Get ONMINE

Stay Ahead, Stay ONMINE

Malaysia Awards Two PSCs Offshore Borneo

Petroliam Nasional Bhd. (Petronas) has signed two production sharing contracts (PSCs) for exploration blocks in the waters of Sabah state, the last leases awarded by Malaysia’s national oil and gas company under the 2024 bid round. Last year’s area auction saw a total of 14 licenses go to 12 operators. The PSCs involved 11 so-called […]

Petroliam Nasional Bhd. (Petronas) has signed two production sharing contracts (PSCs) for exploration blocks in the waters of Sabah state, the last leases awarded by Malaysia’s national oil and gas company under the 2024 bid round.

Last year’s area auction saw a total of 14 licenses go to 12 operators. The PSCs involved 11 so-called Discovered Resource Opportunities (DROs) and three exploration blocks, Petronas said in an online statement Tuesday.

A consortium comprising Japan’s INPEX Corp., Petronas and Sabah’s state-owned SMJ Energy Sdn. Bhd. won the last two PSCs: SB306A and SB306B. In both PSCs, INPEX, through INPEX Malaysia E&P SB306A Sdn. Bhd., is operator with a 50 percent stake. Petronas, through Petronas Carigali Sdn. Bhd., holds 42.5 percent. SMJ Energy owns 7.5 percent, according to a separate press release by INPEX.

“The newly acquired blocks are expected to contribute to INPEX’s expansion of natural gas and LNG business as outlined in INPEX Vision 2035 announced in February 2025 as well as expand the company’s operations in Southeast Asia”, INPEX said, noting it has now increased its exploration blocks in Malaysia to six.

“INPEX is committed to further strengthening its business in Malaysia and will continue to actively engage in this effort”.

Petronas also announced Tuesday the signing of two Technical Evaluation Agreements for the Langkasuka Basin in the Straits of Malacca and the Layang-Layang Basin offshore Sabah, one of two Malaysian states in Borneo, an island shared with Brunei and Indonesia.

“These agreements, made with seven leading oil and gas companies – BP, Eni, INPEX, PETRONAS Carigali, Pertamina, PTTEP and TotalEnergies – underscore PETRONAS’ commitment to unlocking frontier basins and driving exploration at these promising regions”, Petronas said.

Concurrently Petronas launched area bidding for 2025. The round offers five exploration blocks in the Malay and Penyu basins offshore Peninsular Malaysia and the Sandakan Basin offshore Sabah, as well as three DRO clusters in shallow waters near existing infrastructures.

“Malaysia continues to be a top-tier destination for upstream investment, offering extensive opportunities for industry players to expand their portfolios”, commented Datuk Ir. Bacho Pilong, senior vice-president of Malaysia Petroleum Management (MPM). MPM is Malaysia’s upstream governing body, under Petronas.

Earlier this year Petronas announced the launch of a new subsurface study of the Malay Basin to explore untapped resources, in partnership with Beicip Franlab Asia.

“The study leverages advanced 4D modeling and machine learning technologies to analyze the subsurface architecture at both basin and reservoir scales”, it said January 7. “It also focuses on predicting hydrocarbon migration and entrapment by harnessing big data from the Malay Basin”.

The “super basin”, located in the South China Sea, has produced over nine billion barrels of oil equivalent since the 1970s, according to Petronas.

“Recent exploration activities have uncovered significant new discoveries, highlighting the basin’s continued potential”, the company added.

“Beyond hydrocarbons, the basin presents substantial opportunities for Carbon Capture and Storage, positioning it as a key player in sustainable energy development”.

To contact the author, email [email protected]

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 AUTHOR

Shape
Shape
Stay Ahead

Explore More Insights

More Articles

Stay ahead with more perspectives on cutting-edge power, infrastructure, energy,  bitcoin and AI solutions. Explore these articles to uncover strategies and insights shaping the future of industries.

