AI data centers are creating new challenges for power grids. Learn how emerging reliability standards and power technologies could reshape their operations.
The post AI Data Centers Are Straining Power Grids. New Rules Aim to Reduce the Risk appeared first on TechRepublic.
AI data centers are creating new challenges for power grids. Learn how emerging reliability standards and power technologies could reshape their operations.
The post AI Data Centers Are Straining Power Grids. New Rules Aim to Reduce the Risk appeared first on TechRepublic.
The Washington Technology Industry Association kicked off the third annual Seattle AI Week on Monday with a reminder that AI affects everyone, from engineers and artists to “someone who learned about ChatGPT today,” as WTIA’s Nick Ellingson put it.
“All of us should be a part of that conversation,” he added.
A few people in the audience took that statement literally.
Members of Troublemakers, a Seattle climate activism group, interrupted the week’s opening panel on AI and economic growth several times before they were led out by security. Outside on Elliott Bay, others floated in kayaks with a banner: “Power for People, Not for Tech.”
“These are not your constituents — we are,” one protester told Beau Perschbacher, Gov. Bob Ferguson’s senior policy advisor, as he addressed the large crowd of tech and startup leaders at Seattle’s AI House. Perschbacher was on a panel with Joe Nguyen of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Mattie Zazueta of OpenAI, the event’s presenting sponsor.
The group’s main message, according to members who spoke with GeekWire: the rush to build data centers and roll out AI is putting the state’s communities, jobs and environment at risk, and Washington should be investing in green jobs and clean energy instead.
The protest comes amid a broader backlash against data centers in Washington state and across the country. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously in June to pause new large data centers in the city for a year, and Washington AI Resistance organized at least 19 protests around the state this month calling for a statewide moratorium.
The event also came the same day Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, as it spends tens of billions of dollars on data centers and AI infrastructure.
The backlash contrasts with a push from the business and tech community for Washington state and the Seattle region to do more to stay competitive in the AI era.
“Washington helped build the technology economy of the last generation. We have an extraordinary opportunity to lead the AI economy of the next,” said former Gov. Chris Gregoire, now CEO of the business group Challenge Seattle, in her opening remarks at the AI Week event.
Gregoire cited efforts to put AI to work on the region’s own problems, including an AI permitting pilot in Everett that she said could cut the median wait for an accessory dwelling unit permit from 252 days to 90. She highlighted the AI-driven protein design work of Nobel laureate David Baker of the University of Washington, with applications in areas including the environment, agriculture and health care.
She also warned that Washington is close to the bottom for its business climate, even though it ranks second in North America for tech talent, as other states court its companies and jobs.
On the panel, Perschbacher said Ferguson’s administration has been focused on data centers since taking office, setting up a work group early last year to study their impact. The group looked for a Washington community that had been harmed by a data center and couldn’t find one, he said.
He added that the state won’t permit data centers to run diesel generators around the clock, and that their water use turned out to be “not out of line with a typical industrial user.”
Electricity is a different story. Data centers “use a really significant amount of electricity,” he said, and with demand also rising from EVs and heat pumps, getting enough power “is a major challenge.”
Perschbacher addressed the protesters directly, saying Washington has some of the strictest environmental laws in the country and that the state’s data center work group reinforced those rules rather than weakening them. Bills on ratepayer protections and transparency for data centers are likely to come back in the next legislative session, he said.
The issue also came up in the event’s second panel, on AI policy. State Sen. Marko Liias, who sponsored a bill this year on high-risk uses of AI, said data centers that want to locate in Washington need to meet “stringent expectations,” including adding clean energy to the grid, recycling water and dropping nondisclosure agreements that keep communities in the dark. Washington’s goal “has never been to be the cheapest or easiest place,” he said.
“When energy becomes scarce, I do think we need to be clear that our communities deserve access to that energy before the data centers do,” Liias said.
Joe Braidwood, founder of AI governance startup Glacis, which works out of AI House, said on the same panel that it was the first event he’d attended there with a public protest. “I think that’s actually kind of promising that people care enough to want to come together and talk and disagree and figure this out,” he said.
Zazueta, OpenAI’s global head of community programs, said in the opening panel that the industry needs to do a better job showing people the benefits of AI. Many people “read about these scary headlines,” she said, but don’t see how the technology applies to their daily lives.
OpenAI runs AI literacy workshops and trains libraries and community groups to lead their own, she said. The company opened an expanded office in Bellevue in March, its largest engineering center outside San Francisco.
