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Hyperion and Alice & Bob Call on HPC Centers to Prepare Now for Early Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing
As the data center industry continues to chase greater performance for AI and scientific workloads, a new joint report from Hyperion Research and Alice & Bob is urging high performance computing (HPC) centers to take immediate steps toward integrating early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC) into their infrastructure. The report, “Seizing Quantum’s Edge: Why and How HPC Should Prepare for eFTQC,” paints a clear picture: the next five years will demand hybrid HPC-quantum workflows if institutions want to stay at the forefront of computational science. According to the analysis, up to half of current HPC workloads at U.S. government research labs—Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and Department of Energy leadership computing facilities among them—could benefit from the speedups and efficiency gains of eFTQC. “Quantum technologies are a pivotal opportunity for the HPC community, offering the potential to significantly accelerate a wide range of critical science and engineering applications in the near-term,” said Bob Sorensen, Senior VP and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research. “However, these machines won’t be plug-and-play, so HPC centers should begin preparing for integration now, ensuring they can influence system design and gain early operational expertise.” The HPC Bottleneck: Why Quantum is Urgent The report underscores a familiar challenge for the HPC community: classical performance gains have slowed as transistor sizes approach physical limits and energy efficiency becomes increasingly difficult to scale. Meanwhile, the threshold for useful quantum applications is drawing nearer. Advances in qubit stability and error correction, particularly Alice & Bob’s cat qubit technology, have compressed the resource requirements for algorithms like Shor’s by an estimated factor of 1,000. Within the next five years, the report projects that quantum computers with 100–1,000 logical qubits and logical error rates between 10⁻⁶ and 10⁻¹⁰ will accelerate applications across materials science, quantum
Land and Expand: CleanArc Data Centers, Google, Duke Energy, Aligned’s ODATA, Fermi America
Land and Expand is a monthly feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center operators about which we’ve been reading lately. Caroline County, VA, Approves 650-Acre Data Center Campus from CleanArc Caroline County, Virginia, has approved redevelopment of the former Virginia Bazaar property in Ruther Glen into a 650-acre data center campus in partnership with CleanArc Data Centers Operating, LLC. On September 9, 2025, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an economic development performance agreement with CleanArc to transform the long-vacant flea market site just off I-95. The agreement allows for the phased construction of three initial data center buildings, each measuring roughly 500,000 square feet, which CleanArc plans to lease to major operators. The project represents one of the county’s largest-ever private investments. While CleanArc has not released a final capital cost, county filings suggest the development could reach into the multi-billion-dollar range over its full buildout. Key provisions include: Local hiring: At least 50 permanent jobs at no less than 150% of the prevailing county wage. Revenue sharing: Caroline County will provide annual incentive grants equal to 25% of incremental tax revenue generated by the campus. Water stewardship: CleanArc is prohibited from using potable county water for data center cooling, requiring the developer to pursue alternative technologies such as non-potable sources, recycled water, or advanced liquid cooling systems. Local officials have emphasized the deal’s importance for diversifying the county’s tax base, while community observers will be watching closely to see which cooling strategies CleanArc adopts in order to comply with the water-use restrictions. Google to Build $10 Billion Data Center Campus in Arkansas Moses Tucker Partners, one of Arkansas’
XRG Walks Away From $19B Santos Takeover
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. dropped its planned $19 billion takeover of Australian natural gas producer Santos Ltd., walking away from an ambitious effort to expand overseas after failing to agree on key terms. A “combination of factors” discouraged the company’s XRG unit from making a final bid, it said Wednesday. The decision was strictly commercial and reflected disagreement over issues including valuation and tax, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. It’s a notable retreat for XRG, the Adnoc spinoff launched to great fanfare last year and tasked with deploying Abu Dhabi’s billions into international dealmaking. The firm has been looking to build a global portfolio, particularly in chemicals and liquefied natural gas, and nixing the Santos transaction may slow an M&A drive aimed at diversifying the Middle Eastern emirate away from crude. The company made its indicative offer in June with a consortium that included Abu Dhabi Development Holding Co. and Carlyle Group Inc. The board of Santos, Australia’s second-largest fossil-fuel producer, recommended the $5.76-a-share proposal, which represented a 28% premium to the stock price at the time. But although the shares surged that day, they have remained well below the offer price, potentially indicating investors were skeptical the consortium could land the deal. Santos extended an exclusivity period for a second time last month, saying the group had sought more time to complete due diligence and obtain approvals. “The market will ask questions about Santos’ valuation after this,” Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at MST Marquee, said by email. Investors may be wary about “any skeletons that may be lurking there, all the more so because XRG was a less price-sensitive buyer than most, yet still couldn’t make it work.” Santos’ American depositary receipts slumped as much as 9.5% to $4.69 on Wednesday. Covestro Hurdles Following agreements for
WTI Falls on Stockpile, Fed Moves
Oil eased after a three-session advance as traders assessed fresh US stockpile data and a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut. West Texas Intermediate fell 0.7% to settle above $64 a barrel after the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point and penciled in two more reductions this year. Although lower rates typically boost energy demand, investors focused on policymakers’ warnings of mounting labor market weakness. Traders had also mostly priced in a 25 basis-point cut ahead of the decision, leading some to unwind hedges against a bigger-than-expected reduction. The dollar strengthened, making commodities priced in the currency less attractive. “There is a somewhat counterintuitive reaction to the Fed’s cut, but the dovish pivot cements their shift to protect the labor side of their mandate,” said Frank Monkam, head of macro trading at Buffalo Bayou Commodities. The shift suggests “an admission that growth risks to the economy are becoming more apparent and concerning.” The Fed move compounded an earlier slide as traders discounted the most recent US stockpile data, which showed crude inventories fell 9.29 million barrels amid a sizable increase in exports. However, the adjustment factor ballooned and distillate inventories rose to the highest since January, adding a bearish tilt to the report. “Traders like to see domestic demand pulling the inventories,” as opposed to exports, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities. The distillate buildup also stunted a rally following Ukraine’s attack on the Saratov refinery in its latest strike on Russian energy facilities — which have helped cut the OPEC+ member’s production to its lowest post-pandemic level, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Still, the strikes haven’t been enough to push oil out of the $5 band it has been in for most of the past month-and-a-half, buffeted between
Cisco strengthens integrated IT/OT network and security controls
Another significant move that will help IT/OT integration is the planned integration of the management console for Cisco’s Catalyst and Meraki networks. That combination will allow IT and OT teams to see the same dashboard for industrial OT and IT enterprise/campus networks. Cyber Vision will feeds into the dashboard along with other Cisco management offerings such as ThousandEyes, which gives customers a shared inventory of assets, traffic flows and security. “What we are focusing on is helping our customers have the secure networking foundation and architecture that lets IT teams and operational teams kind of have one fabric, one architecture, that goes from the carpeted spaces all the way to the far reaches of their OT network,” Butaney said. For too long, OT security has been thought of as a specific cybersecurity practice to be managed with point products, Butaney wrote in a blog post earlier this year: “As industrial organizations start deploying these, they realize that they need most of their IT cybersecurity tools to properly protect the OT environment, and that they also need to detect and remediate threats across domains.” “Protecting industrial operations means profiling and monitoring tens of thousands of industrial assets, often installed in hard-to-reach locations. The traditional approach consisting of deploying dedicated appliances for OT visibility, threat detection, network segmentation, and secure remote access is proving too complex to deploy, too costly to scale, and in some cases just impractical,” Butaney wrote. A recent report from IDC went even further, stating that 50% of OT assets are more than 10 years old, and their security posture needs to be assessed. “Most OT networks remain unsegmented, leaving critical assets exposed and increasing the likelihood of lateral movement during attacks. Adaptive security policies and real-time segmentation are common in IT. These solutions can help minimize risks in
Slovakia and Hungary Resist Trump Bid to Halt Russian Energy
Slovakia and Hungary signaled they would resist pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut Russian oil and gas imports until the European Union member states find sufficient alternative supplies. “Before we can fully commit, we need to have the right conditions in place — otherwise we risk seriously damaging our industry and economy,” Slovak Economy Minister Denisa Sakova told reporters in Bratislava on Wednesday. The minister said sufficient infrastructure must first be in place to support alternative routes. The comments amount to a pushback against fresh pressure from Trump for all EU states to end Russian energy imports, a move that would hit Slovakia and Hungary. Hungarian Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas reiterated that his country would rebuff EU initiatives that threatened the security of its energy supplies. Sakova said she made clear Slovakia’s position during talks with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Vienna this week. She said the Trump official expressed understanding, while acknowledging that the US must boost energy projects in Europe. Trump said over the weekend that he’s prepared to move ahead with “major” sanctions on Russian oil if European nations do the same. The government in Bratislava is prepared to shut its Russian energy links if it has sufficient infrastructure to transport volumes, Sakova said. “As long as we have an alternative route, and the transmission capacity is sufficient, Slovakia has no problem diversifying,” the minister said. A complete cutoff of Russian supplies would pose a risk, she said, because Slovakia is located at the very end of alternative supply routes coming from the West. Slovakia and Hungary, landlocked nations bordering Ukraine, have historically depended on Russian oil and gas. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, both launched several diversification initiatives. Slovakia imports around third of its oil from non-Russian sources via the Adria pipeline
Hyperion and Alice & Bob Call on HPC Centers to Prepare Now for Early Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing
As the data center industry continues to chase greater performance for AI and scientific workloads, a new joint report from Hyperion Research and Alice & Bob is urging high performance computing (HPC) centers to take immediate steps toward integrating early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC) into their infrastructure. The report, “Seizing Quantum’s Edge: Why and How HPC Should Prepare for eFTQC,” paints a clear picture: the next five years will demand hybrid HPC-quantum workflows if institutions want to stay at the forefront of computational science. According to the analysis, up to half of current HPC workloads at U.S. government research labs—Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and Department of Energy leadership computing facilities among them—could benefit from the speedups and efficiency gains of eFTQC. “Quantum technologies are a pivotal opportunity for the HPC community, offering the potential to significantly accelerate a wide range of critical science and engineering applications in the near-term,” said Bob Sorensen, Senior VP and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research. “However, these machines won’t be plug-and-play, so HPC centers should begin preparing for integration now, ensuring they can influence system design and gain early operational expertise.” The HPC Bottleneck: Why Quantum is Urgent The report underscores a familiar challenge for the HPC community: classical performance gains have slowed as transistor sizes approach physical limits and energy efficiency becomes increasingly difficult to scale. Meanwhile, the threshold for useful quantum applications is drawing nearer. Advances in qubit stability and error correction, particularly Alice & Bob’s cat qubit technology, have compressed the resource requirements for algorithms like Shor’s by an estimated factor of 1,000. Within the next five years, the report projects that quantum computers with 100–1,000 logical qubits and logical error rates between 10⁻⁶ and 10⁻¹⁰ will accelerate applications across materials science, quantum
