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The Download: AI can cheat at chess, and the future of search

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. AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games The news: Facing defeat in chess, the latest generation of AI reasoning models sometimes cheat without being instructed to do so. The finding suggests that the next wave of AI models could be more likely to seek out deceptive ways of doing whatever they’ve been asked to do. And worst of all? There’s no simple way to fix it. How they did it: Researchers from the AI research organization Palisade Research instructed seven large language models to play hundreds of games of chess against Stockfish, a powerful open-source chess engine. The research suggests that the more sophisticated the AI model, the more likely it is to spontaneously try to “hack” the game in an attempt to beat its opponent. Older models would do this kind of thing only after explicit nudging from the team. Read the full story. —Rhiannon Williams MIT Technology Review Narrated: AI search could break the web At its best, AI search can infer a user’s intent, amplify quality content, and synthesize information from diverse sources. But if AI search becomes our primary portal to the web, it threatens to disrupt an already precarious digital economy.Today, the production of content online depends on a fragile set of incentives tied to virtual foot traffic: ads, subscriptions, donations, sales, or brand exposure. By shielding the web behind an all-knowing chatbot, AI search could deprive creators of the visits and “eyeballs” they need to survive. This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released. Join us to discuss disruption in the AI model market Join MIT Technology Review’s AI writers as they discuss the latest upheaval in the AI marketplace. Editor in chief Mat Honan will be joined by Will Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, and James O’Donnell, our AI and hardware reporter, to dive into how new developments in AI model development are reshaping competition, raising questions for investors, challenging industry assumptions, and accelerating timelines for AI adoption and innovation. Make sure you register here—it kicks off at 12.30pm ET today. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 A judge has denied Elon Musk’s attempt to halt OpenAI’s for-profit plansBut other aspects of the lawsuit have been permitted to proceed. (CNBC)+ The court will fast-track a trial later this year. (FT $) 2 ChatGPT isn’t going to dethrone GoogleAt least not any time soon. (Insider $)+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)3 Beijing is going all in on AIChina is treating the technology as key to boosting its economy—and lessening its reliance on overseas trade. (WSJ $)+ DeepSeek is, naturally, the jewel in its crown. (Reuters)+ Four Chinese AI startups to watch beyond DeepSeek. (MIT Technology Review) 4  A pair of reinforcement learning pioneers have won the Turing AwardAndrew Barto and Richard Sutton’s technique underpins today’s chatbots. (Axios)+ The former professor and student wrote the literal book on reinforcement learning. (NYT $)+ The pair will share a million dollar prize. (New Scientist $) 5 US apps are being used to groom and exploit minors in Colombia Better internet service is making it easier for sex traffickers to find and sell young girls. (Bloomberg $)+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review)6 Europe is on high alert following undersea cable attacksIt’s unclear whether improving Russian-American relations will help. (The Guardian)+ These stunning images trace ships’ routes as they move. (MIT Technology Review) 7 Jeff Bezos is cracking the whip at Blue OriginHe’s implementing a tougher, Amazon-like approach to catch up with rival SpaceX. (FT $) 8 All hail the return of DiggThe news aggregator is staging a comeback, over a decade after it was split into parts. (Inc)+ It’s been acquired by its original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. (TechCrunch)+ Digg wants to resurrect the community-first social platform. (The Verge)+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review) 9 We’re still learning about how memory works 🧠Greater understanding could pave the way to better treatments for anxiety and chronic pain. (Knowable Magazine)+ A memory prosthesis could restore memory in people with damaged brains. (MIT Technology Review) 10 AI can’t replace your personalityDespite what Big Tech seems to be peddling. (NY Mag $) Quote of the day “That is just a lot of money [to invest] on a handshake.” —US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers questions why Elon Musk invested tens of millions of dollars in OpenAI without a written contract, Associated Press reports. The big story People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. January 2024 It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. New machinery was transforming factories and farms, and everyone was worried about jobs. Were the impressive technological achievements that were making life easier for many also destroying jobs and wreaking havoc on the economy? To make sense of it all, Karl T. Compton, the president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and one of the leading scientists of the day, wrote in the December 1938 issue of this publication about the “Bogey of Technological Unemployment.” His essay concisely framed the debate over jobs and technical progress in a way that remains relevant, especially given today’s fears over the impact of artificial intelligence. It’s a worthwhile reminder that worries over the future of jobs are not new and are best addressed by applying an understanding of economics, rather than conjuring up genies and monsters. Read the full story.—David Rotman

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.

AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games

The news: Facing defeat in chess, the latest generation of AI reasoning models sometimes cheat without being instructed to do so. The finding suggests that the next wave of AI models could be more likely to seek out deceptive ways of doing whatever they’ve been asked to do. And worst of all? There’s no simple way to fix it.

How they did it: Researchers from the AI research organization Palisade Research instructed seven large language models to play hundreds of games of chess against Stockfish, a powerful open-source chess engine. The research suggests that the more sophisticated the AI model, the more likely it is to spontaneously try to “hack” the game in an attempt to beat its opponent. Older models would do this kind of thing only after explicit nudging from the team. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

MIT Technology Review Narrated: AI search could break the web

At its best, AI search can infer a user’s intent, amplify quality content, and synthesize information from diverse sources. But if AI search becomes our primary portal to the web, it threatens to disrupt an already precarious digital economy.
Today, the production of content online depends on a fragile set of incentives tied to virtual foot traffic: ads, subscriptions, donations, sales, or brand exposure. By shielding the web behind an all-knowing chatbot, AI search could deprive creators of the visits and “eyeballs” they need to survive.

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which 
we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

Join us to discuss disruption in the AI model market

Join MIT Technology Review’s AI writers as they discuss the latest upheaval in the AI marketplace. Editor in chief Mat Honan will be joined by Will Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, and James O’Donnell, our AI and hardware reporter, to dive into how new developments in AI model development are reshaping competition, raising questions for investors, challenging industry assumptions, and accelerating timelines for AI adoption and innovation. Make sure you register here—it kicks off at 12.30pm ET today.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 A judge has denied Elon Musk’s attempt to halt OpenAI’s for-profit plans
But other aspects of the lawsuit have been permitted to proceed. (CNBC)
+ The court will fast-track a trial later this year. (FT $)

2 ChatGPT isn’t going to dethrone Google
At least not any time soon. (Insider $)
+ AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Beijing is going all in on AI
China is treating the technology as key to boosting its economy—and lessening its reliance on overseas trade. (WSJ $)
+ DeepSeek is, naturally, the jewel in its crown. (Reuters)
+ Four Chinese AI startups to watch beyond DeepSeek. (MIT Technology Review)

4  A pair of reinforcement learning pioneers have won the Turing Award
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton’s technique underpins today’s chatbots. (Axios)
+ The former professor and student wrote the literal book on reinforcement learning. (NYT $)
+ The pair will share a million dollar prize. (New Scientist $)

5 US apps are being used to groom and exploit minors in Colombia 
Better internet service is making it easier for sex traffickers to find and sell young girls. (Bloomberg $)
+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Europe is on high alert following undersea cable attacks
It’s unclear whether improving Russian-American relations will help. (The Guardian)
+ These stunning images trace ships’ routes as they move. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Jeff Bezos is cracking the whip at Blue Origin
He’s implementing a tougher, Amazon-like approach to catch up with rival SpaceX. (FT $)

8 All hail the return of Digg
The news aggregator is staging a comeback, over a decade after it was split into parts. (Inc)
+ It’s been acquired by its original founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. (TechCrunch)
+ Digg wants to resurrect the community-first social platform. (The Verge)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

9 We’re still learning about how memory works 🧠
Greater understanding could pave the way to better treatments for anxiety and chronic pain. (Knowable Magazine)
+ A memory prosthesis could restore memory in people with damaged brains. (MIT Technology Review)

10 AI can’t replace your personality
Despite what Big Tech seems to be peddling. (NY Mag $)

Quote of the day

“That is just a lot of money [to invest] on a handshake.”

—US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers questions why Elon Musk invested tens of millions of dollars in OpenAI without a written contract, Associated Press reports.

The big story

People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before.


