Latest news with #datacenters
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Brazil power co gets OK for data center project with TikTok interest
SAO PAULO, May 30 (Reuters) - Wind farm developer Casa dos Ventos has regulatory approval to move ahead with a 300-megawatt project in northeast Brazil where the company has been discussing a major data center investment with the owner of TikTok. Brazil's national power grid operator (ONS) gave the green light to connect the project at the Pecém port complex in Ceará, Casa dos Ventos told Reuters on Friday. The total investment in infrastructure and equipment for the data centers is expected to reach 50 billion reais ($8.7 billion), the company added. The ONS approval should speed up talks with major technology companies including ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, a person familiar with the negotiations said. Reuters first reported last month that the Chinese company was eyeing a major Brazilian data center investment with Casa dos Ventos, which partnered in 2022 with TotalEnergies ( opens new tab on its wind power portfolio. ($1 = 5.7180 reais)
TechCrunch
5 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Atomic Canyon wants to be ChatGPT for the nuclear industry
Tech companies are betting heavily that nuclear power can help deliver the electricity they need to realize their AI plans. But data centers need power tomorrow, and the nuclear industry isn't known for its speed. Trey Lauderdale thinks AI can give nuclear the speed that it needs. Lauderdale's obsession with nuclear started close to home. In San Luis Obispo, California, where he lives, he kept running into people who worked at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. 'They're like the coaches of our flag football team,' he said. In talking with them, he learned that nuclear power plants are swimming in documents. Diablo Canyon, near Lauderdale's home in San Luis Obispo, has around 2 billion pages worth, he said. Lauderdale, a serial healthcare entrepreneur, had a hunch that AI could help the nuclear industry tame its paper problem. Lauderdale founded Atomic Canyon a little over a year and a half ago, initially funding it with his own money. The startup uses AI to help engineers, maintenance technicians, and compliance officers find the documents they need. The startup landed a deal with Diablo Canyon in late 2024. Lauderdale said the deal led to inquiries from other nuclear power companies. 'That's when I knew, as an entrepreneur, we were at a point where we needed to raise a round of capital.' Atomic Canyon closed a $7 million seed round led by the Energy Impact Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Participating investors include Commonweal Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Tower Research Ventures, Wischoff Ventures, and previous angel investors. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW When Atomic Canyon first started, its AI engineers tested various models with underwhelming results. 'We quickly realized the AI hallucinates when it sees these nuclear words,' Lauderdale said. 'It hasn't seen enough examples of the acronyms.' But building a new AI model requires massive computing power. So Lauderdale talked his way into a meeting with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which conducts nuclear research and also happens to have the world's second fastest supercomputer. The lab was intrigued by the idea and awarded Atomic Canyon 20,000 GPU hours worth of compute. Atomic Canyon's models use sentence embedding, which is particularly suited to indexing documents. It tasks them with making a nuclear power plant's documents searchable using retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG. RAG uses large language models to create responses to queries, but it requires the LLMs to refer to specific documents in an effort to reduce hallucination. For now, Atomic Canyon is sticking to document search, in part because the stakes are lower. 'One of the reasons we're starting generative work around the titles of documents is because getting that wrong might cause someone a little frustration. It doesn't put anyone at risk at the plant,' Lauderdale said. Eventually, Lauderdale envisions Atomic Canyon's AI creating 'a first round draft' of documents, complete with references. 'You are always going to have a human in the loop here,' he said. Lauderdale didn't put a timeline on that effort, though. Search is 'the foundational layer,' he said. 'You have to nail the search.' Plus, given the number of documents in the nuclear industry, 'we have a long runway in search alone,' he said.
Reuters
5 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
CenterPoint Energy increases capital plan to meet data center power demand
May 27 (Reuters) - CenterPoint Energy (CNP.N), opens new tab on Tuesday increased its 10-year capital expenditure plan to $52.5 billion through 2030, up from $48.5 billion, to cater to anticipated demand from artificial intelligence data centers, the utility said on Tuesday. U.S. power companies are significantly increasing their capital expenditure budgets as they manage soaring requests for additional power capacity from Big Tech firms scouting the nation for optimal locations to build new data centers. CenterPoint intends to spend $4 billion in new projects to support its growth in Texas. In April, the company had said that new connection requests had surged by nearly 7 gigawatts since the end of January, strengthening its confidence "in the robust economic outlook for (Texas)".
Reuters
6 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
German consortium in talks to build AI data centre, Handelsblatt reports
FRANKFURT, May 27 (Reuters) - Germany's SAP ( opens new tab, Deutsche Telekom ( opens new tab, web hosting firm Ionos ( opens new tab and unlisted retailer Schwarz are vying for European Union support to build a large data processing centre for artificial intelligence, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Tuesday. The consortium is in intensive negotiations to build one of the five data centres, known as AI gigafactories, that the EU plans to support, the paper said, citing industry executives. The companies did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment from Reuters. The European Commission plans to provide $20 billion in funding to construct AI data centres to catch up with the U.S. and China. The project, intended to enable the bloc to create its own AI models, will face challenges ranging from obtaining chips to finding suitable sites and electricity. Under the government coalition agreement, opens new tab between German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives and the Social Democrats, the partners earlier this year said they aimed to have at least one such centre built in Germany. Handelsblatt said the deadline to provide initial expressions of interest to the EU is June 20.
E&E News
23-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Wisconsin OKs gas-fired power to offset coal closures, serve data centers
Wisconsin's largest utility received approval from state regulators Thursday to add almost $1.5 billion of new gas-fired generation to supply new data center demand as it shutters existing coal plants. The three-member Public Service Commission, all appointees of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, voted unanimously to conditionally approve the projects proposed by Milwaukee-based We Energies over opposition from consumer advocates and environmental groups who argued that the utility was overlooking cheaper, cleaner options. The issue before the PSC highlights a tension across the country. States have established emissions reductions goals, yet face political pressure to attract economic investment, specifically 'hyperscaler' data centers like the ones proposed along Wisconsin's Interstate 94 corridor. Advertisement Such is the case in Wisconsin, where Evers during his first term laid out a goal of achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050. But the governor sees data centers — and especially a $3.3 billion Microsoft data center campus in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee — as a huge economic win for the state.
