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Reports of SATA’s demise are overblown, but the technology is aging fast

The SATA 1.0 interface made its debut in 2003. It was developed by a consortium consisting of Intel, Dell, and storage vendors like Seagate and Maxtor. It quickly advanced to SATA III in 2009, but there never was a SATA IV. There was just nibbling around the edges with incremental updates as momentum and emphasis […]

The SATA 1.0 interface made its debut in 2003. It was developed by a consortium consisting of Intel, Dell, and storage vendors like Seagate and Maxtor. It quickly advanced to SATA III in 2009, but there never was a SATA IV. There was just nibbling around the edges with incremental updates as momentum and emphasis shifted to PCI Express and NVMe.

So is there any life to be had in the venerable SATA interface? Surprisingly, yes, say the analysts. “At a high level, yes, SATA for consumer is pretty much a dead end, although if you’re storing TB of photos and videos, it is still the least expensive option,” said Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst with TECHnalysis Research.

Similarly for enterprise, for massive storage demands, the 20 and 30 TB SATA drives from companies like Seagate and WD are apparently still in wide use in cloud data centers for things like cold storage. “In fact, both of those companies are seeing recording revenues based, in part, on the demand for these huge, high-capacity low-cost drives,” he said.

“SATA doesn’t make much sense anymore. It underperforms NVMe significantly,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with The Enderle Group. “It really doesn’t make much sense to continue make it given Samsung allegedly makes three to four times more margin on NVMe.”

And like O’Donnell, Enderle sees continued life for SATA-based high-capacity hard drives. “There will likely be legacy makers doing SATA for some time. IT doesn’t flip technology quickly and SATA drives do wear out, so there will likely be those producing legacy SATA products for some time,” he said.

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Rust 1.93 updates bundled musl library to boost networking

The Rust team has unveiled Rust 1.93, the latest version of the programming language designed to create fast and safe system-level software. This release improves operations involving the DNS resolver for the musl implementation of the  C standard library. Linux binaries are expected to be more reliable for networking as

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Intel nabs Qualcomm veteran to lead GPU initiative

Intel has struggled for more than two decades to develop a successful GPU/accelerated computing strategy, going all the way back to the aughts and the ill-fated Larrabee effort.  Its most recent efforts centered around Ponte Vecchio and Gaudi chips, neither of which have gained any traction. Still, CEO Lip-Bu Tan

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New Relic extends observability into ChatGPT-hosted apps

New Relic’s cloud-based observability platform monitors applications and services in real time to provide insights into software, hardware, and cloud performance. The new capability extends the platform’s browser agent into the GPT iframe environment. It captures standard telemetry data, including latency and connectivity of an application within the GPT iframe.

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AI can’t fix a broken NetOps practice

Data collection errors, inconsistent data formatting issues across vendors, data storage issues, and network monitoring blind spots were the top issues that are impacting this data quality. Bad data leads to bad AI insights. Network teams will need to assess their data before they invest time and money in AI

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France Boards Oil Tanker Linked to Russia Shadow Fleet

France’s navy boarded an oil tanker coming from Russia into the Mediterranean Sea, as part of a global crackdown on shadow fleet ships used to export sanctioned crude. The operation was carried out on the high seas, with the support of several of France’s allies, French President Emmanuel Macron said on X. The vessel – the Grinch – is subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag, he said.  The operation comes amid a step-up in pressure on the shadow fleet of aging tankers globally. The US has been seizing ships tied to Venezuela’s oil exports – one of which sought the shelter of the Russian flag – while European nations have long talked about tougher measures against aging ships sailing through their waters. “We are determined to uphold international law and to ensure the effective enforcement of sanctions,” Macron said. “The activities of the ‘shadow fleet’ contribute to financing the war of aggression against Ukraine.” A judicial investigation has been opened and the vessel has been diverted, Macron said. UN rules allow checks to be carried out on ships suspected of carrying false flags, according to a statement from the country’s administration for maritime affairs in the Mediterranean. The French navy said the tanker, which came from Murmansk on Russia’s Arctic coast, was boarded in the Alboran Sea, south of Spain, and taken to a mooring. The tanker was loaded with cargo at the time, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. While not giving a destination, it was sailing in the direction of the Suez Canal, a common waypoint for tankers taking Russian barrels to Asia. It disappeared from the industry’s digital tracking system on Wednesday, not long after passing Gibraltar. The Equasis international shipping database does not provide contact details for the manager of the Grinch. A clampdown on the shadow

