SSE starts construction on 208 MW Strathy South wind farm in Scotland

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SSE starts construction on 208 MW Strathy South wind farm in Scotland

SSE has started construction on its £400 million Strathy South wind farm in the Scottish Highlands after securing a Contract for Difference (CfD) in 2023. SSE made a final investment decision on the 208 MW project in December last year, with early construction works now underway at the site near Sutherland. The 35-turbine project is […]

SSE has started construction on its £400 million Strathy South wind farm in the Scottish Highlands after securing a Contract for Difference (CfD) in 2023.

SSE made a final investment decision on the 208 MW project in December last year, with early construction works now underway at the site near Sutherland.

The 35-turbine project is adjacent to SSE’s already operational 67 MW Strathy North site.

SSE secured a 15-year CfD contract for Strathy South in the UK government’s fifth allocation round (AR5), with the company aiming to commence operations in 2027.

Once complete, Strathy South will have the capacity to power around 200,000 UK homes with renewable electricity.

SSE Renewables managing director Stephen Wheeler said the start of construction on Strathy South demonstrates the firm’s commitment to the UK’s energy transition.

“At SSE we’re working hard to play our part to support the UK government in the delivery of the country’s most ambitious reforms to the energy system in generations, as set out in the UK’s clean power 2030 action plan,” Wheeler said.

Achany wind farm in Sutherland
Supplied by SSE Renewables

“We’re committed to delivering the clean power projects the UK needs now, whether through the delivery of our Berwick Bank offshore wind project or through new onshore wind farms such as Strathy South.

“Together, we can power change towards a new era of clean, homegrown energy.”

Danish turbine manufacturer Vestas will supply, install and commission all 35 of the wind turbines for Strathy South, with the project expected to support 125 full-time jobs at peak construction.

Strathy South demonstrates UK planning woes

The start of work on Strathy South comes nearly 20-years after SSE first announced proposals to develop a 77-turbine wind farm in 2007.

SSE later cut the number of turbines to 39 to limit its environmental impact and submitted amended plans to the Scottish government in 2013 and 2014.

However, Scottish ministers took until 2018 to approve the project, then in 2019 UK regulator Ofgem removed the renewable obligation certificate (ROC) scheme, threatening its viability.

In 2020, SSE again applied to Scottish ministers to vary the existing 2018 consent, which was approved in 2021.

The extended planning process comes as SSE continues waiting for approval from the Scottish government for its 4 GW Berwick Bank offshore wind project.

Elsewhere, the company achieved first power from its 103-turbine Viking onshore wind farm in Shetland last year.

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New open-source framework could solve quantum computing’s calibration challenge

Cohen’s reference to this speed and quality tradeoff mirrors what analysts identified as a critical transition phase: while some labs still manage calibration manually, the field is clearly moving toward automation. “The true value lies in preparing for future systems,” emphasized Daniel. “As we approach fault-tolerant quantum computing, calibration must

Red Hat releases tool to manage edge devices at scale… and to drive cars

Another problem for enterprises deploying edge devices is that there’s usually a lack of IT expertise in these locations, Chow says. The Red Hat Edge Manager will address that skills gap with a user-friendly, simplified management environment, the company announced. The tool also supports onboarding, updates and decommissioning and is

Red Hat Enterprise Linux update advances security, containerization and AI

AI in RHEL 10 In particular, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 now supports Lightspeed, which integrates generative AI directly into the command line, signaling the beginning of a shift to AI-assisted operations. “You just type in a plain English query saying, ‘Hey, why is this not working?’,” Raj Das, Red

China takes edge computing to orbit with first space-based processing network

“China’s Three-Body Computing Constellation marks a radical evolution in edge computing — demonstrating a ‘hyper-edge’ model: autonomous, localized processing under extreme latency and bandwidth constraints,” explained Deepti Sekhri, practice director at Everest Group. “This leap forces enterprise edge strategies to move beyond basic edge nodes toward resilient, AI-infused micro-infrastructures. We

