power plant
A Startup Wants to Power Data Centers With 'Supercritical' Carbon Dioxide
The technology could strap onto existing gas turbines and make them more efficient--but it wouldn't do away with their emissions entirely. A new company has a plan to make the dirty gas turbines powering data centers more efficient: liquid carbon dioxide. American Supercritical came out of stealth Wednesday, announcing $8 million in funding. It wants to retrofit inefficient gas turbines that many data centers rely on for power with units that can generate more power, without adding more emissions (though the gas-fired turbines will continue to emit carbon pollution). The technology can also theoretically be used on a wide variety of energy sources at a time when power demand is skyrocketing.
What's at stake in AI's trillion-dollar gamble
When Jessica Wachter, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, wanted to assess AI's impact on the economy over the next few years, she faced a long list of business and technical uncertainties. So she started with what she calls a "remarkable fact" that is not in question: A handful of so-called hyperscalers are investing huge amounts of money to build AI data centers. Instead of trying to predict how useful and widely deployed AI models will be, she simply asked how fast the hyperscalers' earnings will need to grow to justify their spending through 2027, when--she and her collaborator estimate--expenditures will reach nearly $1.1 trillion.
AI Agents Are Thirsty for Power
Silicon Valley is shifting away from chatbot queries toward a future filled with resource-intensive agentic AI--and it's driving the data center buildout. Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season's biggest issue: data centers. If you've got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Molly an email at [email protected] or reach them securely on Signal at mollytaft.76. "What on earth are they building all of these data centers for?" an exasperated friend asked me recently.
The Download: kids outlearning AI, and space travel agents
Plus: A new Amazon data center could become the US's most polluting power plant. Plus: both parties are turning against AI data centers ahead of the midterms. Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times more words than a person will experience in the process of mastering their mother tongue. This yawning divide between children and machines is called the data efficiency gap. It raises a tantalizing question for cognitive scientists and a challenge for the architects of AI models: how can children still outperform the most linguistically sophisticated machines ever built?
Russia reports Ukrainian drone strike near Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
Is the war entering a new phase? A drone strike close to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in occupied southeastern Ukraine has killed one nuclear specialist and wounded 17, according to Russian reports. Moscow asserted on Tuesday that the drone was launched by Ukraine. The security of Europe's biggest nuclear plant has provoked significant global concern amid the full-scale war on Ukraine that Russia launched in February 2022. Most of those injured by the strike were employees of the plant, according to a Telegram update by the Russian management of the nuclear facility.
Two Fossil Fuel Companies Are Betting Big on Data Centers
Chevron and Williams are big winners in the race to power artificial intelligence as they build out gas-fired power plants and pipelines. It's been a banner year for oil and gas companies. Some of the world's biggest oil giants have announced billions of dollars in quarterly profits over the past two weeks, boosted largely by the soaring price of oil thanks to the conflict in the Middle East. But the artificial intelligence boom is also giving fossil fuel companies a new industry to sell their gas, pipelines, and power plants to: data centers . Two American oil and gas companies, Williams and Chevron, are presenting that demand to investors as a huge win.
Iran warns of regional turmoil if US threats and attacks do not stop
What is Iran's Pickaxe Mountain? The United States has launched a 12th continuous night of strikes against targets in Iran, as Tehran threatened to launch more of its own attacks across the Gulf region, warning that "no infrastructure will be safe" unless its own security is guaranteed. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Wednesday that it had launched the strikes "to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters". Iran has said that strikes in the Gulf will not stop if the US continues to attack and threaten Iran. Iran's chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf delivered the message in a post on X Wednesday, after US President Donald Trump threatened to attack more Iranian power plants and bridges.
Cancer-linked chemicals pumped into US neighborhoods by Elon Musk's 'illegal' data center, lawsuit claims
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