January 2024

It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. New machinery was transforming factories and farms, and everyone was worried about jobs.

Were the impressive technological achievements that were making life easier for many also destroying jobs and wreaking havoc on the economy? To make sense of it all, Karl T. Compton, the president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and one of the leading scientists of the day, wrote in the December 1938 issue of this publication about the “Bogey of Technological Unemployment.”

His essay concisely framed the debate over jobs and technical progress in a way that remains relevant, especially given today’s fears over the impact of artificial intelligence. It’s a worthwhile reminder that worries over the future of jobs are not new and are best addressed by applying an understanding of economics, rather than conjuring up genies and monsters. Read the full story.

—David Rotman

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SolarWinds buys Squadcast to speed incident response

Squadcast customers shared their experiences with the technology. “Since implementing Squadcast, we’ve reduced incoming alerts from tens of thousands to hundreds, thanks to flexible deduplication. It has a direct impact on reducing alert fatigue and increasing awareness,” said Avner Yaacov, Senior Manager at Redis, in a statement. According to SolarWinds,

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Tariffs won’t impact IT organizations, for now anyway

The idea behind tariffs is to increase domestic manufacturing, but Almassy notes the United Stated doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity or capability that Taiwan does. TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries have some fabs here but they are not building the most leading edge technologies. “Those are all in Taiwan at the

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Kinetik Holdings Logs Lower Profit

Midland, Texas-headquartered midstream company Kinetik Holdings Inc. has reported a net income including non-controlling interests for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024, of $16.2 million and $244.2 million, respectively. The figures pale in comparison to Q4 and full-year results for 2023, when the company reported net income including non-controlling interests of $267.3 million and $384.6 million, respectively. According to Jamie Welch, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kinetik Holdings, 2024 was another “transformational” year for the company. “We substantially expanded our footprint and capabilities across the Delaware Basin and enhanced our growth profile through highly strategic and accretive transactions and commercial agreements. This included our acquisition of Durango Permian, LLC, a 15-year gas gathering and processing agreement in Eddy County, and the strategic connector pipeline between Kinetik’s Delaware North and Delaware South positions which all support significant future growth in New Mexico”, Welch said. “We also acquired the compelling bolt-on Barilla Draw assets from Permian Resources and increased our equity interest in EPIC Crude Holdings, LP to 27.5 percent ownership in a series of transactions that would support its continued growth and strengthen its financial profile”. Kinetik said it generated adjusted EBITDA of $237.5 million and $971.1 million for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024, respectively. Full-year adjusted EBITDA grew 16 percent year-over-year. In the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2024, Kinetik processed natural gas volumes of 1.74 Billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and 1.64 Bcf/d, respectively. “In the fourth quarter, results were temporarily impacted by unexpected events in November that resulted in a $15 million headwind. In November, the average gas daily price at Waha was negative $1.40/Million British thermal units (Mmbtu) for the first 15 days due to scheduled maintenance on several intrastate gas pipelines, including Permian Highway Pipeline”,

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Honeywell to Acquire Sundyne for $2.16B

Major industrial tech company Honeywell International Inc. has signed a deal to buy Sundyne, a leader in the manufacture of pumps and compressors, for $2.16 billion in cash. The purchase from Warburg Pincus LLC is expected to be completed in the second quarter subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Honeywell said in an online statement Tuesday. “Sundyne’s deep customer relationships, best-in-class products and technology will unlock strategic growth potential for Honeywell UOP’s value chains in refining and petrochemicals, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and clean and renewable fuels”, Honeywell said. “The combination will result in an improved product offering for customers as Honeywell Forge, a leading IoT platform, will enable the digitalization of Sundyne’s equipment to enhance reliability and predictive maintenance. “Utilizing Honeywell’s advanced R&D [research and development] capabilities, the combined company will also be able to further accelerate new product development in the pumps and compressors space”. The acquisition will add about 1,000 Sundyne employees to Honeywell’s workforce, Honeywell said. “The integration is expected to generate material run-rate revenue synergies with Honeywell UOP process licensing and modular capabilities, as well as a global sales reach”, it said. “The acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to Honeywell’s sales growth and segment margin, as well as to adjusted EPS [earnings per share] in the first full year of ownership”, Honeywell added. Honeywell has announced $11.03 billion worth of acquisitions since December 2023. On March 27, 2024, it announced it was acquiring Civitanavi Systems SpA in a stock transaction with an equity value of around EUR 200 million ($214.22 million). Civitanavi provides position navigation and timing technology for the aerospace, defense and industrial markets. “The acquisition will further strengthen Honeywell’s capabilities to help its customers create autonomous operations in aircraft and other vehicles”, Honeywell said. On June 3, 2024,

