Chips & Infrastructure

AMD’s data centre sales nearly double to $8.5B

Total revenue rose 45% to $13.38 billion, and AMD forecasts about $17 billion for the next quarter. It says Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle now run work on its new Helios AI racks.

AMD reported third-quarter results on November 3. Revenue rose 45% from a year earlier to $13.38 billion, above the $13.09 billion that analysts expected, according to LSEG. Data centre sales rose 97% to a record $8.5 billion, helped by server processors and new MI450 AI chips. AMD forecasts about $17 billion for the fourth quarter, and its shares rose after the report.

Marvell agrees to buy Lumentum in a $115B bet on AI optics

The all-stock deal gives Lumentum an enterprise value of $115 billion, including debt. Marvell says copper links are reaching their limits in AI data centres. Both companies’ shares fell on Monday, and the deal is due to close in the first half of 2028.

Marvell and Lumentum announced on Monday, November 2, that they will combine. Each Lumentum share becomes 4.5 Marvell shares, worth about $1,132 at prices before reports of the talks. Marvell’s owners would hold about 67% of the combined company.

Google’s satellite runs AI in orbit and sends back a haiku

Its Suncatcher prototype answered a first prompt with the Gemma 4 model, a month after launch. Google calls it the first AI response from a data-centre-class chip in orbit. Tests of heat and radiation come next.

Google said on October 30 that its Project Suncatcher prototype satellite has answered its first AI prompt in orbit. Engineers sent a prompt to Gemma 4, an open Google model on board, and asked for a haiku about being in space. The answer came down as the satellite passed over Svalbard, Norway.

Samsung says its 2027 HBM supply is already sold out

Samsung confirmed a record quarterly profit of 107.4 trillion won, almost all from chips. It plans to spend about 84.4 trillion won on factories and equipment this year, a record.

Samsung Electronics published its final results for July to September on October 29. Operating profit was a record 107.4 trillion won, about $80 billion, up 783% from a year earlier. On its earnings call, Samsung said it has finished selling its 2027 supply of HBM, the fast memory used in AI chips.

Apple’s new MacBook Pro is the first Mac with a touchscreen

The 14-inch and 16-inch models have an OLED screen, the Dynamic Island from the iPhone, and M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. They start at $2,899 and $3,399 and reach stores on November 6.

Apple announced a new MacBook Pro on October 28 with a touch display that it calls PROLED XDR. It is the first Mac that people can control by touching the screen. Orders opened the same day in 30 countries, Apple says. The new laptops sit above the cheaper M6 MacBook Pro that Apple announced a day earlier.

SK hynix sales pass 100 trillion won on AI memory demand

The Korean chipmaker’s July–September sales rose 328% from a year earlier, and its operating profit rose 632%. SK hynix expects demand for memory to beat supply through 2030.

SK hynix, a top maker of the memory chips that AI systems need, published its third-quarter results on October 28 in Seoul. Sales were 104.6 trillion won, its first quarter above 100 trillion won. Operating profit was 83.3 trillion won, or about $62.8 billion, AFP reports. The figures are preliminary.

Apple puts its M6 chip in the MacBook Pro and iMac

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and the iMac at $1,499, and both go on sale on November 6. Apple says the M6 runs AI work up to 25% faster than the M5, but no outside test has checked its claims yet.

Apple announced a new 14-inch MacBook Pro and a new 24-inch iMac with its M6 chip on Tuesday, October 27. Both can be ordered from October 28 and go on sale on November 6, in 35 countries and regions, Reuters reports. Apple sells both as machines that run AI on the device. The speed claims are Apple’s own.

Apple’s new iPad mini gets OLED, an A20 Pro and a $699 price

Apple announced a thinner iPad mini with an 8.5-inch OLED screen, its A20 Pro chip and protection against water and dust. Orders open on Wednesday and it goes on sale on November 6. It costs $200 more than the 2024 model did at launch.

Apple’s new iPad mini, announced on Monday, October 26, starts at $699 for Wi-Fi and $849 with cellular. Apple says the A20 Pro chip runs AI tasks up to 4.5 times faster than before. No independent tests are out yet.

Amazon plans more than €16bn for Germany in 2027

Amazon says €4.8 billion of it will expand its cloud data centres around Frankfurt. The total is a plan for one year, close to what Amazon says it spent in Germany in 2025.