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Natural Gas Prices Across the USA Surge

Natural gas prices for near-term delivery at regional trading hubs across the US jumped as the market braced for a historic winter storm that’s poised to send temperatures plummeting and boost demand for the heating fuel.  So-called cash prices for gas at the benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana to be delivered over the weekend surged early Friday to $18.80 per million British thermal units, according to traders. That compares with $8.42 on Thursday. Spot prices at the SoCal Citygate hub in California traded as high as $8 per million Btu as gas volumes delivered via pipeline from the Permian Basin in West Texas to the West Coast have likely been reduced, traders said. That’s up from $4.42 on Thursday. This week’s surge has been driven by forecasts for below-normal temperatures across most of the country, threatening to boost gas consumption and drain inventories. The freeze — particularly in the southern gas-producing states — has raised concerns about water icing in pipelines, potentially disrupting output starting this weekend. US natural gas futures for February delivery, meanwhile, rose for a fourth straight day. They were up 6.3% to $5.362 per million Btu as of 9:22 a.m. in New York, heading for their biggest weekly gain in records going back to 1990. The shift in US weather forecasts came days after hedge funds turned more bearish on gas at the end of last week, leaving the market poised for a rally as traders rushed to close out those wagers. Gas prices briefly climbed above $5.50 per million Btu on Thursday, a level that a Citigroup Inc. analysis on Thursday showed would wipe out all shorts.  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or

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USA Crude Oil Stocks Increase Week on Week

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.6 million barrels from the week ending January 9 to the week ending January 16, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. Crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 426.0 million barrels on January 16, 422.4 million barrels on January 9, and 411.7 million barrels on January 17, 2025, the EIA report, which was released on January 22 and included data for the week ending January 16, showed. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 414.5 million barrels on January 16, 413.7 million barrels on January 9, and 394.6 million barrels on January 17, 2025, the 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 1.722 billion barrels on January 16, the report highlighted. Total petroleum stocks were up 8.3 million barrels week on week and up 100.3 million barrels year on year, the report pointed out. “At 426.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about two percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest weekly petroleum status report. “Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 6.0 million barrels from last week and are about five percent above the five year average for this time of year. Both finished gasoline and blending components inventories increased last week,” it added. “Distillate fuel inventories increased by 3.3 million barrels last week and are about one percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased 2.1 million barrels from last week and are about 39 percent above the five year average for this

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Alaska LNG Secures Preliminary Deals with Suppliers, Offtakers

Glenfarne Group LLC said Thursday it had signed several preliminary agreements to source natural gas for and sell output from Alaska LNG, designed to also supply the domestic market, as well as conditionally awarded build contracts. Alaska LNG holds an Energy Department permit to export 20 million metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of LNG, or 2.55 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas equivalent according to Alaska LNG, to both FTA and non-FTA countries. The project secured the authorization November 2014 for the portion for countries with a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States and August 2020 for the non-FTA portion. On December 11, 2025 the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council announced the completion of permit renewal for the project, which would process gas from the North Slope for both the domestic and overseas markets, following a review of environmental opinions. On Thursday Glenfarne said it has executed “gas sales precedent agreements” with Exxon Mobil Corp and Hilcorp Energy Co for the supply of gas from phase 1 of Alaska LNG. The Houston, Texas-based developer did not disclose any prospective contract volume. Glenfarne has a previous gas sales precedent agreement with Pantheon Resources PLC. “These agreements, which include pricing, contract length and other fundamental commercial terms, are a monumental step in achieving the decades-long objective of bringing the benefits of Alaska’s incredible North Slope reserves to Alaskans and to global markets”, said Adam Prestidge, Glenfarne president for Alaska LNG. Thursday’s statement also said Glenfarne had signed a letter of intent with Alaskan utility ENSTAR Natural Gas Co for a 30-year supply of LNG from the project. The volume under negotiation was not disclosed. Earlier this month it announced a letter of intent with Donlin Gold LLC of Novagold Resources Inc for a power plant for the Donlin gold

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Texas Governor Issues Disaster Declaration for 134 Counties