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Superior in the Red amid Strategy Shift

Superior Plus Corp., a North American distributor and marketer of propane and distillates, has reported slips in figures across the board. In its quarterly financial report, Superior Plus said its net income for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, landed at $4.2 million, compared to $57.8 million for the corresponding quarter in 2023. For the full year 2024, Superior Plus posted a $17.9 million net loss, versus a $57.6 million net profit for 2023. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $702.3 million, down from $725.3 million for the corresponding quarter a year prior. Full-year revenue reached $2.38 billion, down from $2.48 billion a year prior. Superior Plus said its compressed natural gas delivery volumes reached 29,406,980 million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2024, rising 21 percent from the pro forma 24,283,131 MMBtu in the prior year. “2024 was a defining year for Superior Plus”, Allan MacDonald, President and Chief Executive Officer, said. “With the launch of Superior Delivers – we set in motion a bold transformation of Superior Plus – making significant changes to our operations and strategy that will drive long-term growth. These changes are strengthening our propane business, positioning it to significantly grow profitability and capture greater market share in the years ahead. In our Compressed Natural Gas division, we adapted to the changing environment by sharpening our capital discipline, setting the stage for increased free cash flow”. “While 2024 brought challenges including unseasonably warm weather in propane and shifting market dynamics in compressed natural gas – our progress and commitment remained unwavering”, MacDonald added. “The foundation we’ve built is strong, and I am fully confident that it will translate into the profitability and cash flow we know the business can deliver”, he said. To contact the author, email [email protected] WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by

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Elliott Nominates 7 for Phillips 66 Board Election

Elliott Investment Management LP has nominated seven candidates with the “best-in-class experience in refining and midstream operations”, including an Elliott partner, for election to Phillips 66’s board at the company’s upcoming yearly meeting of shareholders. The investor, which has a declared investment of over $2.5 billion in Phillips 66, is pushing for portfolio simplification, an operational review and stronger oversight, blaming Phillip66’s current structure and leadership for “persistent underperformance”. “The director nominees announced today will bring the right experience and objective perspectives to the Board as it executes the best path forward for the Company, including by bolstering accountability and improving oversight of management initiatives”, Elliott said in an online statement Tuesday. The nominees are Brian Coffman, ex-chief executive of Motiva Enterprises and former senior vice president (SVP) for refining at Andeavor; Sigmund Cornelius, former SVP and chief financial officer of ConocoPhillips; Michael Heim, co-founder and former president and chief operating officer of Targa Resources; Alan Hirshberg, former executive VP for production, drilling and projects at ConocoPhillips; Gillian Hobson, former capital markets partner at Vinson & Elkins; Stacy Nieuwoudt, former energy and industrials analyst at Citadel; and John Pike, partner at Elliott. Two of Phillips 66’s 14 seating directors, 13 of whom are independent according to the company, have decided not to stand for re-election, according to a disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) February 12. Gary K. Adams and Denise L. Ramos’s decisions “were not the result of any disagreement between either director and the Company relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices”, Phillips 66 told the SEC. In Tuesday’s statement Elliott noted Phillips 66 “has not disclosed how many seats will now be up for election or who it will be nominating”. “Elliott’s candidates were chosen through a comprehensive search process to identify professionals with complementary