Shape

Huawei at center of European Parliament bribery investigation

Although Huawei successfully introduced its wares into the heart of the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure, it faced an uphill struggle elsewhere in Europe, where authorities were concerned that it unfairly benefited from preferential financing by the Chinese government. Its effort to win European hearts and minds prompted Huawei to employ more

Read More »

Intel taps semiconductor veteran Lip-Bu Tan as new CEO

“This is welcome news for Intel Corporation, as it appoints an industry veteran that has intrinsic understanding of the semiconductor industry, both from a product design aspect as well as the needs of enabling chip manufacturing – an area that Intel Foundry needs help in making their tools more user

Read More »

Guyana Seeks Suriname Gas Deal After Building Oil Fortune

Guyana President Irfaan Ali is exploring a partnership with Suriname to build a gas-powered industrial hub as he works to fortify his nation’s economy, which was rapidly transformed by oil fortunes in the past decade.  The nation is seeking the partnership with Suriname for a prospective hub on the north coast of South America that would use natural gas from the countries’ offshore fields, he said in an interview. Ali said he aims “to build regional prosperity” by producing power, fertilizer and aluminum in the Berbice region in eastern Guyana. He spoke on the sidelines of the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston.  Exxon Mobil Corp.’s oil discovery in 2015 has transformed Guyana’s economic fortunes, filling the government’s coffers with billions of dollars from oil exports. But it’s also left the nation’s outlook extremely intertwined with the whims of the crude market at a time when an expectant population is looking for a rapid uplift in living standards. Ali, who is up for re-election this year, wants to build “resilience” by investing heavily in non-oil sectors, such as agriculture, infrastructure, education and healthcare, he said.  The hub would be critical for “energy and food security,” he said as the region seeks to grow its economy.  “We’re hoping also to discuss with Suriname the integration of their gas into that facility,” Ali said. “That facility would be able to serve both Guyana and Suriname and create the economic spin off and opportunities for both countries.” Gas Developments  Longtail, Exxon’s eighth offshore Guyana project, provides a unique opportunity because unlike the other seven, it’s more focused on natural gas and other hydrocarbon liquids rather than oil. Positioned in the south-east of the Stabroek block, Longtail is not far from where TotalEnergies SE is building the GranMorgu oil project in Suriname. Exxon will

Read More »

Net Power Resets Project Permian Plans on Higher Costs

Net Power Inc. has reset its plans for Project Permian (SN1) following the completion of the front-end engineering design (FFED) for its first utility-scale project in West Texas. The company said in a media release that the cost estimate was significantly higher than expected, prompting the company to pause long-lead releases for the project. Net Power said it had commenced post-FEED optimization and value engineering exercises to deliver a financeable commercial product launch. It has launched a modular multi-unit feasibility study to drive cost reductions and take advantage of the market’s demand for larger generation capacity. “2024 was a year of significant achievement amidst challenging market conditions for commercializing new technologies”, Danny Rice, Chief Executive Officer of Net Power, said. “Due, in large part, to today’s inflationary environment and the first-of-a-kind nature of this facility, the initial cost estimates reveal areas where we can meaningfully and efficiently reduce costs to achieve successful final investment decision (FID). “We believe our shift in focus to remove or reduce these costs from SN1 as well as from our standard plant design will better position Net Power to achieve the lowest costing clean, firm power available in the market. “With over $500 million in liquidity, we believe we’re in a strong position to advance the technology and optimize our plant design while simultaneously attracting the right strategic partners to help commercialize and fully unlock this technology’s potential”. Net Power estimates Project Permian’s total installed cost to be $1.7 billion to $2.0 billion, including unique project costs. While benefiting from existing CO2 pipeline infrastructure, the project faces site-specific challenges affecting costs, the company said. If successful, the project is expected to start no earlier than 2029. The company said it plans a scalable configuration of two to four power train modules per plant to reduce

Read More »