Land and Expand: CleanArc Data Centers, Google, Duke Energy, Aligned’s ODATA, Fermi America
Land and Expand is a monthly feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center operators about which we’ve been reading lately. Caroline County, VA, Approves 650-Acre Data Center Campus from CleanArc Caroline County, Virginia, has approved redevelopment of the former Virginia Bazaar property in Ruther Glen into a 650-acre data center campus in partnership with CleanArc Data Centers Operating, LLC. On September 9, 2025, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an economic development performance agreement with CleanArc to transform the long-vacant flea market site just off I-95. The agreement allows for the phased construction of three initial data center buildings, each measuring roughly 500,000 square feet, which CleanArc plans to lease to major operators. The project represents one of the county’s largest-ever private investments. While CleanArc has not released a final capital cost, county filings suggest the development could reach into the multi-billion-dollar range over its full buildout. Key provisions include: Local hiring: At least 50 permanent jobs at no less than 150% of the prevailing county wage. Revenue sharing: Caroline County will provide annual incentive grants equal to 25% of incremental tax revenue generated by the campus. Water stewardship: CleanArc is prohibited from using potable county water for data center cooling, requiring the developer to pursue alternative technologies such as non-potable sources, recycled water, or advanced liquid cooling systems. Local officials have emphasized the deal’s importance for diversifying the county’s tax base, while community observers will be watching closely to see which cooling strategies CleanArc adopts in order to comply with the water-use restrictions. Google to Build $10 Billion Data Center Campus in Arkansas Moses Tucker Partners, one of Arkansas’
XRG Walks Away From $19B Santos Takeover
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. dropped its planned $19 billion takeover of Australian natural gas producer Santos Ltd., walking away from an ambitious effort to expand overseas after failing to agree on key terms. A “combination of factors” discouraged the company’s XRG unit from making a final bid, it said Wednesday. The decision was strictly commercial and reflected disagreement over issues including valuation and tax, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. It’s a notable retreat for XRG, the Adnoc spinoff launched to great fanfare last year and tasked with deploying Abu Dhabi’s billions into international dealmaking. The firm has been looking to build a global portfolio, particularly in chemicals and liquefied natural gas, and nixing the Santos transaction may slow an M&A drive aimed at diversifying the Middle Eastern emirate away from crude. The company made its indicative offer in June with a consortium that included Abu Dhabi Development Holding Co. and Carlyle Group Inc. The board of Santos, Australia’s second-largest fossil-fuel producer, recommended the $5.76-a-share proposal, which represented a 28% premium to the stock price at the time. But although the shares surged that day, they have remained well below the offer price, potentially indicating investors were skeptical the consortium could land the deal. Santos extended an exclusivity period for a second time last month, saying the group had sought more time to complete due diligence and obtain approvals. “The market will ask questions about Santos’ valuation after this,” Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at MST Marquee, said by email. Investors may be wary about “any skeletons that may be lurking there, all the more so because XRG was a less price-sensitive buyer than most, yet still couldn’t make it work.” Santos’ American depositary receipts slumped as much as 9.5% to $4.69 on Wednesday. Covestro Hurdles Following agreements for
WTI Falls on Stockpile, Fed Moves
Oil eased after a three-session advance as traders assessed fresh US stockpile data and a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut. West Texas Intermediate fell 0.7% to settle above $64 a barrel after the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point and penciled in two more reductions this year. Although lower rates typically boost energy demand, investors focused on policymakers’ warnings of mounting labor market weakness. Traders had also mostly priced in a 25 basis-point cut ahead of the decision, leading some to unwind hedges against a bigger-than-expected reduction. The dollar strengthened, making commodities priced in the currency less attractive. “There is a somewhat counterintuitive reaction to the Fed’s cut, but the dovish pivot cements their shift to protect the labor side of their mandate,” said Frank Monkam, head of macro trading at Buffalo Bayou Commodities. The shift suggests “an admission that growth risks to the economy are becoming more apparent and concerning.” The Fed move compounded an earlier slide as traders discounted the most recent US stockpile data, which showed crude inventories fell 9.29 million barrels amid a sizable increase in exports. However, the adjustment factor ballooned and distillate inventories rose to the highest since January, adding a bearish tilt to the report. “Traders like to see domestic demand pulling the inventories,” as opposed to exports, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities. The distillate buildup also stunted a rally following Ukraine’s attack on the Saratov refinery in its latest strike on Russian energy facilities — which have helped cut the OPEC+ member’s production to its lowest post-pandemic level, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Still, the strikes haven’t been enough to push oil out of the $5 band it has been in for most of the past month-and-a-half, buffeted between
Cisco strengthens integrated IT/OT network and security controls
Another significant move that will help IT/OT integration is the planned integration of the management console for Cisco’s Catalyst and Meraki networks. That combination will allow IT and OT teams to see the same dashboard for industrial OT and IT enterprise/campus networks. Cyber Vision will feeds into the dashboard along with other Cisco management offerings such as ThousandEyes, which gives customers a shared inventory of assets, traffic flows and security. “What we are focusing on is helping our customers have the secure networking foundation and architecture that lets IT teams and operational teams kind of have one fabric, one architecture, that goes from the carpeted spaces all the way to the far reaches of their OT network,” Butaney said. For too long, OT security has been thought of as a specific cybersecurity practice to be managed with point products, Butaney wrote in a blog post earlier this year: “As industrial organizations start deploying these, they realize that they need most of their IT cybersecurity tools to properly protect the OT environment, and that they also need to detect and remediate threats across domains.” “Protecting industrial operations means profiling and monitoring tens of thousands of industrial assets, often installed in hard-to-reach locations. The traditional approach consisting of deploying dedicated appliances for OT visibility, threat detection, network segmentation, and secure remote access is proving too complex to deploy, too costly to scale, and in some cases just impractical,” Butaney wrote. A recent report from IDC went even further, stating that 50% of OT assets are more than 10 years old, and their security posture needs to be assessed. “Most OT networks remain unsegmented, leaving critical assets exposed and increasing the likelihood of lateral movement during attacks. Adaptive security policies and real-time segmentation are common in IT. These solutions can help minimize risks in
Slovakia and Hungary Resist Trump Bid to Halt Russian Energy
Slovakia and Hungary signaled they would resist pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut Russian oil and gas imports until the European Union member states find sufficient alternative supplies. “Before we can fully commit, we need to have the right conditions in place — otherwise we risk seriously damaging our industry and economy,” Slovak Economy Minister Denisa Sakova told reporters in Bratislava on Wednesday. The minister said sufficient infrastructure must first be in place to support alternative routes. The comments amount to a pushback against fresh pressure from Trump for all EU states to end Russian energy imports, a move that would hit Slovakia and Hungary. Hungarian Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas reiterated that his country would rebuff EU initiatives that threatened the security of its energy supplies. Sakova said she made clear Slovakia’s position during talks with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Vienna this week. She said the Trump official expressed understanding, while acknowledging that the US must boost energy projects in Europe. Trump said over the weekend that he’s prepared to move ahead with “major” sanctions on Russian oil if European nations do the same. The government in Bratislava is prepared to shut its Russian energy links if it has sufficient infrastructure to transport volumes, Sakova said. “As long as we have an alternative route, and the transmission capacity is sufficient, Slovakia has no problem diversifying,” the minister said. A complete cutoff of Russian supplies would pose a risk, she said, because Slovakia is located at the very end of alternative supply routes coming from the West. Slovakia and Hungary, landlocked nations bordering Ukraine, have historically depended on Russian oil and gas. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, both launched several diversification initiatives. Slovakia imports around third of its oil from non-Russian sources via the Adria pipeline
Energy-related US CO2 emissions down 20% since 2005: EIA
Listen to the article 2 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption fell in every state from 2005 to 2023, primarily due to less coal being burned, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a Monday report. In total, CO2 emissions fell by 20% in those years. The U.S. population increased by 14% during that period, so per capita, emissions fell by 30%, according to EIA. “Increased electricity generation from natural gas, which releases about half as many CO2 emissions per unit of energy when combusted as coal, and from non-CO2-emitting wind and solar generation offset the decrease in coal generation,” EIA said. Emissions decreased in every state, falling the most in Maryland and the District of Columbia, which saw per capita drops of 49% and 48%, respectively. Emissions fell the least in Idaho, where they dropped by 3%, and Mississippi, where they dropped by 1%. Optional Caption Courtesy of Energy Information Administration “In 2023, Maryland had the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of any state, at 7.8 metric tons of CO2 (mtCO2), which is the second lowest in recorded data beginning in 1960,” EIA said. “The District of Columbia has lower per capita CO2 emissions than any state and tied its record low of 3.6 mtCO2 in 2023.” EIA forecasts a 1% increase in total U.S. emissions from energy consumption this year, “in part because of more recent increased fossil fuel consumption for crude oil production and electricity generation growth.” In 2023, the transportation sector was responsible for the largest share of emissions from energy consumption across 28 states, EIA said. In 2005, the electric power sector had “accounted for the largest share of emissions in 31 states, while the transportation sector made up the
Chord Announces ‘Strategic Acquisition of Williston Basin Assets’
Chord Energy Corporation announced a “strategic acquisition of Williston Basin assets” in a statement posted on its website recently. In the statement, Chord said a wholly owned subsidiary of the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire assets in the Williston Basin from XTO Energy Inc. and affiliates for a total cash consideration of $550 million, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. The consideration is expected to be funded through a combination of cash on hand and borrowings, Chord noted in the statement, which highlighted that the effective date for the transaction is September 1, 2025, and that the deal is expected to close by year-end. Chord outlined in the statement that the deal includes 48,000 net acres in the Williston core, noting that “90 net 10,000 foot equivalent locations (72 net operated) extend Chord’s inventory life”. Pointing out “inventory quality” in the statement, Chord highlighted that “low average NYMEX WTI breakeven economics ($40s) compete at the front-end of Chord’s program and lower the weighted-average breakeven of Chord’s portfolio”. The company outlined that the deal is “expected to be accretive to all key metrics including cash flow, free cash flow and NAV in both near and long-term”. “We are excited to announce the acquisition of these high-quality assets,” Danny Brown, Chord Energy’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said in the statement. “The acquired assets are in one of the best areas of the Williston Basin and have significant overlap with Chord’s existing footprint, setting the stage for long-lateral development. The assets have a low average NYMEX WTI breakeven and are immediately competitive for capital,” he added. “We expect that the transaction will create significant accretion for shareholders across all key metrics, while maintaining pro forma leverage below the peer group and supporting sustainable FCF generation and return of capital,” he continued.
