Antora Energy has closed a $550 million Series C round, one of the largest in cleantech this year. The company, which uses thermal batteries to store energy, aims to capitalize on unprecedented demand for electricity driven by artificial intelligence.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an investigation into how Microsoft markets its 365 subscriptions, looking into whether the company misled individual and family customers by raising prices and forcibly bundling its Copilot assistant. The announcement, made on July 29, focuses on marketing practices, not product functionality.
SSD prices have surged up to 220% in the past year as manufacturers prioritize high-margin components for AI, such as HBM and enterprise SSDs. The disappearance of Crucial and reduced NAND supply have left the DIY market with increasingly expensive and limited options.
Samsung has acknowledged that the memory chip shortage will not only not subside, but will intensify in the coming years, raising prices for PC RAM and SSDs. Long-term agreements with major data center companies, which absorb up to 70% of its production, postpone the recovery of the consumer market until 2029. This is a hard blow for users and manufacturers who expected a quick stabilization.
SK hynix reported a record operating profit of 60.54 trillion won in the second quarter, up 557% year-over-year, driven by AI demand. However, its shares fell amid a rise in capital expenditure to 40 trillion won and forecasts that the shortage will extend beyond 2030.
A federal judge has dismissed Google's lawsuit against SerpApi, which extracts and resells search results. The decision underscores that public data on the internet is free to be scraped, a principle Google itself used to build its business.
China has begun mass-producing its own deep ultraviolet (UVP) lithography machines, according to The Information. This breakthrough, led by a Shanghai startup linked to Huawei, enables the production of 28 nm chips (extendable to 7 nm) and has already caused a 6.5% drop in ASML's shares. The article analyzes the impact on the global industry, technological limitations, and geopolitical implications.
Verizon has revealed a deal worth over $1 billion with Google to connect its data centers using dark fiber, and plans to convert its telephone central offices into mini data centers for edge AI. The move aims to capitalize on the exploding demand for compute and low latency for applications like robotics and autonomous driving.
Google has revealed it guarantees up to $44 billion in lease payments for third-party-owned data centers. The figure, which multiplied sevenfold since September, reflects the frantic expansion of AI infrastructure and Google's strategy of outsourcing real estate risk while accelerating its cloud and AI services.
Qualcomm has announced a 'double-digit' price increase for its Snapdragon chips, a move that will make high-end and mid-range Android devices more expensive. This decision directly affects manufacturers like Samsung and Xiaomi and could reshape the smartphone market competition.
The NHTSA rejected investigating a defect in Tesla's electronic door handles linked to several deaths, but proposes stricter regulation for the entire automotive industry. The measure could change door design in all new vehicles.
Airbus has started moving its critical systems from Amazon Web Services to the French cloud Scaleway. This strategic move aims to shield industrial and defense data from the jurisdiction of the US Cloud Act.