A release posted on the website of the Office of the Texas Governor on Thursday announced that Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for 134 counties “to ensure that every necessary resource is made available to Texans”. A letter of transmittal, which accompanied the release, noted that Abbott issued “a proclamation declaring a disaster due to severe winter weather in a number of Texas counties”. “I, Greg Abbott, Governor of the State of Texas, do hereby certify that severe winter weather poses an imminent threat of widespread and severe property damage, injury, and loss of life due to prolonged freezing temperatures, heavy snow, icy conditions, and freezing rain in several counties,” Abbott stated in the original proclamation, which was attached to the letter. In a statement sent to Rigzone late Thursday by the AccuWeather team, AccuWeather said “a massive winter storm is forecast to unleash extreme freezing rain, damaging ice and heavy snow impacts across much of the southern, central, and eastern United States beginning Friday, followed by repeated waves of bitter cold”.   “More than 200 million people could be affected, with impacts expected to cascade nationwide through widespread power outages, travel shutdowns, and business operations grinding to a halt,” the statement warned. In that AccuWeather statement, the company’s Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said, “this winter storm will shut it all down”. “This storm will have a variety of dangerous and life-threatening hazards. The combination of freezing rain, ice and heavy snow, followed by a deep freeze, increases the risk of widespread travel shutdowns, extended business and commerce disruptions, and interruptions to daily life,” he warned. The AccuWeather statement noted that significant to severe freezing rain and ice impacts are forecast to begin in Texas on Friday, then extend across the South into the Carolinas over the weekend. In a “winter weather outlook” notice to oil and gas and pipeline operators posted on its website on January 20, the Texas Railroad

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Kinder Morgan Reports Record Year

Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) has reported $996 million in net profit for the fourth quarter of 2025 and $3.06 billion for the year, the company’s highest Q4 and annual results. The increase was driven by its natural gas pipelines business, which rode on rising demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), according to a statement on the Houston, Texas-based company’s website. Executive chair Richard D. Kinder said KMI has delivered over 40 percent of feed gas to United States liquefaction facilities amid the Russia-Ukraine war, noting the U.S. has become a vital energy exporter to Europe. “Led by record-setting performance in our natural gas pipelines business segment, the company delivered its highest ever fourth-quarter and full-year net income attributable to KMI and adjusted EBITDA”, Dang said. KMI carried 48,353 billion British thermal units a day (BBtud) of gas in October-December 2025, up from 44,507 BBtud from the same quarter in 2024. Over the last 12 months, gas transport volumes averaged 46,603 BBtud, up from 44,252 BBtud in 2024, KMI said. KMI’s gas sales volumes averaged 4,045 BBtud in Q4 2025 and 3,302 BBtud in the full year. Gas gathering volumes averaged 4,513 BBtud in Q4 2025 and 3,792 BBtud in 2025, KMI said. “Growth in the fourth quarter of 2025 relative to the fourth quarter of 2024 was due primarily to higher contributions from our Texas Intrastate system, KinderHawk and Outrigger Energy assets”, said KMI president Tom Martin. “Natural gas transport volumes were up nine percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 primarily due to LNG deliveries on Tennessee Gas Pipeline. “Natural gas gathering volumes were up 19 percent from the fourth quarter of 2024 across all assets, with our KinderHawk system making the largest contribution”. Earnings before depreciation, depletion and amortization (EBDA) from the gas pipelines segment came at

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Reports of SATA’s demise are overblown, but the technology is aging fast

The SATA 1.0 interface made its debut in 2003. It was developed by a consortium consisting of Intel, Dell, and storage vendors like Seagate and Maxtor. It quickly advanced to SATA III in 2009, but there never was a SATA IV. There was just nibbling around the edges with incremental updates as momentum and emphasis shifted to PCI Express and NVMe. So is there any life to be had in the venerable SATA interface? Surprisingly, yes, say the analysts. “At a high level, yes, SATA for consumer is pretty much a dead end, although if you’re storing TB of photos and videos, it is still the least expensive option,” said Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst with TECHnalysis Research. Similarly for enterprise, for massive storage demands, the 20 and 30 TB SATA drives from companies like Seagate and WD are apparently still in wide use in cloud data centers for things like cold storage. “In fact, both of those companies are seeing recording revenues based, in part, on the demand for these huge, high-capacity low-cost drives,” he said. “SATA doesn’t make much sense anymore. It underperforms NVMe significantly,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with The Enderle Group. “It really doesn’t make much sense to continue make it given Samsung allegedly makes three to four times more margin on NVMe.” And like O’Donnell, Enderle sees continued life for SATA-based high-capacity hard drives. “There will likely be legacy makers doing SATA for some time. IT doesn’t flip technology quickly and SATA drives do wear out, so there will likely be those producing legacy SATA products for some time,” he said.