AI can aid building energy retrofit decisions, but faces limitations: study
Listen to the article 4 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Generative AI models are able to produce effective retrofit decisions but do less well identifying which ones can produce the best result most quickly and at the least cost, according to analysis by researchers at Michigan State University. The study, “Can AI Make Energy Retrofit Decisions? An Evaluation of Large Language Models,” is one of the first to examine how large language models, or LLMs, perform in determining efficient and effective building energy retrofits. Identifying the optimal retrofit solution can be critical from a cost standpoint. Light to medium retrofits can unlock between 10% and 40% in energy savings, or $0.49 to $1.94 per square foot of savings on average, according to JLL research published last September. Despite these savings, these actions aren’t being implemented at the scale required to meet decarbonization targets because of their capital-intensive nature, the report says. Decision-making complexity and the inadequacy of data and tools are also problem, according to the report. To determine the potential of generative AI in addressing these limitations, MSU researchers tasked seven LLMs with generating energy retrofit decisions under two contexts: a technical context focused on maximum CO2 reduction and a sociotechnical context focused on minimum packback period. The AI-generated retrofit decisions were evaluated based on whether they matched the top-ranked retrofit measure or fell within the top three or the top five measures. The researchers then used a sample of 400 homes from ResStock 2024.2 data, spanning 49 states, to evaluate LLM performance based on accuracy, consistency, sensitivity and reasoning. Researchers evaluated each LLM by issuing prompts, which included an overview of 16 potential retrofit packages and building-specific information. The overview described each retrofit measure’s features like heat pump efficiency, whether
CPS Energy to Acquire Nearly 2 GW Gas Plants from ProEnergy
CPS Energy has signed an agreement to acquire four natural gas power plants operated by ProEnergy in the ERCOT area for $1.387 billion. The facilities have an aggregate capacity of 1.632 gigawatts, according to a joint statement. “Located in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market, the acquired assets include state-of-the-art, recently constructed peaking natural gas plants in Harris, Brazoria and Galveston Counties”, the companies said. “The acquired assets are dual-fuel capable, providing CPS Energy future optionality to transition to a hydrogen fuel blend that would enable reduced carbon emissions”. San Antonio, Texas-based CPS Energy has a prior agreement with Modern Hydrogen, announced July 22, to use the latter’s technology to convert natural gas into hydrogen. CPS Energy president and chief executive Rudy D. Garza said of the agreement with ProEnergy, “By acquiring recently constructed, currently operating modern power plants that utilize proven technology already in use by CPS Energy, we avoid higher construction costs, inflationary risk, and long timelines associated with building new facilities – while also enhancing the reliability and affordability of the CPS Energy generation portfolio”. “As we add resources to meet the needs of our fast-growing communities, we will continue to look to a diverse balance of energy sources that complement our portfolio, including natural gas, solar, wind and storage, keeping our community powered and growing”, Garza added. CPS Energy earlier issued a request for proposals (RFP) to secure up to 400 MW of wind generation capacity through one or more PPAs (power purchase agreements). “The RFP marks the first time in over a decade that CPS Energy has specifically sought proposals for wind projects. CPS Energy’s target to contract up to 400 MW of wind capacity would bring the utility’s total wind generation to 1,467 MW”, it said in a press release July 31. “The
New Fortress Energy Gets New Deal to Supply Gas to Puerto Rico
New Fortress Energy Inc. (NFE) said Tuesday it had agreed contract terms with local authorities to continue delivering natural gas for Puerto Rico’s power system for seven more years. The agreement with the Third-Party Procurement Office and the Public-Private Partnership Authority provides for the supply of up to 75 trillion British thermal units a year (TBtu) “with minimum annual take-or-pay volumes of 40 TBtu, increasing to up to 50 TBtu if certain conditions are met”, New York City-based NFE said in a statement on its website. “This landmark agreement provides two critical benefits to the island. First, it establishes security of supply in San Juan for the next seven years for power plants currently running on LNG”, said NFE chair and chief executive Wes Edens. “Second, it provides for incremental LNG volumes to be delivered, allowing for the conversion of additional gas-ready plants currently burning diesel, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in energy savings for Puerto Ricans”. “Puerto Ricans pay far too much for electricity today and this long-term agreement provides cheaper and cleaner fuel for existing power plants for years to come”, Edens added, noting talks with the Puerto Rican government for a long-term fuel supply had been ongoing since April. “This contract complements our existing long-term 25-year supply contract with Energiza and the new 550-megawatt power plant they are developing”. NFE said, “Pricing of the volumes supplied through the GSA [Gas Supply Agreement] is set at a blend of 115 percent of Henry Hub plus $7.95/million Btu, excluding natural gas supplied to the units at San Juan 5 & 6 (which has historically consumed ~20 TBtu per year). Instead, these volumes are priced at 115 percent of Henry Hub plus $6.50/MMBtu”. NFE expects to source the LNG under the new GSA from its Fast LNG facility in Altamira, Mexico. With a capacity of 1.4 million metric
USA EIA Sees USA Crude Oil Production Dropping in 2026
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects U.S. crude oil production to drop next year, according to its latest short term energy outlook (STEO), which was released on September 9. In its September STEO, the EIA projected that total U.S. crude oil output, including lease condensate, will average 13.44 million barrels per day in 2025 and 13.30 million barrels per day in 2026. This output came in at 13.23 million barrels per day in 2024, the STEO highlighted. The STEO showed that Lower 48 states, excluding the Gulf of America, will provide 11.18 million barrels per day of the projected total in 2025 and 10.96 million barrels per day of the projected total in 2026. Of this 11.18 million barrel per day figure, the STEO expects 6.52 million barrels per day to come from the Permian region, 1.20 million barrels per day to come from the Bakken region, 1.12 million barrels per day to come from the Eagle Ford region, 0.19 million barrels per day to come from the Appalachia region, 0.03 million barrels per day to come from the Haynesville region, and 2.12 million barrels per day to come from the “rest of [the] Lower 48 states”. In 2026, the STEO sees 6.41 million barrels per day coming from the Permian region, 1.20 million barrels per day coming from the Bakken region, 1.10 million barrels per day coming from the Eagle Ford region, 0.17 million barrels per day coming from the Appalachia region, 0.03 million barrels per day to come from the Haynesville region, and 2.05 million barrels per day to come from the “rest of [the] Lower 48 states”. The EIA’s latest STEO showed that, in 2024, the Permian region produced 6.30 million barrels per day, the Bakken region produced 1.23 million barrels per day, the Eagle Ford
LG rolls out new AI services to help consumers with daily tasks
Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More LG kicked off the AI bandwagon today with a new set of AI services to help consumers in their daily tasks at home, in the car and in the office. The aim of LG’s CES 2025 press event was to show how AI will work in a day of someone’s life, with the goal of redefining the concept of space, said William Joowan Cho, CEO of LG Electronics at the event. The presentation showed LG is fully focused on bringing AI into just about all of its products and services. Cho referred to LG’s AI efforts as “affectionate intelligence,” and he said it stands out from other strategies with its human-centered focus. The strategy focuses on three things: connected devices, capable AI agents and integrated services. One of things the company announced was a strategic partnership with Microsoft on AI innovation, where the companies pledged to join forces to shape the future of AI-powered spaces. One of the outcomes is that Microsoft’s Xbox Ultimate Game Pass will appear via Xbox Cloud on LG’s TVs, helping LG catch up with Samsung in offering cloud gaming natively on its TVs. LG Electronics will bring the Xbox App to select LG smart TVs. That means players with LG Smart TVs will be able to explore the Gaming Portal for direct access to hundreds of games in the Game Pass Ultimate catalog, including popular titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and upcoming releases like Avowed (launching February 18, 2025). Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members will be able to play games directly from the Xbox app on select LG Smart TVs through cloud gaming. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and a compatible Bluetooth-enabled
Big tech must stop passing the cost of its spiking energy needs onto the public
Julianne Malveaux is an MIT-educated economist, author, educator and political commentator who has written extensively about the critical relationship between public policy, corporate accountability and social equity. The rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S. is not only reshaping the digital economy but also threatening to overwhelm our energy infrastructure. These data centers aren’t just heavy on processing power — they’re heavy on our shared energy infrastructure. For Americans, this could mean serious sticker shock when it comes to their energy bills. Across the country, many households are already feeling the pinch as utilities ramp up investments in costly new infrastructure to power these data centers. With costs almost certain to rise as more data centers come online, state policymakers and energy companies must act now to protect consumers. We need new policies that ensure the cost of these projects is carried by the wealthy big tech companies that profit from them, not by regular energy consumers such as family households and small businesses. According to an analysis from consulting firm Bain & Co., data centers could require more than $2 trillion in new energy resources globally, with U.S. demand alone potentially outpacing supply in the next few years. This unprecedented growth is fueled by the expansion of generative AI, cloud computing and other tech innovations that require massive computing power. Bain’s analysis warns that, to meet this energy demand, U.S. utilities may need to boost annual generation capacity by as much as 26% by 2028 — a staggering jump compared to the 5% yearly increases of the past two decades. This poses a threat to energy affordability and reliability for millions of Americans. Bain’s research estimates that capital investments required to meet data center needs could incrementally raise consumer bills by 1% each year through 2032. That increase may
