
Some of the big US investments being made in AI and energy
Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab-owned Google has struck a $3 billion deal with Brookfield Asset Management for electricity generated from two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania. The tech giant will also invest $25 billion in data centers across Pennsylvania and neighboring states over the next two years, Semafor reported on Tuesday.
Asset management firm Blackstone (BX.N), opens new tab plans a $25 billion investment in data centers and energy infrastructure in Pennsylvania, its President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Gray told a panel at the summit.
On Monday Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said his company would spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers, including a multi-gigawatt data center dubbed Prometheus, which is planned for Ohio.
Cloud infrastructure technology company CoreWeave (CRWV.O), opens new tab plans to spend up to $6 billion on building a new artificial intelligence data center in Pennsylvania, the company said on Tuesday.
The pledges come amid a surge in investments for AI startups, a sign that the field continues to thrive even as venture capital firms are struggling to raise money, a report from PitchBook on Tuesday showed.
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The Independent
11 minutes ago
- The Independent
Border Patrol hiring spree offers lessons as another immigration agency embarks on massive growth
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ICE, the main agency responsible for arresting and deporting people within the U.S., is set to get $76.5 billion, nearly 10 times its annual budget, under a bill Trump signed on July 4. Most of that money is for detention, but some is for hiring and other uses. The White House says ICE will grow from 20,000 employees to about 30,000. 'To do it today is an effort that needs to start years ago,' said Matthew Hudak, former Border Patrol deputy chief. 'The funding is there, but it is nearly impossible to bring in that many people that quickly because you hit challenges." Sponsoring a NASCAR race car and bull riding contests The Border Patrol nearly doubled its workforce from 11,264 agents in October 2005 to 21,444 agents six years later. To recruit officers, the agency sponsored a NASCAR race car and bull riding contests. It aired ads during Dallas Cowboys football games. It advertised at military bases. Billboards and job fairs hundreds of miles from the border promised fulfilling careers, resulting in thousands of applications a week. The agency also loosened some hiring guidelines and training requirements. The age limit for new hires was raised to 40 years old from 37. Spanish language training was cut by up to 30 days, some training was moved online and other instruction was shifted to the field to lessen time at a training academy that the agency opened in Artesia, New Mexico, during the hiring surge, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Arrests for illegal crossings fell to their lowest levels in decades — a sign for some that the strategy succeeded. But other measurements were more troubling. In 2008, the Border Patrol struggled to keep new agents, with about 20% failing to graduate from the academy and more leaving after returning to their stations. Arrests of CBP employees for misconduct increased to 336 in the 2012 fiscal year from 190 seven years earlier. The agency saw a spate of high-profile corruption cases, including agents accused of smuggling people across the border or working with drug cartels to bring illegal drugs into the U.S. The polygraph pass rate for new applicants tumbled to 33% in 2012 from 58% four years earlier. While the accuracy of the tests came under scrutiny, one applicant admitted that his brother-in-law, a known Mexican drug smuggler, asked him to use his employment to facilitate cocaine trafficking. Another admitted to using marijuana 9,000 times, including the night before the exam. A 2015 Homeland Security report found that the number of investigators assigned to internal wrongdoing was 'woefully inadequate' for the agency's growth. "Any time you have massive political pressure to beef up overnight, it never turns out well," said T.J. 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It comes at a time of historically low crossings after they reached a record high in December 2023. ___ Spagat reported from San Diego.


BBC News
11 minutes ago
- BBC News
Meta investors settle $8bn lawsuit with Zuckerberg over Facebook privacy
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Reuters
11 minutes ago
- Reuters
Exclusive: Amazon's AWS cloud computing unit cuts jobs
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