Speaking with GeekWire outside the event on Monday afternoon, one of the protesters who had interrupted the panel singled out that remark. She said it dismissed public concerns about AI as the product of bad headlines, and she objected to the idea of using community groups to win people over to the benefits of artificial intelligence.
“They want to infiltrate our communities,” she said.
The opening panel with Zazueta, Perschbacher and Nguyen was titled “The Abundance State: Washington’s Chance to Lead the AI Future.” The protester objected to that framing, saying the panelists’ idea of abundance came down to easing permits for data centers.
It wasn’t the first time the group has protested the tech industry’s energy use. In 2024, it blocked entrances at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to protest the company’s plans to power data centers in Oregon with natural gas.
Inside the event on Monday, as the interruptions continued, Nguyen, a former state senator who now leads the Seattle chamber, had responded to the protesters directly. “If you want to have your own event, have your own event,” he told them.
After they were led out, Nguyen said he agreed with the protesters, calling their passion “very warranted.” Those concerns are one reason Washington created some of the most stringent energy policies in the country, he said, adding that everyone would be better off if data centers elsewhere were held to the same standards.
“I think we’re very unique in Washington state to be able to actually do this in a way that really is mindful of our values, of the environment, and also pushing for innovation as well,” he said.
At the same time, Nguyen said demand for AI and data centers is market-driven, and it isn’t fair to criticize data centers while using them every day.
“For anybody who’s upset with data centers, I hope that when you email me, don’t email me,” he said. “Print it off and walk it to my office.”
Update, Oct. 27: Protesters interrupted the opening session of WTIA’s Seattle AI Summit six times Tuesday morning, during an on-stage interview of OpenAI’s Vijaye Raji by GeekWire’s Todd Bishop. They objected to AI-related job losses, the climate impact of data centers, OpenAI’s ties to the Trump administration and the leadership of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Elon Musk’s “flying” Roadster jumped and flipped through the air this month in a stunt that went viral around the world. But his bigger bet is on changing the way Tesla makes money—and the wider car industry is scrambling to catch up.
Five days after the spectacle, made possible by compressed-gas thrusters developed by Musk’s SpaceX, he revealed the companies were exploring a merger that could accelerate his push into autonomous driving.
At stake is more than a technological race. Car groups, already grappling with growing Chinese competition, are seeking to move beyond a business model centered on vehicle sales towards one that also generates recurring revenues from software and AI-powered services.
© Tesla
Trump wants data center companies to pay host communities as opposition to AI infrastructure grows. Here's what the proposal could mean for future projects.
The post The AI Boom Needs More Data Centers. Trump Wants Communities to Get a Cut appeared first on TechRepublic.
Trump wants data center companies to pay host communities as opposition to AI infrastructure grows. Here's what the proposal could mean for future projects.
The post The AI Boom Needs More Data Centers. Trump Wants Communities to Get a Cut appeared first on TechRepublic.
Google Cloud’s London outage disrupted banking apps and business services. Learn what happened and what IT teams should check after service recovery.
The post Google Cloud London Outage Disrupts Banking and Business Services appeared first on TechRepublic.
Google Cloud’s London outage disrupted banking apps and business services. Learn what happened and what IT teams should check after service recovery.
The post Google Cloud London Outage Disrupts Banking and Business Services appeared first on TechRepublic.
At the 2026 OCP Global Summit, Nvidia opened up its Vera Rubin rack designs, released open-source AI factory software, and announced plans with Cisco for a new pluggable-optics specification. Here's why openness has become a scaling requirement, and what IT pros should do about it.
The post Nvidia’s OCP Moves Highlight How Openness Can Help Scale AI appeared first on TechRepublic.
At the 2026 OCP Global Summit, Nvidia opened up its Vera Rubin rack designs, released open-source AI factory software, and announced plans with Cisco for a new pluggable-optics specification. Here's why openness has become a scaling requirement, and what IT pros should do about it.
The post Nvidia’s OCP Moves Highlight How Openness Can Help Scale AI appeared first on TechRepublic.
Seattle-based TriMagnetix has landed new funding and commitments totaling $1 million to continue developing a semiconductor chip that, according to initial lab testing, consumes 800 times less energy than a traditional chip to process the same amount of data.
The startup uses nanomagnetic technology that requires only electrical pulses rather than the constant power stream traditional chips need, dramatically reducing electricity consumption and heat generation. The design also makes the chip resistant to radiation, and it’s built to integrate with existing computing infrastructure.
