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Trump Says He Welcomes China, India Investment in VEN Oil

President Donald Trump said Saturday he welcomed investment by China and India in Venezuela’s oil industry. “China is welcome to come in and will make a great deal on oil,” Trump told reporters during a flight to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One. He added that the US is working with India on a deal to purchase Venezuelan oil. “India’s coming in and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil, as opposed to buying it from Iran,” he said. “We’ve already made the deal, the concept of that deal.” Earlier this week, Venezuela’s acting president signed off on historic changes to the country’s nationalist oil policy that would reduce taxes and allow greater ownership for foreign oil companies, less than a month after US forces captured longtime leader Nicolas Maduro. Shortly after, US Treasury Department issued a general license expanding the ability for US companies to export, sell and refine crude coming from the sanctioned South American country.  The US is set to import the most Venezuelan oil in a year after the Trump administration moved to control the country’s energy supply and pressed oil companies to invest $100 billion in rebuilding the country’s oil infrastructure. Yet as the US emerges as the biggest recipient of Venezuelan oil following Maduro’s capture, shipments to China — which averaged 400,000 barrels a day last year — fell to zero in January amid a US naval crackdown on the so-called dark fleet of vessels used to transport sanctioned oil to China.  Most of the oil arriving in the US comes from Chevron Corp., which holds a US license to sell sanctioned Venezuelan crude. About 20% is being supplied by commodity traders Trafigura Group and Vitol Group, which were tapped by the Trump administration to help sell up to 50 million barrels of oil after

Read More »

Trump to Launch $12B Critical Mineral Stockpile

President Donald Trump is set to launch a strategic critical-minerals stockpile with $12 billion in seed money, a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the US works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals.  The venture — dubbed Project Vault — is set to marry $1.67 billion in private capital with a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank to procure and store the minerals for automakers, tech firms and other manufacturers.  US rare-earths stocks jumped in premarket trading upon news of the administration’s plan, including USA Rare Earth Inc., Critical Metals Corp., United States Antimony Corp. and NioCorp Developments Ltd. Details of the initiative, which would represent a first-of-its-kind stockpile for the US private sector, were described by senior administration officials, who asked not to be identified discussing a plan that has yet to be announced. The effort is akin to the nation’s existing emergency oil stockpile. But instead of crude, its focus would be minerals — such as gallium and cobalt — used in products such as iPhones, batteries and jet engines. The stockpile is expected to include both rare earths and critical minerals as well as other strategically important elements that are subject to volatile prices. A Gallium Arsenide semiconducting wafer is processed into chips for radio frequency communications devices at RF Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD) headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. RF Micro Devices Inc. manufactures radio-frequency components and semiconductor technologies. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg It represents a major commitment to accumulate minerals deemed critical to the industrial economy — including the automotive, aerospace and energy sectors — and highlights Trump’s effort to wean US supply chains from China, the world’s dominant provider and processor of critical minerals.  The project has participation from more

Read More »

Energy Star gets full 2026 funding from Congress

Congress has fully funded the Energy Star program through fiscal year 2026 as part of a funding bill that President Trump signed into law Jan. 23. The administration tried to zero-out the program in early 2025. “The funding is a huge win,” Sabine Rogers, federal policy manager at the U.S. Green Building Council, said in a blog post. A provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill that funds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several other federal agencies, H.R. 6938, mandates that the administration provide at least $33 million to carry out the program through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — a modest increase over the $32 million provided in FY2024, the most recent year where program funding data is available. The provision includes a directive from Congress that the administration not take actions to reduce the amount. “[This is] the very first time that Congress has stipulated a mandatory annual spending level for Energy Star,” Rogers said, “placing a clear and binding legal requirement on the administration.” More than 1,200 organizations lobbied Congress last year to save Energy Star after the Trump administration in May proposed eliminating EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, which oversees the program. In letters calling for the EPA to continue the program, organizations said its elimination would damage the real estate sector at a time when it is already facing significant uncertainty.  The Energy Star program has saved consumers and organizations some 5.2 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy and more than $500 billion in costs since it was created in 1992, according to the program website. “Energy Star has grown to become the international standard for energy efficiency and one of the most successful voluntary U.S. government programs in history,” the site says.  Energy Star Portfolio Manager, a free tool that allows commercial building operators

Read More »

Eying AI factories, Nvidia buys bigger stake in CoreWeave

Nvidia continues to throw its sizable bank account around, this time making a $2 billion investment in GPU cloud service provider CoreWeave. The company says the investment reflects Nvidia’s “confidence in CoreWeave’s business, team and growth strategy as a cloud platform built on Nvidia infrastructure.” CoreWeave is not the only company that has built its business on Nvidia infrastructure: so has Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and dedicated GPU CSPs like Lambda Labs, Crusoe, and RunPod.

Read More »

AI, security tailwinds signal promising 2026 for Cisco

A big component of AI in communications is agentic agents talking to employees and customers, and bringing trust to the system is where Cisco should shine. It builds and runs its own infrastructure, which is secure by design. Cisco has relationships with governments all over the world, and between Webex and its on-premises solutions, it can meet any kind of digital sovereignty requirements. As the world becomes increasingly AI driven and fractured because of macro issues, Cisco will be able to deliver solutions that work, are secure, and adhere to any kind of compliance requirements. Look for the company to lean into trust to reestablish the Webex business. Continued focus on Purpose: From one billion lives to 40 communities While the technology is complex, Cisco’s guiding North Star remains its commitment to its Purpose corporate social responsibility programs. Having surpassed its goal to positively impact one billion lives, Cisco is doubling down on its 40 Communities initiative. In 2026, expect significant investments in: AI for social good: Using agentic AI to optimize energy consumption in smart buildings and reduce carbon footprints. The digital divide: Continued expansion of the Cisco Networking Academy, which is being redesigned to focus on AI and cybersecurity skills for underserved regions. Resilient infrastructure: Rebuilding connectivity in disaster-prone areas with resilience-first networking that can withstand both physical and cyber shocks. Evidence of this was seen in Davos, where Cisco reinforced its commitment to global reskilling, acting as a core partner in the Reskilling Revolution initiative. This initiative aims to equip 1 billion people with better education, skills, and economic opportunities by 2030, with a focus on addressing the rapid transformation of the labor market due to AI and the energy transition.  Over the years, questions have been raised as to whether there’s a place for Purpose with publicly traded

Read More »

Iran Edges Toward Nuclear Talks With USA in Bid to Avoid War

(Update) February 2, 2026, 3:29 PM GMT: Article updated with with more on the talks in fifth paragraph. Iran said talks with the US over a new nuclear deal could get underway in the coming days, building on a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at averting war between the two sides.  President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the start of negotiations with Washington “within the framework of the nuclear issue,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news service reported Monday, citing a government source. Talks could include senior officials from both countries such as US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Tasnim news service said, citing a source it didn’t identify. “We’re ready for diplomacy, but they must understand that diplomacy is not compatible with threats, intimidation or pressure,” Araghchi said on state TV. “We will remain steadfast on this path and hope to see its results soon.” Multiple countries in the Middle East have been acting as intermediaries between Tehran and Washington, according to Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry. No time or location for an initial meeting have been set, Tasnim said, while details of what would be discussed remain unclear, such as whether the US would push for the Islamic Republic to end uranium enrichment.   Iran’s priority in new talks will be sanctions relief and Tehran is “realistic” in its approach, Baghaei said. The developments underline the international effort to ease Middle East tensions as US President Donald Trump threatens Iran with military action if it doesn’t reach an agreement to curb its nuclear program. American naval assets have been dispatched toward the region and Trump said Sunday they were “a couple of days” away, even while unspecified Gulf allies negotiate to “make a deal.” Oil prices fell sharply on Monday, partly because of the heightened diplomatic

Read More »

