AI chips, data centre and energy news

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.

Why it matters

Nvidia’s strength is not only its chips but CUDA, the software most AI developers already use. Tools that let the same code run on Huawei’s chips make switching cheaper for Chinese developers. How well that code performs on the Ascend 950 has not been tested by anyone outside the project.

3 min read 3 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 29

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.

4 min read 4 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 29

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.

4 min read 2 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 28

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.

4 min read 4 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 26

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”.

4 min read 4 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 25

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.

4 min read 4 sources

Chips & InfrastructureSep 25

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.

4 min read 4 sources

More Chips & Infrastructure news

Chips & InfrastructureSep 23

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 23

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 19

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 19

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 16

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 15

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 13

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 13

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 10

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 10

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 10

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 9

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 9

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 9

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.

5 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 2

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 2

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.

4 min read

Chips & InfrastructureSep 2

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.

4 min read