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Analysts Look at OPEC+ Move

In an oil and gas report sent to Rigzone late Tuesday by the Macquarie team, Macquarie strategists said they believe the structural landscape has increasingly been shifting towards a return of OPEC supply. “Beyond a potential return of shut-in production, upstream growth potential across the group has been stacking up, with Saudi Arabia scheduled to bring large field expansions online in 2025, UAE continuing to grow capacity, Kazakhstan delivering a long-delayed Tengiz expansion, and now Iraq reaching an agreement for Kirkuk redevelopment,” the strategists noted in the report. The Macquarie strategists outlined in the report that the statement posted on OPEC’s site on Monday – which revealed that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman will start unwinding a 2.2 million barrel per day cut from next month – “is not entirely surprising”. They added that “the proactive nature of the return of supply (with prices still at the lower end of the recent range) is likely to be viewed bearishly”. The strategists also highlighted in the report that, “broadly speaking”, they “have seen no indication that OPEC+ is angling for a renewed price war with non-OPEC producers”. “While we believe fiscal break-evens are overstated as drivers of oil price, they cannot be altogether overlooked,” they added. The Macquarie strategists went on to note in the report that, “while we do take the OPEC+ release at its word regarding language around ‘flexibility’, we believe inertia on the existing plan cannot be dismissed”. “Put alternatively, while OPEC+ may indeed seek to steer markets towards stability, resistance to future pauses/cuts could emerge, creating potential for crude overshooting to the downside in 2025,” they said. In a report sent to Rigzone by Standard Chartered Bank Commodities Research Head Paul Horsnell late Tuesday, analysts at the company, including

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Port of Cromarty Firth receives £55m to boost floating wind

The Port of Cromarty Firth has received £55.7 million of UK government funding to help drive its expansion and support Scotland’s floating offshore wind sector. The money was provided via the UK government’s £160m Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOWMIS), which provides grants to support development of port infrastructure needed for deployment of floating offshore wind at scale. The grant will help make Cromarty Firth the first port able to make floating offshore wind turbines on site in the UK. With multiple floating wind projects, such as Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn’s 560MW Green Volt project moving into development, this will make Cromarty Firth a key site to support the projects. In addition, the government financial backing aims to unlock match-funding for the port from other investors. Port of Cromarty Firth chief executive Alex Campbell said: “The port is delighted that FLOWMIS funding has been secured for our ambitious phase 5 expansion, which is a critical step towards creating the UK’s first custom-built floating offshore wind integration port. “We believe this confirmation by the UK government shows the faith in our trust port status to deliver jobs and economic growth locally and nationally, and that the certainty from this announcement will unlock further investment in other ports across the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport to boost their complementary plans.” Construction work to expand the port expansion is expected to create up to 320 jobs. When fully developed and operational by the start of 2028, the port is expected to support up to 1,000 skilled jobs in the construction, installation and operational support of offshore and floating offshore wind. This includes roles such as crane operators, marine engineers, and people working on the vessels towing the turbines out to sea. Energy minister Michael Shanks said: “Communities in Scotland and across

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AI driving a 165% rise in data center power demand by 2030

Goldman Sachs Research estimates the power usage by the global data center market to be around 55 gigawatts, which breaks down as 54% for cloud computing workloads, 32% for traditional line of business workloads and 14% for AI. By 2027, that number jumps to 84 GW, with AI growing to 27% of the overall market, cloud dropping to 50%, and traditional workloads falling to 23%, Schneider stated. Goldman Sachs Research estimates that there will be around 122 GW of data center capacity online by the end of 2030, and the density of power use in data centers is likely to grow as well, from 162 kilowatts per square foot to 176 KW per square foot in 2027, thanks to AI, Schneider stated.  “Data center supply — specifically the rate at which incremental supply is built — has been constrained over the past 18 months,” Schneider wrote. These constraints have arisen from the inability of utilities to expand transmission capacity because of permitting delays, supply chain bottlenecks, and infrastructure that is both costly and time-intensive to upgrade. The result is that due to power demand from data centers, there will need to be additional utility investment, to the tune of about $720 billion of grid spending through 2030. And then they are subject to the pace of public utilities, which move much slower than hyperscalers. “These transmission projects can take several years to permit, and then several more to build, creating another potential bottleneck for data center growth if the regions are not proactive about this given the lead time,” Schneider wrote.

