data

Meta spent a fortune on AI talent and data centers. Nine months later the result is: zero models

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Mark Zuckerberg wanted to be the Florentino Pérez of AI. last summer began to sign galacticos in this segment and getting talent by letting go stacks of millions of dollars. He more popularOf course, it was the AI wunderkind Alexandr Wangwho became leader of its “Superintelligence” division. The funny thing is that the months go by and go by and in Meta they don’t seem to have absolutely anything to show. And that is very worrying. Delays. Despite having invested billions of dollars in that restructuring of the company to bet (practically) everything on AI, three internal sources confirm that Meta finds it very difficult to meet the planned deadlines. The race for generative AI waits for no one, and at the company headquarters nerves are on edge because the roadmap is not being met. Avocado, where are you? The new foundational AI model that Meta has been working on for months has been internally named Avocado, but at the moment it is not measuring up, something that reminds us what happened to Llama 4. Internal tests reveal that although it manages to surpass the aforementioned Llama 4 and the old Gemini 2.5, it falls short of Gemini 3.0 (and of course, the recent Gemini 3.1). Patience. Coming out with a model that is clearly worse than its rivals does not make sense, so Meta has decided to wait and delay the launch of its model. Avocado is expected to hit the market in May at the earliest. And meanwhile, Gemini. The situation is so critical that according to these sources, the leaders of the AI ​​division are considering something unthinkable: paying a license to Google to be able to use Gemini in their own products, something that for example will Apple do Siri. That would be a clear sign that for now this own model is not capable enough to power the AI ​​functions of WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads. Money does not equal speed. The company has spent billions of dollars on AI researchers, and has committed to invest 600,000 million dollars in building AI data centers. In January, Meta projected a capex of $135 billion dedicated almost entirely to these projectsalmost double the $72 billion it spent last year. Despite these investments, the company is currently missing from an area in which its competitors continue to advance. Internal tension. According to these sources, Meta is becoming a tinderbox. The “TBD Lab” (for “To Be Determined”), the unit led by Wang, is working under maximum pressure on models named after fruits (Avocado, Mango, Watermelon), but has clashed with old-school Meta managers like Chris Cox and Andrew Bossworth. The company is trying to integrate those models with Meta’s advertising business, which is what supports everything, but Wang doesn’t seem to handle that part of the business very well. Goodbye to open models. Meta stood out at the beginning of this AI race as the company whose open models —not Open Source— were above the rest. Llama became the norm in this area, but in this new stage that philosophy seems to change and China is the one that now leads that segment. Thus, there is talk that both Zuckerberg and Wang lean toward closed models, such as those of OpenAI (GPT) or Google (Gemini). This allows you to have full control over the code, a competitive advantage that Meta does not seem to want to give up. Few fruits of this tree. Despite the extraordinary deployment of resources, the current balance is poor. Meta’s only tangible product of those investments is Vibes, an application similar to Sora that has not managed to fully gel. Meanwhile, those initial talent signings have turned into abandonments: the trickle of AI researchers who leave the company to join others (or found their own projects) is increasing. In Xataka | Meta has been buying chips from NVIDIA and AMD for years. Now it also makes its own so as not to fall short

Chips connected by laser instead of cable. It seems like science fiction, but it aims to revolutionize data centers

