May 30, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Following Human Rights Watch’s call for Microsoft to suspend plans in Saudi Arabia, 17 more groups have now joined the campaign, citing human rights concerns. The human rights groups have highlighted the government’s track record of infiltrating technology programs for spying purposes and its...
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May 27, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Contact Energy for geothermal energy in New Zealand. The 10-year PPA was reportedly signed in September 2022 and will see Contact provide Microsoft with all the renewable energy attributes generated by Contact's new 51.4MW Te Huka Unit 3...
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May 25, 2023 Meta
After announcing that it was canceling or pausing data center projects that were in mid-development last year, Meta has finally revealed some details on its AI-optimized data centers. The giant has shared that it is working on a custom chip "family" to bolster the efficiency of its data centers,...
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May 24, 2023 Meta
rPlus Energies has announced that it has signed a 200MW power purchase agreement (PPA) with Idaho Power, which has a special energy services agreement with Meta; output from the project will go into the same grid supporting Meta's new Kuna data center. The Ada County, Idaho solar farm, known as...
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May 18, 2023 Meta
Details regarding Meta's water consumption at a planned data center in Toledo have been released, revealing that yearly the facility will guzzle an estimated 660 million gallons of water. The facility was given the green light by Castilla-La Mancha back in March as a PSI, due to the economic...
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May 14, 2023 Microsoft Azure
A bill submitted Monday would exclude data center equipment, software, and other costs from state sales and use taxes. Microsoft's projected Mount Pleasant data center would presumably benefit first. The bill's creators, Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, R-River Falls, and Sen. Romaine Robert Quinn,...
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May 12, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has made a world first by inking a PPA deal with Helion for electricity from the company's first commercial fusion power plant. Scheduled to come online in 2028, the giant has been promised to receive 50MW or greater from the plant after a one-year ramp-up. This technology has been long...
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May 08, 2023 Prime Data Centers
Prime has announced that it is expanding into the Phoenix market with a new five-building, 66.5-acre campus located in Avondale. Prime's new location will feature 210 MW of critical power and span 1.3 million square feet of space. According to the company, it plans to embed sustainability...
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April 27, 2023 Meta
In an effort to curb construction waste, Meta has announced a new project that is using mushrooms to help mitigate some of the 660 million tons of waste sent to landfills and incinerators each year. The giant has been working with Mycocycle, a tech company in the zero-waste market, to pilot the...
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April 27, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has announced that it has opened its first data center region in Poland, which consists of three independent physical locations around Warsaw. The giant shared that this expansion is in response to the growing demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and fast and reliable access to...
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April 26, 2023 Meta
Reuters reports that Meta abandoned plans to release its own artificial intelligence processor and instead adopted Nvidia GPUs. Initial use of CPUs for AI training and chips for inference caused the company to fall behind in AI development. The switch to GPUs necessitated the redesign of its data...
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April 25, 2023 Microsoft Azure
After what has been a long road, potted with controversy and setbacks, Microsoft has obtained construction permission for its data center in the Hollands Kroon area in the north of the Netherlands, after a protracted permitting process. While permission has now been granted, back in 2021, the...
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April 19, 2023 Microsoft Azure
In Racine County, Microsoft's $1 billion data center campus in Wisconsin has been given the go-ahead by The Racine County Board of Supervisors after initially receiving Village Board approval. As per the deal, the tech giant will begin the first phase of construction by July 2026, with the second...
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April 18, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Following news that Microsoft has acquired over 30 more acres of land in Chicago, Illinois, it is believed that the giant will be expanding its data center presence in the region. The land, purchased for $41.5 million, is reportedly set to house two 207,000-square-foot (19,230 sqm) data centers....
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April 14, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft's new cloud data center region in Saudi Arabia has faced criticism since the tech giant announced its plans in early February. Now, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for Microsoft to suspend its investment in the country until it can "clearly demonstrate" how it plans to mitigate the...
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April 14, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Authomize, a leading cloud security and authorization platform, has announced that its services are now available in Microsoft data centers in Australia. This expansion brings Authomize's innovative platform closer to Australian businesses seeking advanced security solutions. According to the...
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April 12, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has filed plans to construct a new data center in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. This week, the Norfolk District of the US Army Corps of Engineers got a joint license application for Federal and State clearances from the corporation. According to the application – labeled LYH03 Bailey –...
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April 11, 2023 Microsoft Azure
As AI continues its rapid evolution, machine learning researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky is sounding the alarm, arguing that AI should not only be paused, as recommended by the Future of Life Institute, but stopped entirely. Yudkowsky has been a vocal critic of AI for over two decades, and says that...
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April 04, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Unilever has finished moving to the cloud. The business has shifted workloads for its 400+ brands to the cloud, using Azure as its main cloud platform, in what it calls the "biggest and most difficult cloud migration in the consumer products market." With the aid of Accenture, Microsoft, and...
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March 31, 2023 Microsoft Azure
Microsoft has announced its plans to expand in Wisconsin, with a $1 billion data center campus in Mount Pleasant. The plan, discussed at a recent closed session meeting, outlined that the campus will be situated on a 315-acre parcel of land owned by the Village of Mount Pleasant. Microsoft is set...
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