Algonquin Power Posts $189 MM Loss for Q4

Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. (AQN) has reported a net loss of $189.1 million, including discontinued operations, for the fourth quarter of 2024. This deepened the loss for the year to $1.39 billion. The company’s adjusted net earnings fell 44 percent year-on-year to $45.2 million for the fourth quarter. According to the company, adjusted net earnings were negatively affected by the sale of its 42.2 percent stake in Atlantica Sustainable Infrastructure plc, higher borrowing costs to fund growth, higher effective tax rates, and the settlement of the purchase contracts underlying the company’s green equity units. “The company continued to make strides in its transition to a pure-play utility … we successfully completed our Renewables and Atlantica sales, and we enter 2025 with a recapitalized balance sheet and significant opportunity for improvement”, Chris Huskilson, the recently replaced Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AQN, said. The sale of AQN’s renewable energy business was completed on January 8, 2025. It was divested to a wholly-owned subsidiary of LS Power for proceeds of approximately $2.1 billion, after subtracting taxes, transaction fees, and other preliminary closing adjustments, including an adjustment for estimated remaining completion costs for in-construction assets. AQN has appointed a new CEO, Roderick West, who took over the company’s leadership on March 7, 2025. Huskilson has stepped down from his position but will continue to serve as a director of the company. Additionally, on January 14, 2025, the company announced that Darren Myers would resign as Chief Financial Officer following the release of the fourth quarter 2024 results. The company has initiated a search for a permanent Chief Financial Officer. In the interim, on February 14, 2025, the company announced that Brian Chin, Vice President of Investor Relations, would be appointed as Interim Chief Financial Officer, effective March 7, 2025. “It has been

Read More »

21 House Republicans oppose cutting clean energy credits to pay for tax cuts

Dive Brief: How House Republicans plan to pay for extensions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act got more complicated Monday, when 21 GOP representatives came out to publicly oppose wholesale repeals of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits as part of the party’s upcoming reconciliation bill. The letter, dated March 9, is addressed to House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith and was first shared with Politico Monday. The members, led by Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., requested instead that any changes be done in a “targeted and pragmatic fashion.”  The number of signatories has increased since last summer, from the 18 House Republicans in the last Congress who publicly opposed a repeal of the credits. Republicans have majorities in the House and Senate, but the party’s House majority is slim. Dive Insight: The letter comes about a month after clean energy stakeholders descended on Capitol Hill to directly lobby with and ask Congress members to maintain the renewable energy tax credits contained in the IRA. President Donald Trump also signed a day one executive order pausing disbursements related to the IRA and some programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has led to confusion and prompted project pauses across the industry, according to clean energy executives. The Inflation Reduction Act contained more than $369 billion in clean energy incentives, as well as a transferability mechanism that unlocked new financing options for corporations and developers. Garbarino and the other lawmakers wrote that they wanted to emphasize to Smith “the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.” “Countless American companies are utilizing sector-wide energy tax credits — many of which have enjoyed broad support in Congress — to

Read More »

US denounces UN’s sustainable development goals, quits climate damage fund

Dive Brief: The United States has condemned the sustainable development goals set by the United Nations and its global framework to achieve these goals — which include ending poverty, attaining gender equality and taking urgent climate action — by the end of the decade. In a speech before the UN’s General Assembly last week, a Trump administration representative said the U.S. “rejects and denounces” the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs. As such, the nation will “no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.” The same day, the U.S. announced it had withdrawn from the board of a UN-backed climate damage fund designed to provide financial assistance to nations most vulnerable to climate change. A March 4 letter penned to the fund’s co-chair Jean-Christophe Donnellier stated both the U.S. board member and alternate board member will step down “effective immediately” and not be replaced by another U.S. representative. Dive Insight: The nation’s new stance on the SDGs surfaced during remarks made by Edward Heartney, a minister-counselor at the U.S. mission to the UN, on a resolution to create an “International Day of Peaceful Coexistence.” This resolution also included a reaffirmation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Heartney said the 2030 agenda and SDGs “advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty and adverse to the rights and interests of Americans.” He added that “globalist endeavors like Agenda 2030 and the SDGs lost at the ballot box” in the U.S. November election. Heartney also said Trump had “set a clear and overdue course correction on ‘gender’ and climate ideology, which pervade the SDGs.” Despite initially stating a commitment to support “efforts to sustain peace and pursue diplomatic solutions to crises in the world,” the U.S. voted against the resolution and