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If you have ever mounted a PCSurely one of the points on which you have had to pay the most attention is the connections. Because understanding the power of the processor, the GPU or the speed of the RAM is “easy”, but the motherboard is what allows us to interconnect all these components with ‘highways’ in which the data speed can be maximum. In the data centers and serversthis is the same: the better the connections between chips and equipment, the lower latency, higher bandwidth and better performance. These connections are made physically, but there is a French startup that wants to change the rules of the game with NVIDIA. As? Connecting the chips by laser. Chips connected by laser and NVIDIA taking out the wallet Improving interconnection speed is no small feat or a whim. NVIDIA has begun manufacturing its next generation platform, the one named Vera Rubin. It is a system that can be combined with others to multiply benefits. That union, as we say, is physical, but there comes a point at which physics is no longer enough. When that arrives, NVIDIA wants to be ready and, a few days ago, Reuters reported on a $4 billion investment by NVIDIA in two companies that are aggressively researching new technologies to help increase that interconnection speed: Lumentum and Coherent. This is a rack and the nightmare of those of us who hate cables. Specifically, that of the Wikimedia Foundation. Well, imagine that a large part of those cables go outside because the systems are connected by electricity Another of the companies in which they have invested is Scintil Photonics. It is a French startup that this in the testing phase of a technology that, if the industry adopts it, will mark a before and after in this connection on a team scale. The LEAF Light Evaluation Kit is, as detailed, the first dense wavelength division multiplexing single chip to go from theory to practice. It’s like another language, I know, but it’s basically what we were talking about: an optical chip interconnection system instead of copper. And that is the main advantage. With copper reaching physical limits of speed and density, optics are emerging as a solution when connecting clusters of thousands of processors. Each chip has an optical system that is responsible for emitting and receiving light, and in that light goes the data that is currently traveling through cables. The one from the French company it is not the first chip based on photonic communication, but they claim that their technology reduces the energy necessary for them to work by 50%, as well as latency. Results? Well we’ll see. The startup’s CEO, Matt Crowley, has commented that he has “six or seven companies interested in implementing the technology by 2028,” but that due to confidentiality agreements, he cannot name names. The Scintil Photonics prototype The complication in this will be that they get supply of the photonics systems, since the data center racks are built with the idea that they are scalables. That is, it is no longer just power, but how many tens of thousands of units you can interconnect, and a bottleneck in the manufacturing of any of the parties involved in optics would be equivalent to a lack of supply for their customers. At the moment, some prototypes have already been served to select companies for testing, but certainly, using light pulses instead of electrical signals is something that is very interesting in superclusters focused on huge data centers that can scale without the limitations of the physical connection. Images | Victorgrigas, M.I.T., GlobeNewswire In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

Building data centers in the Middle East seemed like a great deal. Until Iran arrived

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A few days ago we said that Iran had attacked two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain. It is the first deliberate attack on a data center and proof that it has become critical infrastructure at the level of power plants. The question is who thought it was a good idea to build data centers in one of the most unstable areas on the planet. A plan that comes from afar. In a trip to Saudi Arabia last yearTrump was accompanied by an entourage of technological leaders among whom were Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman or Sundar Pichai among others. At this meeting, massive investments were announced in the region with the construction of a massive data center complex. However, although it has been strengthened by this administration, the previous one was the one that started the path. In September 2024, Biden met with the leader of the Emirates to seek a strategic alliance that would allow them to develop their AI ecosystem. The reason. What has led technology companies to build in the Middle East is evident: saving. They count in Financial Times that the Gulf countries offered very interesting incentives, such as subsidies and cheaper energy. Furthermore, in this way all the problems they are having at home with the electrical gridpermits and resistance from many communities. The business seemed good. The map of AI in the Middle East. Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the countries with the most data centers, with 57 and 61 facilities respectively, according to Data Center Map. Of all of them, many are from American companies. Amazon alone has nine in the area, including those in the Emirates, Bahrain and also Saudi Arabia. Microsoft has data centers in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and is building one in Saudi Arabia. Oracle, OpenAI and other partners are building a mega data center in Abu Dhabi which they expect to reach 5GW. The damage. Although the Middle East has gained presence on the map of big tech data centers, the concentration of infrastructure is still ridiculous compared to that of the United States itself, which has more than 4,000 installations. All in all, build a data center It’s not exactly cheap. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, said a few months ago that Each gigawatt costs about $50 billion.. The irony. The same leaders who posed for a photo with Trump on that trip now see how their infrastructure is threatened and suffering the consequences of the conflict caused by the president himself. The idea of ​​investing in so much digital infrastructure in an unstable area was not such a good idea. The war against Iran It looks like it’s going to get longer. and nothing prevents Tehran from continuing to attack energy and technological facilities in the region. They were looking to reduce costs and it may end up being expensive, although seeing the projected capex for this yearthey can afford it. Image | Data Center Map (edited) In Xataka | The US is beginning to realize something worrying: AI data centers are skyrocketing its electricity bill