Trump Says He Welcomes China, India Investment in VEN Oil

President Donald Trump said Saturday he welcomed investment by China and India in Venezuela’s oil industry. “China is welcome to come in and will make a great deal on oil,” Trump told reporters during a flight to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One. He added that the US is working with India on a deal to purchase Venezuelan oil. “India’s coming in and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil, as opposed to buying it from Iran,” he said. “We’ve already made the deal, the concept of that deal.” Earlier this week, Venezuela’s acting president signed off on historic changes to the country’s nationalist oil policy that would reduce taxes and allow greater ownership for foreign oil companies, less than a month after US forces captured longtime leader Nicolas Maduro. Shortly after, US Treasury Department issued a general license expanding the ability for US companies to export, sell and refine crude coming from the sanctioned South American country.  The US is set to import the most Venezuelan oil in a year after the Trump administration moved to control the country’s energy supply and pressed oil companies to invest $100 billion in rebuilding the country’s oil infrastructure. Yet as the US emerges as the biggest recipient of Venezuelan oil following Maduro’s capture, shipments to China — which averaged 400,000 barrels a day last year — fell to zero in January amid a US naval crackdown on the so-called dark fleet of vessels used to transport sanctioned oil to China.  Most of the oil arriving in the US comes from Chevron Corp., which holds a US license to sell sanctioned Venezuelan crude. About 20% is being supplied by commodity traders Trafigura Group and Vitol Group, which were tapped by the Trump administration to help sell up to 50 million barrels of oil after

Read More »

Trump to Launch $12B Critical Mineral Stockpile

President Donald Trump is set to launch a strategic critical-minerals stockpile with $12 billion in seed money, a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the US works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals.  The venture — dubbed Project Vault — is set to marry $1.67 billion in private capital with a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank to procure and store the minerals for automakers, tech firms and other manufacturers.  US rare-earths stocks jumped in premarket trading upon news of the administration’s plan, including USA Rare Earth Inc., Critical Metals Corp., United States Antimony Corp. and NioCorp Developments Ltd. Details of the initiative, which would represent a first-of-its-kind stockpile for the US private sector, were described by senior administration officials, who asked not to be identified discussing a plan that has yet to be announced. The effort is akin to the nation’s existing emergency oil stockpile. But instead of crude, its focus would be minerals — such as gallium and cobalt — used in products such as iPhones, batteries and jet engines. The stockpile is expected to include both rare earths and critical minerals as well as other strategically important elements that are subject to volatile prices. A Gallium Arsenide semiconducting wafer is processed into chips for radio frequency communications devices at RF Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD) headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. RF Micro Devices Inc. manufactures radio-frequency components and semiconductor technologies. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg It represents a major commitment to accumulate minerals deemed critical to the industrial economy — including the automotive, aerospace and energy sectors — and highlights Trump’s effort to wean US supply chains from China, the world’s dominant provider and processor of critical minerals.  The project has participation from more

Read More »

Energy Star gets full 2026 funding from Congress

Congress has fully funded the Energy Star program through fiscal year 2026 as part of a funding bill that President Trump signed into law Jan. 23. The administration tried to zero-out the program in early 2025. “The funding is a huge win,” Sabine Rogers, federal policy manager at the U.S. Green Building Council, said in a blog post. A provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill that funds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several other federal agencies, H.R. 6938, mandates that the administration provide at least $33 million to carry out the program through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — a modest increase over the $32 million provided in FY2024, the most recent year where program funding data is available. The provision includes a directive from Congress that the administration not take actions to reduce the amount. “[This is] the very first time that Congress has stipulated a mandatory annual spending level for Energy Star,” Rogers said, “placing a clear and binding legal requirement on the administration.” More than 1,200 organizations lobbied Congress last year to save Energy Star after the Trump administration in May proposed eliminating EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, which oversees the program. In letters calling for the EPA to continue the program, organizations said its elimination would damage the real estate sector at a time when it is already facing significant uncertainty.  The Energy Star program has saved consumers and organizations some 5.2 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy and more than $500 billion in costs since it was created in 1992, according to the program website. “Energy Star has grown to become the international standard for energy efficiency and one of the most successful voluntary U.S. government programs in history,” the site says.  Energy Star Portfolio Manager, a free tool that allows commercial building operators

Read More »

Eying AI factories, Nvidia buys bigger stake in CoreWeave

Nvidia continues to throw its sizable bank account around, this time making a $2 billion investment in GPU cloud service provider CoreWeave. The company says the investment reflects Nvidia’s “confidence in CoreWeave’s business, team and growth strategy as a cloud platform built on Nvidia infrastructure.” CoreWeave is not the only company that has built its business on Nvidia infrastructure: so has Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and dedicated GPU CSPs like Lambda Labs, Crusoe, and RunPod.

Read More »

AI, security tailwinds signal promising 2026 for Cisco

A big component of AI in communications is agentic agents talking to employees and customers, and bringing trust to the system is where Cisco should shine. It builds and runs its own infrastructure, which is secure by design. Cisco has relationships with governments all over the world, and between Webex and its on-premises solutions, it can meet any kind of digital sovereignty requirements. As the world becomes increasingly AI driven and fractured because of macro issues, Cisco will be able to deliver solutions that work, are secure, and adhere to any kind of compliance requirements. Look for the company to lean into trust to reestablish the Webex business. Continued focus on Purpose: From one billion lives to 40 communities While the technology is complex, Cisco’s guiding North Star remains its commitment to its Purpose corporate social responsibility programs. Having surpassed its goal to positively impact one billion lives, Cisco is doubling down on its 40 Communities initiative. In 2026, expect significant investments in: AI for social good: Using agentic AI to optimize energy consumption in smart buildings and reduce carbon footprints. The digital divide: Continued expansion of the Cisco Networking Academy, which is being redesigned to focus on AI and cybersecurity skills for underserved regions. Resilient infrastructure: Rebuilding connectivity in disaster-prone areas with resilience-first networking that can withstand both physical and cyber shocks. Evidence of this was seen in Davos, where Cisco reinforced its commitment to global reskilling, acting as a core partner in the Reskilling Revolution initiative. This initiative aims to equip 1 billion people with better education, skills, and economic opportunities by 2030, with a focus on addressing the rapid transformation of the labor market due to AI and the energy transition.  Over the years, questions have been raised as to whether there’s a place for Purpose with publicly traded

Read More »

Iran Edges Toward Nuclear Talks With USA in Bid to Avoid War

(Update) February 2, 2026, 3:29 PM GMT: Article updated with with more on the talks in fifth paragraph. Iran said talks with the US over a new nuclear deal could get underway in the coming days, building on a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at averting war between the two sides.  President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the start of negotiations with Washington “within the framework of the nuclear issue,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news service reported Monday, citing a government source. Talks could include senior officials from both countries such as US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Tasnim news service said, citing a source it didn’t identify. “We’re ready for diplomacy, but they must understand that diplomacy is not compatible with threats, intimidation or pressure,” Araghchi said on state TV. “We will remain steadfast on this path and hope to see its results soon.” Multiple countries in the Middle East have been acting as intermediaries between Tehran and Washington, according to Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry. No time or location for an initial meeting have been set, Tasnim said, while details of what would be discussed remain unclear, such as whether the US would push for the Islamic Republic to end uranium enrichment.   Iran’s priority in new talks will be sanctions relief and Tehran is “realistic” in its approach, Baghaei said. The developments underline the international effort to ease Middle East tensions as US President Donald Trump threatens Iran with military action if it doesn’t reach an agreement to curb its nuclear program. American naval assets have been dispatched toward the region and Trump said Sunday they were “a couple of days” away, even while unspecified Gulf allies negotiate to “make a deal.” Oil prices fell sharply on Monday, partly because of the heightened diplomatic

Read More »