Read More »

Avangrid Plans to Invest $20 Billion in US Grid until 2030

Iberdrola SA’s United States subsidiary said Wednesday it plans to invest $20 billion in the country’s power grid infrastructure until the end of the decade. That would be spent on grid modernization and expansion. “The investment plan could also include opportunities for new generation”, Avangrid Inc. said in an online statement. The investment “comes at a time when U.S. energy demand is surging due to manufacturing and data center growth”, it said. Data center load growth in the U.S. tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple by 2028, when data centers would account for about 6.7-12 percent of U.S. power consumption, according to a report by the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory December 20, 2024. Data center power usage grew from 58 terawatt hours (tWh) in 2014 to 176 tWh in 2023. The sector’s power consumption is projected to surge to between 325 and 580 tWh by 2028, according to the report. Avangrid announced the investment at CERAWeek in Houston, Texas. At the energy conference Iberdrola executive chair Ignacio Galán and Avangrid chief executive Pedro Azagra met with key U.S. policymakers including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, who is also chair of the White House National Energy Dominance Council. “They discussed how growing energy demand requires a critical need to invest in energy infrastructure, and that the U.S. is a top investment destination as Avangrid and Iberdrola modernize and expand the country’s electrical grid”, Avangrid said. It said it has about $50 billion worth of assets across 23 states in the U.S., where it employs over 8,000 people. Avangrid supplies over 3.3 million electricity and gas consumers in the Northeast. It also has about 10.5 gigawatts of generation capacity, enough to power more than three million homes, according to the

Read More »

VergeIO enhances VergeFabric network virtualization offering

VergeIO is not, however, using an off-the-shelf version of KVM. Rather, it is using what Crump referred to as a heavily modified KVM hypervisor base, with significant proprietary enhancements while still maintaining connections to the open-source community. VergeIO’s deployment profile is currently 70% on premises and about 30% via bare-metal service providers, with a particularly strong following among cloud service providers that host applications for their customers. The software requires direct hardware access due to its low-level integration with physical resources. “Since November of 2023, the normal number one customer we’re attracting right now is guys that have had a heart attack when they got their VMware renewal license,” Crump said. “The more of the stack you own, the better our story becomes.” A 2024 report from Data Center Intelligence Group (DCIG) identified VergeOS as one of the top 5 alternatives to VMware. “VergeIO starts by installing VergeOS on bare metal servers,” the report stated. “It then brings the servers’ hardware resources under its management, catalogs these resources, and makes them available to VMs. By directly accessing and managing the server’s hardware resources, it optimizes them in ways other hypervisors often cannot.” Advanced networking features in VergeFabric VergeFabric is the networking component within the VergeOS ecosystem, providing software-defined networking capabilities as an integrated service rather than as a separate virtual machine or application.

Read More »

Podcast: On the Frontier of Modular Edge AI Data Centers with Flexnode’s Andrew Lindsey