How to have your own specialized AI with the data and knowledge that you give it using NotebookLM

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Let’s explain to you how to have an AI trained with your own dataso that you can then ask questions related to them. For this we are going to use NotebookLMwhich is slowly becoming the artificial intelligence more useful and productive. What we are going to do is explain to you in a very simple way the main function of this tool, which is to create a notebook and upload your own sources of knowledgeso that all the questions you ask are based on this information you have uploaded. To process the information and generate the answers, the model will be used Gemini. It will maintain features such as understanding what you write and generating text, but the answers will be based solely on the sources you have added. An AI specialized in what you tell it The first thing you have to do is enter notebooklm.google.comand create a new notebook. NotebookLM is a tool that you can use for free, although with a limit of 50 free fonts. If you want your notebook to have more, then you will have to pay. When you’re creating your first notebook, you’ll be able to upload your first font. You can upload fonts in several waysusing a website whose data you want to use, uploading files that can be PDFs, images, documents or audios, YouTube videos, Drive folders or copied text. When you upload the first source, your notebook will be created. In it, at the top you can give it a specific name to differentiate it. You will have a tab of Sources where you can upload new elements as sources, and activate or deactivate the ones you want whenever you want. If you enter the tab Chatthen you will go to a Gemini type chat. In it, you can ask him questions about whatever you want, and will respond to you with the data from the sources that you have uploaded. If the answer to your question is not in the sourcesthen Gemini within your NotebookLM will respond clearly with a message. In this message he will tell you that the documents provided do not have mentions of what you have asked him. You have a configuration button in the section Chatwhere you will be able to define both the role of AI and its objectives in conversations and the length of the responses it gives you. This way, you can adapt it to what you need. You also have a tab Studiowhere you have different types of elements that you can create based on the sources or documents you have uploaded. So, if you are looking for more than textual answers, you can also create other elements such as audio summaries to listen to whenever you want, presentations or flashcards. In Xataka Basics | The best prompts to save hours of work and do your tasks with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or other artificial intelligence

Oracle builds yesterday’s data centers with tomorrow’s debt

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Yeah Stargate it smelled funny It’s because I did it. This has just been demonstrated by the decision of Oracle and OpenAI, who have decided to stop their expansion plans for the data center that was going to be the flagship of the project. This is not just a setback for the project: it is a turning point in that narrative that we have not stopped seeing and that seemed to defend that investment in AI could be unlimited. It’s not like that. OpenAI no longer trusts Oracle. According to reveal sources close to the project, OpenAI’s plans to expand the alliance with Oracle in its data center in Abilene (Texas) have been canceled. What initially It seemed like a solid partnership. to dominate the AI ​​computing segment has collided head-on with a reality: the sector seems to be growing faster than its foundations. Too slow. On Bloomberg indicate that the decision responds to an inability to scale at the pace that Sam Altman demands. OpenAI requires a compute density and deployment speed that Oracle cannot guarantee in the short term. That has forced OpenAI to look to other partners—including Microsoft—so as not to compromise its roadmap. Technological gap. This brake is a symptom of a potential critical problem for Oracle: the world requires data centers with the latest technology, the most modern chips and modern liquid cooling systems, but Oracle seems to be focused on a very slow update cycle. They are building yesterday’s data centers with tomorrow’s debt: although the infrastructures they are built were valid under previous standards, they are obsolete for the next generation of large language models (LLMs). The accounts do not come out. And as we said, the other problem with Oracle is that all these projects are financed with very high leverage and economic risk. Larry Ellison’s Company is jeopardizing future cash flows to create data centers that are “old” when they come into action. If AI revenues don’t materialize, Oracle will find itself in a dangerous position. Bubble. All of this contributes once again to AI bubble debate. No one seems to deny that this bubble exists, but this slowdown raises more and more doubts about excess investment in the sector. That OpenAI is now making this decision is a bad sign, and reinforces the theory that investment in AI has been absolutely overblown. This year alone, several AI giants have indicated that they will dedicate a capex of 650,000 million for data centers. The challenge of not being a Big Tech. OpenAI has a fundamental problem: it is trying to play with the elders. Google, Amazon and Microsoft already had gigantic cloud infrastructures, but also a financial situation that allowed them to consider their strategy in a different way. While OpenAI has not stopped signing agreements in which the figures involved are astonishing. OpenAI follows burning moneybut not only his: also that of others. The danger of the domino effect. That OpenAI has hit the brakes with Oracle can be dangerously contagious. If one of the leading companies in the sector takes a step back from its alliance with a key supplier, other clients could begin to think twice before reaching similar agreements. In Xataka | OpenAI says its deal with the Pentagon is secure. Seriously, really, you have to believe it, trust it, it assures you

