employs 600 people. Xodus chief executive Steve Swindell said: “Xodus was founded 20 years ago to deliver independent, integrated thinking to the energy industry. “The energy landscape has evolved beyond recognition in that time and the needs of the industry have changed. Xodus wants to continue to be at the forefront of delivering integrated advice to the industry and acquiring Daymark Energy Advisors supports this effort. “Our involvement in energy transition projects has grown considerably, with many developments either delivering electrons to the grid or drawing upon power from the grid / local power source in the production of hydrogen or the storage of carbon. “Daymark brings deep knowledge and an integrated view of energy infrastructure, regulation, and markets to help clients succeed in the face of uncertainty and

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Statkraft hails ‘best in history’ results despite major profits slump

Norwegian energy giant Statkraft said its performance in 2024 was “among the best” in its history despite “substantially lower power prices” which hit profits. The state-owned utility said its operating profit for the fourth quarter fell by 56% while net profit fell to NOK 1.5 billion (£140 million) in the fourth quarter from NOK 6bn the year prior. Nevertheless the firm insisted its underlying EBIT was “among the best in Statkraft’s history” despite having achieved “substantially lower power prices”. In 2024, Statkraft revealed plans to “sharpen” its strategy, focusing on the Nordics, Europe and South America. Since it opened its first UK office in 2006, Statkraft has invested billions in renewable energy infrastructure projects, including onshore wind, battery storage and pumped storage hydro across Scotland and England. © Supplied by StatkraftStatkraft battery asset. The company has a UK investment pipeline of more than £4bn, with almost 20 consented projects including two BESS schemes at Coylton and Neilston in Scotland. Statkraft said total power generation was up to 66.3 TWh in 2024 compared to 61.9 TWh in 2023. The seven per cent increase year-on-year was primarily related to new wind power assets in Brazil and Spain and higher generation from the gas-fired power plants in Germany. The hydropower generation in the Nordics was 0.7 TWh lower than in 2023. Statkraft president and chief executive Birgitte Ringstad Vartdal said: “Statkraft delivered one of our strongest annual results, only outperformed by results driven by the exceptionally high prices during the energy crisis. “I am proud of the results the organisation has achieved in 2024, driven by solid operations, record-strong energy management and continued high value-creation in our market activities. “We are investing heavily in maintaining and upgrading our Norwegian hydropower assets, while developing and optimising a portfolio of renewable energy projects to build

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“Inconsistency” in approval of BP and Equinor’s Net Zero Teesside, court hears

An appeal court heard that a High Court ruling over emissions from the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) power gas project was “wrong” to conclude Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was unaware of the planning inspector’s guidance. Campaigner Dr Andrew Boswell’s legal claim against BP and Equinor’s plans to develop a gas-fired power station with carbon capture in Teesside was heard in the Court of Appeal in London Tuesday. Represented by law firm Leigh Day, he argued that calculation errors made by the developers will mean that the power station will emit more greenhouse gas emissions than initially declared. © Supplied by ShutterstockSecretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Milliband While the revised emissions calculation was accepted by Miliband, the project was nevertheless granted approval in February 2024, on the basis that it would “help deliver the government’s net zero commitment” by 2050. According to Boswell’s legal case, those higher than anticipated emissions are at odds with the UK’s net zero commitments. At stake is whether BP and Equinor’s flagship NZT power station will contribute towards the government’s net zero targets. The project was awarded funding under track one of the UK government’s £21.7 billion carbon capture and storage scheme alongside a major carbon capture and storage facility known as the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP). Boswell’s claim was initially dismissed by a judge in the High Court last year, but he was granted permission to appeal in September 2024. Judge Nathalie Lieven had rejected the claim in August on the basis that Miliband did not need to rely on the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) guidance that a panel of planning inspectors used to evaluate emissions. An appeal was nevertheless granted in September on the basis that the judge had erred in determining that the secretary did

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New Stratus Energy Exits Four Venezuela Fields