The modular data center industry is undergoing a seismic shift in the age of AI, and few are as deeply embedded in this transformation as Andrew Lindsey, Co-Founder and CEO of Flexnode. In a recent episode of the Data Center Frontier Show podcast, Lindsey joined Editor-in-Chief Matt Vincent and Senior Editor David Chernicoff to discuss the evolution of modular data centers, the growing demand for high-density liquid-cooled solutions, and the industry factors driving this momentum. A Background Rooted in Innovation Lindsey’s career has been defined by the intersection of technology and the built environment. Prior to launching Flexnode, he worked at Alpha Corporation, a top 100 engineering and construction management firm founded by his father in 1979. His early career involved spearheading technology adoption within the firm, with a focus on high-security infrastructure for both government and private clients. Recognizing a massive opportunity in the data center space, Lindsey saw a need for an innovative approach to infrastructure deployment. “The construction industry is relatively uninnovative,” he explained, citing a McKinsey study that ranked construction as the second least-digitized industry—just above fishing and wildlife, which remains deliberately undigitized. Given the billions of square feet of data center infrastructure required in a relatively short timeframe, Lindsey set out to streamline and modernize the process. Founded four years ago, Flexnode delivers modular data centers with a fully integrated approach, handling everything from site selection to design, engineering, manufacturing, deployment, operations, and even end-of-life decommissioning. Their core mission is to provide an “easy button” for high-density computing solutions, including cloud and dedicated GPU infrastructure, allowing faster and more efficient deployment of modular data centers. The Rising Momentum for Modular Data Centers As Vincent noted, Data Center Frontier has closely tracked the increasing traction of modular infrastructure. Lindsey has been at the forefront of this

Read More »

Last Energy to Deploy 30 Microreactors in Texas for Data Centers

As the demand for data center power surges in Texas, nuclear startup Last Energy has now announced plans to build 30 microreactors in the state’s Haskell County near the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The reactors will serve a growing customer base of data center operators in the region looking for reliable, carbon-free energy. The plan marks Last Energy’s largest project to date and a significant step in advancing modular nuclear power as a viable solution for high-density computing infrastructure. Meeting the Looming Power Demands of Texas Data Centers Texas is already home to over 340 data centers, with significant expansion underway. Google is increasing its data center footprint in Dallas, while OpenAI’s Stargate has announced plans for a new facility in Abilene, just an hour south of Last Energy’s planned site. The company notes the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area alone is projected to require an additional 43 gigawatts of power in the coming years, far surpassing current grid capacity. To help remediate, Last Energy has secured a 200+ acre site in Haskell County, approximately three and a half hours west of Dallas. The company has also filed for a grid connection with ERCOT, with plans to deliver power via a mix of private wire and grid transmission. Additionally, Last Energy has begun pre-application engagement with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for an Early Site Permit, a key step in securing regulatory approval. According to Last Energy CEO Bret Kugelmass, the company’s modular approach is designed to bring nuclear energy online faster than traditional projects. “Nuclear power is the most effective way to meet Texas’ growing energy demand, but it needs to be deployed faster and at scale,” Kugelmass said. “Our microreactors are designed to be plug-and-play, enabling data center operators to bypass the constraints of an overloaded grid.” Scaling Nuclear for

Read More »

Data Center Jobs: Engineering and Technician Jobs Available in Major Markets

Each month Data Center Frontier, in partnership with Pkaza, posts some of the hottest data center career opportunities in the market. Here’s a look at some of the latest data center jobs posted on the Data Center Frontier jobs board, powered by Pkaza Critical Facilities Recruiting.  Data Center Facility Engineer (Night Shift Available) Ashburn, VAThis position is also available in: Tacoma, WA (Nights), Days/Nights: Needham, MA and New York City, NY. This opportunity is working directly with a leading mission-critical data center developer / wholesaler / colo provider. This firm provides data center solutions custom-fit to the requirements of their client’s mission-critical operational facilities. They provide reliability of mission-critical facilities for many of the world’s largest organizations facilities supporting enterprise clients and hyperscale companies. This opportunity provides a career-growth minded role with exciting projects with leading-edge technology and innovation as well as competitive salaries and benefits. Electrical Commissioning Engineer New Albany, OHThis traveling position is also available in: Somerset, NJ; Boydton, VA; Richmond, VA; Ashburn, VA; Charlotte, NC; Atlanta, GA; Hampton, GA; Fayetteville, GA; Des Moines, IA; San Jose, CA; Portland, OR; St Louis, MO; Phoenix, AZ;  Dallas, TX;  Chicago, IL; or Toronto, ON. *** ALSO looking for a LEAD EE and ME CxA agents.*** Our client is an engineering design and commissioning company that has a national footprint and specializes in MEP critical facilities design. They provide design, commissioning, consulting and management expertise in the critical facilities space. They have a mindset to provide reliability, energy efficiency, sustainable design and LEED expertise when providing these consulting services for enterprise, colocation and hyperscale companies. This career-growth minded opportunity offers exciting projects with leading-edge technology and innovation as well as competitive salaries and benefits. Switchgear Field Service Technician – Critical Facilities Nationwide TravelThis position is also available in: Charlotte, NC; Atlanta, GA; Dallas,

