GoPro announced a definitive merger with private photonics firm Starman Optical, aiming to expand beyond action cameras into AI data center infrastructure and defense-related optics. Shareholders will receive $285 million in cash, or $1.14 per share, while the stock stays on the Nasdaq and existing consumer products continue. Shares jumped 40% on the news, with major stakeholders including Markiplier and BlackRock standing to benefit.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told CNBC that many AI data center developers disregard the concerns of communities where they build, contrasting them with companies like Chobani that engage locally. His remarks followed an August executive order imposing strict new requirements on data center projects and removing them from a fast-track approval process.
SB Energy, a data center infrastructure company backed by SoftBank, Nvidia and OpenAI, has filed for an initial public offering with the SEC. The filing discloses net losses of about $3.2 billion for the first half of 2026 against roughly $139 million in revenue, mostly from its legacy energy business, while none of its planned AI data centers are yet operational.
GoPro announced a merger with optical-photonics company Starman Optical, a deal valued at $285 million that will pay off GoPro's roughly $92 million in outstanding debt. Existing GoPro shareholders will retain about 10 percent ownership of the combined, still publicly traded company, which expects the deal to close by the end of 2026 pending shareholder and regulatory approval. Beyond its camera and subscription business, GoPro plans to expand into optical transceivers for AI infrastructure, along with defense, government, robotics and aerospace markets.
Philip Johnston, co-founder of the orbital data center company Starcloud, has joined other entrepreneurs to announce the 'Fermi Explorer' project, aiming to raise $15 million to build and launch a small spacecraft carrying a 1-kg payload toward Alpha Centauri. The stated goal is to have the probe reach that star system in under 80,000 years, testing assumptions behind the Fermi paradox about why humanity hasn't detected extraterrestrial civilizations.
Starcloud founders Philip Johnston, Adi Oltean, and Ezra Feilden, along with program manager Garret Jameson, have unveiled Fermi Explorer, a nonprofit aiming to send a 1-kilogram spacecraft toward Alpha Centauri using existing space technology. The mission, budgeted at roughly $15 million and targeting a 2029 launch, would take about 80,000 years to reach the star and would be the sixth object to leave our solar system after Voyager and its peers.
MediaTek stock jumped 10% on Tuesday following news that Nvidia will invest $3.5 billion in convertible bonds issued by the Taiwanese chipmaker. The deal deepens a partnership aimed at expanding MediaTek's presence in data center chips, extending a rally that has seen its shares nearly triple this year.
Build American AI, a new group tied to the super PAC Leading the Future, plans a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin to build public support for local data centers. Leading the Future was seeded with over $50 million from investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and has mainly spent that money backing pro-AI candidates and opposing those skeptical of the technology.
President Trump used a Truth Social post to criticize local communities resisting new AI data center construction, saying such opposition would leave them 'backwards and poor' compared to areas that welcome the projects. The remarks follow a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo flagging voter backlash over data centers as a political risk ahead of the midterms, particularly in Ohio's tight Senate race.
President Trump posted on Truth Social criticizing the growing local opposition to AI data center construction across the U.S., arguing that communities rejecting these projects are choosing poverty and stagnation over prosperity. He also claimed that China benefits from the anti-data-center sentiment spreading through American towns and cities.
President Trump argued that communities blocking data center construction risk falling into economic decline, framing local resistance as a threat to competitiveness. His remarks come as polling shows most Americans are wary of having such facilities built near their homes.
Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Tsukuba built a solid-state cooling prototype that uses a shape-memory titanium-nickel film to convert heat directly into the mechanical motion needed to drive elastocaloric cooling, replacing the usual electric actuator. In tests, heating the actuator film to 86°C produced a 4.0 K temperature difference across the cooling device, and swapping in an external 130°C heat source still yielded a 2.2 K span, showing waste heat alone can power the cycle.
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