Texas Upstream Oil, Gas Employment Was Steady in 2025

In a statement sent to Rigzone recently, the Texas Oil & Gas Association (TXOGA) said Texas upstream oil and gas employment was “steady in 2025, despite market headwinds”. TXOGA noted in the statement that, according to data released by the Texas Workforce Commission, Texas upstream oil and gas employment “remained essentially flat in 2025, even as producers continued to deliver strong output amid challenging market conditions”. “Through November 2025, upstream employment totaled 201,200 jobs. While employment declined by 3,500 jobs in November compared with October, year to date employment was little changed, with a net gain of 300 direct upstream jobs,” it added. “Employment was also modestly higher than a year earlier, rising by 100 jobs, or 0.1 percent,” it continued. TXOGA noted in the statement that, “since the Covid-era low point in September 2020”, Texas upstream oil and natural gas employment has “increased by more than 44,000 jobs, a 28 percent gain”. The industry body outlined in the statement that this increase “underscor[es]… the industry’s continued role as a high-wage employer in the Texas economy”. TXOGA President Todd Staples said in the statement that “reaching new production highs in multiple categories with employment essentially remaining steady is absolutely remarkable”. “Navigating these volatile circumstances is a vivid reminder: growth is not guaranteed,” he added. “This resilience demonstrated by increased energy output in 2025 depends on policies that support infrastructure development and market flexibility so the oil and natural gas industry can adapt to uncertainty and continue delivering the affordable, reliable energy that powers our modern way of life,” he continued. TXOGA highlighted in its statement that upstream employment includes oil and natural gas extraction and related support activities, and excludes downstream sectors such as refining, petrochemicals, pipelines, and fuels distribution. “The combined industry sectors moved up slightly on average from

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OPEC+ 8 Reaffirm Decision to Pause Output Hikes

A statement posted on OPEC’s website on February 1 revealed that, in a meeting held on Sunday, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman “reaffirmed their decision on 2 November 2025 to pause production increments in March 2026 due to seasonality”.  According to a table accompanying the statement, “required production” in March this year is 10.103 million barrels per day for Saudi Arabia, 9.574 million barrels per day for Russia, 4.273 million barrels per day for Iraq, 3.411 million barrels per day for the UAE, 2.580 million barrels per day for Kuwait, 1.569 million barrels per day for Kazakhstan, 971,000 barrels per day for Algeria, and 811,000 barrels per day for Oman. The statement highlighted that the eight OPEC+ countries, “which previously announced additional voluntary adjustments in April and November 2023”, met virtually on February 1 “to review global market conditions and outlook”. It said the eight participating countries “reiterated that the 1.65 million barrels per day may be returned in part or in full subject to evolving market conditions and in a gradual manner”. “The countries will continue to closely monitor and assess market conditions, and in their continuous efforts to support market stability, they reaffirmed the importance of adopting a cautious approach and retaining full flexibility to continue pausing or reverse the additional voluntary production adjustments, including the previously implemented voluntary adjustments of the 2.2 million barrels per day announced in November 2023,” the statement said. “The eight countries reiterated their collective commitment to achieve full conformity with the Declaration of Cooperation, including the additional voluntary production adjustments that will be monitored by the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee,” it added. “They also confirmed their intention to fully compensate for any overproduced volume since January 2024,” it continued. The statement went on to note that the

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Analysts Explain Energy ‘Bloodbath’

In a statement sent to Rigzone on Monday, Naeem Aslam, CIO of Zaye Capital Markets, said energy’s “bloodbath” today is a “classic risk-premium unwind”. “Trump’s ‘serious talks’ with Iran vaporized the geopolitical froth, driving oil around five percent lower, while a sudden flip to milder U.S. weather forecasts gut-punched natgas 16 percent as heating demand dreams evaporate,” Aslam said. “Short-term relief rally gone wrong – welcome back to oversupply reality,” he added. Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at B. Riley Wealth, highlighted to Rigzone that oil prices are heading for the steepest single-session decline in more than six months “after U.S. President Donald Trump ⁠said Iran was ‘seriously talking’ with Washington, signaling de-escalation with an OPEC member”. “The crude oil market is interpreting this as an encouraging step back from confrontation, easing ‍the geopolitical risk premium built into the price during last week’s rally ‌and prompting a bout of profit-taking,” he added. Hogan told Rigzone that this is flowing through to the whole energy complex. “The pullback has also been reinforced by renewed strength in the U.S. dollar, which typically makes dollar-denominated oil more expensive for non-U.S. buyers, further weighing on prices,” he said. Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at the PRICE Futures Group, told Rigzone that natural gas prices are getting hit “as the temperatures are going to warm up and there’s some questions about the return of the polar vortex in February”. Looking at the oil price, Flynn said the “market is coming down on the fact that there was no attack on Iran over the weekend, despite market chatter on Friday”. “Because we got through the weekend with no attack we’re taking a lot of risk premium out of the price,” he said. “On top of that we have risk-off and a lot of commodities … are lightening

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Iran Hopes Diplomacy Push Will Avert War With USA

(Update) February 2, 2026, 11:49 AM GMT: Article updated with reports on potential talks from the first paragraph. Iran said talks with the US over a new nuclear deal could get underway in coming days, building on a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at averting war between the two sides.  President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the start of negotiations with Washington “within the framework of the nuclear issue,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news service reported Monday, citing a government source. Talks could include senior officials from both countries such as US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Tasnim news service said, citing a source it didn’t identify. “We’re ready for diplomacy, but they must understand that diplomacy is not compatible with threats, intimidation or pressure,” Araghchi said on state TV. “We will remain steadfast on this path and hope to see its results soon.” Multiple countries in the Middle East have been acting as intermediaries between Tehran and Washington, said Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for the Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry. The developments underline the international effort to ease Middle East tensions as US President Donald Trump threatens the Islamic Republic with military action if it doesn’t reach an agreement to curb its nuclear program. American naval assets have been dispatched toward Iran and Trump said Sunday they were “a couple of days” away, even while unspecified Gulf allies negotiate to “make a deal.” Oil prices fell sharply in early trading on Monday, partly because of the heightened diplomatic maneuvers, with Brent dropping around 5% to below $66 a barrel. Prices are still up roughly 8.5% this year because of the still-high chances of a conflict in the oil-rich region. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned Sunday of a “regional war” if his country is attacked. Tehran has previously threatened to

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Saudi Supply Hikes Help Drive Best GDP Growth Since 2022

Saudi Arabia’s economy expanded at the fastest pace in three years in 2025, with the oil sector emerging as a stronger engine of growth under new OPEC+ supply policy. Gross domestic product rose 4.5% in the 12 months through December, according to preliminary data published by the statistics office on Sunday. The expansion was the strongest since 2022, as was the 5.6% growth rate seen for the oil economy. Non-oil activities slowed for a third straight year, though the sector was still the biggest contributor to overall economic expansion in 2025. Real GDP for the whole economy grew 4.9% year on year in the final quarter of the year. State oil giant Saudi Aramco has been pumping more crude since around mid-2025 as part of supply increases agreed to by OPEC+, led by the kingdom and Russia. The Gulf nation churned out about 10 million barrels a day in the final three months of last year, the most since early 2023, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While Saudi officials say oil activities are less important than in the past given their focus on growing other areas, the oil sector still makes up about half of the economy.  Sunday’s GDP data underscores that Saudi Arabia’s economic activity remains a bright spot for a government that’s currently adjusting its strategy to spend more efficiently and contend with fresh volatility for both oil prices and geopolitics. Benchmark Brent crude topped $70 a barrel last week for the first time in months as geopolitical tensions between Iran, Israel and the US flared. While any sustained increase in prices would boost Saudi oil revenues, a renewed conflict risks slowing growth in the country’s broader economy. Saudi Arabia’s main stock exchange dropped the most since April on Sunday, in a sign of the investor angst. For now, economic momentum

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Unleashing a solar plus storage tidal wave

