3+ week, 1+ day ago (402+ words) To survive the transition, it might be helpful to at least sound like you are up on the latest terminology, even if you can't bring yourself to use it. That way, you can understand what others think they mean as they style their way through the new era. So here are the five key buzzwords and phrases to look out for. Hence, there's a need for an "AI accuracy survival kit, which includes formal metrics to test AI output against an established norm, two factor error check, and so on. "We get one AI model to check another: a good enough ratio, a measure for AI accuracy, is just good enough for your initiative, O'Donohue said. "When a senior staff delegates to AI some of the work that juniors used to do. That approach captures value, but it can stall…...

4+ day, 16+ hour ago (290+ words) Digital Realty and a consortium including Equinix are competing to acquire atNorth, a Scandinavian datacenter operator, according to reports. Partners Group, a Swiss private equity and real estate biz which bought atNorth in 2021, is understood to be seeking between "4 billion ($4.6 billion) and "4.5 billion ($5.2 billion), according to Bloomberg and the FT. Now the bidders keen to snatch up the business are reported to include two of the largest multinational datacenter operators, Digital Realty and Equinix. Equinix is working with investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The Register asked atNorth to comment. atNorth operates nine datacenters across countries with cooler climates. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland are locations that offer significant cooling advantages for AI workloads. For either buyer, the acquisition would provide both additional capacity and entry into markets beyond the main European hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP)....

1+ week, 5+ day ago (793+ words) The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are trying again to eliminate state-level AI regulations in favor of a federal standard. The plan faces opposition from many state governments and civil-society organizations, while AI vendors have welcomed it. Not a party to be dissuaded by their own long-held view that states' rights to self-determination should preempt federal overreach, Republicans are trying two different approaches to getting a state-level AI regulation ban on the books after failing to pass the measure as a rider on Trump's budget reconciliation bill over the summer." This time around, Republicans in the House of Representatives want to find a way to add a ban on state-level AI regulation to the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The must-pass bill has already made its way through the Senate without an AI ban amendment, and language for such a…...

3+ week, 11+ hour ago (569+ words) The US datacenter industry is reaping huge benefits from state-level subsidies, but transparency around these incentives is limited and states that do calculate their returns find they are losing money on the deals. Hundreds of billions is being lavished on datacenter construction across the country, however, a report published today claims many of these projects are being funded at the expense of taxpayers, with few states confirming the names of the beneficiaries. Cloudy Data, Costly Deals: How Poorly States Disclose Data Center Subsidies is published by Good Jobs First, a non-profit body focused on corporate and government accountability. It points to 36 states where economic development subsidies for server farm projects mean that building materials and IT equipment are exempt from sales and use taxes. The report claims only 11 states actually disclose which companies are receiving subsidies, and even then the…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago (255+ words) Colt Data Centre Services has secured approval to invest "2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) in three hyperscale data centers at its Hayes Digital Park campus in west London. The expansion, approved by Hillingdon Council, will add 97 MW of IT capacity to the site near Heathrow Airport " more than doubling its total capacity to 160 MW. Construction is slated to begin mid-2026, with the first facility going live in early 2029. The new facilities " designated London 6, 7, and 8 " will run entirely on renewable energy through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), Colt said. Under planning restrictions, backup generators can operate for a maximum of 15 hours annually. Grid connection via high-voltage supply is scheduled for October 2027. Colt positions the project as support the UK government's industrial strategy, strengthening digital infrastructure for the AI economy - one of the obsessions of the current administration. The campus will feature an Innovation Hub developed…...

1+ day, 2+ hour ago (217+ words) Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. OpenAI says that it has taken an undisclosed ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, the management-focused offshoot of private equity heavyweight Thrive Capital, which itself is a major investor in the ChatGPT maker. "This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what's possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers," Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI said, according to a canned statement that accompanied the news. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in OpenAI's Monday announcement. The Register has reached out to OpenAI and Thrive Holdings for comment and details and will update if we hear back. Thrive Holdings' parent company, Thrive Capital, has invested billions into OpenAI through multiple rounds, and was one of three leaders (alongside…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (390+ words) Nvidia's latest generation of Blackwell accelerators won't be available in China anytime soon, according to CEO Jensen Huang, who said there were no "active discussions" about selling the coveted chips to the Middle Kingdom. The comments come as Nvidia increasingly finds itself cut off from the Chinese market. US lawmakers have repeatedly lobbied against allowing the sale of the GPU giant's most powerful AI chips to China." Meanwhile, in Beijing, opposition to Western IT infrastructure has grown, with government officials reportedly pressuring tech titans to ditch Western suppliers in favor of domestic alternatives. Most recently, Chinese officials reportedly banned state-funded datacenters from deploying foreign AI chips." "Currently, we are not planning to ship anything to China," Huang said during a visit to Taiwan on Friday, according to a Reuters report. "It's up to China when they would like Nvidia products…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago (396+ words) Broadcom will let its hardware allies self-certify their boxes as compliant with a new spec it developed that describes rigs ready to run AI workloads under its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud platform. The spec for AI hardware describes "AI Ready Nodes." VMware already certifies "vSAN ReadyNodes" " meaning servers designed for software-defined storage. VMware intends the AI version of this scheme to reassure customers that any kit they acquire will be capable of running AI on VCF, as part of Broadcom's move into the AI infrastructure market. The chips and software biz thinks this makes VCF more open and extensible. SuperMicro looks set to be the first to certify an AI ReadyNode system. "So all of the main GPU vendors out there, and the AI accelerator vendors out there, we will test and validate that solution with VCF and…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago (428+ words) Ready to have your agent talk to my agent and arrange a sale? Microsoft has published a simulated marketplace to put AI agents through their paces and answer a question for the new age: Would you trust AI with your credit card? Customer-facing assistants are all the rage these days. OpenAI and Anthropic, for example, have helpers that will navigate websites and complete purchases. Then there are assistants that will aid sellers with customer engagement and operations. It all points to a future where, like rich people with personal shoppers, the average user will have "people" to do all the work for them. To simulate what might happen, Microsoft's researchers built the Magentic Marketplace, an open-source simulation upon which agents can be unleashed and the results studied. And the conclusion? "Agents should assist, not replace, human decision-making." The marketplace simulation…...

1+ day, 8+ hour ago (499+ words) HPE is upgrading its Private Cloud AI stack with Nvidia technology and preparing a France-based AI Factory Lab where customers will be able to test out workloads. In advance of the firm's Discover event in Barcelona this week, HPE is disclosing details of some of the AI-related products and services it will be showcasing for customers. As you might guess, many involve GPU giant Nvidia. For example, the latest RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs are to be available across all of HPE's AI-focused private cloud platforms, along with STIG-hardened NIMs. STIG refers to Security Technical Implementation Guides published by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and NIMs are inferencing microservices from Nvidia for deploying AI models at scale. HPE is also adding support for GPU fractionalization, virtualization for Nvidia GPUs aimed at optimizing utilization and lowering costs, to those…...