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DCN becoming the new WAN for AI-era applications

“DCN is increasingly treated as an end-to-end operating model that standardizes connectivity, security policy enforcement, and telemetry across users, the middle mile, and cloud/application edges,” Sanchez said. Dell’Oro defines DCN as platforms and services that deliver consistent connectivity, policy enforcement, and telemetry from users, across the WAN, to distributed cloud and application edges spanning branch sites, data centers and public clouds. The category is gaining relevance as hybrid architectures and AI-era traffic patterns increase the operational penalty for fragmented control planes. DCN buyers are moving beyond isolated upgrades and are prioritizing architectures that reduce operational seams across connectivity, security and telemetry so that incident response and change control can follow a single thread, according to Dell’Oro’s research. What makes DCN distinct is that it links user-to-application experience with where policy and visibility are enforced. This matters as application delivery paths become more dynamic and workloads shift between on-premises data centers, public cloud, and edge locations. The architectural requirement is eliminating handoffs between networking and security teams rather than optimizing individual network segments. Where DCN is growing the fastest Cloud/application edge is the fastest-growing DCN pillar. This segment deploys policy enforcement and telemetry collection points adjacent to workloads rather than backhauling traffic to centralized security stacks. “Multi-cloud remains a reality, but it is no longer the durable driver by itself,” Sanchez said. “Cloud/application edge is accelerating because enterprises are trying to make application paths predictable and secure across hybrid environments, and that requires pushing application-aware steering, policy enforcement, and unified telemetry closer to workloads.”

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Edged US Builds Waterless, High-Density AI Data Center Campuses at Scale

Edged US is targeting a narrow but increasingly valuable lane of the hyperscale AI infrastructure market: high-density compute delivered at speed, paired with a sustainability posture centered on waterless, closed-loop cooling and a portfolio-wide design PUE target of roughly 1.15. Two recent announcements illustrate the model. In Aurora, Illinois, Edged is developing a 72-MW facility purpose-built for AI training and inference, with liquid-to-chip cooling designed to support rack densities exceeding 200 kW. In Irving, Texas, a 24-MW campus expansion combines air-cooled densities above 120 kW per rack with liquid-to-chip capability reaching 400 kW. Taken together, the projects point to a consistent strategy: standardized, multi-building campuses in major markets; a vertically integrated technical stack with cooling at its core; and an operating model built around repeatable designs, modular systems, and readiness for rapidly escalating AI densities. A Campus-First Platform Strategy Edged US’s platform strategy is built around campus-scale expansion rather than one-off facilities. The company positions itself as a gigawatt-scale, AI-ready portfolio expanding across major U.S. metros through repeatable design targets and multi-building campuses: an emphasis that is deliberate and increasingly consequential. In Chicago/Aurora, Edged is developing a multi-building campus with an initial facility already online and a second 72-MW building under construction. Dallas/Irving follows the same playbook: the first facility opened in January 2025, with a second 24-MW building approved unanimously by the city. Taken together with developments in Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Des Moines, Kansas City, and Phoenix, the footprint reflects a portfolio-first mindset rather than a collection of bespoke sites. This focus on campus-based expansion matters because the AI factory era increasingly rewards developers that can execute three things at once: Lock down power and land at scale. Standardize delivery across markets. Operate efficiently while staying aligned with community and regulatory expectations. Edged is explicitly selling the second

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CBRE’s 2026 Data Center Outlook: Demand Surges as Delivery Becomes the Constraint

