Oracle and OpenAI have confirmed the $30 billion per year AI data center contract reported earlier this month. The deal will provide OpenAI’s Stargate project with 4.5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity in the U.S. Oracle is a Stargate partner and has been working in partnership with OpenAI on the Stargate I site, coming online in Abilene, Texas. “This additional partnership with Oracle will bring us to over 5 gigawatts of Stargate AI data center capacity under development, which will run over 2 million chips,” OpenAI explains. The “investment will create new jobs, accelerate America’s reindustrialization, and help advance U.S. AI leadership.” Continue reading OpenAI and Oracle Confirm $30B Annual Data Center Contract

OpenAI is adding Google Cloud to its list of global infrastructure providers for ChatGPT after relying exclusively on Microsoft Azure since the chatbot’s 2022 launch until January 2025 when Stargate was announced. Oracle and CoreWeave are also OpenAI cloud providers. Oracle is a Stargate investor, as is Nvidia, which holds a minority interest in CoreWeave. OpenAI has been active as it heads toward a December deadline for transitioning to a for-profit company. Meanwhile, ChatGPT is integrating a payment system to receive commissions on sales it initiates, and yesterday OpenAI launched a new AI agent that can perform complex tasks within a user’s browser. Continue reading OpenAI Contracts Google Cloud and Debuts ChatGPT Agent

Meta Platforms has embarked on an ambitious data center build-out to power its AI ambitions. This includes Hyperion, a massive facility to be built in Louisiana that “will be able to scale up to 5 gigawatts over several years,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Threads with a graphic illustrating how its planned footprint is nearly big enough to cover most of Manhattan. The first new plant to come online will be Prometheus in Ohio in 2026, Zuckerberg said, indicating his company will not be looking to OpenAI and Stargate partners to power Meta AI processing. Continue reading Meta Power Play Includes Data Centers of Up to 5 Gigawatts

Oracle will supply massive compute power to OpenAI as part of a new contract reported at $30 billion annually focused on accelerating Sam Altman’s ambitions for Stargate, the initiative to build U.S. data centers announced in January by President Trump as a matter of national security. OpenAI committed $500 billion over four years to the project. The Oracle deal involves an estimated 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center power consumption, equivalent to the power output of four-and-a-half nuclear reactors operating at full capacity — enough to power approximately 3.3 million U.S. households during that time. Continue reading OpenAI Deal with Oracle to Scale Up U.S. Cloud Infrastructure

New Jersey-based cloud-computing startup CoreWeave has reached an agreement to acquire crypto miner Core Scientific in a vertical integration move that will see the AI infrastructure provider gain access to more than 1 gigawatt of U.S. data center capacity with an incremental 1 gigawatt of power available for expansion. The all-stock transaction, valued at $9 billion, is expected to close in Q4 pending regulatory approval. According to CoreWeave, the purchase will eliminate some $10 billion in upcoming lease fees, saving around $500 million annually starting in 2027 and helping to “future-proof” the company. Continue reading AI Provider CoreWeave to Acquire Core Scientific for $9 Billion

Microsoft has entered into a five-year strategic partnership with the Premier League, replacing Oracle as the British football association’s official cloud partner in addition to providing AI services. Premier League mobile and web apps will begin featuring a chatbot powered by Copilot and Microsoft AI, which will also be used for the league’s fantasy games. The Premier League says it has 1.8 billion fans in 189 countries and claims to be “the world’s most-watched football league.” Microsoft will also help modernize the League’s technical infrastructure, both internally and in broadcast operations. Continue reading Microsoft Nets British Premier League as Cloud and AI Client

Stargate UAE is the first major deal announced by the OpenAI-led Stargate consortium in its march to develop giant data centers for artificial intelligence around the world. The massive Abu Dhabi cluster is expected to go live with 200 megawatts in 2026 then scale up to 1 gigawatt — enough to power a million homes — eventually taking its place as part of a 5GW UAE-U.S. AI technology cluster in the region. Stargate partners G42, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and SoftBank are participating in the build-out, which OpenAI explains was “developed in close coordination with the U.S. government.” Continue reading OpenAI-Led Stargate UAE Is Latest in Middle East Tech Push

