Did you hear the news?

• BlackRock, GIP, MGX in group acquiring data center operator in $40B deal (Update) - The AIP was founded by BlackRock, GIP, MGX, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) to expand capacity of AI infrastructure. Its financial anchor investors include the Kuwait Investment Authority and Temasek. [SA - 20251015]
• AMD to supply OpenAI with 6GW-worth of GPUs, 1GW deployment from 2026 - "Deal will also allow OpenAI to take a ten percent stake in the chipmaker" [DCD - 20251006]
• Microsoft CTO claims company will mainly use its own AI chips in the future - "Microsoft hopes to one day use mainly its own AI data center chips, according to CTO Kevin Scott." [DCD- 20251002]
• NVIDIA Partners With AI Infrastructure Ecosystem to Unveil Reference Design for Giga-Scale AI Factories - "At the AI Infrastructure Summit, NVIDIA’s Ian Buck introduces a reference design and partner-driven strategy to transform global infrastructure for high-performance, energy-efficient AI." [Nvidia-20250909]
• Nvidia launches Rubin CPX GPU for large-scale inferencing - "The company this week announced the Rubin CPX, a new class of GPU purpose-built for massive-context processing. The chip designer said the new GPU enables AI systems to handle million-token software coding and generative video faster and more efficiently." [DED-20250909]
• OpenAI set to start mass production of its own AI chips with Broadcom, FT reports [BT-20250905]
• "European Commission receives 76 expressions of interest for AI gigafactories initiative" - "The EU gigafactories project, announced in February, will see three to five supercomputing clusters built across the continent, each equipped with 100,000 AI chips for training the latest and most complex models. Further technical specifications have not been disclosed." [DCD- 20250702]
• "Elon Musk's xAI raises $10bn in debt and equity for data center development" - "Elon Musk's xAI has raised a total of $10 billion in debt and equity, partly to fund the development of more data center capacity." [DCD- 20250702]
• "Top 10: Cloud Leaders" - "... some of the leading cloud companies across the technology industry to support data centres with security and compliance" [DCM- 20250627]
• "AMD vs NVIDIA Inference Benchmark: Who Wins? – Performance & Cost Per Million Tokens" - MI325X, H100, H200, B200, MI355X, VLLM, SGLang, TRT-LLM, ROCm CI Lack of Coverage, Inflated AMD Rental Prices [SemiAnalysis- 20250523]
• "Nvidia launches NVLink Fusion to connect custom CPUs and ASICs with Nvidia hardware" - Fujitsu and Qualcomm will be first companies to integrate NVLink Fusion into their chips [DCD- 20250519]
• "Waymo and Toyota Strike Deal on AI-Assisted Driving. What It Means for Tesla" [BARRONS- 20250503]
• Vertiv, Nvidia, and iGenius partner on AI supercomputer Colosseum " Vertiv, Nvidia, and iGenius are teaming up to deploy an AI supercomputer in Italy. Dubbed Colosseum, the supercomputer will be an Nvidia DGX AI supercomputer powered by the Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips. The system is expected to be deployed this year, and will be located in southern Italy." [DCD - 20250422]
• Nvidia GB200 NVL72 now available via Oracle Cloud [DCD - 20250429]
• AMD 2.0 – New Sense of Urgency | MI450X Chance to Beat Nvidia | Nvidia’s New Moat [Semianalysis - 20250423]
• Accelsius tests ability to cool 4,500-watt chips.  "After around 700W, air cooling for chips becomes increasingly difficult, and liquid-cooling becomes a more suitable option. Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs can currently operate at up to 1,200W, with the previous-generation H100s scaling up to a thermal design point (TDP) of 700W. AMD’s MI355X operates at a TDP of 1,100W. The recently announced Blackwell Ultra, also known as GB300, is set to operate at a 1,400W TDP." [DCD - 20250414]
• Google's Sundar Pichai recommits to $75bn spend on data centers [DCD - 20250411]
• Google unveils 7th gen TPU "Google unveiled the seventh-generation tensor processing unit chips, which will be the first designed specifically for inference." - Ironwood: The first Google TPU for the age of inference [Google Press Release - 20250409]
• EU Commission sets course for Europe's AI leadership with an ambitious AI Continent Action Plan "Building a large-scale AI data and computing infrastructure" [EU Press release - 20250409]
• Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Ian Buck, and Charlie Boyle on the future of data center rack density "CEO Huang and other Nvidia heads tell DCD about what to expect over the next few years" [DCD - 20250321]
• Who is Intel’s new CEO Tan Lip-Bu? "The Singapore-raised industry veteran will helm the US chip giant from Mar 18" [BT-20250314]
• MWC 2025: It's not just a telecoms show anymore "Unsurprisingly, AI dominated most of the discussion at MWC. I don’t think I saw a stand that didn’t mention AI in some shape or form, it was absolutely everywhere."[DCD-20250313]
• CoreWeave files for IPO on Nasdaq stock market "In the company's SEC filing, CoreWeave noted that as of December 31, 2024, it had 32 data centers operating more than 250,000 GPUs in total, and more than 360MW of active power."[DCD-20250305]