Grid infrastructure has been in the spotlight for years, even before the AI-driven data center boom we’ve had headlines of long interconnection queues for both demand and generation. Now it is a mainstream (and bipartisan) issue as politicians grapple with the need to serve a growing electricity demand without landing consumers with even higher bills. International competitiveness depends on the power sector being able to create capacity, fast. A new paradigm for grid operators emerges given the flat electricity demand the United States has experienced in recent decades. Expanding grid capacity, across both generation and network infrastructure, is required throughout the system. However, the greatest opportunity lies at the lowest rung: the low-voltage distribution network. According to research by Capgemini, global average utilization of transmission networks sits around 40 to 50%, while distribution networks operate at under 10%. This is because the lower down the network, the less actively it has been managed. A mass deployment of resources at the grid edge has outsized potential to unlock latent capacity and cascade benefits right through the network. A more traditional approach of just building more physical network capacity (e.g. transformers and cables) at the distribution level would continue the trend of rising bills and take far longer to mobilize. In a capacity constrained paradigm, we should look to maximize the potential of every interconnection point. If lithium ion continues its track record of cost declines, the business case pencils just about anywhere the install can be done efficiently. In this paradigm, any time PV deployed without battery is a great missed opportunity. One of the biggest barriers to this model is red tape. At the residential level, permitting and export approval for solar and battery installations can take many months. As a result, permissionless hardware is gaining traction, for example, over

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West of Orkney developers helped support 24 charities last year

The developers of the 2GW West of Orkney wind farm paid out a total of £18,000 to 24 organisations from its small donations fund in 2024. The money went to projects across Caithness, Sutherland and Orkney, including a mental health initiative in Thurso and a scheme by Dunnet Community Forest to improve the quality of meadows through the use of traditional scythes. Established in 2022, the fund offers up to £1,000 per project towards programmes in the far north. In addition to the small donations fund, the West of Orkney developers intend to follow other wind farms by establishing a community benefit fund once the project is operational. West of Orkney wind farm project director Stuart McAuley said: “Our donations programme is just one small way in which we can support some of the many valuable initiatives in Caithness, Sutherland and Orkney. “In every case we have been immensely impressed by the passion and professionalism each organisation brings, whether their focus is on sport, the arts, social care, education or the environment, and we hope the funds we provide help them achieve their goals.” In addition to the local donations scheme, the wind farm developers have helped fund a £1 million research and development programme led by EMEC in Orkney and a £1.2m education initiative led by UHI. It also provided £50,000 to support the FutureSkills apprenticeship programme in Caithness, with funds going to employment and training costs to help tackle skill shortages in the North of Scotland. The West of Orkney wind farm is being developed by Corio Generation, TotalEnergies and Renewable Infrastructure Development Group (RIDG). The project is among the leaders of the ScotWind cohort, having been the first to submit its offshore consent documents in late 2023. In addition, the project’s onshore plans were approved by the

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Biden bans US offshore oil and gas drilling ahead of Trump’s return

US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across vast swathes of the country’s coastal waters. The decision comes just weeks before his successor Donald Trump, who has vowed to increase US fossil fuel production, takes office. The drilling ban will affect 625 million acres of federal waters across America’s eastern and western coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea. The decision does not affect the western Gulf of Mexico, where much of American offshore oil and gas production occurs and is set to continue. In a statement, President Biden said he is taking action to protect the regions “from oil and natural gas drilling and the harm it can cause”. “My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said. “It is not worth the risks. “As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.” Offshore drilling ban The White House said Biden used his authority under the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling. However, the law does not give a president the right to unilaterally reverse a drilling ban without congressional approval. This means that Trump, who pledged to “unleash” US fossil fuel production during his re-election campaign, could find it difficult to overturn the ban after taking office. Sunset shot of the Shell Olympus platform in the foreground and the Shell Mars platform in the background in the Gulf of Mexico Trump

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The Download: our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 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. Introducing: MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025 Each year, we spend months researching and discussing which technologies will make the cut for our 10 Breakthrough Technologies list. We try to highlight a mix of items that reflect innovations happening in various fields. We look at consumer technologies, large industrial­-scale projects, biomedical advances, changes in computing, climate solutions, the latest in AI, and more.We’ve been publishing this list every year since 2001 and, frankly, have a great track record of flagging things that are poised to hit a tipping point. It’s hard to think of another industry that has as much of a hype machine behind it as tech does, so the real secret of the TR10 is really what we choose to leave off the list.Check out the full list of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, which is front and center in our latest print issue. It’s all about the exciting innovations happening in the world right now, and includes some fascinating stories, such as: + How digital twins of human organs are set to transform medical treatment and shake up how we trial new drugs.+ What will it take for us to fully trust robots? The answer is a complicated one.+ Wind is an underutilized resource that has the potential to steer the notoriously dirty shipping industry toward a greener future. Read the full story.+ After decades of frustration, machine-learning tools are helping ecologists to unlock a treasure trove of acoustic bird data—and to shed much-needed light on their migration habits. Read the full story. 
+ How poop could help feed the planet—yes, really. Read the full story.
Roundtables: Unveiling the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025 Last week, Amy Nordrum, our executive editor, joined our news editor Charlotte Jee to unveil our 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025 in an exclusive Roundtable discussion. Subscribers can watch their conversation back here. And, if you’re interested in previous discussions about topics ranging from mixed reality tech to gene editing to AI’s climate impact, check out some of the highlights from the past year’s events. This international surveillance project aims to protect wheat from deadly diseases For as long as there’s been domesticated wheat (about 8,000 years), there has been harvest-devastating rust. Breeding efforts in the mid-20th century led to rust-resistant wheat strains that boosted crop yields, and rust epidemics receded in much of the world.But now, after decades, rusts are considered a reemerging disease in Europe, at least partly due to climate change.  An international initiative hopes to turn the tide by scaling up a system to track wheat diseases and forecast potential outbreaks to governments and farmers in close to real time. And by doing so, they hope to protect a crop that supplies about one-fifth of the world’s calories. Read the full story. —Shaoni Bhattacharya

The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Meta has taken down its creepy AI profiles Following a big backlash from unhappy users. (NBC News)+ Many of the profiles were likely to have been live from as far back as 2023. (404 Media)+ It also appears they were never very popular in the first place. (The Verge) 2 Uber and Lyft are racing to catch up with their robotaxi rivalsAfter abandoning their own self-driving projects years ago. (WSJ $)+ China’s Pony.ai is gearing up to expand to Hong Kong.  (Reuters)3 Elon Musk is going after NASA He’s largely veered away from criticising the space agency publicly—until now. (Wired $)+ SpaceX’s Starship rocket has a legion of scientist fans. (The Guardian)+ What’s next for NASA’s giant moon rocket? (MIT Technology Review) 4 How Sam Altman actually runs OpenAIFeaturing three-hour meetings and a whole lot of Slack messages. (Bloomberg $)+ ChatGPT Pro is a pricey loss-maker, apparently. (MIT Technology Review) 5 The dangerous allure of TikTokMigrants’ online portrayal of their experiences in America aren’t always reflective of their realities. (New Yorker $) 6 Demand for electricity is skyrocketingAnd AI is only a part of it. (Economist $)+ AI’s search for more energy is growing more urgent. (MIT Technology Review) 7 The messy ethics of writing religious sermons using AISkeptics aren’t convinced the technology should be used to channel spirituality. (NYT $)
8 How a wildlife app became an invaluable wildfire trackerWatch Duty has become a safeguarding sensation across the US west. (The Guardian)+ How AI can help spot wildfires. (MIT Technology Review) 9 Computer scientists just love oracles 🔮 Hypothetical devices are a surprisingly important part of computing. (Quanta Magazine)
10 Pet tech is booming 🐾But not all gadgets are made equal. (FT $)+ These scientists are working to extend the lifespan of pet dogs—and their owners. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day “The next kind of wave of this is like, well, what is AI doing for me right now other than telling me that I have AI?” —Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, tells Wired a lot of companies’ AI claims are overblown.
The big story Broadband funding for Native communities could finally connect some of America’s most isolated places September 2022 Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by.
The covid-19 pandemic underscored the problem as Native communities locked down and moved school and other essential daily activities online. But it also kicked off an unprecedented surge of relief funding to solve it. Read the full story. —Robert Chaney 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.) + Rollerskating Spice Girls is exactly what your Monday morning needs.+ It’s not just you, some people really do look like their dogs!+ I’m not sure if this is actually the world’s healthiest meal, but it sure looks tasty.+ Ah, the old “bitten by a rabid fox chestnut.”

