Latest AI News
Meta inks deal for solar power at night, beamed from space
The race to secure electricity for AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night. In 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—roughly enough to power more than1.7 million American homesfor a year—and its need for compute power is only increasing. The company has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants. Typically, data centers turning to solar power must either invest in battery storage or rely on other generation sources to operate at night. Overview, a four-year-old, Ashburn, Virginia, outfit thatemerged from stealthin December, has a different solution: The company is developing spacecraft that collect plentiful solar power in space. It then plans to convert that energy to near-infrared light and beam it at sufficiently large solar farms—on the order of hundreds of megawatts—which can convert that light to electricity. By using a wide, infrared beam to power existing terrestrial solar infrastructure, Overview thinks it can sidestep the technological challenges and safety and regulatory issues that bedevil plans to transmit power to Earth through high-power lasers or microwave beams. CEO Marc Berte says you’ll be able to stare right into his satellite’s beam with no ill effects. The technology would increase the return on investment from building solar farms and reduce reliance on fossil fuels — if it can be deployed at scale. Overview says it has already demonstrated power transmission to the ground from an aircraft, and is planning to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 to perform its first power transmission from space. In today’s announcement, Meta said it signed the first capacity reservation agreement with Overview to receive up to 1 gigawatt of power from the company’s spacecraft, although it’s not clear if any money changed hands. Overview developed a new metric for this contract, megawatt photons, which is the amount of light required to generate a megawatt of electricity. Berte expects to begin launching the satellites that would fulfill that commitment in 2030, with a goal of flying 1,000 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, a high orbit in which each satellite remains fixed above the same point on Earth. He expects each of the company’s spacecraft to provide power from space for more than 10 years. Once in space, Berte says the fleet of spacecraft will be able to cover about a third of the planet, with an initial deployment that will reach from the West Coast of the United States across to Western Europe. As the Earth rotates below and customer solar farms enter evening and night, Overview’s spacecraft should boost their electrical generation with additional light from space. Berte sees opportunity in combining both generation and transmission, with the flexibility to deliver power to solar farms wherever and whenever it is most valuable. “There’s a big difference between being in any one energy market, and being in all of the energy markets,” Berte told TechCrunch.
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TSMC Unveils A13 Node for AI Computing, But Production Begins in 2029. Why?
This new process technology targets AI and high-performance computing workloads, with production planned for 2029.
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Meta-Manus Deal Blocked by China: Report
Last month, Chinese regulators barred Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao from leaving the country.
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What’s Behind HGS’s 90-Day AI ROI Push? CEO Explains
Global CEO Venkatesh Korla outlines HGS’s 90-day AI ROI push, move to outcome-based pricing, and evolving workforce model.
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OpenAI Developing Custom Chips With MediaTek, Qualcomm for ‘AI Agent’ Smartphones: Ming-Chi Kuo
OpenAI is said to be moving towards building new custom processors for smartphones. According to an analyst, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) company has partnered with MediaTek and Qualcomm, and both chipmakers are expected to benefit from long-term demand if smartphones with agentic AI capabilities gain traction. The project, however, is still believed to be in the infancy stage, with mass production currently targeted for 2028. The analyst said that the supply chain is expected to involve Luxshare as the exclusive system co-design and manufacturing partner.
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Shopify Builds Qwen3-32B Agent For 68% Cheaper Store Automations
Shopify’s custom tool-calling agent, which serves the Sidekick commerce assistant, also operates 2.2 times faster.
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China Cloud Spend Hits $14.7 Bn as AI Agent Adoption Accelerates
Alibaba Cloud is the market leader with a 37% share.
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Indian IT's AI Startups Deals Have Changed Since 2024—For the Better
Indian IT firms are rapidly moving beyond AI pilots, forging deep partnerships with global tech giants and startups to deploy agentic AI at scale.
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NatWest Group Partners With IIT Delhi to Drive AI, Fintech Innovation in India
A key priority will be translating academic insights into scalable innovations.
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DPIIT Rolls Out Guidelines for ₹10,000 Cr Startup India FoF 2.0
SIDBI will lead deployment as the Centre looks to deepen domestic venture capital and unlock more private funding for startups.
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To buy this Bay Area home, you’ll need Anthropic equity
Someone’s offering an unusual deal for a 13-acre property in Mill Valley, just north of South Francisco. Homeowner and investment banker Storm Duncan has createda LinkedIn pagefor the home, which he said he’d “like to exchange […] for Anthropic equity.” The San Francisco Standard reportsthat Duncan described this as a “diversification play,” as he’s “under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the importance of AI in the future, and over-concentrated in real estate,” while a young Anthropic employee might be “in the exact opposite scenario.” Duncan is asking potential buyers to email him to discuss deal specifics, but he said it would be a private transaction that doesn’t require the buyer to sell their stock outright. On LinkedIn, he also said the homebuyer would “continue to retain 20% of the upside value of the shares exchanged for the duration of the lockup period.” Duncan, who described himself as a longtime Bay Area resident who moved to Miami during the pandemic, boughtthe propertyin 2019 for $4.75 million. It’s currently occupied by “a high profile VC,” he said, but he declined to identify the VC.
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From Corner Office to a Co-Working Desk: Why Jagdish Mitra Chose to Restart After 30 Years
At 55, a veteran of Indian IT chose uncertainty over comfort, driven by one idea, a broken services model, and the belief that India must build deep-tech products, not just deliver them.
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