Final 45V hydrogen tax credit guidance draws mixed response
Dive Brief: The final rule for the 45V clean hydrogen production tax credit, which the U.S. Treasury Department released Friday morning, drew mixed responses from industry leaders and environmentalists. Clean hydrogen development within the U.S. ground to a halt following the release of the initial guidance in December 2023, leading industry participants to call for revisions that would enable more projects to qualify for the tax credit. While the final rule makes “significant improvements” to Treasury’s initial proposal, the guidelines remain “extremely complex,” according to the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association. FCHEA President and CEO Frank Wolak and other industry leaders said they look forward to working with the Trump administration to refine the rule. Dive Insight: Friday’s release closed what Wolak described as a “long chapter” for the hydrogen industry. But industry reaction to the final rule was decidedly mixed, and it remains to be seen whether the rule — which could be overturned as soon as Trump assumes office — will remain unchanged. “The final 45V rule falls short,” Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber’s Global Energy Institute, said in a statement. “While the rule provides some of the additional flexibility we sought, … we believe that it still will leave billions of dollars of announced projects in limbo. The incoming Administration will have an opportunity to improve the 45V rules to ensure the industry will attract the investments necessary to scale the hydrogen economy and help the U.S. lead the world in clean manufacturing.” But others in the industry felt the rule would be sufficient for ending hydrogen’s year-long malaise. “With this added clarity, many projects that have been delayed may move forward, which can help unlock billions of dollars in investments across the country,” Kim Hedegaard, CEO of Topsoe’s Power-to-X, said in a statement. Topsoe
Texas, Utah, Last Energy challenge NRC’s ‘overburdensome’ microreactor regulations
Dive Brief: A 69-year-old Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule underpinning U.S. nuclear reactor licensing exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and creates an unreasonable burden for microreactor developers, the states of Texas and Utah and advanced nuclear technology company Last Energy said in a lawsuit filed Dec. 30 in federal court in Texas. The plaintiffs asked the Eastern District of Texas court to exempt Last Energy’s 20-MW reactor design and research reactors located in the plaintiff states from the NRC’s definition of nuclear “utilization facilities,” which subjects all U.S. commercial and research reactors to strict regulatory scrutiny, and order the NRC to develop a more flexible definition for use in future licensing proceedings. Regardless of its merits, the lawsuit underscores the need for “continued discussion around proportional regulatory requirements … that align with the hazards of the reactor and correspond to a safety case,” said Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. Dive Insight: Only three commercial nuclear reactors have been built in the United States in the past 28 years, and none are presently under construction, according to a World Nuclear Association tracker cited in the lawsuit. “Building a new commercial reactor of any size in the United States has become virtually impossible,” the plaintiffs said. “The root cause is not lack of demand or technology — but rather the [NRC], which, despite its name, does not really regulate new nuclear reactor construction so much as ensure that it almost never happens.” More than a dozen advanced nuclear technology developers have engaged the NRC in pre-application activities, which the agency says help standardize the content of advanced reactor applications and expedite NRC review. Last Energy is not among them. The pre-application process can itself stretch for years and must be followed by a formal application that can take two
Qualcomm unveils AI chips for PCs, cars, smart homes and enterprises
Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Qualcomm unveiled AI technologies and collaborations for PCs, cars, smart homes and enterprises at CES 2025. At the big tech trade show in Las Vegas, Qualcomm Technologies showed how it’s using AI capabilities in its chips to drive the transformation of user experiences across diverse device categories, including PCs, automobiles, smart homes and into enterprises. The company unveiled the Snapdragon X platform, the fourth platform in its high-performance PC portfolio, the Snapdragon X Series, bringing industry-leading performance, multi-day battery life, and AI leadership to more of the Windows ecosystem. Qualcomm has talked about how its processors are making headway grabbing share from the x86-based AMD and Intel rivals through better efficiency. Qualcomm’s neural processing unit gets about 45 TOPS, a key benchmark for AI PCs. The Snapdragon X family of AI PC processors. Additionally, Qualcomm Technologies showcased continued traction of the Snapdragon X Series, with over 60 designs in production or development and more than 100 expected by 2026. Snapdragon for vehicles Qualcomm demoed chips that are expanding its automotive collaborations. It is working with Alpine, Amazon, Leapmotor, Mobis, Royal Enfield, and Sony Honda Mobility, who look to Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions to drive AI-powered in-cabin and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Qualcomm also announced continued traction for its Snapdragon Elite-tier platforms for automotive, highlighting its work with Desay, Garmin, and Panasonic for Snapdragon Cockpit Elite. Throughout the show, Qualcomm will highlight its holistic approach to improving comfort and focusing on safety with demonstrations on the potential of the convergence of AI, multimodal contextual awareness, and cloudbased services. Attendees will also get a first glimpse of the new Snapdragon Ride Platform with integrated automated driving software stack and system definition jointly
Oil, Gas Execs Reveal Where They Expect WTI Oil Price to Land in the Future
Executives from oil and gas firms have revealed where they expect the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price to be at various points in the future as part of the fourth quarter Dallas Fed Energy Survey, which was released recently. The average response executives from 131 oil and gas firms gave when asked what they expect the WTI crude oil price to be at the end of 2025 was $71.13 per barrel, the survey showed. The low forecast came in at $53 per barrel, the high forecast was $100 per barrel, and the spot price during the survey was $70.66 per barrel, the survey pointed out. This question was not asked in the previous Dallas Fed Energy Survey, which was released in the third quarter. That survey asked participants what they expect the WTI crude oil price to be at the end of 2024. Executives from 134 oil and gas firms answered this question, offering an average response of $72.66 per barrel, that survey showed. The latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey also asked participants where they expect WTI prices to be in six months, one year, two years, and five years. Executives from 124 oil and gas firms answered this question and gave a mean response of $69 per barrel for the six month mark, $71 per barrel for the year mark, $74 per barrel for the two year mark, and $80 per barrel for the five year mark, the survey showed. Executives from 119 oil and gas firms answered this question in the third quarter Dallas Fed Energy Survey and gave a mean response of $73 per barrel for the six month mark, $76 per barrel for the year mark, $81 per barrel for the two year mark, and $87 per barrel for the five year mark, that
The Download: regulators are coming for AI companions, and meet our Innovator of 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The looming crackdown on AI companionship As long as there has been AI, there have been people sounding alarms about what it might do to us: rogue superintelligence, mass unemployment, or environmental ruin. But another threat entirely—that of kids forming unhealthy bonds with AI—is pulling AI safety out of the academic fringe and into regulators’ crosshairs. This has been bubbling for a while. Two high-profile lawsuits filed in the last year, against Character.AI and OpenAI, allege that their models contributed to the suicides of two teenagers. A study published in July, found that 72% of teenagers have used AI for companionship. And stories about “AI psychosis” have highlighted how endless conversations with chatbots can lead people down delusional spirals.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of these stories. To the public, they are proof that AI is not merely imperfect, but harmful. If you doubted that this outrage would be taken seriously by regulators and companies, three things happened this week that might change your mind. —James O’Donnell
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. If you’re interested in reading more about AI companionship, why not check out:+ AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction—and lawmakers are taking aim. Read the full story.+ Chatbots are rapidly changing how we connect to each other—and ourselves. We’re never going back. Read the full story. + Why GPT-4o’s sudden shutdown last month left people grieving. Read the full story.+ An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it.+ OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being. But there’s still a lot we don’t know. Meet the designer of the world’s fastest whole-genome sequencing method Every year, MIT Technology Review selects one individual whose work we admire to recognize as Innovator of the Year. For 2025, we chose Sneha Goenka, who designed the computations behind the world’s fastest whole-genome sequencing method. Thanks to her work, physicians can now sequence a patient’s genome and diagnose a genetic condition in less than eight hours—an achievement that could transform medical care. Register here to join an exclusive subscriber-only Roundtable conversation with Goenka, Leilani Battle, assistant professor at the University of Washington, and our editor in chief Mat Honan at 1pm ET on Tuesday September 23.