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Equinor Secures $3 Billion Financing for US Offshore Wind Project

Equinor ASA has announced a final investment decision on Empire Wind 1 and financial close for $3 billion in debt financing for the under-construction project offshore Long Island, expected to power 500,000 New York homes. The Norwegian majority state-owned energy major said in a statement it intends to farm down ownership “to further enhance value and reduce exposure”. Equinor has taken full ownership of Empire Wind 1 and 2 since last year, in a swap transaction with 50 percent co-venturer BP PLC that allowed the former to exit the Beacon Wind lease, also a 50-50 venture between the two. Equinor has yet to complete a portion of the transaction under which it would also acquire BP’s 50 percent share in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal lease, according to the latest transaction update on Equinor’s website. The lease involves a terminal conversion project that was intended to serve as an interconnection station for Beacon Wind and Empire Wind, as agreed on by the two companies and the state of New York in 2022.  “The expected total capital investments, including fees for the use of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, are approximately $5 billion including the effect of expected future tax credits (ITCs)”, said the statement on Equinor’s website announcing financial close. Equinor did not disclose its backers, only saying, “The final group of lenders includes some of the most experienced lenders in the sector along with many of Equinor’s relationship banks”. “Empire Wind 1 will be the first offshore wind project to connect into the New York City grid”, the statement added. “The redevelopment of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and construction of Empire Wind 1 will create more than 1,000 union jobs in the construction phase”, Equinor said. On February 22, 2024, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced

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USA Crude Oil Stocks Drop Week on Week

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), decreased by 1.2 million barrels from the week ending December 20 to the week ending December 27, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report, which was released on January 2. Crude oil stocks, excluding the SPR, stood at 415.6 million barrels on December 27, 416.8 million barrels on December 20, and 431.1 million barrels on December 29, 2023, the report revealed. Crude oil in the SPR came in at 393.6 million barrels on December 27, 393.3 million barrels on December 20, and 354.4 million barrels on December 29, 2023, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.623 billion barrels on December 27, the report revealed. This figure was up 9.6 million barrels week on week and up 17.8 million barrels year on year, the report outlined. “At 415.6 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about five percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA said in its latest report. “Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 7.7 million barrels from last week and are slightly below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories decreased last week while blending components inventories increased last week,” it added. “Distillate fuel inventories increased by 6.4 million barrels last week and are about six percent below the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 0.6 million barrels from last week and are 10 percent above the five year average for this time of year,” it went on to state. In the report, the EIA noted

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More telecom firms were breached by Chinese hackers than previously reported

Broader implications for US infrastructure The Salt Typhoon revelations follow a broader pattern of state-sponsored cyber operations targeting the US technology ecosystem. The telecom sector, serving as a backbone for industries including finance, energy, and transportation, remains particularly vulnerable to such attacks. While Chinese officials have dismissed the accusations as disinformation, the recurring breaches underscore the pressing need for international collaboration and policy enforcement to deter future attacks. The Salt Typhoon campaign has uncovered alarming gaps in the cybersecurity of US telecommunications firms, with breaches now extending to over a dozen networks. Federal agencies and private firms must act swiftly to mitigate risks as adversaries continue to evolve their attack strategies. Strengthening oversight, fostering industry-wide collaboration, and investing in advanced defense mechanisms are essential steps toward safeguarding national security and public trust.

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Behind “ANCESTRA”: combining Veo with live-action filmmaking

Today, Eliza McNitt’s short film, “ANCESTRA,” premieres at the Tribeca Festival. It’s the story of a mother, and what happens when her child is born with a hole in its heart. Inspired by the dramatic events of McNitt’s own birth, the film portrays a mother’s love as a cosmic, life-saving force.This is the first of three short films produced in partnership between our team at Google DeepMind and Primordial Soup, a new venture dedicated to storytelling innovation founded by director Darren Aronofsky. Together, we founded this partnership to put the world’s best generative AI into the hands of top filmmakers, to advance the frontiers of storytelling and technology.“ANCESTRA” combined live-action scenes with sequences generated by Veo, our state-of-the-art video generation model. McNitt described her experience working with our technology: “Veo is another lens through which I get to imagine the universe around me.”To create “ANCESTRA”, Google DeepMind assembled a multidisciplinary creative team of animators, art directors, designers, writers, technologists and researchers who worked closely with more than 200 experts in traditional filmmaking and production, a live-action crew and cast, plus an editorial team, visual effects (VFX) artists, sound designers and music composers.

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AlphaEarth Foundations helps map our planet in unprecedented detail

New AI model integrates petabytes of Earth observation data to generate a unified data representation that revolutionizes global mapping and monitoringEvery day, satellites capture information-rich images and measurements, providing scientists and experts with a nearly real-time view of our planet. While this data has been incredibly impactful, its complexity, multimodality and refresh rate creates a new challenge: connecting disparate datasets and making use of them all effectively.Today, we’re introducing AlphaEarth Foundations, an artificial intelligence (AI) model that functions like a virtual satellite. It accurately and efficiently characterizes the planet’s entire terrestrial land and coastal waters by integrating huge amounts of Earth observation data into a unified digital representation, or “embedding,” that computer systems can easily process. This allows the model to provide scientists with a more complete and consistent picture of our planet’s evolution, helping them make more informed decisions on critical issues like food security, deforestation, urban expansion, and water resources.To accelerate research and unlock use cases, we are now releasing a collection of AlphaEarth Foundations’ annual embeddings as the Satellite Embedding dataset in Google Earth Engine. Over the past year, we’ve been working with more than 50 organizations to test this dataset on their real-world applications.Our partners are already seeing significant benefits, using the data to better classify unmapped ecosystems, understand agricultural and environmental changes, and greatly increase the accuracy and speed of their mapping work. In this blog, we are excited to highlight some of their feedback and showcase the tangible impact of this new technology.

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Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is now ready for scaled production use

Today, we’re releasing the stable version of Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, our fastest and lowest cost ($0.10 input per 1M, $0.40 output per 1M) model in the Gemini 2.5 model family. We built 2.5 Flash-Lite to push the frontier of intelligence per dollar, with native reasoning capabilities that can be optionally toggled on for more demanding use cases. Building on the momentum of 2.5 Pro and 2.5 Flash, this model rounds out our set of 2.5 models that are ready for scaled production use.Our most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite strikes a balance between performance and cost, without compromising on quality, particularly for latency-sensitive tasks like translation and classification.Here’s what makes it stand out:Best in-class speed: Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has lower latency than both 2.0 Flash-Lite and 2.0 Flash on a broad sample of prompts.Cost-efficiency: It’s our lowest-cost 2.5 model yet, priced at $0.10 / 1M input tokens and $0.40 output tokens, allowing you to handle large volumes of requests affordably. We have also reduced audio input pricing by 40% from the preview launch.Smart and small: It demonstrates all-around higher quality than 2.0 Flash-Lite across a wide range of benchmarks, including coding, math, science, reasoning, and multimodal understanding.Fully featured: When you build with 2.5 Flash-Lite, you get access to a 1 million-token context window, controllable thinking budgets, and support for native tools like Grounding with Google Search, Code Execution, and URL Context.Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite in actionSince the launch of 2.5 Flash-Lite, we have already seen some incredibly successful deployments, here are some of our favorites:Satlyt is building a decentralized space computing platform that will transform how satellite data is processed and utilized for real-time summarization of in-orbit telemetry, autonomous task management, and satellite-to-satellite communication parsing. 2.5 Flash-Lite’s speed has enabled a 45% reduction in latency for critical onboard diagnostics and a 30% decrease in power consumption compared to their baseline models.HeyGen uses AI to create avatars for video content and leverages Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite to automate video planning, analyze and optimize content, and translate videos into over 180 languages. This allows them to provide global, personalized experiences for their users.DocsHound turns product demos into documentation by using Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite to process long videos and extract thousands of screenshots with low latency. This transforms footage into comprehensive documentation and training data for AI agents much faster than traditional methods.Evertune helps brands understand how they are represented across AI models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is a game-changer for them, dramatically speeding up analysis and report generation. Its fast performance allows them to quickly scan and synthesize large volumes of model output to provide clients with dynamic, timely insights.You can start using 2.5 Flash-Lite by specifying “gemini-2.5-flash-lite” in your code. If you are using the preview version, you can switch to “gemini-2.5-flash-lite” which is the same underlying model. We plan to remove the preview alias of Flash-Lite on August 25th.Ready to start building? Try the stable version of Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite now in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.