The U.S. data center market is entering 2026 with fundamentals that remain unmatched across commercial real estate, but the nature of the dominant constraint has shifted. Demand is no longer gated by capital, connectivity, or even land. It is gated by the ability to deliver very large blocks of power, on aggressive timelines, at a predictable cost. According to the CBRE 2026 U.S. Real Estate Market Outlook as overseen by Gordon Dolven and Pat Lynch, the sector is on track to post another record year for leasing activity, even as vacancy remains at historic lows and pricing reaches all-time highs. What has changed is the scale at which demand now presents itself, and the difficulty of meeting it. Large-Block Leasing Rewrites the Economics AI-driven workloads are reshaping leasing dynamics in ways that break from prior hyperscale norms. Where 10-MW-plus deployments once commanded pricing concessions, CBRE now observes the opposite behavior: large, contiguous blocks of capacity are commanding premiums. Neocloud providers, GPU-as-a-service platforms and AI startups, many backed by aggressive capital deployment strategies, are actively competing for full-building and campus-scale capacity.  For operators, this is altering development and merchandising strategies. Rather than subdividing shells for flexibility, owners increasingly face a strategic choice: hold buildings intact to preserve optionality for single-tenant, high-density users who are willing to pay for scale. In effect, scale itself has become the scarce asset. Behind-the-Meter Power Moves to the Foreground For data centers, power availability meaning not just access, but certainty of delivery, is now the defining variable in the market.  CBRE notes accelerating adoption of behind-the-meter strategies as operators seek to bypass increasingly constrained utility timelines. On-site generation using natural gas, solar, wind, and battery storage is gaining traction, particularly in deregulated electricity markets where operators have more latitude to structure BYOP (bring your own power) solutions. 

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Blue Origin targets enterprise networks with a multi-terabit satellite connectivity plan

“It’s ideal for remote, sparse, or sensitive regions,” said Manish Rawat, analyst at TechInsights. “Key use cases include cloud-to-cloud links, data center replication, government, defense, and disaster recovery workloads. It supports rapid or temporary deployments and prioritizes fewer customers with high capacity, strict SLAs, and deep carrier integration.” Adoption, however, is expected to largely depend on the sector. For governments and organizations operating highly critical or sensitive infrastructure, where reliability and security outweigh cost considerations, this could be attractive as a redundancy option. “Banks, national security agencies, and other mission-critical operators may consider it as an alternate routing path,” Jain said. “For most enterprises, however, it is unlikely to replace terrestrial connectivity and would instead function as a supplementary layer.” Real-world performance Although satellite connectivity offers potential advantages, analysts note that questions remain around real-world performance. “TeraWave’s 6 Tbps refers to total constellation capacity, not per-user throughput, achieved via multiple optical inter-satellite links and ground gateways,” Rawat said. “Optical crosslinks provide high aggregate bandwidth but not a single terabit-class pipe. Performance lies between fiber and GEO satellites, with lower intercontinental latency than GEO but higher than fiber.” Operational factors could also affect network stability. Jitter is generally low, but handovers, rerouting, and weather conditions can introduce intermittent performance spikes. Packet loss is expected to remain modest but episodic, Rawat added.

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CyrusOne Hones AI-Era Data Center Strategy for Power, Pace, and Reliability

In the second half of 2025, CyrusOne was racing to secure buildable power and faster time-to-market capacity for AI-era customers. At the same time, its reputation for mission-critical reliability took a very public hit when a disruption at a CyrusOne facility helped knock CME trading offline. The incident forced the company into an unusually open conversation about redundancy, cooling systems, and operational discipline: systems that are meant to disappear in normal operation, and dominate the story when they malfunction. From Projects to a Playbook Which projects, missteps, and strategic moves from 2025 are now shaping how CyrusOne enters 2026? Nowhere is that view clearer than in Texas. There, CyrusOne has been leaning hard into a “power + land + interconnect” model: treating deliverable power and grid position as part of the product, not just a prerequisite. If you map the company’s announcements since late July, Texas reveals the playbook. Secure power, secure substations and grid position, then build multi-phase campuses designed to scale quickly as demand materializes. The Calpine “Powered Land” Deal: From 190 MW to 400 MW in Three Months On July 30, 2025, CyrusOne and Calpine announced a 190-MW agreement tied to a hyperscale campus (DFW10) adjacent to Calpine’s Thad Hill Energy Center in Bosque County, Texas. The structure bundled power, grid connection, and land into a single development package, with CyrusOne saying the site was already under construction and targeting operation by Q4 2026. Just three months later, on November 3–4, the partners announced a second phase, adding 210 MW and taking the campus to 400 MW. The update emphasized coordination to support grid reliability during scarcity; such curtailment and operational-coordination concepts are becoming table stakes for ERCOT-scale megaprojects. Together, the two announcements show CyrusOne placing a large bet on an emerging model: power-ready campuses, or “powered

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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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