Spain is preparing a data center specifically designed to have AI for war. The surprise: it is in Soria

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More than two thousand years ago, on the hill of Numanciaits inhabitants preferred to resist to the end rather than surrender to the siege of the legions of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. That story of defiance against a superior enemy has remained engraved in Soria’s memory as a symbol of resistance. Now, a few kilometers from that place, in the Valcorba industrial estate, the Ministry of Defense wants to build another kind of fortress: a data center named Numant-IA, where defense will no longer be measured in walls or swords, but in servers, algorithms and artificial intelligence. A unique project. While we live a technological-military schism in the USSpain accelerates in a project that precisely combines both sections. The Government has launched Numant-IA, a data center with a notable investment and totally dedicated to offering computing for AI. Here there are, yes, two notes that stand out. The full name of the project will be the Center for Advanced Defense Technological Capabilities, and its investment is part of the Annual Contracting Plan of the Ministry of Defense (Pacdef) from 2026. It includes 7,868 proposals and 156 framework agreements with a combined value of 10,102 million euros. Soria, new technological capital. The data center announced by the Government last September and that already it was outlined months before, it will have its headquarters in Soria. The project will take advantage of a space provided by the Soria City Council and that covers an area of ​​almost four hectares in the Valcorba industrial estate. Lieutenant General José María Millán, director of CESTIC, already warned then that said center will carry out the “incorporation of artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of the Armed Forces.” Military applications. The initial investment, which was 70 million euros, has been increased to almost 130 million euros according to El Heraldo de Soriaand will be assumed by the Ministry of Defense. Its resources will be used for applications that will process classified data in the area of ​​operations and logistics, and military applications will be an integral part of its mission. This project confirms other movements of the Armed Forces such as the development of Gonzalo, that “ChatGPT” for the army which is precisely designed to support this type of tasks safely. Employment and template. About 20 people will be a permanent part of the staff of this center that will operate 24/7 once it is operational. The construction of the data center, the Department of Defense states, will generate “a significant economic and employment impact on the city.” We know when, but we don’t know what. The Ministry of Defense has indicated that the project has a construction period of 24 months, and therefore they hope that it will theoretically be ready by early 2028. What we do not know is what type of infrastructure it will house or what the real capacity of the data center will be. 67.88 million euros will be dedicated to information systems and servers – unspecified, perhaps because they are not yet defined – while construction will be allocated 58.68 million euros and a third item of 1.65 million euros has no specified purpose. Sovereignty and decentralization. Choosing Soria as the location for this data center responds to the decentralization strategy of the Armed Forces. The defense budgets demonstrate this with a distribution of these funds throughout Spain in different projects that try to avoid the danger of excessive centralization of critical centers. The movement also answers to others that we have been seeing for months and that make it clear that in Spain and Europe they are trying to find solutions that allow us to have the highest possible degree of digital sovereignty. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Spain’s main problem is not weapons, fighters or drones: it is the number of hands it lacks to use them