Vistra to Acquire Lotus Gas Power Plants for $1.9B

Vistra Corp. has signed a definitive agreement to buy seven natural gas-fired generation facilities spread across different states from Lotus Infrastructure Partners for $1.9 billion. The acquisition consists of five combined-cycle gas turbine plants and two combustion turbine plants in California, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, “further geographically diversifying Vistra’s natural gas fleet”, Vistra said in an online statement. The plants have a combined capacity of 2,557 megawatts (MW). The biggest of them is the Fairless plant in Pennsylvania, which produces up to 1,320 MW. The transaction price translates to $743 per kilowatt, subject to net working capital adjustments, according to the Irving, Texas-based power utility. “Vistra expects to fund the transaction with the assumption of an existing term loan from Lotus and cash on hand”, it said. “Although the principal amount of the term loan to be assumed is subject to change, it is currently expected to be approximately 50 percent of the consideration at closing. “The purchase price implies a multiple of approximately 7x 2026 Adjusted EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), excluding any potential synergies”. The parties expect to complete the transaction late this year or early 2026, subject to regulatory approvals including anti-trust clearance. Vistra said the acquisition will not change its previously set capital allocation plans including $300 million in annual dividends and at least $1 billion in share buybacks each year. “We are excited to announce another opportunistic expansion of our generation footprint in some of our key competitive markets”, said Vistra president and chief executive Jim Burke. “We believe natural gas-fired generation will continue to play an ever-increasing role in the reliability, affordability, and flexibility of U.S. power grids for years to come. “The addition of this attractive portfolio of combined cycle and peaking assets allows Vistra to serve growing power demand while

There Were 3 Drivers to Monday’s USA Natural Gas Price Pullback

There were three drivers to yesterday’s U.S. natural gas price pullback, Art Hogan, Chief Market Strategist at B. Riley Wealth, told Rigzone in an exclusive interview on Tuesday. “Weather forecasts maintained mild conditions. The threat of re-escalating tariffs on U.S. trading partners stood as a further demand-side risk, while production remained steady,” Hogan said. Rigzone contacted the White House for comment on Hogan’s statement. At the time of writing, the White House has not responded to Rigzone with a comment. In a separate exclusive interview today, Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at the PRICE Futures Group, said “shoulder season is on full display, with producers coming out of maintenance raising output while demand is weak”. Flynn also told Rigzone that the weather is in a “goldilocks” state, “not too hot and not too cold”. In an EBW Analytics Group report sent to Rigzone by the EBW team today, Eli Rubin, an analyst at the company, said the June natural gas contract “shed another 22.1¢ yesterday, testing support as low as $3.098, as indelibly weak shoulder season fundamentals continue to pummel the market”. “The front-month has now lost 68.2¢ in six sessions, and technicals remain bearish,” Rubin warned. In the report, Rubin went on to state that gas production at a monthly high over the weekend appears to have spooked longs, although the analyst added that gains were small in absolute terms. Rubin also noted in the report that “early-season heating demand for Weeks 2 and 3 may total 10 cooling degree days below 30-year norms”. Rubin said in the report that near-term pricing is likely to remain dominated by trader positioning ahead of the Memorial Day holiday and June contract options expiration and final settlement next week. “Over the next 30-45 days, however, confidence is increasing for a rebound if and when

America’s climate brain drain is real — and it’s just getting started

Joe Curtatone is president of the Alliance for Climate Transition. While China now leads the U.S. in the number of patents, the United States has long been the global leader in scientific innovation and technological breakthroughs. From launching the internet to decoding the human genome, our universities, national labs and startup ecosystems have powered progress not just at home, but across the globe. But that leadership is now at serious risk — especially in climate and tough tech sectors — thanks to a combination of short-sighted federal policies, tariffs, attacks on academic institutions and an increasingly hostile posture toward international students and researchers. At the heart of this crisis is a growing brain drain — a phenomenon where top talent, including scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, increasingly look outside the U.S. to study, work and build the technologies of the future. The warning signs are everywhere. In recent months, we’ve seen sweeping attempts by the current administration to undermine the independence and integrity of university research, especially in areas tied to climate science, advanced energy and environmental policy. Key research grants have been frozen or redirected based on political ideology. Experts have been sidelined or dismissed. Federal agencies have been pressured to strip climate and environmental language from their reports. The message is clear: If your work doesn’t align with the administration’s narrative, you may be punished for it. Simultaneously, international scholars and students — the lifeblood of many of our top science and engineering programs — are being pushed away. Visas are being revoked without due process, delays are mounting and the overall tone from federal leadership is one of suspicion and exclusion. This isn’t just bad optics. It directly threatens our innovation economy and the recovery could take decades. Engineering, environmental science and computer science international students don’t just

