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Police say sophisticated thieves stole six pallets of Nvidia equipment worth $11.4 million after the shipment left Oakland on August 29 bound for Fort Worth, Texas. The loss wasn't discovered until early September, and investigators lost the suspect vehicle's trail in San Bernardino County after multiple lengthy stops. No suspects have been arrested.
Jim Cramer said next week's earnings from companies tied to AI infrastructure, including Constellation Energy and neocloud CoreWeave, will test whether the recent selloff in data center stocks has stabilized. He noted Friday's market rebound followed the worst trading day in 19 months, triggered by election results that shifted control of Congress and some governorships. Cramer also pointed to Tuesday's CPI report as a factor that could influence Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh's next move on interest rates.
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC the company will continue investing in AI infrastructure and raising capital to meet customer demand, even after voters in Tuesday's midterms largely rejected or restricted local data center projects. She said OpenAI will keep working to build trust with communities and pointed to a policy blueprint the company released this week outlining commitments for its own data centers.
Tech and AI-linked stocks dropped sharply this week after Democrats' strong midterm showing, with Nvidia, AMD, Microsoft, Micron, Broadcom, Tesla and SpaceX all posting steep losses on Thursday. Neocloud providers Nebius, Iren and CoreWeave were hit even harder, falling between 10% and 17%, before U.S. tech shares showed partial recovery Friday morning. Analyst Kyle Rodda of Capital.com linked the slide to investor concern over potential tech regulation under a Democrat-controlled Congress, plus dozens of local ballot measures across 10 states targeting data center construction.
Companies that converted bitcoin-mining operations into AI data centers are discovering that the new business carries its own instability, rather than offering a calmer alternative to crypto mining. The shift, driven by hopes of steadier returns from leasing computing power to AI firms, has not shielded these operators from market and operational turbulence.
Apple reported record quarterly results, but new CEO John Ternus faced criticism for his handling of his first earnings call, with commentators from Bloomberg and Fortune describing his remarks as rehearsed and cautious. Ternus shared the call with CFO Kevan Parekh and COO Sabih Khan, a departure from Apple's recent practice of having the CEO field most questions. Apple shares slipped in pre-market trading after the company flagged rising memory costs and expenses tied to building Siri AI data centers.
Reports ahead of the November 3 midterm elections indicate that AI data centers have become a major campaign topic in several states, with candidates debating regulation and proposed moratoriums on new facilities. Voter turnout for the midterms is reportedly reaching record levels.
Sam Altman said on the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint that it's inefficient for consumers to keep DRAM sitting mostly idle in personal computers, arguing that memory would be better utilized in AI data centers. Elon Musk responded on X with a mocking meme referencing a WWII film about hunting for hidden items, framing Altman's comment as an attack on consumer RAM ownership.
A Sierra Club analysis, first reported by Bloomberg, projects that US grid emissions could reach 2.1 billion metric tons of CO2 by 2030 if currently planned AI data centers come online as scheduled. That would mark a 42 percent jump from 2025 levels, driven largely by gas-fired power plants built on or near data center sites to bypass grid bottlenecks.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says Boom Supersonic will miss its 2029 target for delivering the first Overture supersonic jet. Meanwhile, Boom has opened a new Colorado factory to build 42-megawatt natural gas turbines called Superpower for AI data centers, aiming to deliver the first units by mid-2027 and scale to 50 turbines annually by 2029. The company says a shared turbine core, Sprint Core, will power both the Superpower unit and the Overture's Symphony engine, with first test firing planned before Thanksgiving.
In a Cheeky Pint interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it's "quite terrible" that DRAM sits mostly unused inside consumer devices, since he estimates it's active only about 5% of the time. He argued memory would be better utilized in data centers, which run hardware near-continuously, citing PCs with local AI features and open-source LLMs as examples of inefficient use.
Amazon reported third-quarter results that fell short of Wall Street expectations, citing a shift in Prime Day timing as a drag on sales, even as its AWS cloud unit grew 39.3% to $46 billion, its fastest pace in nearly five years. The company also gave a cautious outlook for the holiday-quarter sales forecast, and shares fell 7% in after-hours trading following the report.