The startup has made additional progress beyond the new funding:
Earthbound data centers struggling to curb energy use and heat output are seeking more sustainable chips, but the startup is particularly interested in satellite applications.
The Pacific Northwest, home to companies including Starcloud and SpaceX, is the “satellite capital of the world,” said Lucas Hahn, co-founder, president and chief strategic officer of TriMagnetix.
Satellite companies have told him they want semiconductors that are energy efficient and resistant to the radiation experienced in space, Hahn said. That makes TriMagnetix’s devices “a no-brainer.”
In addition to Hahn, the startup’s other employee is Madison Hanberry, who launched the TriMagnetix in 2023. Hanberry, who has served as chief of research and development, is transitioning to CEO. His sister, Aspen White, is also a co-founder.
The chips made so far by TriMagnetix are not the high-performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, used for applications such as AI and 3D animation. Nor are they simpler central processing units, or CPUs.
“It’s replacing specific compute in certain devices at a very low level,” Hahn said. “So not quite CPU yet, but it is at the core level doing similar things.”
TriMagnetix has contracted with the Washington Nanofabrication Facility at the University of Washington to use the site’s fabrication equipment. It aims to have a product available for commercial sales within the next year.
The round was led by Acequia Capital with participation from Athenaeum Ventures. Actuate Ventures has also committed to the round. The combined total from the three firms is $1 million. Last year, the startup received a $200,000 investment from climate venture fund SNØCAP.
When Russia began attacking Ukrainian data centers and telecommunication infrastructure, it apparently failed to prepare for possible retaliation. Now Russia’s digital services are facing widespread outages after Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out three of the largest data centers owned by Russian tech giant Yandex within several days.
Pro-Kremlin bloggers are warning that Russia’s centralized digital economy could collapse because the country is not prepared for the “data center war” it started, according to posts translated by the pseudonymous independent researcher ChrisO_wiki. The Russian commentators also suggested that Ukraine’s decentralized digital services could prove more resilient than Russia’s system if the countries continue trading such blows.
Russia initially launched a drone strike campaign targeting Ukrainian data centers and mobile phone networks in late September. The attacks temporarily disrupted Internet and cell phone service for up to 100,000 households in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and came as part of a broader long-range strike campaign that has involved Russian missiles and jet-powered drones hitting Ukraine’s power grid infrastructure, transportation hubs, and even residential apartment building blocks.
© Igor IVANKO / AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian drone strikes have knocked out two of five data centers belonging to the Russian tech giant Yandex. The damage has left Yandex, known as “Russia’s Google” because it operates the country’s most popular search engine, struggling to maintain its AI chatbot and other online services.
The Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centers in the Sasovo and Kaluga regions of Russia on October 8 and October 9, according to Reuters. Those actions came as a direct response to a Russian drone strike campaign targeting Ukraine’s data centers, which has disrupted mobile phone and Internet services for thousands of Ukrainians since late September.
“We continue to respond to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, and we’re doing so with high precision,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a post on X. “Another data center was hit as well—our symmetrical response.”
© Planet Labs PBC
Amazon says it will spend more than $1 billion over five years in the U.S. communities where it builds and operates data centers, responding to a growing backlash across the country against the tech industry’s massive AI infrastructure buildout.
The company’s new program, which it calls “Built Together,” will fund free community college, job training, energy upgrades for homes and schools, and other local projects identified by data center communities. It comes on top of more than $1 billion that Amazon says it has given to communities over the past three years.
Amazon also says it will stop using NDAs with government agencies on data center projects, install lower-emission backup generators at new sites, publish its energy and water use each year, and pay enough for power to keep local electricity bills from rising.
Announcing the commitments in a post Friday morning, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said local opposition to data centers — which he asserted is stoked by “misinformation and outright lies” — threatens the country’s position in the global race for AI leadership.
“Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country,” Garman wrote. “If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations.”
The business stakes: Amazon is making an unprecedented bet on AI, projecting about $220 billion in capital expenses this year, largely on data centers and chips. That’s more than the cash its business generates on an annual basis.
By comparison, the additional $1 billion in community funding over five years works out to about $200 million a year, or about one-tenth of 1% of this year’s projected capital spending.
Amazon’s AI strategy depends on finding communities willing to host its data centers. Microsoft, Google and other tech giants are spending on a similar scale, to meet current and anticipated AI demand, and they face the same problem.