DOE Backs LNG Exports in Verdict on Biden-Era Study

The Department of Energy (DOE) said Monday it will proceed with issuing final orders on pending applications to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries with no free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. It has now prepared a response to comments on a Biden-era study reviewing permitting considerations and thereby “completed the final hurdles left over from the Biden administration’s reckless pause on LNG export permits, paving the way for the Trump Administration to fully unleash American LNG exports”, the DOE said in an online statement. On January 21 Donald Trump, upon taking office in his second nonconsecutive term as U.S. president, binned his predecessor’s LNG export moratorium, imposed around the same time last year. The DOE under Biden had said the pause would give it time to review permitting considerations involving greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impact, energy prices and domestic gas supply. While ending the pause, the DOE under Trump did not immediately invalidate the study by the Biden government on such considerations, published December 2024. In its January 21, 2025, statement the DOE said it was extending the deadline for the comment period for the results of that study to March 20, 2025. “Based on the record evidence from the 2024 LNG Export Study and the public comments received, DOE makes several key findings, including: the United States has a robust natural gas supply that is sufficient to meet growing levels of exports while minimizing impacts to domestic prices; growing LNG exports increases our gross domestic product and expands jobs while improving our trade balance; and increasing U.S. LNG exports enhances domestic and international global security with no discernable impact to global greenhouse gas emissions”, the DOE said Monday. “In sum, DOE concludes that the complete record from the 2024 LNG Export Study, inclusive of the Study,

Chariot Regains Interest in Moroccan Offshore Assets

Africa-focused energy company Chariot Limited said it has regained its Moroccan offshore interests from Energean plc with the acquisition of its subsidiary, which holds 45 percent and 37.5 percent, respectively, in the Lixus Offshore and Rissana Offshore licenses. Chariot is now the operator of the assets, with a 75 percent working interest in each license, with Morocco’s National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines, or ONHYM, retaining its 25 percent stake. The Anchois gas field is located in the Lixus Offshore license, where three wells have been drilled, Chariot said in a news release. The Anchois-3 well was completed in September 2024. While the well did not deliver the additional volumes required to enable an expansion of the initially planned Anchois development, multiple quality gas-bearing reservoirs were found in the main B sand appraisal interval, Chariot noted. The company said it “remains committed to progressing the license work programs and will collaborate with ONHYM to assess and adapt the Anchois development plan based on discovered resources”. Chariot said it will continue to assess the additional potential of the wider Lixus and Rissana license areas. Chariot CEO Adonis Pouroulis said, “We are pleased to have completed the transfer of these licenses and regained operatorship as we see material value within our diversified Moroccan position, both offshore and onshore. The Anchois gas discovery still offers the potential for a rescaled development and our next steps are to scope this based on the core resources found in the three wells underpinned by our previous work on engineering design, environmental and regulatory approvals, project financing and gas sales. Gas market fundamentals in Morocco are robust with strong gas demand and excellent fiscal terms and we will look to work with all stakeholders, including our partner ONHYM and the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development

Analyst Says Trump Essentially Walked Away from Russia-Ukraine War

Trump essentially walked away from the Russia-Ukraine war yesterday, leaving it to Putin, Zelensky, and the Pope to solve, Bjarne Schieldrop, Chief Commodities Analyst at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB), said in an oil report sent to Rigzone by the SEB team today. “The U.S. is placing no visible pressure on Russia to force it towards a resolution as far as we can see,” Schieldrop said in the report, adding that “Trump is talking nicely about Putin while describing Zelensky as difficult”. “What this means for the oil price is rather foggy of course, but an easing of U.S. sanctions towards Russia and an end of weapons to Ukraine from the U.S. could be met by a ‘thank you’ from Putin in the form of more oil and a lower oil price,” Schieldrop noted in the report. “Trump wants a lower oil price and he wants to do loads of business with Russia. Putin wants Ukraine more than anything. And lifting of U.S. sanctions and a ramping up of business between Russia and the U.S. is naturally of very high value for Putin,” he continued. “This sounds like a deal made in heaven. If the Pope will bless it remains to be seen,” Schieldrop went on to state. In the report, the SEB analyst noted that an immediate resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war looks unlikely. “While it could lead to more oil from Russia into the market, it is out in time and uncertain as Russia is still bound by its obligation to OPEC+,” Schieldrop stated in the report. Rigzone has contacted the White House, the Department of Information and Press of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and the Holy See Press Office for comment on Schieldrop’s statements.