New Stratus Energy Inc. (NSE) said it has dissolved a joint venture (JV) for four oilfields onshore Venezuela, under terms that allow the Calgary, Canada-based company to regain its shareholding in the JV after two years. Concurrently South America-focused NSE announced it has won production and exploration rights along with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) for an Ecuadorian block that includes a “significant” oilfield. The Venezuelan JV “was structured through an indirect 40 percent equity participation in Vencupet SA, facilitated via GoldPillar International SPC Ltd. (‘GP’), a British Virgin Islands-based fund that holds 40 percent of Vencupet”, NSE said in an online statement. Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) holds 60 percent of Vencupet. On January 2, 2024, NSE said it had joined a JV called Desarrolladora de Oriente Oil & Gas Ltd. (DOOG), a British Virgin Islands company that held 100 percent of GP’s share capital. Through DOOG, NSE acquired a 50 percent indirect interest in GP, making NSE an indirect investor in six Vencupet fields: Adas, Leona, Lido, Limon, Oficina Central and Oficina Norte. NSE said then the fields, in the states of Anzoategui and Monagas, had stopped producing since 2015 due to a lack of investment. “The Vencupet oil fields development project included a financing arrangement under which GP would provide funding for the rehabilitation of these oil wells”, NSE said announcing the dissolution. “In return, PDVSA was to repay the financing and to compensate GP with oil produced through the assignment of crude oil shipments”, it said. “Following the termination of its joint venture, NSE has relinquished its entire equity stake in DOOG at no cost. “Additionally, all shareholder loans extended by NSE to DOOG in the amount of approximately US$4.1 million have been forgiven, and all counterparty agreements and consideration arrangements have been terminated, without any further obligation

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Locational pricing risks putting offshore wind rollout in jeopardy

Developers have warned that potential reforms to the electricity system risk derailing offshore wind deployment. Representatives of Ocean Winds, a 50/50 venture between EDP Renewables and Engie, warned that the current model – Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) – and the possibility of introducing locational charging could erode the economic cases for upcoming projects. Mark Baxter, project director for Ocean Winds’ upcoming Caledonia offshore wind farm, says: “These unfair locational charges create a lot of jeopardy for me as a project director.” He warns that the changes will make it more difficult to prove that “Scotland is a place to invest”. © Supplied by Ocean WindsCaledonia project director Mark Baxter. “What we have coming in the summer is what I term an energy market gamble, which I’m not sure we should be taking at the moment given the criticality of what we’re trying to achieve,” he says. Ocean Winds UK country manager Adam Morrison also tells Energy Voice: “The UK government is sending a strategic message that it wants to build more electricity networks in the north of Scotland, so we can use our renewable resources to get more clean power onto the system and provide opportunities for skills transition in the North East.” However, government proposals that could change the electricity market are at odds with this message, and the mixed signals are eroding investor confidence. Running costs Under TNUoS, electricity users and generators are charged to use the UK’s transmission network, sharing the cost of its creation and upkeep. The charges are determined by several factors, with location a major contributor. This typically means generators located near centres of demand, such as in the South of England, pay less, while those in more remote areas, such as the North of Scotland, pay more. Developers have warned that

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Top data storage certifications to sharpen your skills

Organization: Hitachi Vantara Skills acquired: Knowledge of data center infrastructure management tasks automation using Hitachi Ops Center Automator. Price: $100 Exam duration: 60 minutes How to prepare: Knowledge of all storage-related operations from an end-user perspective, including planning, allocating, and managing storage and architecting storage layouts. Read more about Hitachi Vantara’s training and certification options here. Certifications that bundle cloud, networking and storage skills AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification from leading cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps individuals showcase advanced knowledge and skills in optimizing security, cost, and performance, and automating manual processes. The certification is a means for organizations to identify and develop talent with these skills for implementing cloud initiatives, according to AWS. The ideal candidate has the ability to evaluate cloud application requirements, make architectural recommendations for deployment of applications on AWS, and provide expert guidance on architectural design across multiple applications and projects within a complex organization, AWS says. Certified individuals report increased credibility with technical colleagues and customers as a result of earning this certification, it says. Organization: Amazon Web Services Skills acquired: Helps individuals showcase skills in optimizing security, cost, and performance, and automating manual processes Price: $300 Exam duration: 180 minutes How to prepare: The recommended experience prior to taking the exam is two or more years of experience in using AWS services to design and implement cloud solutions Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Data Center The Cisco CCIE Data Center certification enables individuals to demonstrate advanced skills to plan, design, deploy, operate, and optimize complex data center networks. They will gain comprehensive expertise in orchestrating data center infrastructure, focusing on seamless integration of networking, compute, and storage components. Other skills gained include building scalable, low-latency, high-performance networks that are optimized to support artificial intelligence (AI)

