In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities nearby. Meanwhile, Microsoft has acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property, and Apple is expanding its existing data center just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert--and it's just far enough away from Nevada's communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny. This story is part of Power Hungry: AI and our energy future--our new series shining a light on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial intelligence revolution.

Do you want allegedly useful "artificial intelligence" features in your face in every single service and tool you use, constantly, unceasingly, and demanding you pay more for it? The latest perpetrator is Adobe, who's now raising the price of its priciest Creative Cloud plans next month and justifying it by bundling in a bunch of generative AI tools. The Creative Cloud All Apps plan is being renamed Creative Cloud Pro, because apparently tools that cost hundreds of dollars a year and aren't available as full purchases aren't for "professionals" unless they're paying the maximum amount. If you're in the US, Canada, or Mexico, and if you're currently subscribed to All Apps, you'll be moved over to the Pro plan starting on June 17th… with a price bump from 60 per month to 70 per month for standard, yearly-subscribed users in the US. Month-to-month prices will jump from the already-sky-high 90 per month to 105 per month.

Innovation in IT got us to this point. Graphics processing units (GPUs) that power the computing behind AI have fallen in cost by 99% since 2006. There was similar concern about the energy use of data centers in the early 2010s, with wild projections of growth in electricity demand. But gains in computing power and energy efficiency not only proved these projections wrong but enabled a 550% increase in global computing capability from 2010 to 2018 with only minimal increases in energy use. In the late 2010s, however, the trends that had saved us began to break.

Over the course of a three-day trip to the Middle East, President Trump and his emissaries from Silicon Valley have transformed the Persian Gulf from an artificial-intelligence neophyte into an A.I. power broker. They have reached an enormous deal with the United Arab Emirates to deliver hundreds of thousands of today's most advanced chips from Nvidia annually to build one of the world's largest data center hubs in the region, three people familiar with the talks said. The shipments would begin this year, and include roughly 100,000 chips for G42, an Emirati A.I. firm, with the rest going to U.S. cloud service providers. The administration revealed the agreement on Thursday in an announcement unveiling a new A.I. campus in Abu Dhabi supported by 5 gigawatts of electrical power. It would the largest such project outside of the United States and help U.S. companies serve customers in Africa, Europe and Asia, the administration said.

Sumitomo and SBI Holdings will each acquire a 20% stake in a unit of Vietnam's software and telecommunications conglomerate FPT to foster artificial intelligence adoption in Japan, according to a statement. Sumitomo and SBI will invest in FPT Smart Cloud Japan, which oversees FPT's Japan AI data center, according to a statement from the Vietnamese technology firm. FPT will remain the unit's major stakeholder, it said. SBI Holdings late last year signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire as much as a 35% stake in FPT's Japan cloud unit. FPT is setting up a Japan AI data center, with an initial investment of 200 million.

I have to admit, heading out to London for 2025 KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe, I thought I might see the beginning of the downward trend for the event about building, deploying, and managing next-generation cloud applications and infrastructures. After all, the show turned 10 last year, and, in my experience, that's when conferences start to show their age. Plus, there has been lots of news around the effect of AI on application development, and while KubeCon isn't directly about dev, much of its focus is on applications and services. But boy, was I wrong. In fact, KubeCon 2025 in London was packed, with over 12,000 attendees.

I have to admit, heading out to London for 2025 KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe, I thought I might see the beginning of the downward trend for the event about building, deploying, and managing next-generation cloud applications and infrastructures. After all, the show turned 10 last year, and, in my experience, that's when conferences start to show their age. Plus, there has been lots of news around the effect of AI on application development, and while KubeCon isn't directly about dev, much of its focus is on applications and services. But boy, was I wrong. In fact, KubeCon 2025 in London was packed, with over 12,000 attendees.

To no one's surprise, there have been a lot of AI-related announcements at the Google Cloud Next event. Even less surprising: Google's annual cloud computing conference has focused on new versions of its flagship Gemini model and advances in AI agents. So, for those following the whiplash competition between AI heavy hitters like Google and OpenAI, let's unpack the latest Gemini updates. On Wednesday, Google announced Gemini 2.5 Flash, a "workhorse" that has been adapted from its most advanced Gemini 2.5 Pro model. Gemini 2.5 Flash has the same build as 2.5 Pro but has been optimized to be faster and cheaper to run.

A handful of wealthy, politically connected Silicon Valley investors are reportedly eyeing Greenland's icy shores as the site for a techno-utopian "freedom city." That's according to a report from Reuters, which details a proposed effort to establish a new, libertarian-minded municipality characterized by minimal corporate regulation and a focus on accelerating emerging technologies like AI and mini nuclear reactors. Supporters of increased economic development in Greenland argue its frigid climate could naturally cool massive, energy intensive AI data centers. Large deposits of critical and rare earth minerals buried beneath the island's ice sheets could also potentially be used to manufacture consumer electronics. The so-called "start-up city"--which bears similarities to another ongoing venture in California's Solano County--reportedly already has the backing of PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, President Donald Trump's pick for Denmark ambassador.

Everyone and their dog is investing in AI, but Google has more reason than most to put serious effort into its offerings. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an internal meeting before last year's holidays: "In 2025, we need to be relentlessly focused on unlocking the benefits of [AI] technology and solve real user problems." To help realize that vision, at the Google Cloud Next 2025 event in Las Vegas, Google announced substantial advancements in its Kubernetes and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) offerings. These advances aim to empower platform teams and developers to succeed with AI while leveraging their existing Kubernetes skills. Indeed, Gabe Monroy, Google's VP of Cloud Runtimes, said: "Your Kubernetes skills and investments aren't just relevant; they're your AI superpower."