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Trade Wars
U.S. Forms $1 Billion Partnership With AMD
The U.S. has formed a $1 billion partnership with Advanced Micro Devices to construct two supercomputers that will tackle large scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer treatments to national security, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and AMD CEO Lisa Su told Reuters. The U.S. is building the two machines to ensure the country has enough supercomputers to run increasingly complex experiments that require harnessing enormous amounts of data-crunching capability. The machines can accelerate the process of making scientific discoveries in areas the U.S. is focused on.
The plans call for the first computer called Lux to be constructed and come online within the next six months. It will be based around AMD's MI355X artificial intelligence chips, and the design will also include central processors (CPUs) and networking chips made by AMD. The system is co-developed by AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer said the Lux supercomputer will deliver about three times the AI capacity of current supercomputers. The second, more advanced computer called Discovery will be based around AMD's MI430 series of AI chips that are tuned for high-performance computing. This system will be designed by ORNL, HPE and AMD. Discovery is expected to be delivered in 2028 and be ready for operations in 2029.
Read more at Bloomberg
2025’s Incredible AI Spending Frenzy – A List of All the Investments of $1B Plus So Far This Year
$375 billion. That’s how much global annual AI spending is expected to swell to by the end of the year, according to projections from UBS. The investment bank expects AI spending to reach $500 billion by 2026, with spending on power and resources for electricity demand topping $3 trillion annually by 2030. Companies will spend a combined $6.7 trillion on data centers through 2030, with most expenditures funding systems based around AI chips, according to estimates from the consulting firm McKinsey.
Economists have warned that a stream of investments into AI could disrupt the global market, with some equating today’s trading environment to the 2000 dot-com crash. Forbes asked several AI chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok, about whether an AI bubble existed: Grok and ChatGPT signaled a bubble was present, while Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot suggested there were signs of an “emerging” bubble and Meta AI and Gemini said a bubble was “debatable.” Most of the chatbots pointed to likely unsustainable investor enthusiasm, while also noting there was nothing wrong with the technology or AI-related products.
Read more and see the spending timeline at Forbes
Lilly Partners With Nvidia On AI Supercomputer To Speed Up Drug Development
Eli Lilly said on Tuesday it was collaborating with Nvidia to build a supercomputer to help with drug discovery and shorten development cycles, getting medicines to people faster. Using the supercomputer, scientists at Lilly will be able to train AI models on millions of experiments to test potential medicines, expanding the scope of drug discovery efforts, the company said. A number of these proprietary AI models will be available on Lilly TuneLab, a federated artificial-intelligence and machine-learning platform that allows biotech companies access to drug discovery models trained on years of its research data.
Beyond discovery, Lilly plans to leverage the supercomputer to shorten drug development cycles. Additional applications include manufacturing, medical imaging and enterprise AI agents, Lilly said. Drug developers are increasingly adopting AI technologies for discovery and safety testing to get faster and cheaper results, in line with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's push to reduce animal testing in the near future.
Read more at Reuters
Nvidia Will Build AI Supercomputers For US Energy Department, Announces Total Bookings Of $500 Billion
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence chip leader will build seven new supercomputers for the U.S. Department of Energy, and said the company has $500 billion in bookings for its AI chips. The first company to be worth more than $4 trillion, Nvidia is at the core of the global rollout of AI. It is striking deals around the world while also navigating a U.S.-China trade war that could determine which country's technology is most used around the world.
The supercomputers Nvidia is building for the Energy Department will in part help the United States maintain and develop its nuclear weapons arsenal. The supercomputers will also be used to research alternative energy sources such as nuclear fusion. The largest of the supercomputers for the Department of Energy will be built with Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and contain 100,000 of Nvidia's Blackwell chips. Nvidia also announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies, a company that works closely with the U.S. government. However, the focus of Nvidia's partnership was on Palantir's commercial business, where Nvidia will help it speed up solving logistics problems for companies such as home improvement retailer Lowe's. Such corporate work was a longtime stronghold of Intel.
Read more at Reuters
Amazon to Lay Off Up to 30,000 Corporate Workers
Amazon.com plans to lay off as many as 30,000 employees starting as early as today, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest cost-cutting move for the tech giant that is seeking to slim down and conserve cash. The job cuts, which won’t all happen this week, would amount to roughly 10% of the online giant’s corporate workforce, the people said. The latest round of job cuts would be the largest since 2022, when Amazon eliminated around 27,000 roles.
Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy has been on a yearslong campaign to cut expenses as the company ramped up spending on AI in the face of increased competition for its cloud-computing business. The company views the cuts in part as an effort to correct an aggressive hiring period during the pandemic, the people said. During that period, a boom in online shopping led Amazon to double its warehouse network over a two-year period, an expansion that created both blue- and white-collar positions. Earlier this month, Amazon showed off how investments in robots and AI could help drive down costs, boosting sales without the need for as many human workers.
Read more at the WSJ
Security Experts Offer Advice On How To Avoid A Cyber Shutdown That Crippled JLR Factories
As Jaguar Land Rover slowly begins its phased restart of vehicle production processes, the boardrooms of many global automakers must evaluate what they would do if they faced such a catastrophe, experts say. The British marque saw a total global shutdown in vehicle production for nearly 40 days after hackers broke into its computer systems, ultimately costing the automaker an estimated £2 billion ($2.67 billion) in lost revenues. That sort of loss would force any automaker’s board of directors to worry about an area few have so far taken very seriously.
According to Jon Connet, chief product officer at Aeris the JLR hack is a wake-up call for manufacturers to think about how they can transition from being cyber-reactive to cyber-resilient — especially where information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) converge into a linked system. His take is that the problem stems from how companies manage these two systems — with IT often centered in the “carpeted” offices and the OT operating on the “uncarpeted” factory floor. Even with this divide, modern factory systems are always linked to the internet. IP addresses provide efficiencies and reduce the costs of production, Connet said, whether that’s by connecting a conveyor belt in a factory, an industrial robot or what’s commonly called a programmable logic controller. However, when the same IP address links multiple devices, the jump from hacking the “carpeted” part of the business to the “uncarpeted” factory floor is much easier for the cybercriminal.
Read more at Ward’s Auto
New-Vehicle Average Transaction Price Hits Record-High In September
The average new-vehicle transaction price was $50,080 in September, an increase of 3.6% from a year ago, according Cox Automotive. Kelly Blue Book is a Cox Automotive company. For perspective, the average new-vehicle transaction price in September 2019 was $37,590. That’s before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. Since then, vehicle prices are up for both the long- and short-term, according to Cox Automotive. More affluent buyers can afford to spend more on new vehicles, which is contributing to sales of higher-priced models.
Meanwhile, many price conscious consumers — including well-qualified ones with good credit — are turning to used vehicles instead. This is also “propping up the higher end of the market,” Keating said. Another long-term trend driving average vehicle prices higher is the switch from smaller and cheaper passenger cars to bigger and more expensive pickups, SUVs and crossovers. The trend reflects changing consumer tastes, but it also shows that domestic OEMs are essentially dropping unprofitable passenger cars in favor of more profitable trucks and SUVs.
Read more at Ward’s Automotive
Army Wants To Boost Funding For Its FUZE Program
The Army’s top acquisition official told DefenseScoop that he expects to see further growth in resources for the service’s FUZE initiative. FUZE, which was announced last month by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, combines elements of multiple technology innovation programs — including the xTech, Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR), ManTech, and Technology Maturation Initiative efforts — under a more integrated framework to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to soldiers, according to the service.
Driscoll said at the recent AUSA event that the Army’s goal with FUZE is to contract with startups that have never, ever worked with the United States Army before in just 60 to 70 days. And for companies that the Army has worked with that have prototypes, the intent is to contract in 10 and start “soldier iterations in 30 to 45 days,” he said. The Army has already aligned $750 million to this model under FUZE, according to Driscoll. Next year, it plans to raise that slightly to $765 million. Brent Ingraham, the new assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said he anticipates that funding levels for those efforts will be higher in subsequent years.
Read more and listen at Fed Scoop
US Startup Substrate Announces Lithography Chipmaking Tool That It Says Will Rival ASML
Substrate, a small U.S. startup, said on Tuesday that it had developed a chipmaking tool capable of competing with the most advanced lithography equipment made by Dutch firm ASML. Substrate's tool is the first step in the startup's ambitious plan to build a U.S.-based contract chip-manufacturing business that would compete with Taiwan's TSMC in making the most advanced AI chips, its CEO James Proud told Reuters in an interview. Proud wants to slash the cost of chipmaking by producing the tools needed much more cheaply than rivals.
Substrate said that it has developed a version of lithography that uses X-ray light and is capable of printing features at resolutions that are comparable to the most advanced chipmaking tools made by ASML that cost more than $400 million apiece. The company said it has conducted demonstrations at U.S. National Laboratories and at its facilities in San Francisco. Developing an advance chipmaking process that could rival TSMC's costs billions of dollars and has been a challenge for the likes of Intel and Samsung to perfect. Chip factories today cost more than $15 billion to build and require specialized expertise to build and operate.
Read more at Yahoo Finance
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