Amazon says it will invest more than €16 billion in Germany in 2027, in cloud and AI data centres, warehouses, its Leo satellite internet and Prime Video shows. It announced the plan in Berlin at the government’s Invest in Germany Summit.

Amazon open-sources TorchNeuron to run PyTorch on Trainium

The tool lets PyTorch code run on Amazon’s own AI chips, and its public beta starts on October 20. Amazon says one setting is enough, but its own list of gaps shows that some code still needs work.

Amazon has released TorchNeuron, a tool that lets code written for PyTorch run on its Trainium2 and Trainium3 AI chips. It is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence, and its public beta starts on October 20. Amazon says developers need only one setting and no rewrite.

Microsoft quits Nscale’s Essex AI data centre, reports say

The Telegraph and the BBC say Microsoft has ended its part in the planned UK site, which cannot get enough power until the 2030s. Microsoft declined to comment, and Nscale says it still plans to build.

Microsoft has pulled out of Nscale’s planned AI data centre in Loughton, Essex, the Telegraph reported on October 18. The BBC said it understood the same. Nscale, a British company, has been told that the site will not get its power until the 2030s. Microsoft declined to comment to the BBC, and Nscale says it remains committed to the project.

iPhone Duo deliveries slip to late January after preorders

Within about half an hour of preorders opening, new orders for every version of Apple’s $1,999 foldable showed late-January delivery in the US. Apple calls the demand “nothing short of extraordinary”, but gave no order numbers.

Apple opened preorders for the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, on October 16 in more than 70 countries. By 5:30 a.m. Pacific time, half an hour after the start, Apple’s US store showed January 25 delivery for all eight versions, MacRumors found. Launch-day store pickup also sold out.

Tests find RTX Spark laptops fast at local AI, but hot

Reviewers ran AI models with more than 100 billion parameters on laptops with Nvidia’s new chip. Laptops with RTX 5090 graphics were faster on smaller models, and three testers saw crashes or shutdowns under heavy load.

The first independent tests of laptops with Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip came out on October 15 and 16. In Tom’s Hardware’s test of local AI agent tasks, Apple’s M5 Max MacBook Pro took about 25% longer than Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra. Most AI tests used versions with 128GB of memory, which cost $5,899.99 for the Surface.

Amazon’s Bee launches two AI recorders, from $74.99

The Bee Frontier goes on a wrist or clothing, and the Bee Eclipse sticks to the back of a phone. Both turn conversations into summaries and to-dos, and a Bee Pro plan costs $11.99 a month.

Bee, a maker of AI note-taking devices that Amazon bought in 2025, launched its first new products since then on October 15. The $74.99 Bee Frontier is on sale now at Amazon.com. The Bee Eclipse, from $99.99, comes “soon”. While switched on, both listen to conversations and turn them into summaries, reminders and to-dos.

TSMC’s profit jumps 69% to a record on AI chip demand

The world’s biggest contract chipmaker beat forecasts for a sixth record quarter in a row. It expects sales of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion in the last three months of 2026.

TSMC made a net profit of NT$763.1 billion from July to September, 68.7% more than a year earlier and above analysts’ forecasts. Its sales rose 41.2% in US dollars, to $46.72 billion. Chips for high-performance computing, a group that includes AI chips, brought in 68% of its sales.

Google to buy power from a $4B fuel cell plant in Wyoming

American Electric Power will build a 702-megawatt plant of Bloom Energy fuel cells near Cheyenne and sell its power to Google for 20 years. It should run fully by the end of 2028.

American Electric Power (AEP), a big US utility, plans to spend about $4 billion on a 702-megawatt fuel cell plant near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Google will buy its power for 20 years. Google is building a large data centre campus nearby. The fuel cells make electricity from natural gas without burning it, and AEP plans to add carbon capture.

ASML says AI demand will outrun its supply in 2027 and 2028

The Dutch maker of chipmaking machines raised its 2026 sales forecast to €44–45 billion. Some customers already want to order for 2029 and even 2030, ASML says.

ASML reported third-quarter sales of €11.7 billion and a profit of €5.0 billion on October 14. Its customers keep raising their forecasts for new machines, mainly because of AI investment, the company says. ASML now expects that its planned supply for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet that demand.

Apple’s $299 HomeView puts Siri AI on a home screen

Apple also showed a new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini on October 13. Siri AI starts as a test version in English and in eight countries, and HomeView will not be sold in the EU.