Tariff uncertainty weighs on networking vendors

“Our guide assumes current tariffs and exemptions remain in place through the quarter. These include the following: China at 30%, partially offset by an exemption for semiconductors and certain electronic components; Mexico and Canada at 25% for the components and products that are not eligible for the current exemptions,” Cisco CFO Scott Herron told Wall Street analysts in the company’s quarterly earnings report on May 14. At this time, Cisco expects little impact from tariffs on steel and aluminum and retaliatory tariffs, Herron said. “We’ll continue to leverage our world-class supply chain team to help mitigate the impact,” he said, adding that “the flexibility and agility we have built into our operations over the last few years, the size and scale of our supply chain, provides us some unique advantages as we support our customers globally.” “Once the tariff scenario stabilizes, there [are] steps that we can take to mitigate it, as you’ve seen us do with China from the first Trump administration. And only after that would we consider price [increases],” Herron said. Similarly, Extreme Networks noted the changing tariff conditions during its earnings call on April 30. “The tariff situation is very dynamic, I think, as everybody knows and can appreciate, and it’s kind of hard to call. Yes, there was concern initially given the magnitude of tariffs,” said Extreme Networks CEO Ed Meyercord on the earnings call. “The larger question is, will all of the changes globally in trade and tariff policy have an impact on demand? And that’s hard to call at this point. And we’re going to hold as far as providing guidance or judgment on that until we have finality come July.” Financial news Meanwhile, AI is fueling high expectations and influencing investments in enterprise campus and data center environments.

Liquid cooling becoming essential as AI servers proliferate

“Facility water loops sometimes have good water quality, sometimes bad,” says My Troung, CTO at ZutaCore, a liquid cooling company. “Sometimes you have organics you don’t want to have inside the technical loop.” So there’s one set of pipes that goes around the data center, collecting the heat from the server racks, and another set of smaller pipes that lives inside individual racks or servers. “That inner loop is some sort of technical fluid, and the two loops exchange heat across a heat exchanger,” says Troung. The most common approach today, he says, is to use a single-phase liquid — one that stays in liquid form and never evaporates into a gas — such as water or propylene glycol. But it’s not the most efficient option. Evaporation is a great way to dissipate heat. That’s what our bodies do when we sweat. When water goes from a liquid to a gas it’s called a phase change, and it uses up energy and makes everything around it slightly cooler. Of course, few servers run hot enough to boil water — but they can boil other liquids. “Two phase is the most efficient cooling technology,” says Xianming (Simon) Dai, a professor at University of Texas at Dallas. And it might be here sooner than you think. In a keynote address in March at Nvidia GTC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the Rubin Ultra NVL576, due in the second half of 2027 — with 600 kilowatts per rack. “With the 600 kilowatt racks that Nvidia is announcing, the industry will have to shift very soon from single-phase approaches to two-phase,” says ZutaCore’s Troung. Another highly-efficient cooling approach is immersion cooling. According to a Castrol survey released in March, 90% of 600 data center industry leaders say that they are considering switching to immersion

Cisco taps OpenAI’s Codex for AI-driven network coding

“If you want to ask Codex a question about your codebase, click “Ask”. Each task is processed independently in a separate, isolated environment preloaded with your codebase. Codex can read and edit files, as well as run commands including test harnesses, linters, and type checkers. Task completion typically takes between 1 and 30 minutes, depending on complexity, and you can monitor Codex’s progress in real time,” according to OpenAI. “Once Codex completes a task, it commits its changes in its environment. Codex provides verifiable evidence of its actions through citations of terminal logs and test outputs, allowing you to trace each step taken during task completion,” OpenAI wrote. “You can then review the results, request further revisions, open a GitHub pull request, or directly integrate the changes into your local environment. In the product, you can configure the Codex environment to match your real development environment as closely as possible.” OpenAI is releasing Codex as a research preview: “We prioritized security and transparency when designing Codex so users can verify its outputs – a safeguard that grows increasingly more important as AI models handle more complex coding tasks independently and safety considerations evolve. Users can check Codex’s work through citations, terminal logs and test results,” OpenAI wrote. Internally, technical teams at OpenAI have started using Codex. “It is most often used by OpenAI engineers to offload repetitive, well-scoped tasks, like refactoring, renaming, and writing tests, that would otherwise break focus. It’s equally useful for scaffolding new features, wiring components, fixing bugs, and drafting documentation,” OpenAI stated. Cisco’s view of agentic AI Patel stated that Codex is part of the developing AI agent world, where Cisco envisions billions of AI agents will work together to transform and redefine the architectural assumptions the industry has relied on. Agents will communicate within and