create the mother of all data centers

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Almost a decade ago we learned about Neom, a Saudi superproject orchestrated to diversify the economy and stop depending so much on oil. Within the ‘crazy things‘ inside Neom, The Line It was the largest: a linear city 170 kilometers long and 500 meters high to house nine million people. The project has been falling apartbut they have found a solution: convert The Line into a data center. You wouldn’t expect anything else, would you? Let’s go with context. Climbing, but downwards. The Line has gone from being the city of the future to something totally different. Over the years, the utopian megaproject of 500,000 million dollars without cars, automated, powered by renewables and that began to be built under strong controversies due to the forced displacement of native tribes it was deflating. Of the 170 kilometers and nine million inhabitants, expectations dropped to 2.7 kilometers long for a population of 300,000 inhabitants. The most recent and independent reports indicated that The Line was unrealizable and that not even a country like Saudi Arabia could bear the cost. There were experts who they pointed that it was something “unmoored from reality.” “New phase”. The problem is that there is already a certain infrastructure built and, being a failure as it already is (and as it is perceived by the rest of the world), the most sensible thing would be to reuse what has already been built to do whatever. And within that ‘whatever’, comes the new gold mine: data centers. In the area where they were going to build the megacity, there is plenty of space to house gigantic data centersbut also some operational advantages. A small part of the land that has already begun to be moved to build The Line. Something will have to be done with the work done From the country they have not said anything because, as we say, swould be accepting a failure of biblical proportionsbut for a few weeks it has been pointed out that this new phase, this conversion to data centers, would allow monetizing what until now has only been a pit of money. They already have the land, the earthworks and part of the electrical connections, and building data centers is easier than ‘pulling’ two skyscrapers kilometers and kilometers long. Neom IA. And this new approach fits with Saudi Arabia’s aspiration to become the global AI node. We have been telling for a few months how Saudi Arabia is investing a lot of money to attract companies that want to build data centers. For example, 7 billion in one fell swoop at NVIDIAhuge investment for build a city-sized data centerand have created a company called Humain in which both NVIDIA and AMD are already involved. The million-dollar purchases are not being restricted to investments in Western Big Tech. In September last year, the Saudi fund (which is ultimately owned by the country) was merged 55 billion dollars in a legendary video game company: Electronic Arts. He didn’t do it for his video games (which, admittedly, are in the doldrums), but to buy cultural influence in millions of homes. It has not been the only billion-dollar movement in the country in terms of video games, since they are now negotiating the purchase of a mobile games company for about 7,000 million dollars. Access to the Red Sea. Therefore, it is evident that the country wants to diversify its economy, even if that means investing astronomical amounts that, admittedly, are still infinitely smaller than The Line’s initial objective. And, apart from money, the Saudis have something equally important: the power to do what they want in terms of energy, territory and access to the Red Sea. data centers They need water to dissipate heat and, although the navy is not adequate (in fact, there is controversy over its freshwater needs), the Red Sea implies an outlet to the rest of the world. As? Through submarine cables. They are deploying cables and that access to the Red Sea would allow the data centers on The Line’s land to be integrated with international fiber optic nodes in Europe or Africa. “We are determined, by the grace and power of God, to achieve the transformation objectives. But we will also not hesitate to cancel or radically change any program or objective if we find that the public interest requires it” – Shura Council on Neom and The Line in September 2025 Challenges. They can also combine gas with renewables like solarwhere it has enormous potential on the ground, although there are some difficulties ahead. For example, temperatures are high and fresh water is scarce, although it could be used in heat exchange systems. Furthermore, the energy required to maintain the humidity and temperature conditions of the server rooms would be tremendous, complicating the design of the infrastructure. Promises and realities. In the end, and as different sources point out in Financial Timesit’s about getting money, diversifying the economy and data centers come into the equation. The location between three continents is good, there is plenty of land and access to both renewable and profitable energy (with projects like that of green hydrogen). And then there is the Red Sea. It certainly seems more likely that we’ll see a gigantic data center before anything else related to the Neom project. Current events are showing that Big Tech They have billions to invest in artificial intelligenceand Saudi pockets are deep to attract anyone. Some of the largest – Amazon, for example, which has just closed its data centers in Saudi Arabia by the Iranian attacks – may be attracted to the sovereign wealth fund. But of course, we will have to see if it is fulfilled. There we have the Jeddah Tower, Mukaabeither pharaonic airportother examples outside of Neom that, for the moment, are nothing more than promises. And Big Tech, with its hunger for computing, needs the data centers of the next decade… for before yesterday. Images | Neom In Xataka | AI is bringing … Read more