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Introducing Gemma 3n: The developer guide

The first Gemma model launched early last year and has since grown into a thriving Gemmaverse of over 160 million collective downloads. This ecosystem includes our family of over a dozen specialized models for everything from safeguarding to medical applications and, most inspiringly, the countless innovations from the community. From innovators like Roboflow building enterprise computer vision to the Institute of Science Tokyo creating highly-capable Japanese Gemma variants, your work has shown us the path forward.Building on this incredible momentum, we’re excited to announce the full release of Gemma 3n. While last month’s preview offered a glimpse, today unlocks the full power of this mobile-first architecture. Gemma 3n is designed for the developer community that helped shape Gemma. It’s supported by your favorite tools including Hugging Face Transformers, llama.cpp, Google AI Edge, Ollama, MLX, and many others, enabling you to fine-tune and deploy for your specific on-device applications with ease. This post is the developer deep dive: we’ll explore some of the innovations behind Gemma 3n, share new benchmark results, and show you how to start building today.What’s new in Gemma 3n?Gemma 3n represents a major advancement for on-device AI, bringing powerful multimodal capabilities to edge devices with performance previously only seen in last year’s cloud-based frontier models.

Achieving this leap in on-device performance required rethinking the model from the ground up. The foundation is Gemma 3n’s unique mobile-first architecture, and it all starts with MatFormer.MatFormer: One model, many sizesAt the core of Gemma 3n is the MatFormer (🪆Matryoshka Transformer) architecture, a novel nested transformer built for elastic inference. Think of it like Matryoshka dolls: a larger model contains smaller, fully functional versions of itself. This approach extends the concept of Matryoshka Representation Learning from just embeddings to all transformer components.

During the MatFormer training of the 4B effective parameter (E4B) model, a 2B effective parameter (E2B) sub-model is simultaneously optimized within it, as shown in the figure above. This provides developers two powerful capabilities and use cases today:1: Pre-extracted models: You can directly download and use either the main E4B model for the highest capabilities, or the standalone E2B sub-model which we have already extracted for you, offering up to 2x faster inference.2: Custom sizes with Mix-n-Match: For more granular control tailored to specific hardware constraints, you can create a spectrum of custom-sized models between E2B and E4B using a method we call Mix-n-Match. This technique allows you to precisely slice the E4B model’s parameters, primarily by adjusting the feed forward network hidden dimension per layer (from 8192 to 16384) and selectively skipping some layers. We are releasing the MatFormer Lab, a tool that shows how to retrieve these optimal models, which were identified by evaluating various settings on benchmarks like MMLU.

MMLU scores for the pre-trained Gemma 3n checkpoints at different model sizes (using Mix-n-Match)

Looking ahead, the MatFormer architecture also paves the way for elastic execution. While not part of today’s launched implementations, this capability allows a single deployed E4B model to dynamically switch between E4B and E2B inference paths on the fly, enabling real-time optimization of performance and memory usage based on the current task and device load.Per-Layer Embeddings (PLE): Unlocking more memory efficiencyGemma 3n models incorporate Per-Layer Embeddings (PLE). This innovation is tailored for on-device deployment as it dramatically improves model quality without increasing the high-speed memory footprint required on your device’s accelerator (GPU/TPU).While the Gemma 3n E2B and E4B models have a total parameter count of 5B and 8B respectively, PLE allows a significant portion of these parameters (the embeddings associated with each layer) to be loaded and computed efficiently on the CPU. This means only the core transformer weights (approximately 2B for E2B and 4B for E4B) need to sit in the typically more constrained accelerator memory (VRAM).

With Per-Layer Embeddings, you can use Gemma 3n E2B while only having ~2B parameters loaded in your accelerator.

KV Cache sharing: Faster long-context processingProcessing long inputs, such as the sequences derived from audio and video streams, is essential for many advanced on-device multimodal applications. Gemma 3n introduces KV Cache Sharing, a feature designed to significantly accelerate time-to-first-token for streaming response applications.KV Cache Sharing optimizes how the model handles the initial input processing stage (often called the “prefill” phase). The keys and values of the middle layer from local and global attention are directly shared with all the top layers, delivering a notable 2x improvement on prefill performance compared to Gemma 3 4B. This means the model can ingest and understand lengthy prompt sequences much faster than before.Audio understanding: Introducing speech to text and translationGemma 3n uses an advanced audio encoder based on the Universal Speech Model (USM). The encoder generates a token for every 160ms of audio (about 6 tokens per second), which are then integrated as input to the language model, providing a granular representation of the sound context.This integrated audio capability unlocks key features for on-device development, including:Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR): Enable high-quality speech-to-text transcription directly on the device.Automatic Speech Translation (AST): Translate spoken language into text in another language.We’ve observed particularly strong AST results for translation between English and Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, offering great potential for developers targeting applications in these languages. For tasks like speech translation, leveraging Chain-of-Thought prompting can significantly enhance results. Here’s an example:

user
Transcribe the following speech segment in Spanish, then translate it into English:

model

Plain text

At launch time, the Gemma 3n encoder is implemented to process audio clips up to 30 seconds. However, this is not a fundamental limitation. The underlying audio encoder is a streaming encoder, capable of processing arbitrarily long audios with additional long form audio training. Follow-up implementations will unlock low-latency, long streaming applications.MobileNet-V5: New state-of-the-art vision encoderAlongside its integrated audio capabilities, Gemma 3n features a new, highly efficient vision encoder, MobileNet-V5-300M, delivering state-of-the-art performance for multimodal tasks on edge devices.Designed for flexibility and power on constrained hardware, MobileNet-V5 gives developers:Multiple input resolutions: Natively supports resolutions of 256×256, 512×512, and 768×768 pixels, allowing you to balance performance and detail for your specific applications.Broad visual understanding: Co-trained on extensive multimodal datasets, it excels at a wide range of image and video comprehension tasks.High throughput: Processes up to 60 frames per second on a Google Pixel, enabling real-time, on-device video analysis and interactive experiences.This level of performance is achieved with multiple architectural innovations, including:An advanced foundation of MobileNet-V4 blocks (including Universal Inverted Bottlenecks and Mobile MQA).A significantly scaled up architecture, featuring a hybrid, deep pyramid model that is 10x larger than the biggest MobileNet-V4 variant.A novel Multi-Scale Fusion VLM adapter that enhances the quality of tokens for better accuracy and efficiency.Benefiting from novel architectural designs and advanced distillation techniques, MobileNet-V5-300M substantially outperforms the baseline SoViT in Gemma 3 (trained with SigLip, no distillation). On a Google Pixel Edge TPU, it delivers a 13x speedup with quantization (6.5x without), requires 46% fewer parameters, and has a 4x smaller memory footprint, all while providing significantly higher accuracy on vision-language tasksWe’re excited to share more about the work behind this model. Look out for our upcoming MobileNet-V5 technical report, which will deep dive into the model architecture, data scaling strategies, and advanced distillation techniques.Making Gemma 3n accessible from day one has been a priority. We’re proud to partner with many incredible open source developers to ensure broad support across popular tools and platforms, including contributions from teams behind AMD, Axolotl, Docker, Hugging Face, llama.cpp, LMStudio, MLX, NVIDIA, Ollama, RedHat, SGLang, Unsloth, and vLLM.But this ecosystem is just the beginning. The true power of this technology is in what you will build with it. That’s why we’re launching the Gemma 3n Impact Challenge. Your mission: use Gemma 3n’s unique on-device, offline, and multimodal capabilities to build a product for a better world. With $150,000 in prizes, we’re looking for a compelling video story and a “wow” factor demo that shows real-world impact. Join the challenge and help build a better future.Get started with Gemma 3n todayReady to explore the potential of Gemma 3n today? Here’s how:Experiment directly: Use Google AI Studio to try Gemma 3n in just a couple of clicks. Gemma models can also be deployed directly to Cloud Run from AI Studio.Learn & integrate: Dive into our comprehensive documentation to quickly integrate Gemma into your projects or start with our inference and fine-tuning guides.

