Friday, 15 November 2024
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Data Sheet: Amazon datacenters, IBM earnings, Meta oversight, Apple Card, Nvidia flaw

Transmission lines adjacent to an Amazon Web Services data center in Hilliard, Ohio, on March 23, 2024.(Photo: Brian Kaiser/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Good morning. There have been an awful lot of Chinese self-driving car companies making moves to go public lately, haven’t there? Off the top of my head: WeRide, Pony.ai, Momenta, Horizon Robotics. 

(The last one successfully did so in Hong Kong today, by the way; shares were up 11% at the time of writing.)

The IPO rush is as much a sign of the improving state of the market as it is a reflection that autonomous vehicles are, somewhat surprisingly, hot again. In 2016, a whimsical Fortune magazine cover declared, “Silicon Valley Goes to Detroit;” nearly a decade later, it feels like maybe both have hopped a direct flight to Beijing. —Andrew Nusca

P.S. Speaking of self-driving cars: In yesterday’s edition, the headline of the first item misstated the finances of GM’s Cruise. The company is certainly cutting expenses, but it won’t be “driving toward profit” until it restarts service and generates more revenue.

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Amazon’s datacenter buildout is pushing limits

Transmission lines adjacent to an Amazon Web Services data center in Hilliard, Ohio, on March 23, 2024. (Photo: Brian Kaiser/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

It’s no secret in the tech community that the buildout of computing infrastructure to support artificial intelligence would be an extraordinary burden on virtually everything—from corporate coffers to the earth’s climate.

An Amazon internal document newly reviewed by Business Insider reveals that the company—no stranger to scaling things—is already feeling the limits of its datacenter expansion: “Across the [Americas] region, we are experiencing headwinds in power, zoning and permitting, water, and workforce/labor that are providing challenges to our long-term capacity growth.”

Of those concerns, electricity is considered to be the most pressing. Datacenter energy consumption will increase by 15% to 20% each year to comprise 16% of total U.S. power consumption by 2030, according to estimates Boston Consulting Group published in July.

For Amazon, it’s a matter of business stability. According to the internal document, the company is already seeing transmission limitations in Oregon, Ohio, and Virginia—leading to idling datacenters that sometimes lack the power to be fully operational. Will tech’s giants use these hurdles as an opportunity to work with the government to improve underfunded American infrastructure? We’ll find out. —AN

IBM…

Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Fortune | FORTUNE…