Local opposition has become a real limit on the AI buildout. At least 75 data center projects worth about $130 billion were blocked or delayed in the first three months of the year alone, according to Data Center Watch, a group that tracks these disputes. An Economist/YouGov poll in late August found that 63% of Americans would oppose a data center in their community.
Pushing back on the narrative: Much of Garman’s post is a point-by-point rebuttal of what he calls myths about data centers.
He called it “false” that data centers are sucking up all the water in communities, “misleading and convenient scapegoating” to blame them for driving up all electricity rates, “untrue” that their backup generators emit huge amounts of pollution, and “false” that communities get nothing in return.
Amazon’s average data center uses less than 13,000 gallons of water a day, he wrote, and backup generators sit idle 99.9% of the time. Where electricity rates are rising, he attributed it primarily to an aging grid.
Garman pointed to “widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the U.S. about data centers to trick us into slowing down.” OpenAI and X have each reported China-linked accounts posting about data centers.
However, PolitiFact reported last month that the role of foreign influence in the opposition to data centers has been exaggerated, with little sign the accounts reached a wide audience.
“We understand why there is apprehension in some communities where data centers are being built,” Garman wrote. At the same time, he said Amazon and other data center operators have already taken many steps to address those concerns.
The new commitments, he wrote, are a way to codify the company’s existing practices.
Where Amazon and Microsoft differ: Microsoft promised in January not to seek local tax breaks for its data centers. Asked by GeekWire whether it would do the same, Amazon did not make that commitment. The company said it is the largest taxpayer in almost every community where it operates, and that local governments offer incentives to attract its projects.
In his post, Garman pointed to St. Joseph County, Ind., where he wrote that Amazon is expected to pay more than $3 billion in taxes on land that would have generated $1.2 million under its prior use. In Madison County, Miss., he cited more than 2,300 construction workers now on the job and more than 1,700 operations jobs to come.
In 2023, Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that tracks corporate subsidies, reported that five Amazon data centers in Morrow County, Ore., would receive about $1 billion in property tax breaks over 15 years, which the group called the largest known subsidy in the company’s history at the time.
Microsoft also went further on NDAs, saying in March that it would terminate its existing nondisclosure agreements with local governments. Amazon said its change applies going forward, and that it doesn’t plan to revisit past agreements, most of which no longer apply once a project becomes public.
Power costs: Amazon was among seven companies that signed a White House pledge in March to pay for the power and grid upgrades their data centers require.
The new commitment repeats that pledge, which the company said reflects what it was already doing. Amazon has long structured its power agreements to cover the full cost of serving its data centers, it said, with rates approved by state utility regulators.
In his post, Garman disputed that data centers are to blame for rising electricity rates. Among states with large numbers of data centers, he wrote, rates have risen in some, including Illinois and New York, and fallen in others, including Indiana and Mississippi. He wrote that new grid capacity, funded by the private sector, should lead to flat or lower rates for nearby residents.
However, according to U.S. government data reported by CNBC, residential electricity prices in three states with high concentrations of data centers were up sharply in August 2025 from a year earlier: 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio, compared with 6% nationally.
Climate goals: Amazon’s carbon emissions rose 16% last year as the company expanded its data center capacity. Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said at Climate Week NYC last week that the company remains committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2040.
Garman wrote that Amazon has been the largest corporate buyer of carbon-free energy since 2019. Under the new commitment, the company each year will publish the share of its energy that comes from carbon-free sources.
On water, Amazon says it is committed to returning more water to communities than its data centers use by 2030, and was 75% of the way to that goal as of 2025. Microsoft made a similar pledge in January.
Where the money goes: Amazon’s Built Together program is organized around three areas: education and job training, energy and water, and flexible funding for local priorities.
Addressing questions from GeekWire, Amazon didn’t provide a full breakdown of the $1 billion, but said it expects to put more than $100 million up front into community college endowments and roughly another $100 million into expanding its training centers.
Under the program, Amazon says it will:
“Every community is different,” Garman wrote. “What matters most in rural Oregon is not the same as what matters in suburban Virginia or a mid-size city in Ohio.”
The local funding will reflect those differences, he wrote, saying that Amazon is not deciding what communities need but rather “providing resources and letting communities decide.”
GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler contributed to this story.
Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud has signed up to send its artificial intelligence data-processing hardware into lunar orbit on a Firefly Aerospace spacecraft.