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Netskope expands SASE footprint, bolsters AI and automation

Netskope is expanding its global presence by adding multiple regions to its NewEdge carrier-grade infrastructure, which now includes more than 75 locations to ensure processing remains close to end users. The secure access service edge (SASE) provider also enhanced its digital experience monitoring (DEM) capabilities with AI-powered root-cause analysis and automated network diagnostics. “We are announcing continued expansion of our infrastructure and our continued focus on resilience. I’m a believer that nothing gets adopted if end users don’t have a great experience,” says Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri. “We monitor traffic, we have multiple carriers in every one of our more than 75 regions, and when traffic goes from us to that destination, the path is direct.” Netskope added regions including data centers in Calgary, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Prague as well as expanded existing NewEdge regions including data centers in Bogota, Jeddah, Osaka, and New York City. Each data center offers customers a range of SASE capabilities including cloud firewalls, secure web gateway (SWG), inline cloud access security broker (CASB), zero trust network access (ZTNA), SD-WAN, secure service edge (SSE), and threat protection. The additional locations enable Netskope to provide coverage for more than 220 countries and territories with 200 NewEdge Localization Zones, which deliver a local direct-to-net digital experience for users, the company says.

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Inside the Nuclear Race for Data Center Energy with Aalo Atomics CEO Matt Loszak

The latest episode of the DCF Show podcast delves into one of the most pressing challenges facing the data center industry today: the search for sustainable, high-density power solutions. And how, as hyperscale operators like Google and Meta contend with growing energy demands—and, in some cases, resistance from utilities unwilling or unable to support their expanding footprints—the conversation around nuclear energy has intensified.  Both legacy nuclear providers and innovative startups are racing to secure the future business of data center giants, each bringing unique approaches to the table. Our guest for this podcast episode is Matt Loszak, co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, an Austin-based company that’s taking a fresh approach to nuclear energy. Aalo, which secured a $29.5 million Series A funding round in 2024, stands out in the nuclear sector with its 10-megawatt sodium-cooled reactor design—eliminating the need for water, a critical advantage for siting flexibility. Inspired by the Department of Energy’s MARVEL microreactor, Aalo’s technology benefits from direct expertise, as the company’s CTO was the chief architect behind MARVEL. Beyond reactor design, Aalo’s vision extends to full-scale modular plant production. Instead of just building reactors, the company aims to manufacture entire nuclear plants using prefabricated, LEGO-style components. The fully modular plants, shipped in standard containers, are designed to match the footprint of a data center while requiring no onsite water—features that could make them particularly attractive to hyperscale operators seeking localized, high-density power.  Aalo has already made significant strides, with the Department of Energy identifying land at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as a potential site for its first nuclear facility. The company is on an accelerated timeline, expecting to complete a non-nuclear prototype within three months and break ground on its first nuclear reactor in about a year—remarkably fast progress for the nuclear industry. In our discussion,

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Does It Matter If Microsoft Is Cancelling AI Data Center Leases?

Strategic Reallocation: Microsoft is a major owner and operator of data centers and might be reallocating resources to in-house infrastructure rather than leased spaces. Supply Chain Delays: TD Cowen noted that Microsoft used power and facility delays as justifications for voiding agreements, a tactic previously employed by Meta. Oversupply Issues: Analysts at TD Cowen speculate that Microsoft may have overestimated AI demand, leading to an excess in capacity. As it is all speculation, it could simply be that the latest information has driven Microsoft to reevaluate demand and move to more closely align projected supply with projected demand. Microsoft has reiterated their commitment to spend $80 billion on AI in the coming year. Reallocating this spending internally or wit a different set of partners remains on the table. And when you put the TD Cowen report that Microsoft has cancelled leases for “a couple hundred megawatts” into context with Microsoft’s overall leased power, which is estimated at around 20 GW, you see that more than 98% of their energy commitment remains unchanged. Investment Markets Might See the Biggest Hits Microsoft’s retreat has had ripple effects on the stock market, particularly among energy and infrastructure companies. European firms like Schneider Electric and Siemens Energy experienced a decline in stock value, indicating fears that major AI companies might scale back energy-intensive data center investments. However, at press time we have not seen any other indicators that this is an issue as despite these concerns about potential AI overcapacity, major tech firms continue to invest heavily in AI infrastructure:         Amazon: Pledged $100 billion towards AI data centers.         Alphabet (Google): Committed $75 billion.         Meta (Facebook): Planning to spend up to $65 billion.         Alibaba: Announced a $53 billion investment over the next three years. If we see a rush of announcements