• DigitalOcean launches Bare Metal GPUs. "Bare Metal GPUs differ from DigitalOcean's GPU Droplets in that the infrastructure is not shared, and gives customers full access to the entire GPU. According to DigitalOcean, this is ideal for customers needing direct control over hardware and is "tailored" for projects like large-scale model training and real-time inference.."[DCD-20241122]
• Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI’s “mind” "Autoencoders are letting us peer into the black box of AI. They could help us create AI that is better understood, and more easily controlled."[MIT-20241114]
• Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO on Claude, AGI & the Future of AI & Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #452 [Video] [Podcast-20241112]
• NVIDIA and SoftBank Corp. Accelerate Japan’s Journey to Global AI Powerhouse "NVIDIA today announced a series of collaborations with SoftBank Corp. designed to accelerate Japan’s sovereign AI initiatives and further its global technology leadership while also unlocking billions of dollars in AI revenue opportunities for telecommunications providers worldwide."[Nvida-20241112]
• Largest Liquid-Cooled AI Cluster in the World. "xAI’s Colossus supercomputer cluster achieves massive scale using the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform to connect 100,000 NVIDIA Hopper Tensor Core GPUs. The most powerful liquid-cooled AI SuperCluster is designed to take xAI’s Grok AI to another era. [Video]"[SMIC-20241029]
• Open Compute Project Foundation Expands Its Open Systems for AI Initiative. "NVIDIA and Meta Contribute Modular Server and Rack Technologies Establishing New Multi-Vendor AI Cluster Supply Chain" [Open Compute-20241015]
• Tech Unheard Episode 1: Jensen Huang. "“We’re trying to make it go faster,” Huang said during a conversation with Arm CEO Rene Haas. The discussion came in the debut episode of a new podcast hosted by Arm, called Tech Unheard. The podcast launches today." [Tech Unheard-20241010]
• OpenAI pitched White House on unprecedented data centre construction. "Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation Energy, said he has heard Altman is talking about building five to seven data centres that are each 5 GW." [Business Times-20240926]
• Oracle Offers First Zettascale Cloud Computing Cluster. "OCI is now taking orders for the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud—available with up to 131,072 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs—delivering an unprecedented 2.4 zettaFLOPS of peak performance. The maximum scale of OCI Supercluster offers more than three times as many GPUs as the Frontier supercomputer and more than six times that of other hyperscalers. OCI Supercluster includes OCI Compute Bare Metal, ultra-low latency RoCEv2 with ConnectX-7 NICs and ConnectX-8 SuperNICs or NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand-based networks, and a choice of HPC storage." [Oracle Press Release-20240911]
• AMD to Significantly Expand Data Center AI Systems Capabilities with Acquisition of Hyperscale Solutions Provider ZT Systems. "Strategic acquisition to provide AMD with industry-leading systems expertise to accelerate deployment of optimized rack-scale solutions addressing $400 billion data center AI accelerator opportunity in 2027." [AMD-20240819]
• Singtel partners Bridge Alliance to offer GPU-as-a-Service in South-east Asia "The deal will allow Bridge Alliance member operators to gain access to the GPUaaS offerings from Singtel." [BT-20240819] 
• What are the core barometers of AI Monetization?  [SA-20240812]
• Palantir and Microsoft Partner to Deliver Enhanced Analytics and AI Services to Classified Networks for Critical National Security Operations. [BW-20240808]
• Everyone can have a personal AI (agent)! [Nvidia-20240730] Watch Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discuss how fundamental research is enabling AI breakthroughs, and how generative AI and open-source software will empower developers and creators. They also discuss the role of generative AI in building virtual worlds, and the potential of virtual worlds for building the next wave of AI and robots. 
• Apple says it uses no Nvidia GPUs to train its AI models. [BT-20240730]. Apple's paper detailed how two of its models are built.
• What Is Apple Intelligence? [SeekingAlpha - 20240729] "Given the interplay between semiconductor design and software in AI, we'd like to share our thoughts on Apple's silicon prowess."
• Google DeepMind’s new AI systems can now solve complex math problems. [MIT-TechReview - 20240725] 
• AMD President Victor Peng to Retire. [SA-20240722]
• AMD creates new unified AI team under Victor Peng. [TS-20230503]
• The Appetite For Datacenter Compute Is Ravenous. [NP-202406] Interview with Forrest Norrod, GM of AMD DC Business. "What’s the biggest AI training cluster that somebody is serious about – you don’t have to name names. Has somebody come to you and said with MI500, I need 1.2 million GPUs or whatever."