Google is going to build a mega data center in a state where the drought is atrocious. Your cooling plan: use air

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The American state of Texas has been dealing with heat wavesdroughts and a increasing pressure on its aquiferswhich makes it on paper one of the worst places to set up a data center. Well, Wilbarger County in Texas is just the place chosen by Google to set up your next data center. But big tech hides an ace up its sleeve: it is not going to use water for cooling, but air. Context. Briefly, a data center is an industrial facility full of servers where information transmitted over the internet, such as AI responses or your Google photos, is stored and processed. And if your personal computer requires cooling when it has been working with a certain intensity for some time to dissipate heat, more of the same with servers, which operate 24/7. The usual thing in these plants is to use thermal dissipation systems with water, either with chillers, evaporation or direct cooling with immersion, thermally efficient solutions, but problematic if water is scarce. The problem? That Texas is an oven that is not for buns: its drought is pressing. But Texas is not a foreign place for Google: it has been in that state for more than 15 years, where it has operational centers in Midlothian and Red Oak and already plans to build two more campuses in Armstrong and Haskell Counties. It’s very serious. The project. The Wilbarger County data center will reduce water use so much that it will restrict its application to basic campus uses such as kitchens and services. As? Google has not provided details of the technology, only that it will be advanced air cooling. Cooling with air in such a hot scenario implies greater energy consumption, so the problem now becomes electricity. What Google proposes is a “Power first” model. In short: the data center goes hand in hand with its own renewable electricity generation plant. Google’s energy partner for this project is AESone of the largest producers of renewables in the US, with whom it has a 20-year energy purchase agreement at an agreed price. This is how both win: AES has stability to build the plants and Google has the guaranteed supply and price. Furthermore, according to Google, they already have the land and the interconnection signed, which saves bureaucracy and launches the project into the construction phase. Why is it important. Because according to EESI estimatesa medium-sized data center can consume 416 million liters per year for thermal dissipation alone, the equivalent of a thousand homes. And if there is a shortage of water, allocating it to meet the needs of a data center is hardly justifiable. Wilbarger’s project solves this with air cooling, removing the precious commodity of water from the equation, but also from the electrical grid itself: Google cooks it and Google eats it (with the help of AES). Given that the demand for computing continues to grow, a model that does not consume water or overload the network emerges as a solution to a resource management problem. In figures. For Google, Wilbarger County is not a pilot plant and its size demonstrates this: 0 liters of water for cooling. The project will provide 7,800 MW of power to the Texas grid. The agreement between the technology and energy companies is for 20 years. Google advertisement an investment item of 40 billion dollars for Texas in November 2025 and has provided a $30 million fund to boost energy initiatives in Texas from 2026 to 2028. It won’t be easy. Although Google has been cryptic when it comes to reporting what the technology, its capacity and needs will be, the reality is that when cooling with air in a hot climate, the pressure is transferred to the electrical grid. On the other hand, and although this specific project points the direction of a possible solution to this problem, we will have to see if and how it can be scaled, because there are more and more data centers and the climate is increasingly more extreme. In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands In Xataka | Data centers in space are the finger, Google’s purchase of an electrical company is the Moon Cover | Google Data Centers and Ganapathy Kumar

Data centers have made the electricity bill more expensive in the US. And the Government has said enough

