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Tech News
President Trump posted on Truth Social that AI data center operators and hyperscalers will be required to generate their own electricity and share or sell surplus power back to local communities. He framed this as a way to offset rising electricity costs and other burdens these facilities impose on nearby residents.
Samsung Electronics is reportedly planning to convert its Xian factory to produce 286-layer NAND flash chips by year-end, while SK Hynix aims to upgrade its Dalian plant to make chips with 240 or more layers, according to Reuters sources. Both companies are racing to boost advanced memory output as AI data center demand grows, while fending off rising competition from Chinese manufacturers such as CXMT and YMTC.
CNBC's Jim Cramer said investors should not chase Monday's tech rebound, which saw the Nasdaq Composite rise about 1.1% after last week's AI stock selloff pushed the index below its 50-day moving average. Cramer identified four conditions he wants met before turning bullish again on data center stocks: improved chart patterns, hyperscaler earnings reports, the election concluding, and Anthropic completing its IPO.
Nvidia and Cisco have jointly unveiled Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a new optical transceiver standard supporting 400Gb/s per lane, the first interface to do so. Cisco says the module is designed to eventually reach total transfer rates of 12.8Tb/s, offering four times the bandwidth of existing 200Gb/s optics and 1.3x better power efficiency. Initial USFP transceivers will have 16 full-duplex lanes and work with both switches and Nvidia's SuperNIC adapters, which move data between GPUs using the RoCE protocol.
A YouGov/Economist survey found that among voters living within a mile of an AI data center, support for Democratic candidates rose from 54% to 61% between May and October. Nationally over the same period, the Democratic voting share rose more modestly, from 53% to 55%.
Federal Reserve officials, including Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee, say the massive buildout of AI data centers is pushing up prices beyond tech-related industries, a shift from earlier blaming tariffs for inflation. Goolsbee described the effect as demand-driven overheating rather than limited to data center components and adjacent sectors. The comments come as the Fed raised interest rates in September and markets expect another hike this month.
A new analysis from the Environment America Research and Policy Center, highlighted by Electrek, projects that gas-fired generator capacity in the US will grow by roughly 20 gigawatts, a 44 percent jump from today's 41.8 gigawatts, within four years. The report attributes much of this growth to surging electricity demand from AI data centers, and notes that planned wind farm capacity has fallen 34 percent since December 2025.
According to this week's Tom's Hardware Premium roundup, Tencent has signed a five-year, $7 billion deal to lease high-performance AI chips from Oracle, with the per-hour rate roughly 43% cheaper than leasing an Nvidia H100 on a one-year contract. No specific chip model was confirmed, though the deal's scale and pricing suggest Hopper-class GPUs. Separately, Synopsys and OpenAI unveiled 'GPT-Synopsys,' an AI model combining Synopsys' chip design IP and EDA tools with OpenAI's LLM capabilities.
A year-long Senate investigation found that AI data center developers have often exaggerated the community benefits of their projects while obscuring key figures. Companies reportedly tout construction job counts but withhold permanent staffing numbers, with some disclosing ratios as low as one permanent job per megawatt of capacity. The probe also examined sales-tax exemptions on computer equipment, which investigators say are more lucrative to companies than the property-tax breaks that typically draw public scrutiny.
A shortage of computer RAM, informally dubbed 'RAMageddon,' is being driven in part by AI data centers consuming large quantities of memory chips. The shortage is pushing up prices for consumers and businesses that rely on RAM for computers and other devices.
Firmus, the Nvidia-backed Australian AI data center operator, has withdrawn its planned initial public offering, which would have raised about $5 billion and ranked as Australia's second-largest share sale ever. The company said market volatility and unfavorable offer terms led its board to scrap the listing, and it will instead seek funding through private markets while weighing other public or private options.
A report from the Texas-based Collapse Survival Institute, authored by retired Air Force Colonel Drew Miller, claims people living near AI data centers could become targets if a 'misaligned' artificial intelligence were to escape human control. The report cites former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who has said there is more than a 10% chance AI could cause human extinction, and calls on Congress to halt new data center construction and require 'kill switch' infrastructure.