US companies are helping Saudi Arabia to build an AI powerhouse

AMD announced a five-year, $10 billion collaboration with Humain to deploy up to 500 megawatts of AI compute in Saudi Arabia and the US, aiming to deploy “multi-exaflop capacity by early 2026.” AWS, too, is expanding its data centers in Saudi Arabia to bolster Humain’s cloud infrastructure. Saudi Arabia has abundant oil and gas to power those data centers, and is growing its renewable energy resources with the goal of supplying 50% of the country’s power by 2030. “Commercial electricity rates, nearly 50% lower than in the US, offer potential cost savings for AI model training, though high local hosting costs due to land, talent, and infrastructure limit total savings,” said Eric Samuel, Associate Director at IDC. Located near Middle Eastern population centers and fiber optic cables to Asia, these data centers will offer enterprises low-latency cloud computing for real-time AI applications. Late is great There’s an advantage to being a relative latecomer to the technology industry, said Eric Samuel, associate director, research at IDC. “Saudi Arabia’s greenfield tech landscape offers a unique opportunity for rapid, ground-up AI integration, unburdened by legacy systems,” he said.

AMD, Nvidia partner with Saudi startup to build multi-billion dollar AI service centers

Humain will deploy the Nvidia Omniverse platform as a multi-tenant system to drive acceleration of the new era of physical AI and robotics through simulation, optimization and operation of physical environments by new human-AI-led solutions. The AMD deal did not discuss the number of chips involved in the deal, but it is valued at $10 billion. AMD and Humain plan to develop a comprehensive AI infrastructure through a network of AMD-based AI data centers that will extend from Saudi Arabia to the US and support a wide range of AI workloads across corporate, start-up, and government markets. Think of it as AWS but only offering AI as a service. AMD will provide its AI compute portfolio – Epyc, Instinct, and FPGA networking — and the AMD ROCm open software ecosystem, while Humain will manage the delivery of the hyperscale data center, sustainable power systems, and global fiber interconnects. The partners expect to activate a multi-exaflop network by early 2026, supported by next-generation AI silicon, modular data center zones, and a software platform stack focused on developer enablement, open standards, and interoperability. Amazon Web Services also got a piece of the action, announcing a more than $5 billion investment to build an “AI zone” in the Kingdom. The zone is the first of its kind and will bring together multiple capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like SageMaker and Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q. Like the AMD project, the zone will be available in 2026. Humain only emerged this month, so little is known about it. But given that it is backed by Crown Prince Salman and has the full weight of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which ranks among the world’s largest and

Check Point CISO: Network segregation can prevent blackouts, disruptions

Fischbein agrees 100% with his colleague’s analysis and adds that education and training can help prevent such incidents from occurring. “Simulating such a blackout is impossible, it has never been done,” he acknowledges, but he is committed to strengthening personal and team training and risk awareness. Increased defense and cybersecurity budgets In 2025, industry watchers expect there will be an increase in the public budget allocated to defense. In Spain, one-third of the budget will be allocated to increasing cybersecurity. But for Fischbein, training teams is much more important than the budget. “The challenge is to distribute the budget in a way that can be managed,” he notes, and to leverage intuitive and easy-to-use platforms, so that organizations don’t have to invest all the money in training. “When you have information, management, users, devices, mobiles, data centers, clouds, cameras, printers… the security challenge is very complex. You have to look for a security platform that makes things easier, faster, and simpler,” he says. ” Today there are excellent tools that can stop all kinds of attacks.” “Since 2010, there have been cybersecurity systems, also from Check Point, that help prevent this type of incident from happening, but I’m not sure that [Spain’s electricity blackout] was a cyberattack.” Leading the way in email security According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Check Point is the leader in email security platforms. Today email is still responsible for 88% of all malicious file distributions. Attacks that, as Fischbein explains, enter through phishing, spam, SMS, or QR codes. “There are two challenges: to stop the threats and not to disturb, because if the security tool is a nuisance it causes more harm than good. It is very important that the solution does not annoy [users],” he stresses. “As almost all attacks enter via e-mail, it is

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

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

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

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

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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

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

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

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