Read More »

Amid Shifting Regional Data Center Policies, Iron Mountain and DC Blox Both Expand in Virginia’s Henrico County

The dynamic landscape of data center developments in Maryland and Virginia exemplify the intricate balance between fostering technological growth and addressing community and environmental concerns. Data center developers in this region find themselves both in the crosshairs of groups worried about the environment and other groups looking to drive economic growth. In some cases, the groups are different components of the same organizations, such as local governments. For data center development, meeting the needs of these competing interests often means walking a none-too-stable tightrope. Rapid Government Action Encourages Growth In May 2024, Maryland demonstrated its commitment to attracting data center investments by enacting the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act. This legislation provides a clear framework for the use of emergency backup power generation, addressing previous regulatory challenges that a few months earlier had hindered projects like Aligned Data Centers’ proposed 264-megawatt campus in Frederick County, causing Aligned to pull out of the project. However, just days after the Act was signed by the governor, Aligned reiterated its plans to move forward with development in Maryland.  With the Quantum Loop and the related data center development making Frederick County a focal point for a balanced approach, the industry is paying careful attention to the pace of development and the relations between developers, communities and the government. In September of 2024, Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater revealed draft legislation that would potentially restrict where in the county data centers could be built. The legislation was based on information found in the Frederick County Data Centers Workgroup’s final report. Those bills would update existing regulations and create a floating zone for Critical Digital Infrastructure and place specific requirements on siting data centers. Statewide, a cautious approach to environmental and community impacts statewide has been deemed important. In January 2025, legislators introduced SB116,  a bill

Read More »

New Reports Show How AI, Power, and Investment Trends Are Reshaping the Data Center Landscape

Today we provide a comprehensive roundup of the latest industry analyst reports from CBRE, PwC, and Synergy Research, offering a data-driven perspective on the state of the North American data center market.  To wit, CBRE’s latest findings highlight record-breaking growth in supply, soaring colocation pricing, and mounting power constraints shaping site selection. For its part, PwC’s analysis underscores the sector’s broader economic impact, quantifying its trillion-dollar contribution to GDP, rapid job growth, and surging tax revenues.  Meanwhile, the latest industry analysis from Synergy Research details the acceleration of cloud spending, AI’s role in fueling infrastructure demand, and an unprecedented surge in data center mergers and acquisitions.  Together, these reports paint a picture of an industry at an inflection point—balancing explosive expansion with evolving challenges in power availability, cost pressures, and infrastructure investment. Let’s examine them. CBRE: Surging Demand Fuels Record Data Center Expansion CBRE says the North American data center sector is scaling at an unprecedented pace, driven by unrelenting demand from artificial intelligence (AI), hyperscale, and cloud service providers. The latest North America Data Center Trends H2 2024 report from CBRE reveals that total supply across primary markets surged by 34% year-over-year to 6,922.6 megawatts (MW), outpacing the 26% growth recorded in 2023. This accelerating expansion has triggered record-breaking construction activity and intensified competition for available capacity. Market Momentum: Scaling Amid Power Constraints According to CBRE, data center construction activity reached historic levels, with 6,350 MW under development at the close of 2024—more than doubling the 3,077.8 MW recorded a year prior. Yet, the report finds the surge in development is being met with significant hurdles, including power constraints and supply chain challenges affecting critical electrical infrastructure. As a result, the vacancy rate across primary markets has plummeted to an all-time low of 1.9%, with only a handful of sites

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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

Read More »

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

Read More »

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

Read More »
More Articles