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Top data storage certifications to sharpen your skills

Organization: Hitachi Vantara Skills acquired: Knowledge of data center infrastructure management tasks automation using Hitachi Ops Center Automator. Price: $100 Exam duration: 60 minutes How to prepare: Knowledge of all storage-related operations from an end-user perspective, including planning, allocating, and managing storage and architecting storage layouts. Read more about Hitachi Vantara’s training and certification options here. Certifications that bundle cloud, networking and storage skills AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification from leading cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) helps individuals showcase advanced knowledge and skills in optimizing security, cost, and performance, and automating manual processes. The certification is a means for organizations to identify and develop talent with these skills for implementing cloud initiatives, according to AWS. The ideal candidate has the ability to evaluate cloud application requirements, make architectural recommendations for deployment of applications on AWS, and provide expert guidance on architectural design across multiple applications and projects within a complex organization, AWS says. Certified individuals report increased credibility with technical colleagues and customers as a result of earning this certification, it says. Organization: Amazon Web Services Skills acquired: Helps individuals showcase skills in optimizing security, cost, and performance, and automating manual processes Price: $300 Exam duration: 180 minutes How to prepare: The recommended experience prior to taking the exam is two or more years of experience in using AWS services to design and implement cloud solutions Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Data Center The Cisco CCIE Data Center certification enables individuals to demonstrate advanced skills to plan, design, deploy, operate, and optimize complex data center networks. They will gain comprehensive expertise in orchestrating data center infrastructure, focusing on seamless integration of networking, compute, and storage components. Other skills gained include building scalable, low-latency, high-performance networks that are optimized to support artificial intelligence (AI)

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Netskope expands SASE footprint, bolsters AI and automation

Netskope is expanding its global presence by adding multiple regions to its NewEdge carrier-grade infrastructure, which now includes more than 75 locations to ensure processing remains close to end users. The secure access service edge (SASE) provider also enhanced its digital experience monitoring (DEM) capabilities with AI-powered root-cause analysis and automated network diagnostics. “We are announcing continued expansion of our infrastructure and our continued focus on resilience. I’m a believer that nothing gets adopted if end users don’t have a great experience,” says Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri. “We monitor traffic, we have multiple carriers in every one of our more than 75 regions, and when traffic goes from us to that destination, the path is direct.” Netskope added regions including data centers in Calgary, Helsinki, Lisbon, and Prague as well as expanded existing NewEdge regions including data centers in Bogota, Jeddah, Osaka, and New York City. Each data center offers customers a range of SASE capabilities including cloud firewalls, secure web gateway (SWG), inline cloud access security broker (CASB), zero trust network access (ZTNA), SD-WAN, secure service edge (SSE), and threat protection. The additional locations enable Netskope to provide coverage for more than 220 countries and territories with 200 NewEdge Localization Zones, which deliver a local direct-to-net digital experience for users, the company says.

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Inside the Nuclear Race for Data Center Energy with Aalo Atomics CEO Matt Loszak

The latest episode of the DCF Show podcast delves into one of the most pressing challenges facing the data center industry today: the search for sustainable, high-density power solutions. And how, as hyperscale operators like Google and Meta contend with growing energy demands—and, in some cases, resistance from utilities unwilling or unable to support their expanding footprints—the conversation around nuclear energy has intensified.  Both legacy nuclear providers and innovative startups are racing to secure the future business of data center giants, each bringing unique approaches to the table. Our guest for this podcast episode is Matt Loszak, co-founder and CEO of Aalo Atomics, an Austin-based company that’s taking a fresh approach to nuclear energy. Aalo, which secured a $29.5 million Series A funding round in 2024, stands out in the nuclear sector with its 10-megawatt sodium-cooled reactor design—eliminating the need for water, a critical advantage for siting flexibility. Inspired by the Department of Energy’s MARVEL microreactor, Aalo’s technology benefits from direct expertise, as the company’s CTO was the chief architect behind MARVEL. Beyond reactor design, Aalo’s vision extends to full-scale modular plant production. Instead of just building reactors, the company aims to manufacture entire nuclear plants using prefabricated, LEGO-style components. The fully modular plants, shipped in standard containers, are designed to match the footprint of a data center while requiring no onsite water—features that could make them particularly attractive to hyperscale operators seeking localized, high-density power.  Aalo has already made significant strides, with the Department of Energy identifying land at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) as a potential site for its first nuclear facility. The company is on an accelerated timeline, expecting to complete a non-nuclear prototype within three months and break ground on its first nuclear reactor in about a year—remarkably fast progress for the nuclear industry. In our discussion,

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Does It Matter If Microsoft Is Cancelling AI Data Center Leases?

