Author: GT

Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned in its quest to secure more compute capacity for meeting its customers’ heavy demand for AI services. On Monday, the Redmond-based tech giant signed a $9.7 billion, five-year contract with Australia’s IREN to secure further AI cloud capacity. The deal will give Microsoft access to compute infrastructure built with Nvidia’s GB300 GPUs, which will be deployed over phases through 2026 at IREN’s facility in Childress, Texas, planned to support 750 megawatts of capacity. IREN said it is separately buying GPUs and equipment from Dell for about $5.8 billion. The deal comes after Microsoft last…

Among the explosion of AI systems, AI web browsers such as Fellou and Comet from Perplexity have begun to make appearances on the corporate desktop. Such applications are described as the next evolution of the humble browser, and come with AI features built in; they can read and summarise web pages – and, at their most advanced – act on web content autonomously.In theory, at least, the promise of an AI browser is that it will speed up digital workflows, undertake online research, and retrieve information from internal sources and the wider internet.However, security research teams are concluding that AI…

Microsoft will invest $15.2 billion in the United Arab Emirates over the next four years, the company announced Monday at the first annual Abu Dhabi Global AI Summit. The investment will include the first-ever shipments of the most advanced Nvidia GPUs to the UAE. As part of the deal, the U.S. has granted Microsoft a license to export Nvidia chips to the UAE, a move that positions the country as both a proving ground for U.S. export-control diplomacy and a regional anchor of American AI influence. The deal allows Microsoft to expand its foothold into the Middle East, a key region…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Microsoft said Monday it will be shipping Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates as part of a deal approved by the U.S. Commerce Department.The Redmond, Washington software giant said licenses approved in September under “stringent” safeguards enable it to ship more than 60,000 Nvidia chips, including the California chipmaker’s advanced GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, for use in data centers in the Middle Eastern country. The agreement appeared to contradict President Donald Trump’s remarks in a “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday that such chips would not be exported outside the U.S.Asked by CBS…

At the APEC CEO Summit, NVIDIA said it is working with public agencies and private companies to build sovereign AI infrastructure across South Korea. The plan includes hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs across sovereign clouds and AI factories for areas like automotive, manufacturing and telecommunications.“Korea’s leadership in technology and manufacturing positions it at the heart of the AI industrial revolution — where accelerated computing infrastructure becomes as vital as power grids and broadband,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Just as Korea’s physical factories have inspired the world with sophisticated ships, cars, chips and electronics, the nation…

Microsoft has entered into a $9.7 billion cloud services contract with artificial intelligence cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips.The five-year deal, which includes a 20% prepayment, will help Microsoft as it looks to keep up with AI demand. Last week the software maker reported its quarterly sales grew 18% to $77.7 billion, beating Wall Street expectations while also surprising some investors with the huge amounts of money it is spending to expand its cloud computing infrastructure and address the growing need for AI tools.Microsoft spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter…

The AI chip wars just got a new heavyweight contender. Qualcomm, the company that powers billions of smartphones worldwide, has made an audacious leap into AI data centre chips – a market where Nvidia has been minting money at an almost unfathomable rate and where fortunes rise and fall on promises of computational supremacy.On October 28, 2025, Qualcomm threw down the gauntlet with its AI200 and AI250 solutions, rack-scale systems designed specifically for AI inference workloads. Wall Street’s reaction was immediate: Qualcomm’s stock price jumped approximately 11% as investors bet that even a modest slice of the exploding AI infrastructure…

It’s no longer news that AI is transforming how people communicate at work. The bad (and less common) news, however, is that AI is also making those conversations harder to control. From chat apps to collaboration tools, employees exchange thousands of messages every day, many of which now pass through AI systems that summarise, analyse, or even respond on their behalf. For enterprises, that creates a new kind of exposure: Communication data that is intelligent, unstructured, and often ungoverned.Dima Gutzeit, CEO of business communications platform provider LeapXpert, believes the future of enterprise communication depends on solving this challenge. “AI has…

A wheel loader takes ore to a crusher at the MP Materials rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. January 30, 2020.Steve Marcus | ReutersThe emergence of critical minerals as a new arena of geopolitical competition has coincided with a dizzying rally in U.S.-listed rare earths mining stocks.Despite paring gains in recent weeks, shares of Critical Metals have advanced 241% over the last three months, while NioCorp Developments, Energy Fuels and Idaho Strategic Resources have all surged well above 100% over the same period.The eye-watering gains are even more remarkable year-to-date. Energy Fuels’ stock price has quadrupled through the…

Kevin Rose has a visceral rule for evaluating AI hardware investments: “If you feel like you should punch someone in the face for wearing it, you probably shouldn’t invest in it.” It’s a typically candid assessment from the veteran investor, and one born from watching the current wave of AI hardware startups repeat mistakes he’s seen before. Rose, a general partner at True Ventures and early investor in Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit, has largely avoided the AI hardware gold rush that’s consumed Silicon Valley. While other VCs rush to fund the next smart glasses or AI pendant, Rose is taking…