New Jersey regulators fined the DataOne data center in Vineland $1.07 million after inspectors found 62 unpermitted portable generators running at the site in late July, giving the operator 45 days to shut them down or seek proper permits. The facility, which supplies compute for Nebius under a $33 billion deal with Microsoft, has drawn prior resident complaints over an unpermitted LNG tank, noise, and lack of public consultation.
Google plans to launch an experimental satellite called MVP on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base next week, part of its Project Suncatcher initiative. The satellite carries four Tensor Processing Units powered by solar panels generating one kilowatt, roughly matching a single Earth-based server, and is designed to process simple AI requests for up to a year while orbiting for as long as six years before burning up on re-entry.
Oracle issued a force majeure notice to the developer of its Project Jupiter data-center site in New Mexico, according to reporting on the project. The company has also dropped one key development partner amid the buildout, while local residents have pushed back against the project.
Apple has continued reducing its overall emissions even as it invests in AI infrastructure, a trend that contrasts with rivals whose emissions are rising due to power-hungry data centers. The company has previously pledged to become carbon neutral across its entire supply chain and product life cycle by 2030.
Oracle Corp Japan reported record fiscal first-quarter results, with net sales up 13% to 74.86 billion yen and net profit up 23.2% to 18.25 billion yen for the June-August period. Cloud revenue rose 31.7%, now accounting for 33.6% of total sales, and the company kept its full-year sales growth outlook at 6-10%. The stock jump came even as Oracle's U.S.-listed shares fell more than 3% after the company issued a force majeure notice related to its New Mexico data center project.
California recently certified a ballot measure for November that would impose a one-time 5% levy on billionaires' wealth, paid over five years, aiming to raise about $20 billion annually for health care, food aid and schools. The Center for Land Economics released a report estimating California's total land value at roughly $8.14 trillion, verified through three separate methods, and argues this dwarfs the state's billionaire wealth base by about eightfold. The report notes six named billionaires already hold substantial wealth outside the state's reach, illustrating the mobility of that wealth compared to land.
New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection fined data center operator DataOne $1.1 million for running 45 of 62 gas generators without required air permits, violating the state's Air Pollution Control Act. The generators operated at 1,982 kilowatts, far above the 37-kilowatt threshold requiring permits, and the violation surfaced after The Guardian and Floodlight News published thermal drone footage in August. DataOne has 45 days to apply for permits or stop operations, but can keep running the generators during that review period.
Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a Stargate data center campus in New Mexico, according to Bloomberg. The notice would let Oracle delay payments if the facility fails to meet its 2028 launch target, though the company says it isn't trying to exit as the site's main tenant. Both Oracle and Blue Owl Capital, whose unit received the notice, say the project's financial commitments remain unchanged and construction is on schedule.
Google plans to launch a satellite called MVP on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 1, carrying four tensor processing units powered by roughly one kilowatt of solar energy. The satellite will process simple AI queries for a year as part of Project Suncatcher, an early-stage effort to test whether AI computing hardware can withstand orbital conditions, and will remain in orbit for six years before burning up on reentry.
Google will launch its first Project Suncatcher test satellite, called MVP, on October 1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The refrigerator-sized craft carries four of Google's custom TPU AI chips and roughly one kilowatt of solar power, and it uses a spacecraft body built by satellite imagery firm Planet Labs rather than a custom-built Google design. The test mission will run for only a few months.
An Entrepreneur op-ed argues that electricity, not chip supply, is becoming the binding constraint on AI growth, citing IEA projections that global data-center power use could nearly double from 485 to 950 terawatt-hours by 2030, with AI-specific demand tripling. It notes that by 2027 a single advanced server rack could draw as much peak power as 65 households, and that grid constraints could delay roughly 20% of planned data-center projects.
In an interview on The Ezra Klein Show, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that AI will require heavy fossil fuel use in the near term because renewable energy capacity is insufficient, likening the resulting pain to surgery necessary to save a patient. He also criticized the US for not building enough fossil fuel plants to meet AI's energy demands.
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