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Every time you ask a generative AI to solve a problem for you, a server on the other side of the world needs power to process it and cooling to keep from melting down. The problem is that this electricity meter that spins at full speed is not just that of the large technology companies: it is that of the entire community. The AI ​​revolution has a real physical and economic cost that has already begun to hit the pockets of families, unleashing a crisis that has forced the United States Government itself to hit the table. The US government has said enough. According to federal dataresidential electricity prices will increase a national average of 6% in 2025. Citizens, stifled by the cost of living, have begun to connect the dots and point to the huge data centers that are proliferating in their neighborhoods. As detailed Politicalthere are currently some 680 data centers planned in the country, gigantic infrastructures that will require energy equivalent to that of 186 large nuclear power plants. This brutal demand has provoked strong citizen opposition, how to explain Guardiannumerous communities have begun to reject and block these projects for fear that their bills will skyrocket. The pressure has been so strong that the rebellion has penetrated traditionally conservative fiefdoms. According to Financial TimesRepublican legislators in states such as Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma have suggested halting the construction of data centers, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed laws to regulate them and protect families from price increases. Faced with this scenario, Donald Trump’s administration has been forced to intervene. Washington’s “historical pact.” As reported The New York Timesexecutives from Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI made the pilgrimage to Washington to meet with President Trump and sign the so-called “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” (Ratepayer Protection Pledge). The objective of the agreement is to shield consumers from rising electricity costs. Technology companies have committed to “build, provide or buy” the new electricity generation resources they need, assuming 100% of the costs of infrastructure and improvements to the transmission network. During the meeting, Trump left a phrase that perfectly summarizes the sector’s reputation crisis: “They need help with public relations, because people think that if a data center is installed, the price of electricity will go up.” The president assured that, thanks to the pact, that “will no longer happen.” For their part, managers such as Ruth Porat (Google) or Dina Powell McCormick (Meta) confirmed their commitment to pay for the infrastructure “whether or not they end up using that energy.” according to statements published by the New York media. We cannot understand this move by Washington without looking at the electoral calendar. Politically, as they point out Financial TimesRepublican strategists alerted the White House that energy inflation was an imminent risk ahead of the midterm congressional elections (midterms). The Democrats, like Senator Mark Kellywere already using citizen anger as a political weapon, calling Trump’s pact a simple “handshake agreement” that was insufficient. And the clash with reality: a network to the limit. On paper, the promise sounds perfect. As the specialized media ironically says Engadget“big tech agrees not to ruin your electricity bill.” However, journalism and energy sector experts agree that there is a gigantic distance from words to actions. As he warns Political, The agreement is, in essence, a voluntary “handshake”, without binding legal force. Rob Gramlich, former economic advisor cited by CNBCremember that the White House has no direct jurisdiction over this matter: the rules of the electric grid are decentralized and depend on the public service commissions of the 50 states. It is they, and not the federal government, who approve how costs are distributed. The damage in some areas has already been done. Argus Media reports that on the PJM network —the largest in the US, covering 13 states and including the world’s largest data center cluster in Virginia—capacity costs have skyrocketed by $23 billion, record rates that are locked in until 2028, making it “virtually impossible” to lower prices for consumers in the short term. An independent watchdog came to describe this situation as a “massive transfer of wealth” from citizens to corporations. Competition for resources is fierce. Abe Silverman, researcher at Johns Hopkins University cited by Politicalcompares the situation to “a bidding war for a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.” There is a five-year waiting list for gas turbines, and their prices have doubled. This technological urgency not only makes the network more expensive, but is stopping the green transition in its tracks. As they explain Argus Mediathe immense demand for servers cannot be covered quickly enough with renewable sources. This is forcing power companies to delay the closure of polluting coal plants and invest heavily in natural gas generation, perpetuating dependence on fossil fuels. The greatest risk, Silverman warnsis what happens if Silicon Valley is wrong in its growth calculations: “You spend 3 billion to improve the network, and then the data center does not materialize (…) Who is left with the problem? Grandma.” Should Europe demand the same? If we cross the pond, the situation is no less worrying, and the regulatory approach is drastically different. According to data from the European Commissiondata centers currently consume 415 Terawatt-hours (TWh) globally (1.5% of the world total), a figure that, driven by AI, will double to 945 TWh in 2030. In the European Union, consumption was around 70 TWh in 2024 and will jump to 115 TWh by the end of the decade. Europe has launched a mandatory monitoring system under the Energy Efficiency Directive to demand transparency about this consumption and its water and carbon footprint. But in Spain, the problem is already a physical jam in the networks. As we have described in Xataka, The Spanish electrical grid is like a saturated highway to which, suddenly, “a convoy of trucks of industrial tonnage” has arrived. The technical regulations of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) caused a “cascade effect” that blocked connection permits. The … Read more