The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Childhood vaccination rates are falling across the USMuch of the country no longer has the means to stop the spread of deadly disease. (NBC News)+ Take a look at the factors driving vaccine hesitancy. (WP $)+ RFK Jr is appointing more vaccine skeptics to the CDC advisory panel. (Ars Technica)+ Why US federal health agencies are abandoning mRNA vaccines. (MIT Technology Review) 2 The US and China have reached a TikTok deal Beijing says the spin-off version sold to US investors will still use ByteDance’s algorithm. (FT $)+ But further details are still pretty scarce. (WP $)+ The deal may have been fueled by China’s desire for Trump to visit the country. (WSJ $)3 OpenAI is releasing a version of GPT-5 optimized for agentic codingIt’s a direct rival to Anthropic’s Claude Code and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. (TechCrunch)+ OpenAI says it’s been trained on real-world engineering tasks. (VentureBeat)+ The second wave of AI coding is here. (MIT Technology Review) 4 The FTC is investigating Ticketmaster’s bot-fighting measures It’s probing whether the platform is doing enough to prevent illegal automated reselling. (Bloomberg $) 5 Google has created a new privacy-preserving LLMVaultGemma uses a technique called differential privacy to reduce the amount of data AI holds onto. (Ars Technica) 6 Space tech firms are fighting it out for NATO contractsMilitaries are willing to branch out and strike deals with commercial vendors. (FT $)+ Why Trump’s “golden dome” missile defense idea is another ripped straight from the movies. (MIT Technology Review) 7 Facebook users are receiving their Cambridge Analytica payoutsDon’t spend it all at once! (The Verge)
8 The future of supercomputing could hinge on moon mining missionsCompanies are rushing to buy the moon’s resources before mining has even begun. (WP $) 9 What it’s like living with an AI toyFeaturing unsettling conversations galore. (The Guardian)10 Anthropic’s staff are obsessed with an albino alligator 🐊As luck would have it, he just happens to be called Claude. (WSJ $)
Quote of the day “It’s going to mean more infections, more hospitalizations, more disability and more death.” —Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, explains the probable outcomes of America’s current vaccine policy jumble, the BBC reports. One more thing
Robots are bringing new life to extinct speciesIn the last few years, paleontologists have developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them.In the absence of a living specimen, scientists say, an ambling, flying, swimming, or slithering automaton is the next best thing for studying the behavior of extinct organisms. Here are four examples of robots that are shedding light on creatures of yore. —Shi En Kim We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + New York City is full of natural life, if you know where to look.+ This photo of Jim Morrison enjoying a beer for breakfast is the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll.+ How to age like a champion athlete.+ Would you dare drive the world’s most narrow car?
The looming crackdown on AI companionship
As long as there has been AI, there have been people sounding alarms about what it might do to us: rogue superintelligence, mass unemployment, or environmental ruin from data center sprawl. But this week showed that another threat entirely—that of kids forming unhealthy bonds with AI—is the one pulling AI safety out of the academic fringe and into regulators’ crosshairs. This has been bubbling for a while. Two high-profile lawsuits filed in the last year, against Character.AI and OpenAI, allege that companion-like behavior in their models contributed to the suicides of two teenagers. A study by US nonprofit Common Sense Media, published in July, found that 72% of teenagers have used AI for companionship. Stories in reputable outlets about “AI psychosis” have highlighted how endless conversations with chatbots can lead people down delusional spirals. It’s hard to overstate the impact of these stories. To the public, they are proof that AI is not merely imperfect, but a technology that’s more harmful than helpful. If you doubted that this outrage would be taken seriously by regulators and companies, three things happened this week that might change your mind. A California law passes the legislature On Thursday, the California state legislature passed a first-of-its-kind bill. It would require AI companies to include reminders for users they know to be minors that responses are AI generated. Companies would also need to have a protocol for addressing suicide and self-harm and provide annual reports on instances of suicidal ideation in users’ conversations with their chatbots. It was led by Democratic state senator Steve Padilla, passed with heavy bipartisan support, and now awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature.
There are reasons to be skeptical of the bill’s impact. It doesn’t specify efforts companies should take to identify which users are minors, and lots of AI companies already include referrals to crisis providers when someone is talking about suicide. (In the case of Adam Raine, one of the teenagers whose survivors are suing, his conversations with ChatGPT before his death included this type of information, but the chatbot allegedly went on to give advice related to suicide anyway.) Still, it is undoubtedly the most significant of the efforts to rein in companion-like behaviors in AI models, which are in the works in other states too. If the bill becomes law, it would strike a blow to the position OpenAI has taken, which is that “America leads best with clear, nationwide rules, not a patchwork of state or local regulations,” as the company’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, wrote on LinkedIn last week.
The Federal Trade Commission takes aim The very same day, the Federal Trade Commission announced an inquiry into seven companies, seeking information about how they develop companion-like characters, monetize engagement, measure and test the impact of their chatbots, and more. The companies are Google, Instagram, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, X, and Character Technologies, the maker of Character.AI. The White House now wields immense, and potentially illegal, political influence over the agency. In March, President Trump fired its lone Democratic commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter. In July, a federal judge ruled that firing illegal, but last week the US Supreme Court temporarily permitted the firing. “Protecting kids online is a top priority for the Trump-Vance FTC, and so is fostering innovation in critical sectors of our economy,” said FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson in a press release about the inquiry. Right now, it’s just that—an inquiry—but the process might (depending on how public the FTC makes its findings) reveal the inner workings of how the companies build their AI companions to keep users coming back again and again. Sam Altman on suicide cases Also on the same day (a busy day for AI news), Tucker Carlson published an hour-long interview with OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman. It covers a lot of ground—Altman’s battle with Elon Musk, OpenAI’s military customers, conspiracy theories about the death of a former employee—but it also includes the most candid comments Altman’s made so far about the cases of suicide following conversations with AI. Altman talked about “the tension between user freedom and privacy and protecting vulnerable users” in cases like these. But then he offered up something I hadn’t heard before. “I think it’d be very reasonable for us to say that in cases of young people talking about suicide seriously, where we cannot get in touch with parents, we do call the authorities,” he said. “That would be a change.” So where does all this go next? For now, it’s clear that—at least in the case of children harmed by AI companionship—companies’ familiar playbook won’t hold. They can no longer deflect responsibility by leaning on privacy, personalization, or “user choice.” Pressure to take a harder line is mounting from state laws, regulators, and an outraged public.
But what will that look like? Politically, the left and right are now paying attention to AI’s harm to children, but their solutions differ. On the right, the proposed solution aligns with the wave of internet age-verification laws that have now been passed in over 20 states. These are meant to shield kids from adult content while defending “family values.” On the left, it’s the revival of stalled ambitions to hold Big Tech accountable through antitrust and consumer-protection powers. Consensus on the problem is easier than agreement on the cure. As it stands, it looks likely we’ll end up with exactly the patchwork of state and local regulations that OpenAI (and plenty of others) have lobbied against. For now, it’s down to companies to decide where to draw the lines. They’re having to decide things like: Should chatbots cut off conversations when users spiral toward self-harm, or would that leave some people worse off? Should they be licensed and regulated like therapists, or treated as entertainment products with warnings? The uncertainty stems from a basic contradiction: Companies have built chatbots to act like caring humans, but they’ve postponed developing the standards and accountability we demand of real caregivers. The clock is now running out. This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
The Download: computing’s bright young minds, and cleaning up satellite streaks
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet tomorrow’s rising stars of computing Each year, MIT Technology Review honors 35 outstanding people under the age of 35 who are driving scientific progress and solving tough problems in their fields.Today we want to introduce you to the computing innovators on the list who are coming up with new AI chips and specialized datasets—along with smart ideas about how to assess advanced systems for safety.Check out the full list of honorees—including our innovator of the year—here.
Job titles of the future: Satellite streak astronomer Earlier this year, the $800 million Vera Rubin Observatory commenced its decade-long quest to create an extremely detailed time-lapse movie of the universe.Rubin is capable of capturing many more stars than any other astronomical observatory ever built; it also sees many more satellites. Up to 40% of images captured by the observatory within its first 10 years of operation will be marred by their sunlight-reflecting streaks.Meredith Rawls, a research scientist at the telescope’s flagship observation project, Vera Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, is one of the experts tasked with protecting Rubin’s science mission from the satellite blight. Read the full story.