Apple unveiled HomeView, a 7-inch screen for the home, at its “Welcome home” event in New York. It costs $299 and arrives on November 13, on the same day as a new $299 Apple TV 4K. A new $149 HomePod mini ships on October 30, but it gets Siri AI only in a later update.

Alibaba starts selling its Qwen N1 AI glasses in China

The glasses run Alibaba’s Qwen assistant and cost from 2,218 yuan after subsidies and launch discounts. The N1 Pro adds eye control and payment by iris scan, Alibaba says.

Alibaba’s N1 and N1 Pro AI glasses went on sale in China on October 13, after pre-orders opened on September 22. Both have a 50-megapixel camera and batteries that can be swapped, and they run Alibaba’s Qwen assistant for tasks such as translation and notes. Alibaba also showed Qwen Clip, AI earbuds tuned with Bose.

Microsoft’s Maia 300 chip will run its AI from 2027

Microsoft says its own chips will become the main system that runs AI in its products. It claims 40% more AI output per unit of power than leading GPU systems, but nobody outside has tested the chip yet.

Microsoft unveiled Maia 300, the third generation of its own AI chip, on October 12. It is built to run AI models rather than train them, and its production use starts in 2027. Microsoft plans to scale its Maia chips to several gigawatts of data-centre power from 2027.

Yandex says drones shut a third data centre in four days

Its Vladimir site stopped on October 11, after strikes on two other sites on October 8 and 9. Reuters says the first site held two of the three supercomputers Yandex used to train YandexGPT.

Yandex said a drone attack damaged its data centre in the Vladimir region on Sunday, October 11, and that work there was completely suspended. Its cloud platform was still running in a limited mode that evening, and it told customers to consider other sites. It is the third Yandex data centre hit since October 8.

PC shipments fall 20% as AI demand lifts memory prices

IDC counts 62.7 million PCs shipped from July to September, and Omdia 58.1 million. Both say buyers stocked up early in the year to beat price rises, and HP and Dell fell the most.

Research firm IDC estimates that 62.7 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the third quarter, 20.1% fewer than a year earlier. Omdia counts 58.1 million, down 21.2%. Lenovo, HP, Dell and Apple all shipped fewer computers. IDC says high prices, driven by the building of AI data centres, are holding buyers back.

GlobalFoundries will make AI chip parts for TSMC in the US

The $2 billion deal runs for five years at first. GlobalFoundries will make silicon interposers, a key part of TSMC’s advanced AI chip packages, in New York from 2028.

GlobalFoundries announced a $2 billion agreement with TSMC on October 8. It will make silicon interposers for TSMC’s CoWoS chip packaging at its factory in Malta, New York. Volume production should start in the first half of 2028. GlobalFoundries says it will be the first US source of these parts, and TSMC has not commented.

Amazon’s new Alexa Tablets run Android with Google Play

The three tablets cost from $229.99 to $499.99 and have Alexa+ built in. They ship on October 14 in the US, Canada and Mexico, and reviewers see them as the successors to Amazon’s Fire tablets.

Amazon announced three Alexa Tablets on October 8: the 12 Pro at $499.99, the 11 at $329.99 and the 8 at $229.99. They run Android with the full Google Play Store, and Alexa+, Amazon’s newer AI assistant, is built in. They ship on October 14 in North America and on October 19 in five European countries.

Samsung’s profit rises almost ninefold on AI memory demand

Samsung estimates its July–September operating profit at about 107.4 trillion won, or about $80 billion. It is the first Korean company to pass 100 trillion won in one quarter.

Samsung Electronics published early estimates for its third quarter on October 8. Operating profit was about 107.4 trillion won, or about $80 billion, up from 12.17 trillion won a year earlier. Sales more than doubled to about 195 trillion won. Reports link the jump to AI demand for memory chips and higher memory prices.

Microsoft’s RTX Spark Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599

Preorders opened on October 7, and the laptop ships on October 16. A $5,999 desktop box with the same Nvidia chip follows in November in the US. No independent reviews exist yet.

Microsoft opened preorders for the Surface Laptop Ultra on October 7, from $2,599. It uses Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip and up to 128GB of memory shared by the processor and graphics. Microsoft says it can run AI models with more than 120 billion parameters on the laptop itself. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box costs $5,999.

Xreal’s Android XR glasses will start at $1,279

Only buyers who paid a deposit can preorder Aura now. Xreal says first shipments go to the US, Canada, Japan and South Korea, with orders for everyone in the coming weeks.