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Dual Feed: Vantage Data Centers, VoltaGrid, Equinix, Bloom Energy, Constellation, Calpine

Nuclear Giant Constellation Acquires Natural Gas Stalwart Calpine, Creating the Largest U.S. Clean Energy Provider On January 10, 2025, Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Calpine Corp. in a $16.4 billion cash-and-stock transaction, including the assumption of $12.7 billion in net debt.  A landmark transaction, the acquisition positions Constellation as the largest clean energy provider in the United States, significantly enhancing its generation portfolio with natural gas and geothermal assets. With an expanded coast-to-coast footprint, the combined company will provide 60 GW of power, reinforcing grid reliability and offering businesses and consumers a broader array of sustainability solutions. The move strengthens Constellation’s competitive retail electricity presence, serving 2.5 million customers across key U.S. markets, including Texas, California, and the Northeast. “This acquisition will help us better serve our customers across America, from families to businesses and utilities,” said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation. “By combining Constellation’s unmatched expertise in zero-emission nuclear energy with Calpine’s industry-leading, low-carbon natural gas and geothermal generation, we can deliver the most comprehensive clean energy portfolio in the industry.” A Strategic Move for the Data Center Industry With skyrocketing demand for AI and cloud services, data centers are under increasing pressure to secure reliable, low-carbon energy sources. The Constellation-Calpine combination is particularly relevant for large-scale hyperscale operators and colocation providers seeking flexible energy solutions.  For the data center industry, this consolidation offers several advantages: Diverse Energy Mix: The integration of nuclear, geothermal, and low-emission natural gas provides data centers with flexible and reliable energy options. Grid Stability: Calpine’s extensive natural gas fleet enhances grid reliability, crucial for data centers operating in high-demand regions. Sustainability Initiatives: The combined entity is well-positioned to invest in clean energy infrastructure, including battery storage and carbon sequestration, aligning with the sustainability goals of hyperscale operators. The

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AI, Data Centers, and the Next Big Correction: Will Growth Outpace Market Reality?

AI is being readily embraced by organizations, government, and individual enthusiasts for data aggregation, pattern recognition, data visualization, and co-creation of content. Given the headlines lately, AI is set to take over the world. And as an emerging, revolutionary technology with large potential impact and newfound user-friendliness, both large tech companies and small startups alike have raced to capitalize on potential growth. Hands down, this transformative technology has caused a wave of adoption, investment, and innovation around the world and across industries. Naturally, when a technology or application accelerates quickly, the more risk-averse will be cautious and when it accelerates this quickly, a bubble might be forming. Even more bullish investors have ridden through too much tumult in the past few decades for their bank accounts to withstand another cataclysmic loss. More investment is pouring in (including at a federal level), stock valuations are all over the charts and not necessarily true to a ticker’s earnings, and the recent market fluctuations leave the entire ecosystem a little hesitant about buying into the hype too much. The Nature of Bubbles and Some Potential Signals to Watch For Economic bubbles occur when asset prices significantly exceed their intrinsic value, often fueled by speculative demand and irrational investment, leading to unsustainable market conditions. A bigger concern than just to digital infrastructure, bubbles can have far-reaching impacts on the entire market, as the initial distorted financial metrics encourage excessive lending and create systemic risk. The collapse of a bubble can trigger a chain reaction of financial distress, causing widespread economic instability and potentially leading to recessions, as seen in historical examples like the dot-com and housing bubbles. Reasonable bubble indicators that have the market concerned include: Overvaluation and Lack of Profit Generation: Tech giants are heavily invested in AI despite limited returns from the

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

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

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

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

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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

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

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

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