—Tereza Pultarova This story is from our new print edition, which is all about the future of security. Subscribe here to catch future copies when they land. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 China has accused Nvidia of violating anti-monopoly lawsAs US and Chinese officials head into a second day of tariff negotiations. (Bloomberg $)+ The investigation dug into Nvidia’s 2020 acquisition of computing firm Mellanox. (CNBC)+ But China’s antitrust regulator hasn’t confirmed if it will punish it. (WSJ $) 2 The US is getting closer to making a TikTok dealBut it’s still prepared to go ahead with a ban if an agreement can’t be reached. (Reuters) 3 Grok spread misinformation about a far-right rally in LondonIt falsely claimed that police misrepresented old footage as being from the protest. (The Guardian)+ Elon Musk called for a new UK government during a video speech. (Politico)
4 Here’s what people are really using ChatGPT forUsers are more likely to use it for personal, rather than work-related queries. (WP $)+ Anthropic says businesses are using AI to automate, not collaborate. (Bloomberg $)+ Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered. (MIT Technology Review) 5 How China’s Hangzhou became a global AI hubSpawning not just Alibaba, but DeepSeek too. (WSJ $)+ China and the US are completely dominating the global AI race. (Rest of World)+ How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Driverless car fleets could plunge US cities into traffic chaosAre we really prepared? (Vox $) 7 The shipping industry is harnessing AI to fight cargo firesThe risk of deadly fires is rising due to shipments of batteries and other flammable goods. (FT $) 8 Sales of used EVs are sky-rocketingBuyers are snapping up previously-owned bargains. (NYT $)+ EV owners won’t be able to drive in carpool lanes any more. (Wired $) 9 A table-top fusion reactor isn’t as crazy as it soundsThis startup is trying to make compact reactors a reality. (Economist $)+ Inside a fusion energy facility. (MIT Technology Review) 10 How a magnetic field could help clean up spaceIf we don’t, we could soon lose access to Earth’s low orbit altogether. (IEEE Spectrum)+ The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day “If we’re going on a journey, they’re absolutely taking travel sickness tablets immediately. They’re not even considering coming in the car without them.”
—Phil Bellamy, an electric car owner, describes the extreme nausea his daughters experience while riding in his vehicle to the Guardian. One more thing Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claimsLast year, Amazon trumpeted that it had purchased enough clean electricity to cover the energy demands of all its global operations, seven years ahead of its sustainability target.That news closely followed Google’s acknowledgment that the soaring energy demands of its AI operations helped ratchet up its corporate emissions by 13% last year—and that it had backed away from claims that it was already carbon neutral.If you were to take the announcements at face value, you’d be forgiven for believing that Google is stumbling while Amazon is speeding ahead in the race to clean up climate pollution.But while both companies are coming up short in their own ways, Google’s approach to driving down greenhouse-gas emissions is now arguably more defensible. To learn why, read our story.—James Temple We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Steven Spielberg was just 26 when he made Jaws? The more you know.+ This tiny car’s huge racing track journey is completely hypnotic.+ Easy dinner recipes? Yes please.+ This archive of thousands of historical children’s books is a real treasure trove—and completely free to read.
The Download: America’s gun crisis, and how AI video models work
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. We can’t “make American children healthy again” without tackling the gun crisis This week, the Trump administration released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again. It suggests American children should be eating more healthily. And they should be getting more exercise. But there’s a glaring omission. The leading cause of death for American children and teenagers isn’t ultraprocessed food or exposure to some chemical. It’s gun violence.
This week’s news of yet more high-profile shootings at schools in the US throws this disconnect into even sharper relief. Experts believe it is time to treat gun violence in the US as what it is: a public health crisis. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. How do AI models generate videos? It’s been a big year for video generation. In the last nine months OpenAI made Sora public, Google DeepMind launched Veo 3, and the video startup Runway launched Gen-4. All can produce video clips that are (almost) impossible to distinguish from actual filmed footage or CGI animation.The downside is that creators are competing with AI slop, and social media feeds are filling up with faked news footage. Video generation also uses up a huge amount of energy, many times more than text or image generation.With AI-generated videos everywhere, let’s take a moment to talk about the tech that makes them work. Read the full story.—Will Douglas Heaven This article is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. Meet our 2025 Innovator of the Year: Sneha Goenka Up to a quarter of children entering intensive care have undiagnosed genetic conditions. To be treated properly, they must first get diagnoses—which means having their genomes sequenced. This process typically takes up to seven weeks. Sadly, that’s often too slow to save a critically ill child.Hospitals may soon have a faster option, thanks to a groundbreaking system built in part by Sneha Goenka, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton—and MIT Technology Review’s 2025 Innovator of the Year. Read all about Goenka and her work in this profile.
—Helen Thomson As well as our Innovator of the Year, Goenka is one of the biotech honorees on our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2025. Meet the rest of our biotech and materials science innovators, and the full list here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 OpenAI and Microsoft have agreed a revised dealBut haven’t actually revealed any details of said deal. (Axios)+ The news comes as OpenAI keeps pursuing its for-profit pivot. (Ars Technica)+ The world’s largest startup is going to need more paying users soon. (WSJ $)2 A child has died from a measles complication in Los AngelesThey had contracted the virus before they were old enough to be vaccinated. (Ars Technica)+ Infants are best protected by community immunity. (LA Times $)+ They’d originally recovered from measles before developing the condition. (CNN)+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review) 3 Ukrainian drone attacks triggered internet blackouts in RussiaThe Kremlin cut internet access in a bid to thwart the mobile-guided drones. (FT $)+ The UK is poised to mass-produce drones to aid Ukraine. (Sky News)+ On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Demis Hasabis says AI may slash drug discovery time to under a yearOr perhaps even faster. (Bloomberg $)+ But there’s good reason to be skeptical of that claim. (FT $)+ An AI-driven “factory of drugs” claims to have hit a big milestone. (MIT Technology Review)
5 How chatbots alter how we thinkWe shouldn’t outsource our critical thinking to them. (Undark)+ AI companies have stopped warning you that their chatbots aren’t doctors. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Fraudsters are threatening small businesses with one-star reviewsOnline reviews can make or break fledgling enterprises, and scammers know it. (NYT $)
7 Why humanoid robots aren’t taking off any time soonThe industry has a major hype problem. (IEEE Spectrum)+ Chinese tech giant Ant Group showed off its own humanoid machine. (The Verge)+ Why the humanoid workforce is running late. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are suing PerplexityIn yet another case of alleged copyright infringement. (Reuters)+ What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits? (MIT Technology Review) 9 Where we’re most likely to find extraterrestrial life in the next decadeWarning: Hollywood may have given us unrealistic expectations. (BBC)10 Want to build a trillion-dollar company?Then kiss your social life goodbye. (WSJ $) Quote of the day “Nooooo I’m going to have to use my brain again and write 100% of my code like a caveman from December 2024.”
—A Hacker News commenter jokes about a service outage that left Anthropic users unable to access its AI coding tools, Ars Technica reports. One more thing What Africa needs to do to become a major AI playerAfrica is still early in the process of adopting AI technologies. But researchers say the continent is uniquely hospitable to it for several reasons, including a relatively young and increasingly well-educated population, a rapidly growing ecosystem of AI startups, and lots of potential consumers.However, ambitious efforts to develop AI tools that answer the needs of Africans face numerous hurdles. Read our story to learn what they are, and how they could be overcome.
—Abdullahi Tsanni We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)+ The fascinating, unexpected origins of everyone’s favorite pastime—karaoke.+ Why the Twilight juggernaut just refuses to die.+ If you’re among the mass of excited Hollow Knight fans, here’s a few tips to get through the early stages of the new Silksong game.+ A sloe gin bramble pie sounds like the perfect way to welcome fall.
How do AI models generate videos?
Sure, the clips you see in demo reels are cherry-picked to showcase a company’s models at the top of their game. But with the technology in the hands of more users than ever before—Sora and Veo 3 are available in the ChatGPT and Gemini apps for paying subscribers—even the most casual filmmaker can now knock out something remarkable. The downside is that creators are competing with AI slop, and social media feeds are filling up with faked news footage. Video generation also uses up a huge amount of energy, many times more than text or image generation.
With AI-generated videos everywhere, let’s take a moment to talk about the tech that makes them work. How do you generate a video? Let’s assume you’re a casual user. There are now a range of high-end tools that allow pro video makers to insert video generation models into their workflows. But most people will use this technology in an app or via a website. You know the drill: “Hey, Gemini, make me a video of a unicorn eating spaghetti. Now make its horn take off like a rocket.” What you get back will be hit or miss, and you’ll typically need to ask the model to take another pass or 10 before you get more or less what you wanted.
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So what’s going on under the hood? Why is it hit or miss—and why does it take so much energy? The latest wave of video generation models are what’s known as latent diffusion transformers. Yes, that’s quite a mouthful. Let’s unpack each part in turn, starting with diffusion. What’s a diffusion model? Imagine taking an image and adding a random spattering of pixels to it. Take that pixel-spattered image and spatter it again and then again. Do that enough times and you will have turned the initial image into a random mess of pixels, like static on an old TV set. A diffusion model is a neural network trained to reverse that process, turning random static into images. During training, it gets shown millions of images in various stages of pixelation. It learns how those images change each time new pixels are thrown at them and, thus, how to undo those changes. The upshot is that when you ask a diffusion model to generate an image, it will start off with a random mess of pixels and step by step turn that mess into an image that is more or less similar to images in its training set.