Xreal said on October 7 that its Aura glasses, which run Google’s Android XR, will cost $1,279 with 256GB of storage and $1,499 with 512GB. Preorders are open to people who paid for a reservation. Two outlets report that the first deliveries start in mid-November.

Amazon says it has dropped NDAs with data centre officials

AWS’s chief wrote that the company no longer signs secrecy deals with the government agencies on its projects. The post does not say whether older agreements still apply.

“We no longer use nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects,” AWS chief executive Matt Garman wrote on Amazon’s website. The same post pledged more than $1 billion over five years to data centre communities and promised yearly figures on energy and water use.

Nvidia adds a 64GB DGX Spark, from $4,999 at partners

The desktop AI computer keeps the same chip with half the memory, as memory prices soar. It goes on sale on October 23 from six PC makers.

Nvidia announced a 64GB version of its DGX Spark desktop AI computer on October 2. Systems from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP and MSI start at $4,999 and go on sale on October 23. Nvidia says one unit runs models of up to 100 billion parameters.

Amazon pledges $1 billion more to its data centre towns

The money over five years goes to job training, energy and water projects, and local priorities. AWS’s chief warns that more than 100 proposed moratoriums could cost the US the AI race.

Amazon said on October 2 that it will add more than $1 billion over the next five years to what it already spends in US communities that host its data centres. The programme, called Built Together, also comes with promises to stop using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies and to cover the energy costs its sites add.

Micron says AI memory will be even scarcer in 2027 and 2028

Its quarterly sales rose almost fivefold to $54.23 billion on AI demand. The chief executive says supply will be tighter in the next two years than this year, and he cannot see when it will balance.

Micron, one of the three big makers of computer memory, reported revenue of $54.23 billion for the quarter to September 3, up from $11.32 billion a year earlier. It expects about $61.5 billion next quarter. Chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra said memory supply will be even tighter in 2027 and 2028 than in 2026.

DeepSeek open-sources tools for Huawei’s AI chips

Its engineers added Huawei’s Ascend 950 to TileLang, an open-source language for AI chip code. DeepSeek says Huawei gave full support.

DeepSeek said on September 30 that it is open-sourcing programming tools for Huawei’s Ascend AI chips, including compute and communication libraries. Its engineers built support for the Ascend 950 into TileLang, an open-source language for writing the code that runs on AI chips. Reuters and the South China Morning Post describe it as a step away from Nvidia’s software.

AMD will buy Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 billion

The all-stock deal brings a maker of 3D world models into the chip company. Li becomes AMD’s chief scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su.

AMD has agreed to buy World Labs, the AI lab founded by Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at about $8.2 billion, the companies said on September 28. World Labs builds models that generate and simulate interactive 3D environments. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

Cerebras and Gimlet plan a faster AI cloud

The partners say a future service could reach 3,000 tokens per second. Its first CS-4 data centre is planned for later this year.

Cerebras and Gimlet Labs announced an inference-cloud partnership on September 28. Gimlet will connect its software with Cerebras wafer-scale computers. The companies say the service could deliver up to 3,000 generated tokens per second for agents and real-time apps. The first Cerebras-powered Gimlet data centre is expected later in 2026.

China may let firms buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500, report says

The Information reports the ministry asked ByteDance and Alibaba about their purchase plans. Reuters could not verify the report, and the card is not on sale yet.

China’s tech ministry asked companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to report their plans to buy Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500, The Information reported on September 27. It told some of them that it intends to approve the purchases, according to the report. Reuters could not verify the report. An Nvidia spokesperson said US firms remain restricted by outdated US export controls and by China’s own limits on imports.

Crusoe and Boom ended their turbine deal for AI data centres

Boom’s CEO first blamed a change in Crusoe’s power plans, then deleted that line. Crusoe says its plans have not changed.

Boom Supersonic’s chief executive, Blake Scholl, said on September 25 that Crusoe and Boom are no longer launching Boom’s Superpower gas turbine together. Crusoe, which builds AI data centres, had ordered 29 of the 42-megawatt turbines in December 2025. Crusoe told TechCrunch the partnership “isn’t the right fit today”.

Oracle sent a force majeure notice on a Stargate campus

The data-centre campus is in New Mexico. Oracle says the project is still on schedule.

Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a huge data-centre campus in New Mexico linked to the Stargate effort with OpenAI and SoftBank. Bloomberg first reported it on September 24. The notice could let Oracle delay payments if the site misses its 2028 start, but Oracle says the project remains on schedule.

Google will send its AI chips into orbit next week

It is the first real test of its idea for data centres in space.

Google said on September 24 that its first Project Suncatcher satellite, built with Planet, will launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission next week. The satellite carries four of Google’s TPU chips and will test how they cope with radiation, heat, and launch forces. Reports put the launch on October 1.

Alibaba calls its Zhenwu V900 China’s most powerful AI chip

It has published no tests to prove it.

At its Apsara conference on September 22, Alibaba showed the Zhenwu V900, a chip for training and running AI. It says the chip has three times the performance of May’s M890 and will be mass-produced from early 2027. It also plans Qwen models with 5 to 10 trillion parameters.

Helsinki’s Verda raised $189 million to rent out AI chips

Its growth figures are its own.

Verda, the Finnish AI cloud company formerly called DataCrunch, announced $189 million in new funding on September 22, led by Emergence Capital. It says it is now worth at least $1 billion and that its yearly revenue rate reached $165 million in July.

Huawei’s new AI system replaces thousands of optical modules

The numbers still need outside tests.

The Atlas 960E SuperPoD links up to 4,096 AI processors with near-packaged optics. Huawei claims lower power use and higher reliability, while the first Ascend 960 chips are planned for 2027.

Amazon ordered billions in backup generators

The AI power boom now has a reliability bill.

Generac expects $2.4 billion of initial deliveries in 2027 and 2028. Amazon also received rights to buy shares as payments for data-centre generators rise toward a possible $8 billion.

AI data centres want faster grid access

A new alliance says flexible power use is the deal.

Google, Nvidia, Emerald AI, and energy companies launched a coalition for data centres that can reduce or move electricity use when the grid is stressed. The promises now need measured results.

Nvidia added software for fault-tolerant quantum computers

The hardware is still the hard part.

CUDA-Q Logical links quantum programs, error-correction methods, and hardware estimates. Fermilab reports faster design work, while Sandia’s QUOPS benchmark offers a common test for future systems.

OpenAI says one storage layer serves a billion weekly users

Its Rust rewrite is the smaller story.

OpenAI says Habitat handles more than 70 million requests each second and over 500 petabytes of data. A new Rust service uses less computing power, but reliable limits and simple data paths made the scale possible.

Positron’s $875 million round backs memory-first AI chips

Production is still planned for 2027.

Liberty Global joined a funding round that values Positron at $5 billion. The company says its design avoids scarce high-bandwidth memory, but its next chip has not entered production.

Nvidia’s Australia plan reaches 2 gigawatts

“Up to” is doing important work.

Nvidia and eight Australian partners say their sites could support up to 2 gigawatts of AI capacity by 2027. The announcement names the companies, but it does not give one full project schedule or energy plan.

Google will spend €13 billion in Finland

The grid plan matters as much as the servers.

Google says its largest single European investment will expand data centres and related systems in four Finnish areas. It also announced nuclear, wind, battery, and community projects.

Analog Devices will buy Alif for $1.35 billion

The target is AI inside machines.

The deal would join Analog Devices sensors with Alif processors that run AI locally. It is signed, but regulators must review it before the companies can close it.

Samsung wants Mistral AI inside its chip factories

Results will decide the value.

Samsung plans to use Mistral models to find defects and improve factory equipment. The partnership is real, but the promised gains have not yet been measured in public.

OpenAI says Samsung is helping with future chips

The details are still thin.

OpenAI says the companies are working on chip production and research. Samsung has not confirmed its exact role, so the announcement is a direction, not a finished product.

A $1 billion plan would put AI on 50 satellites

Most of it is still ahead.

A UAE company plans to fund a French-led network of Earth-watching satellites. They would process images in orbit, but launches, contracts, and safeguards still need proof.

Chiplets let companies build AI chips from smaller parts

Instead of making one very large chip, companies can connect several smaller parts in one package. Each part can have a different job.

Data centers can move some AI work to cleaner hours

Some AI jobs do not need to run at once. Data centers can move this work to times when electricity is cleaner and sometimes cheaper.

Why memory speed can slow down the next AI models

Running AI models is getting cheaper, but moving data through memory is still difficult. Faster chips cannot help if they must wait for data.