American Supercritical, a startup founded by Simon Shuham and others, emerged from stealth with $8 million in funding for technology that uses supercritical carbon dioxide to boost the efficiency of gas turbines powering data centers. The company plans to retrofit simple-cycle turbines—common at data centers but far less efficient than combined-cycle plants—so they generate more electricity without increasing fuel use, though the turbines will still emit carbon pollution from burning gas.
wired.com
· 2026-09-23
Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX is constructing a foundry in Bastrop, Texas, dedicated to casting turbine blades and vanes, a notoriously difficult manufacturing bottleneck in gas turbine production. Musk said the in-house casting operation could cut up to 18 months off the timeline for bringing new natural gas turbines online, supplementing solar power as SpaceX and Tesla scale up 100GW/year of solar capacity.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-30
Residents and advocacy group Stand.earth allege that the DataOne data center in Vineland, New Jersey — tied to a $19.4 billion Nebius-Microsoft GPU deal — has been running dozens of unpermitted gas turbines and building an unpermitted 1.5-million-gallon LNG storage tank near two schools. Locals say they only learned the site was a data center after the Microsoft deal became public, and complaints about nighttime noise and air pollution led to a delayed town hall in January 2026, months after construction began.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-08-29
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