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But you don’t want any image—you want the image you specified, typically with a text prompt. And so the diffusion model is paired with a second model—such as a large language model (LLM) trained to match images with text descriptions—that guides each step of the cleanup process, pushing the diffusion model toward images that the large language model considers a good match to the prompt. An aside: This LLM isn’t pulling the links between text and images out of thin air. Most text-to-image and text-to-video models today are trained on large data sets that contain billions of pairings of text and images or text and video scraped from the internet (a practice many creators are very unhappy about). This means that what you get from such models is a distillation of the world as it’s represented online, distorted by prejudice (and pornography). It’s easiest to imagine diffusion models working with images. But the technique can be used with many kinds of data, including audio and video. To generate movie clips, a diffusion model must clean up sequences of images—the consecutive frames of a video—instead of just one image. What’s a latent diffusion model? All this takes a huge amount of compute (read: energy). That’s why most diffusion models used for video generation use a technique called latent diffusion. Instead of processing raw data—the millions of pixels in each video frame—the model works in what’s known as a latent space, in which the video frames (and text prompt) are compressed into a mathematical code that captures just the essential features of the data and throws out the rest.
A similar thing happens whenever you stream a video over the internet: A video is sent from a server to your screen in a compressed format to make it get to you faster, and when it arrives, your computer or TV will convert it back into a watchable video. And so the final step is to decompress what the latent diffusion process has come up with. Once the compressed frames of random static have been turned into the compressed frames of a video that the LLM guide considers a good match for the user’s prompt, the compressed video gets converted into something you can watch. With latent diffusion, the diffusion process works more or less the way it would for an image. The difference is that the pixelated video frames are now mathematical encodings of those frames rather than the frames themselves. This makes latent diffusion far more efficient than a typical diffusion model. (Even so, video generation still uses more energy than image or text generation. There’s just an eye-popping amount of computation involved.) What’s a latent diffusion transformer? Still with me? There’s one more piece to the puzzle—and that’s how to make sure the diffusion process produces a sequence of frames that are consistent, maintaining objects and lighting and so on from one frame to the next. OpenAI did this with Sora by combining its diffusion model with another kind of model called a transformer. This has now become standard in generative video. Transformers are great at processing long sequences of data, like words. That has made them the special sauce inside large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google DeepMind’s Gemini, which can generate long sequences of words that make sense, maintaining consistency across many dozens of sentences. But videos are not made of words. Instead, videos get cut into chunks that can be treated as if they were. The approach that OpenAI came up with was to dice videos up across both space and time. “It’s like if you were to have a stack of all the video frames and you cut little cubes from it,” says Tim Brooks, a lead researcher on Sora.
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A selection of videos generated with Veo 3 and Midjourney. The clips have been enhanced in postproduction with Topaz, an AI video-editing tool. Credit: VaigueMan
Using transformers alongside diffusion models brings several advantages. Because they are designed to process sequences of data, transformers also help the diffusion model maintain consistency across frames as it generates them. This makes it possible to produce videos in which objects don’t pop in and out of existence, for example. And because the videos are diced up, their size and orientation do not matter. This means that the latest wave of video generation models can be trained on a wide range of example videos, from short vertical clips shot with a phone to wide-screen cinematic films. The greater variety of training data has made video generation far better than it was just two years ago. It also means that video generation models can now be asked to produce videos in a variety of formats.
What about the audio? A big advance with Veo 3 is that it generates video with audio, from lip-synched dialogue to sound effects to background noise. That’s a first for video generation models. As Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis put it at this year’s Google I/O: “We’re emerging from the silent era of video generation.”
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The challenge was to find a way to line up video and audio data so that the diffusion process would work on both at the same time. Google DeepMind’s breakthrough was a new way to compress audio and video into a single piece of data inside the diffusion model. When Veo 3 generates a video, its diffusion model produces audio and video together in a lockstep process, ensuring that the sound and images are synched. You said that diffusion models can generate different kinds of data. Is this how LLMs work too? No—or at least not yet. Diffusion models are most often used to generate images, video, and audio. Large language models—which generate text (including computer code)—are built using transformers. But the lines are blurring. We’ve seen how transformers are now being combined with diffusion models to generate videos. And this summer Google DeepMind revealed that it was building an experimental large language model that used a diffusion model instead of a transformer to generate text. Here’s where things start to get confusing: Though video generation (which uses diffusion models) consumes a lot of energy, diffusion models themselves are in fact more efficient than transformers. Thus, by using a diffusion model instead of a transformer to generate text, Google DeepMind’s new LLM could be a lot more efficient than existing LLMs. Expect to see more from diffusion models in the near future!
We can’t “make American children healthy again” without tackling the gun crisis
Note for readers: This newsletter discusses gun violence, a raw and tragic issue in America. It was already in progress on Wednesday when a school shooting occurred at Evergreen High School in Colorado and Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University. Earlier this week, the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again movement released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, and his colleagues are focusing on four key aspects of child health: diet, exercise, chemical exposure, and overmedicalization. Anyone who’s been listening to RFK Jr. posturing on health and wellness won’t be surprised by these priorities. And the first two are pretty obvious. On the whole, American children should be eating more healthily. And they should be getting more exercise.
But there’s a glaring omission. The leading cause of death for American children and teenagers isn’t ultraprocessed food or exposure to some chemical. It’s gun violence. Yesterday’s news of yet more high-profile shootings at schools in the US throws this disconnect into even sharper relief. Experts believe it is time to treat gun violence in the US as what it is: a public health crisis.
I live in London, UK, with my husband and two young children. We don’t live in a particularly fancy part of the city—in one recent ranking of London boroughs from most to least posh, ours came in at 30th out of 33. I do worry about crime. But I don’t worry about gun violence. That changed when I temporarily moved my family to the US a couple of years ago. We rented the ground-floor apartment of a lovely home in Cambridge, Massachusetts—a beautiful area with good schools, pastel-colored houses, and fluffy rabbits hopping about. It wasn’t until after we’d moved in that my landlord told me he had guns in the basement. My daughter joined the kindergarten of a local school that specialized in music, and we took her younger sister along to watch the kids sing songs about friendship. It was all so heartwarming—until we noticed the school security officer at the entrance carrying a gun. Later in the year, I received an email alert from the superintendent of the Cambridge Public Schools. “At approximately 1:45 this afternoon, a Cambridge Police Department Youth Officer assigned to Cambridge Rindge and Latin School accidentally discharged their firearm while using a staff bathroom inside the school,” the message began. “The school day was not disrupted.” These experiences, among others, truly brought home to me the cultural differences over firearms between the US and the UK (along with most other countries). For the first time, I worried about my children’s exposure to them. I banned my children from accessing parts of the house. I felt guilty that my four-year-old had to learn what to do if a gunman entered her school. But it’s the statistics that are the most upsetting. In 2023, 46,728 people died from gun violence in the US, according to a report published in June by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That includes both homicides and suicides, and it breaks down to 128 deaths per day, on average. The majority of those who die from gun violence are adults. But the figures for children are sickening, too. In 2023, 2,566 young people died from gun violence. Of those, 234 were under the age of 10. Gun death rates among children have more than doubled since 2013. Firearms are involved in more child deaths than cancer or car crashes.
Many other children survive gun violence with nonfatal—but often life-changing—injuries. And the impacts are felt beyond those who are physically injured. Witnessing gun violence or hearing gunshots can understandably cause fear, sadness, and distress. That’s worth bearing in mind when you consider that there have been 434 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999. The Washington Post estimates that 397,000 students have experienced gun violence at school in that period. Another school shooting took place at Evergreen High School in Colorado on Wednesday, adding to that total. “Being indirectly exposed to gun violence takes its toll on our mental health and children’s ability to learn,” says Daniel Webster, Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions in Baltimore. The MAHA report states that “American youth face a mental health crisis,” going on to note that “suicide deaths among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021” and that “suicide is now the leading cause of death in teens aged 15-19.” What it doesn’t say is that around half of these suicides involve guns. “When you add all these dimensions, [gun violence is] a very huge public health problem,” says Webster. Researchers who study gun violence have been saying the same thing for years. And in 2024, then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared it a public health crisis. “We don’t have to subject our children to the ongoing horror of firearm violence in America,” Murthy said in a statement at the time. Instead, he argued, we should tackle the problem using a public health approach. Part of that approach involves identifying who is at the greatest risk and offering support to lower that risk, says Webster. Young men who live in poor communities tend to have the highest risk of gun violence, he says, as do those who experience crisis or turmoil. Trying to mediate conflicts or limit access to firearms, even temporarily, can help lower the incidence of gun violence, he says. There’s an element of social contagion, too, adds Webster. Shooting begets more shooting. He likens it to the outbreak of an infectious disease. “When more people get vaccinated … infection rates go down,” he says. “Almost exactly the same thing happens with gun violence.”