Starcloud’s payload, known as SC-1L, will fly on Firefly’s Elytra orbital vehicle during a NASA-supported mission that’s scheduled for launch no earlier than 2028. The mission will demonstrate technologies that Starcloud plans to use on AI data centers in Earth orbit — and around the moon as well.
“Space is the future of data centers, and the moon is the next frontier for that vision,” Ezra Feilden, Starcloud’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said today in a news release.
Starcloud made its mark in Earth orbit last year with Starcloud-1, a satellite equipped with an Nvidia H100 chip. Starcloud-1 successfully trained a large language model called NanoGPT, marking a first for orbital computing. “We successfully validated our ability to run and train AI models on enterprise-grade GPUs in low Earth orbit, and now we’re taking this proven technology to lunar orbit,” Feilden said.
Starcloud’s SC-1L payload will be integrated aboard the Elytra vehicle for a mission aimed at delivering Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander to a lunar region known as the Gruithuisen Domes. After the lander separates from Elytra and descends to the surface, the orbiting vehicle will serve as a data relay for Blue Ghost.
The data-processing demonstration begins when the Blue Ghost mission ends. SC-1L will ingest data from Elytra’s onboard Solux vision system, execute high-performance AI computing in orbit and transmit the processed data back to Earth.
The Solux system is designed to serve as an autonomous navigation and tracking tool in space environments where global positioning systems are otherwise unavailable. Firefly expects the Elytra orbiter to operate in lunar orbit for at least five years.
“We’re proud to collaborate with innovative customers like Starcloud and collectively take another step toward establishing the infrastructure that will power a permanent human and robotic presence at the moon,” said Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s vice president of spacecraft.
Elytra will also use high-resolution telescopes and Firefly’s Ocula moon imaging service for surface mapping, mineral detection and reconnaissance. Firefly recently announced a collaboration with Nvidia to process the data for Ocula using Nvidia’s Jetson module.
In August, Starcloud reported raising $250 million in funding to support the creation of a constellation of AI data-center satellites in low Earth orbit, powered by Nvidia’s Space-1 Vera Rubin Module. Starcloud has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to operate as many as 88,000 satellites as orbital data centers.
As public concern grows about the environmental impact of AI data centers, the University of Washington is launching a startup incubator to support climate tech innovations addressing those challenges.
UW CoMotion Labs is partnering with Microsoft and the investment network E8 to create a four-month program targeting technologies in areas including backup energy storage, grid improvements, efficient data center cooling, electronics waste reduction and low-carbon building materials.
“This is a really important initiative,” said Karin Kidder, executive director of E8. “The other really great part about this is it’s elevating the Pacific Northwest. There’s so much good work happening here.”
CoMotion has previously run two climate tech incubator cohorts, the second of which wrapped up Tuesday with a public demo event. The new effort is the first to focus on a specific industry within the climate space. Organizers are seeking early-stage applicants with technologies ready to commercialize, deploy as pilot projects or scale.
“Meeting growing demand for digital infrastructure requires continued innovation across energy, water, materials, and cooling,” said Brandon Middaugh, Microsoft’s general manager for sustainable markets, in a statement.
E8, which has invested $77 million in climate startups over two decades, will provide an investor-in-residence to advise founders and a representative on the startup selection committee. Microsoft will share technical and industry expertise and other support. Both organizations are providing funding for the effort, but the UW did not say how much.
In addition, the climate tech investment group Elemental Impact previously launched a Data Center Innovation Initiative to similarly address these challenges and will offer advisory support for the Seattle-based program.
The kickoff for the CoMotion Labs initiative coincides with a poll released Wednesday finding that 53% of Americans are “extremely or very concerned” about the environmental impacts of AI, up from 41% a year ago.
The survey, from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, found that 80% of adults are concerned about data center effects on electric bills, power outages or water supply. The computing facilities are a central issue in the upcoming elections.
When it comes to technologies to lessen the burden of data centers, “these solutions are needed today,” Kidder said. “So I’m hopeful that while some of these solutions may be a couple years out, some may be relevant for today.”
Sarah O’Sell, manager of CoMotion Labs’ climate tech incubators, said one strategy will be connecting startups with partners and customers to speed deployment of new technologies.
“We recognize that climate solutions aren’t necessarily always looking for venture investment,” she said. “They might be looking for a strategic partner or customers or grant funding. There’s all kinds of ways to scale these businesses.”
The 2027 Data Center Innovation Cohort will be based at the Seattle Climate Innovation Hub downtown.
An information session is set for Oct. 15, and applications are due Nov. 15. The cohort begins in February.
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