Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger issued Executive Order 22, barring executive branch officials from signing NDAs on data center projects, mandating faster noise regulations, and reviewing backup power operations. The order also launches an AI task force to study risks like job losses and privacy harms, alongside a new state framework aimed at ending automatic zoning approvals and rolling back subsidies for data center developers.
Creative studio Basura teamed up with producer Alan Wilkis's project Big Data to launch 'Adopt a Data Center,' a stuffed toy called Bezzy shaped like a server rack with googly eyes and limbs. Squeezing the plushie plays an actual recording of the piercing hum captured by a neighbor near a Virginia data center, timed to release alongside a new Big Data single.
Crusoe, the AI infrastructure firm behind Oracle's giant Abilene, Texas campus, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala, pushing its valuation to roughly $30.9 billion. The company is using the capital to expand into smaller, factory-built facilities called Spark, designed for AI inference rather than massive training clusters.
Anthropic and OpenAI are pursuing smaller data center deals in the 20-30 megawatt range, according to sources familiar with the discussions, even as both companies have already signed massive multi-hundred-megawatt and gigawatt infrastructure agreements. Anthropic has explored such deals in the UK and Nordics, while OpenAI has looked at similar opportunities in the Nordics, with talks also reportedly underway for smaller U.S. deployments. OpenAI confirmed it is building a 'diversified compute portfolio' but declined to discuss specific commercial talks; Anthropic did not comment.
Crusoe, the data center developer behind OpenAI's Abilene, Texas site, closed a $3.9 billion Series F funding round led by Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, valuing the company at $30.9 billion. The funds will support both large-scale data center builds and Crusoe's new modular 'Spark' AI factories, which can be manufactured off-site and deployed quickly. The company also added three board members, including Redwood Materials CEO JB Straubel and Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert.
Amazon Web Services has confirmed that customer data hosted in its Bahrain and United Arab Emirates regions was permanently lost following Iranian drone strikes on data centers six months ago. AWS said one of three UAE availability zones and all three Bahrain zones suffered damage beyond what its backup systems could withstand, and it remains unable to restore access to some resources.
Amazon Web Services has confirmed that customer data hosted in its Bahrain and United Arab Emirates data centers was permanently lost following Iranian drone strikes in March. The damage wiped out data across all three availability zones in Bahrain and one of three zones in the UAE, with AWS saying the destruction exceeded what its systems were built to survive. Amazon had already halted billing in the affected regions and spent six months trying to restore services before disclosing the losses.
Emerald AI has launched the AI Energy Management Alliance with Google, Nvidia and Anthropic, alongside utilities like AES, Constellation, National Grid and NRG Energy. The coalition aims to use demand-response software that lets data centers pause noncritical tasks or shift compute loads during peak grid stress, potentially enabling 100 additional gigawatts of data center capacity to connect to the grid.
Amazon Web Services disclosed on September 15 that drone strikes attributed to Iran destroyed data center infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain so severely that customer data and resources could not be recovered. AWS said the damage crossed multiple availability zones, exceeding the redundancy built into its regional and multi-zone systems, following earlier strikes in March and April that had already caused structural, power and fire-related damage.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul's administration released a Community Investment Framework advising local governments on negotiating with data center developers. The guide recommends towns demand roughly $1 million per megawatt of power demand in community investment, alongside plans covering long-term maintenance, site abandonment, and phased funding timelines.
Crusoe, the company behind construction of one of OpenAI's largest data center projects, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round valuing it at nearly $31 billion. The company is now expanding into factory-built, smaller-scale data centers alongside its large infrastructure work.
Al Gore, speaking with TechCrunch alongside Generation Investment Management's Lila Preston, argued that AI data centers' emissions are far smaller than critics claim, comparing them to landfill emissions and global air conditioning use. He said what worries him more are warnings emerging from within the AI industry itself.
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