But existing efforts are already under threat. The Trump administration has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for organizations working to reduce gun violence. Webster thinks the MAHA report has “missed the mark” when it comes to the health and well-being of children in the US. “This document is almost the polar opposite to how many people in public health think,” he says. “We have to acknowledge that injuries and deaths from firearms are a big threat to the health and safety of children and adolescents.” This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
Hyperion and Alice & Bob Call on HPC Centers to Prepare Now for Early Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing
As the data center industry continues to chase greater performance for AI and scientific workloads, a new joint report from Hyperion Research and Alice & Bob is urging high performance computing (HPC) centers to take immediate steps toward integrating early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC) into their infrastructure. The report, “Seizing Quantum’s Edge: Why and How HPC Should Prepare for eFTQC,” paints a clear picture: the next five years will demand hybrid HPC-quantum workflows if institutions want to stay at the forefront of computational science. According to the analysis, up to half of current HPC workloads at U.S. government research labs—Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, and Department of Energy leadership computing facilities among them—could benefit from the speedups and efficiency gains of eFTQC. “Quantum technologies are a pivotal opportunity for the HPC community, offering the potential to significantly accelerate a wide range of critical science and engineering applications in the near-term,” said Bob Sorensen, Senior VP and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research. “However, these machines won’t be plug-and-play, so HPC centers should begin preparing for integration now, ensuring they can influence system design and gain early operational expertise.” The HPC Bottleneck: Why Quantum is Urgent The report underscores a familiar challenge for the HPC community: classical performance gains have slowed as transistor sizes approach physical limits and energy efficiency becomes increasingly difficult to scale. Meanwhile, the threshold for useful quantum applications is drawing nearer. Advances in qubit stability and error correction, particularly Alice & Bob’s cat qubit technology, have compressed the resource requirements for algorithms like Shor’s by an estimated factor of 1,000. Within the next five years, the report projects that quantum computers with 100–1,000 logical qubits and logical error rates between 10⁻⁶ and 10⁻¹⁰ will accelerate applications across materials science, quantum
Land and Expand: CleanArc Data Centers, Google, Duke Energy, Aligned’s ODATA, Fermi America
Land and Expand is a monthly feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center operators about which we’ve been reading lately. Caroline County, VA, Approves 650-Acre Data Center Campus from CleanArc Caroline County, Virginia, has approved redevelopment of the former Virginia Bazaar property in Ruther Glen into a 650-acre data center campus in partnership with CleanArc Data Centers Operating, LLC. On September 9, 2025, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an economic development performance agreement with CleanArc to transform the long-vacant flea market site just off I-95. The agreement allows for the phased construction of three initial data center buildings, each measuring roughly 500,000 square feet, which CleanArc plans to lease to major operators. The project represents one of the county’s largest-ever private investments. While CleanArc has not released a final capital cost, county filings suggest the development could reach into the multi-billion-dollar range over its full buildout. Key provisions include: Local hiring: At least 50 permanent jobs at no less than 150% of the prevailing county wage. Revenue sharing: Caroline County will provide annual incentive grants equal to 25% of incremental tax revenue generated by the campus. Water stewardship: CleanArc is prohibited from using potable county water for data center cooling, requiring the developer to pursue alternative technologies such as non-potable sources, recycled water, or advanced liquid cooling systems. Local officials have emphasized the deal’s importance for diversifying the county’s tax base, while community observers will be watching closely to see which cooling strategies CleanArc adopts in order to comply with the water-use restrictions. Google to Build $10 Billion Data Center Campus in Arkansas Moses Tucker Partners, one of Arkansas’
XRG Walks Away From $19B Santos Takeover
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. dropped its planned $19 billion takeover of Australian natural gas producer Santos Ltd., walking away from an ambitious effort to expand overseas after failing to agree on key terms. A “combination of factors” discouraged the company’s XRG unit from making a final bid, it said Wednesday. The decision was strictly commercial and reflected disagreement over issues including valuation and tax, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. It’s a notable retreat for XRG, the Adnoc spinoff launched to great fanfare last year and tasked with deploying Abu Dhabi’s billions into international dealmaking. The firm has been looking to build a global portfolio, particularly in chemicals and liquefied natural gas, and nixing the Santos transaction may slow an M&A drive aimed at diversifying the Middle Eastern emirate away from crude. The company made its indicative offer in June with a consortium that included Abu Dhabi Development Holding Co. and Carlyle Group Inc. The board of Santos, Australia’s second-largest fossil-fuel producer, recommended the $5.76-a-share proposal, which represented a 28% premium to the stock price at the time. But although the shares surged that day, they have remained well below the offer price, potentially indicating investors were skeptical the consortium could land the deal. Santos extended an exclusivity period for a second time last month, saying the group had sought more time to complete due diligence and obtain approvals. “The market will ask questions about Santos’ valuation after this,” Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at MST Marquee, said by email. Investors may be wary about “any skeletons that may be lurking there, all the more so because XRG was a less price-sensitive buyer than most, yet still couldn’t make it work.” Santos’ American depositary receipts slumped as much as 9.5% to $4.69 on Wednesday. Covestro Hurdles Following agreements for
WTI Falls on Stockpile, Fed Moves
Oil eased after a three-session advance as traders assessed fresh US stockpile data and a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut. West Texas Intermediate fell 0.7% to settle above $64 a barrel after the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point and penciled in two more reductions this year. Although lower rates typically boost energy demand, investors focused on policymakers’ warnings of mounting labor market weakness. Traders had also mostly priced in a 25 basis-point cut ahead of the decision, leading some to unwind hedges against a bigger-than-expected reduction. The dollar strengthened, making commodities priced in the currency less attractive. “There is a somewhat counterintuitive reaction to the Fed’s cut, but the dovish pivot cements their shift to protect the labor side of their mandate,” said Frank Monkam, head of macro trading at Buffalo Bayou Commodities. The shift suggests “an admission that growth risks to the economy are becoming more apparent and concerning.” The Fed move compounded an earlier slide as traders discounted the most recent US stockpile data, which showed crude inventories fell 9.29 million barrels amid a sizable increase in exports. However, the adjustment factor ballooned and distillate inventories rose to the highest since January, adding a bearish tilt to the report. “Traders like to see domestic demand pulling the inventories,” as opposed to exports, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president for trading at BOK Financial Securities. The distillate buildup also stunted a rally following Ukraine’s attack on the Saratov refinery in its latest strike on Russian energy facilities — which have helped cut the OPEC+ member’s production to its lowest post-pandemic level, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Still, the strikes haven’t been enough to push oil out of the $5 band it has been in for most of the past month-and-a-half, buffeted between
Cisco strengthens integrated IT/OT network and security controls
Another significant move that will help IT/OT integration is the planned integration of the management console for Cisco’s Catalyst and Meraki networks. That combination will allow IT and OT teams to see the same dashboard for industrial OT and IT enterprise/campus networks. Cyber Vision will feeds into the dashboard along with other Cisco management offerings such as ThousandEyes, which gives customers a shared inventory of assets, traffic flows and security. “What we are focusing on is helping our customers have the secure networking foundation and architecture that lets IT teams and operational teams kind of have one fabric, one architecture, that goes from the carpeted spaces all the way to the far reaches of their OT network,” Butaney said. For too long, OT security has been thought of as a specific cybersecurity practice to be managed with point products, Butaney wrote in a blog post earlier this year: “As industrial organizations start deploying these, they realize that they need most of their IT cybersecurity tools to properly protect the OT environment, and that they also need to detect and remediate threats across domains.” “Protecting industrial operations means profiling and monitoring tens of thousands of industrial assets, often installed in hard-to-reach locations. The traditional approach consisting of deploying dedicated appliances for OT visibility, threat detection, network segmentation, and secure remote access is proving too complex to deploy, too costly to scale, and in some cases just impractical,” Butaney wrote. A recent report from IDC went even further, stating that 50% of OT assets are more than 10 years old, and their security posture needs to be assessed. “Most OT networks remain unsegmented, leaving critical assets exposed and increasing the likelihood of lateral movement during attacks. Adaptive security policies and real-time segmentation are common in IT. These solutions can help minimize risks in
Slovakia and Hungary Resist Trump Bid to Halt Russian Energy
Slovakia and Hungary signaled they would resist pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut Russian oil and gas imports until the European Union member states find sufficient alternative supplies. “Before we can fully commit, we need to have the right conditions in place — otherwise we risk seriously damaging our industry and economy,” Slovak Economy Minister Denisa Sakova told reporters in Bratislava on Wednesday. The minister said sufficient infrastructure must first be in place to support alternative routes. The comments amount to a pushback against fresh pressure from Trump for all EU states to end Russian energy imports, a move that would hit Slovakia and Hungary. Hungarian Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas reiterated that his country would rebuff EU initiatives that threatened the security of its energy supplies. Sakova said she made clear Slovakia’s position during talks with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Vienna this week. She said the Trump official expressed understanding, while acknowledging that the US must boost energy projects in Europe. Trump said over the weekend that he’s prepared to move ahead with “major” sanctions on Russian oil if European nations do the same. The government in Bratislava is prepared to shut its Russian energy links if it has sufficient infrastructure to transport volumes, Sakova said. “As long as we have an alternative route, and the transmission capacity is sufficient, Slovakia has no problem diversifying,” the minister said. A complete cutoff of Russian supplies would pose a risk, she said, because Slovakia is located at the very end of alternative supply routes coming from the West. Slovakia and Hungary, landlocked nations bordering Ukraine, have historically depended on Russian oil and gas. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, both launched several diversification initiatives. Slovakia imports around third of its oil from non-Russian sources via the Adria pipeline
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