OpenAI has closed a $40 billion funding round, a record for a private tech firm. The infusion gives the nine-year-old San Francisco startup a $300 billion valuation making it the second most richly apprised private firm in the world, second only to SpaceX at $350 billion and tied with ByteDance, according to CNBC. The round was led by SoftBank Group contributing $30 billion, which likely gives the Japanese holding company the second largest stake, after Microsoft, which is said to have received a commitment for 49 percent of any profits in exchange for nearly $14 billion. Continue reading OpenAI Closes the Largest Private Tech Funding Round Ever

Search firm Perplexity AI has renewed its push to acquire TikTok, outlining its vision for “Rebuilding TikTok in America.” As ByteDance approaches its extended deadline of April 5 to sell TikTok or see it banned here in the U.S., Oracle and its cohort of investors have emerged the frontrunners. While the three-year-old Perplexity is a longshot — with observers saying it does not have the cash on hand to purchase the social powerhouse — with deep-pocketed investors including Nvidia, Databricks and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, it likely has access to funding should its offer be accepted. Continue reading Perplexity AI Outlines Pitch to Acquire TikTok, Rebuild for U.S.

Japanese tech investment firm Softbank has agreed to acquire Silicon Valley chip startup Ampere for $6.5 billion, indicating that technology originating in smartphones will eventually become integral to global data centers and the future of artificial intelligence. The eight-year-old Ampere sells chips based on Arm technology, the processor type used in virtually all mobile phones. SoftBank purchased Arm in 2016 and has since been working to ensure the technology becomes used more broadly. Softbank says it will allow Ampere to retain its own name, operating it as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Continue reading Softbank Agrees to Acquire Chipmaker Ampere for $6.5 Billion

Google has acquired Wiz, a multi-cloud security firm that will remain cloud-agnostic under its new ownership. In fact, the ability to expand its customer base to companies that use competing cloud services like AWS or Azure was a key incentive for Google to buy the five-year-old startup, whose mandate is “to help every organization secure everything they build and run in the cloud — any cloud.” Google agreed to pay $32 billion for the New York-based firm, which had annual revenue of $700 million last year and was on track to increase that to $1 billion in 2025. Wiz, which had been considering an IPO, was most recently valued at $12 billion. Continue reading Google Agrees to Buy Cybersecurity Startup Wiz for $32 Billion

Couchbase, the publicly traded data platform for developers, has launched Capella AI Services with the aim of simplifying the process of developing and deploying agentic AI apps for enterprise clients. Capella AI joins the company’s flagship Couchbase Capella cloud data platform. AI offerings include model hosting, automated vectorization, unstructured data preprocessing and AI agent catalog services. Couchbase’s goal is to “allow organizations to prototype, build, test and deploy AI agents” while giving developers control over data across the development lifecycle, including secure data mitigation for large language models running outside the organization. Continue reading Couchbase Capella AI Helps Deploy Agents, Models, Services

Nvidia sales were up 94 percent to $35 billion in the most recent quarter when profits more than doubled, to $19.3 billion, telegraphing the strength of the artificial intelligence boom that took the company from the top supplier of graphics boards for gaming PCs to the world’s most valuable public company with a market cap of $3.59 trillion. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told analysts that demand for the company’s latest AI chip, Blackwell, has been “incredible,” driving projections of $3.59 trillion in revenue for the current quarter as customers begin to take shipments. Continue reading AI Boom Boosts Nvidia Sales by 94 Percent as Profits Double

Competing chipmakers Intel and AMD are joining forces on an advisory group for x86 computing. Invented by Intel and launched in 1978, the x86 architecture remains one of the most widely used platforms in the world, but has already been displaced by ARM in mobile, and is now fending off a challenge from that architecture in the AI space. Also participating in the x86 advisory are Broadcom, Dell, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Red Hat, joined by tech luminaries Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux, and Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. Continue reading Rivals Intel and AMD Team Up to Launch x86 Advisory Group

Management consulting firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) has ordered 100,000 ChatGPT Enterprise licenses from OpenAI, becoming the startup’s biggest third-party customer for the product, which is rolling out to all employees in the U.S. and UK. In addition, OpenAI has named PwC its first resale partner, making it the middleman for selling the AI company’s enterprise products to other businesses. PwC says embedding ChatGPT in its practice will make the Big Four accounting and consulting giant “uniquely positioned to help clients leverage ChatGPT Enterprise for better and faster ways of working.” Continue reading Endorsing GenAI, PwC Is Largest User of ChatGPT Enterprise