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MedGemma: Our most capable open models for health AI development

Healthcare is increasingly embracing AI to improve workflow management, patient communication, and diagnostic and treatment support. It’s critical that these AI-based systems are not only high-performing, but also efficient and privacy-preserving. It’s with these considerations in mind that we built and recently released Health AI Developer Foundations (HAI-DEF). HAI-DEF is a collection of lightweight open models designed to offer developers robust starting points for their own health research and application development. Because HAI-DEF models are open, developers retain full control over privacy, infrastructure and modifications to the models. In May of this year, we expanded the HAI-DEF collection with MedGemma, a collection of generative models based on Gemma 3 that are designed to accelerate healthcare and lifesciences AI development.Today, we’re proud to announce two new models in this collection. The first is MedGemma 27B Multimodal, which complements the previously-released 4B Multimodal and 27B text-only models by adding support for complex multimodal and longitudinal electronic health record interpretation. The second new model is MedSigLIP, a lightweight image and text encoder for classification, search, and related tasks. MedSigLIP is based on the same image encoder that powers the 4B and 27B MedGemma models.MedGemma and MedSigLIP are strong starting points for medical research and product development. MedGemma is useful for medical text or imaging tasks that require generating free text, like report generation or visual question answering. MedSigLIP is recommended for imaging tasks that involve structured outputs like classification or retrieval. All of the above models can be run on a single GPU, and MedGemma 4B and MedSigLIP can even be adapted to run on mobile hardware.Full details of MedGemma and MedSigLIP development and evaluation can be found in the MedGemma technical report.

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Gemini Robotics 1.5 brings AI agents into the physical world

AcknowledgementsThis work was developed by the Gemini Robotics team: Abbas Abdolmaleki, Saminda Abeyruwan, Joshua Ainslie, Jean-Baptiste Alayrac, Montserrat Gonzalez Arenas, Ashwin Balakrishna, Nathan Batchelor, Alex Bewley, Jeff Bingham, Michael Bloesch, Konstantinos Bousmalis, Philemon Brakel, Anthony Brohan, Thomas Buschmann, Arunkumar Byravan, Serkan Cabi, Ken Caluwaerts, Federico Casarini, Christine Chan, Oscar Chang, London Chappellet-Volpini, Jose Enrique Chen, Xi Chen, Hao-Tien Lewis Chiang, Krzysztof Choromanski, Adrian Collister, David B. D’Ambrosio, Sudeep Dasari, Todor Davchev, Meet Kirankumar Dave, Coline Devin, Norman Di Palo, Tianli Ding, Carl Doersch, Adil Dostmohamed, Yilun Du, Debidatta Dwibedi, Sathish Thoppay Egambaram, Michael Elabd, Tom Erez, Xiaolin Fang, Claudio Fantacci, Cody Fong, Erik Frey, Chuyuan Fu, Ruiqi Gao, Marissa Giustina, Keerthana Gopalakrishnan, Laura Graesser, Oliver Groth, Agrim Gupta, Roland Hafner, Steven Hansen, Leonard Hasenclever, Sam Haves, Nicolas Heess, Brandon Hernaez, Alex Hofer, Jasmine Hsu, Lu Huang, Sandy H. Huang, Atil Iscen, Mithun George Jacob, Deepali Jain, Sally Jesmonth, Abhishek Jindal, Ryan Julian, Dmitry Kalashnikov, Stefani Karp, Matija Kecman, J. Chase Kew, Donnie Kim, Frank Kim, Junkyung Kim, Thomas Kipf, Sean Kirmani, Ksenia Konyushkova, Yuheng Kuang, Thomas Lampe, Antoine Laurens, Tuan Anh Le, Isabel Leal, Alex X. Lee, Tsang-Wei Edward Lee, Guy Lever, Jacky Liang, Li-Heng Lin, Fangchen Liu, Shangbang Long, Caden Lu, Sharath Maddineni, Anirudha Majumdar, Kevis-Kokitsi Maninis, Andrew Marmon, Sergio Martinez, Assaf Hurwitz Michaely, Niko Milonopoulos, Joss Moore, Robert Moreno, Michael Neunert, Francesco Nori, Joy Ortiz, Kenneth Oslund, Carolina Parada, Emilio Parisotto, Peter Pastor Sampedro, Acorn Pooley, Thomas Power, Alessio Quaglino, Haroon Qureshi, Rajkumar Vasudeva Raju, Helen Ran, Dushyant Rao, Kanishka Rao, Isaac Reid, David Rendleman, Krista Reymann, Miguel Rivas, Francesco Romano, Yulia Rubanova, Pannag R Sanketi, Dhruv Shah, Mohit Sharma, Kathryn Shea, Mohit Shridhar, Charles Shu, Vikas Sindhwani, Sumeet Singh, Radu Soricut, Rachel Sterneck, Ian Storz, Razvan Surdulescu, Jie Tan, Jonathan Tompson, Saran Tunyasuvunakool, Jake Varley, Grace Vesom, Giulia Vezzani, Maria Bauza Villalonga, Oriol Vinyals, René Wagner, Ayzaan Wahid, Stefan Welker, Paul Wohlhart, Chengda Wu, Markus Wulfmeier, Fei Xia, Ted Xiao, Annie Xie, Jinyu Xie, Peng Xu, Sichun Xu, Ying Xu, Zhuo Xu, Jimmy Yan, Sherry Yang, Skye Yang, Yuxiang Yang, Hiu Hong Yu, Wenhao Yu, Li Yang Ku, Wentao Yuan, Yuan Yuan, Jingwei Zhang, Tingnan Zhang, Zhiyuan Zhang, Allan Zhou, Guangyao Zhou and Yuxiang Zhou.We’d also like to thank: Amy Nommeots-Nomm, Ashley Gibb, Bhavya Sukhija, Bryan Gale, Catarina Barros, Christy Koh, Clara Barbu, Demetra Brady, Hiroki Furuta, Jennie Lees, Kendra Byrne, Keran Rong, Kevin Murphy, Kieran Connell, Kuang-Huei Lee, M. Emre Karagozler, Martina Zambelli, Matthew Jackson, Michael Noseworthy, Miguel Lázaro-Gredilla, Mili Sanwalka, Mimi Jasarevic, Nimrod Gileadi, Rebeca Santamaria-Fernandez, Rui Yao, Siobhan Mcloughlin, Sophie Bridgers, Stefano Saliceti, Steven Bohez, Svetlana Grant, Tim Hertweck, Verena Rieser, Yandong Ji.For their leadership and support of this effort, we’d like to thank: Jean-Baptiste Alayrac, Zoubin Ghahramani, Koray Kavukcuoglu and Demis Hassabis. We’d like to recognize the many teams across Google and Google DeepMind that have contributed to this effort including Legal, Marketing, Communications, Responsibility and Safety Council, Responsible Development and Innovation, Policy, Strategy and Operations, and our Business and Corporate Development teams. We’d like to thank everyone on the Robotics team not explicitly mentioned above for their continued support and guidance. Finally, we’d like to thank the Apptronik team for their support.