energy and data centers

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When talking about Iran’s weapons, missiles are often mentioned. However, a fundamental leg of the country’s war machine is that of kamikaze drones. He Shahed-136 introduced in 2020, known as “loitering ammunition“, has been Iran’s strategic spearhead in the Middle East for years. Also a weapon that Russia has used in the Ukrainian war. After the beginning of the war against the United States and IsraelIran has directed these drones against its enemies. Not against bases, but against the two pillars that can do the most damage to the West. Energy and data centers. The drones. Since the Ukrainian war began, drones have proven to be the most fearsome weapon. There are more homemade ones, there are more sophisticated ones, but they all have something in common: power to destroythey can be operated at a good distance, they are very cheap, it is difficult to intercept them and the most advanced ones can be launched in swarms without risks for the operators. But Shahed’s drones are not like a street DJI with explosives: they are drones with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers that are ideal for attacking very effectively. The key is in the price: they are thrown a lot and, even if many are intercepted, the cost of that interception is extremely favorable for the attacker. It is estimated that a drone costs about $20,000 while a interceptor missile The average is between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars. That relationship is making even the US is using them. Ras Tanura. And it is these drones, and their variants, that Iran is using to attack critical infrastructure. Because they don’t have to hit the targets directly: they just need to land nearby or with the simple threat that they can reach that key infrastructure. We have an example in Ras Tanura. It is one of the largest oil refineries in the world that had to close its doors last Monday. Aramco (the owner) made the decision after debris from intercepted drones fell near the facilities in Saudi Arabia. This caused a crisis in the crude oil market, with the barrel rising in price meteorically and with a lot of Overcrowded cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Data centers. But if power is critical, in the age of AI, data centers have also become a vital infrastructure. That is why these facilities are also in the crosshairs of an Iran that attackeddirectly, two installations of Amazon Web Services, or AWS, on March 1 and 2. AWS presence These are two data centers in the United Arab Emirates, while another Amazon facility in Bahrain also suffered some damage from a third attack. And specifically, computing on EC2 and cloud storage on both S3 and DynamoDB began to experience high error rates. Amazon itself confirmed that “these attacks have caused structural damage, disrupted power to our infrastructure, and, in some cases, required fire suppression activities.” They point out that the water damaged part of the equipment and, as a consequence, their clients should migrate their workload to servers in other parts of the world because the recovery “will be prolonged.” Market with anxiety. This has impacted the market, of course. If in the energy and crude oil segment it is evident that stopping a plant that ‘produces’ 550,000 barrels a day and cutting off a transit area through which passes 20% of the world’s oil has its consequences, which data centers becoming a target has also shaken the market. Major companies related to AI, semiconductors and storage suffered the consequences this past Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. NVIDIA, Micron, Western Digital, ASML, Applied Materials, SK Hynix and Samsung traded lower on the worst day in recent months. It is not known if components can continue to be transported at the high rate we had if two of the busiest container shipping corridors of the planet suffer an alteration in traffic. But don’t worry, they are already recovering so that the AI wheel keep turning in any way. Images | Goal, Tasnim News Agency In Xataka | Ukraine has shown that wars are no longer won with tanks. They are earned with something that Spain has in its hands: PAMOV

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