Strategic Reallocation: Microsoft is a major owner and operator of data centers and might be reallocating resources to in-house infrastructure rather than leased spaces. Supply Chain Delays: TD Cowen noted that Microsoft used power and facility delays as justifications for voiding agreements, a tactic previously employed by Meta. Oversupply Issues: Analysts at TD Cowen speculate that Microsoft may have overestimated AI demand, leading to an excess in capacity. As it is all speculation, it could simply be that the latest information has driven Microsoft to reevaluate demand and move to more closely align projected supply with projected demand. Microsoft has reiterated their commitment to spend $80 billion on AI in the coming year. Reallocating this spending internally or wit a different set of partners remains on the table. And when you put the TD Cowen report that Microsoft has cancelled leases for “a couple hundred megawatts” into context with Microsoft’s overall leased power, which is estimated at around 20 GW, you see that more than 98% of their energy commitment remains unchanged. Investment Markets Might See the Biggest Hits Microsoft’s retreat has had ripple effects on the stock market, particularly among energy and infrastructure companies. European firms like Schneider Electric and Siemens Energy experienced a decline in stock value, indicating fears that major AI companies might scale back energy-intensive data center investments. However, at press time we have not seen any other indicators that this is an issue as despite these concerns about potential AI overcapacity, major tech firms continue to invest heavily in AI infrastructure:         Amazon: Pledged $100 billion towards AI data centers.         Alphabet (Google): Committed $75 billion.         Meta (Facebook): Planning to spend up to $65 billion.         Alibaba: Announced a $53 billion investment over the next three years. If we see a rush of announcements

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Dual Feed: Vantage Data Centers, VoltaGrid, Equinix, Bloom Energy, Constellation, Calpine

Nuclear Giant Constellation Acquires Natural Gas Stalwart Calpine, Creating the Largest U.S. Clean Energy Provider On January 10, 2025, Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Calpine Corp. in a $16.4 billion cash-and-stock transaction, including the assumption of $12.7 billion in net debt.  A landmark transaction, the acquisition positions Constellation as the largest clean energy provider in the United States, significantly enhancing its generation portfolio with natural gas and geothermal assets. With an expanded coast-to-coast footprint, the combined company will provide 60 GW of power, reinforcing grid reliability and offering businesses and consumers a broader array of sustainability solutions. The move strengthens Constellation’s competitive retail electricity presence, serving 2.5 million customers across key U.S. markets, including Texas, California, and the Northeast. “This acquisition will help us better serve our customers across America, from families to businesses and utilities,” said Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation. “By combining Constellation’s unmatched expertise in zero-emission nuclear energy with Calpine’s industry-leading, low-carbon natural gas and geothermal generation, we can deliver the most comprehensive clean energy portfolio in the industry.” A Strategic Move for the Data Center Industry With skyrocketing demand for AI and cloud services, data centers are under increasing pressure to secure reliable, low-carbon energy sources. The Constellation-Calpine combination is particularly relevant for large-scale hyperscale operators and colocation providers seeking flexible energy solutions.  For the data center industry, this consolidation offers several advantages: Diverse Energy Mix: The integration of nuclear, geothermal, and low-emission natural gas provides data centers with flexible and reliable energy options. Grid Stability: Calpine’s extensive natural gas fleet enhances grid reliability, crucial for data centers operating in high-demand regions. Sustainability Initiatives: The combined entity is well-positioned to invest in clean energy infrastructure, including battery storage and carbon sequestration, aligning with the sustainability goals of hyperscale operators. The

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

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

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

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

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

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

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

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

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