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Trump Says He Welcomes China, India Investment in VEN Oil

President Donald Trump said Saturday he welcomed investment by China and India in Venezuela’s oil industry. “China is welcome to come in and will make a great deal on oil,” Trump told reporters during a flight to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One. He added that the US is working with India on a deal to purchase Venezuelan oil. “India’s coming in and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil, as opposed to buying it from Iran,” he said. “We’ve already made the deal, the concept of that deal.” Earlier this week, Venezuela’s acting president signed off on historic changes to the country’s nationalist oil policy that would reduce taxes and allow greater ownership for foreign oil companies, less than a month after US forces captured longtime leader Nicolas Maduro. Shortly after, US Treasury Department issued a general license expanding the ability for US companies to export, sell and refine crude coming from the sanctioned South American country.  The US is set to import the most Venezuelan oil in a year after the Trump administration moved to control the country’s energy supply and pressed oil companies to invest $100 billion in rebuilding the country’s oil infrastructure. Yet as the US emerges as the biggest recipient of Venezuelan oil following Maduro’s capture, shipments to China — which averaged 400,000 barrels a day last year — fell to zero in January amid a US naval crackdown on the so-called dark fleet of vessels used to transport sanctioned oil to China.  Most of the oil arriving in the US comes from Chevron Corp., which holds a US license to sell sanctioned Venezuelan crude. About 20% is being supplied by commodity traders Trafigura Group and Vitol Group, which were tapped by the Trump administration to help sell up to 50 million barrels of oil after

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Trump to Launch $12B Critical Mineral Stockpile

President Donald Trump is set to launch a strategic critical-minerals stockpile with $12 billion in seed money, a bid to insulate manufacturers from supply shocks as the US works to slash its reliance on Chinese rare earths and other metals.  The venture — dubbed Project Vault — is set to marry $1.67 billion in private capital with a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank to procure and store the minerals for automakers, tech firms and other manufacturers.  US rare-earths stocks jumped in premarket trading upon news of the administration’s plan, including USA Rare Earth Inc., Critical Metals Corp., United States Antimony Corp. and NioCorp Developments Ltd. Details of the initiative, which would represent a first-of-its-kind stockpile for the US private sector, were described by senior administration officials, who asked not to be identified discussing a plan that has yet to be announced. The effort is akin to the nation’s existing emergency oil stockpile. But instead of crude, its focus would be minerals — such as gallium and cobalt — used in products such as iPhones, batteries and jet engines. The stockpile is expected to include both rare earths and critical minerals as well as other strategically important elements that are subject to volatile prices. A Gallium Arsenide semiconducting wafer is processed into chips for radio frequency communications devices at RF Micro Devices Inc. (RFMD) headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. RF Micro Devices Inc. manufactures radio-frequency components and semiconductor technologies. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg It represents a major commitment to accumulate minerals deemed critical to the industrial economy — including the automotive, aerospace and energy sectors — and highlights Trump’s effort to wean US supply chains from China, the world’s dominant provider and processor of critical minerals.  The project has participation from more

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Energy Star gets full 2026 funding from Congress

Congress has fully funded the Energy Star program through fiscal year 2026 as part of a funding bill that President Trump signed into law Jan. 23. The administration tried to zero-out the program in early 2025. “The funding is a huge win,” Sabine Rogers, federal policy manager at the U.S. Green Building Council, said in a blog post. A provision in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill that funds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several other federal agencies, H.R. 6938, mandates that the administration provide at least $33 million to carry out the program through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 — a modest increase over the $32 million provided in FY2024, the most recent year where program funding data is available. The provision includes a directive from Congress that the administration not take actions to reduce the amount. “[This is] the very first time that Congress has stipulated a mandatory annual spending level for Energy Star,” Rogers said, “placing a clear and binding legal requirement on the administration.” More than 1,200 organizations lobbied Congress last year to save Energy Star after the Trump administration in May proposed eliminating EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, which oversees the program. In letters calling for the EPA to continue the program, organizations said its elimination would damage the real estate sector at a time when it is already facing significant uncertainty.  The Energy Star program has saved consumers and organizations some 5.2 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy and more than $500 billion in costs since it was created in 1992, according to the program website. “Energy Star has grown to become the international standard for energy efficiency and one of the most successful voluntary U.S. government programs in history,” the site says.  Energy Star Portfolio Manager, a free tool that allows commercial building operators

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Eying AI factories, Nvidia buys bigger stake in CoreWeave

Nvidia continues to throw its sizable bank account around, this time making a $2 billion investment in GPU cloud service provider CoreWeave. The company says the investment reflects Nvidia’s “confidence in CoreWeave’s business, team and growth strategy as a cloud platform built on Nvidia infrastructure.” CoreWeave is not the only company that has built its business on Nvidia infrastructure: so has Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and dedicated GPU CSPs like Lambda Labs, Crusoe, and RunPod.

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AI, security tailwinds signal promising 2026 for Cisco

A big component of AI in communications is agentic agents talking to employees and customers, and bringing trust to the system is where Cisco should shine. It builds and runs its own infrastructure, which is secure by design. Cisco has relationships with governments all over the world, and between Webex and its on-premises solutions, it can meet any kind of digital sovereignty requirements. As the world becomes increasingly AI driven and fractured because of macro issues, Cisco will be able to deliver solutions that work, are secure, and adhere to any kind of compliance requirements. Look for the company to lean into trust to reestablish the Webex business. Continued focus on Purpose: From one billion lives to 40 communities While the technology is complex, Cisco’s guiding North Star remains its commitment to its Purpose corporate social responsibility programs. Having surpassed its goal to positively impact one billion lives, Cisco is doubling down on its 40 Communities initiative. In 2026, expect significant investments in: AI for social good: Using agentic AI to optimize energy consumption in smart buildings and reduce carbon footprints. The digital divide: Continued expansion of the Cisco Networking Academy, which is being redesigned to focus on AI and cybersecurity skills for underserved regions. Resilient infrastructure: Rebuilding connectivity in disaster-prone areas with resilience-first networking that can withstand both physical and cyber shocks. Evidence of this was seen in Davos, where Cisco reinforced its commitment to global reskilling, acting as a core partner in the Reskilling Revolution initiative. This initiative aims to equip 1 billion people with better education, skills, and economic opportunities by 2030, with a focus on addressing the rapid transformation of the labor market due to AI and the energy transition.  Over the years, questions have been raised as to whether there’s a place for Purpose with publicly traded

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Iran Edges Toward Nuclear Talks With USA in Bid to Avoid War

(Update) February 2, 2026, 3:29 PM GMT: Article updated with with more on the talks in fifth paragraph. Iran said talks with the US over a new nuclear deal could get underway in the coming days, building on a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at averting war between the two sides.  President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the start of negotiations with Washington “within the framework of the nuclear issue,” Iran’s semi-official Fars news service reported Monday, citing a government source. Talks could include senior officials from both countries such as US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Tasnim news service said, citing a source it didn’t identify. “We’re ready for diplomacy, but they must understand that diplomacy is not compatible with threats, intimidation or pressure,” Araghchi said on state TV. “We will remain steadfast on this path and hope to see its results soon.” Multiple countries in the Middle East have been acting as intermediaries between Tehran and Washington, according to Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry. No time or location for an initial meeting have been set, Tasnim said, while details of what would be discussed remain unclear, such as whether the US would push for the Islamic Republic to end uranium enrichment.   Iran’s priority in new talks will be sanctions relief and Tehran is “realistic” in its approach, Baghaei said. The developments underline the international effort to ease Middle East tensions as US President Donald Trump threatens Iran with military action if it doesn’t reach an agreement to curb its nuclear program. American naval assets have been dispatched toward the region and Trump said Sunday they were “a couple of days” away, even while unspecified Gulf allies negotiate to “make a deal.” Oil prices fell sharply on Monday, partly because of the heightened diplomatic

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