18 stories
Japan's government has put forward a plan to replace up to five aging nuclear reactors by the 2040s, projecting AI data centre and factory demand will raise electricity consumption by 20% over the next two decades. Design work will begin with three major operators.
Investors are voicing liquidity concerns about Masayoshi Son's SoftBank as it commits up to $30 billion to OpenAI and its borrowings climb sharply. SoftBank shares fell 10% in Tokyo trading and chip unit Arm shed more than $30 billion in market value in a few sessions.
Broadcom reported accelerating AI chip growth, but software sales lagged expectations and the full-year AI chip forecast was left unchanged. Shares fell sharply in after-hours trade. Investors questioned whether the unchanged guidance signals a slowdown in hyperscaler capital spending.
Australia's ASX is set to open higher after AI stocks surged on Wall Street overnight, ABC News Australia reported. Oil prices climbed to a one-week high after conflicting US and Iran updates on bilateral talks.
Japan's leading defence-industry company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has signed a partnership with local technology firm Preferred Networks to build defence-oriented artificial-intelligence models trained domestically. According to Nikkei Asia, the project is positioned as part of Japan's 'AI sovereignty' agenda.
South Korea's SK Hynix has announced it will double wafer production capacity to respond to a global memory-chip shortage. According to the Straits Times, the company's chair said the storage-chip deficit could endure until 2030.
South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix plans to double its wafer capacity over the next five years to keep pace with AI-driven demand, according to Nikkei Asia. The plan signals a meaningful capacity build in the global memory supply chain.
The White House asked US AI developers to voluntarily share early access to their frontier models with federal agencies. The order arrives amid intensifying US-China competition and is set to reshape Washington's dialogue with leading labs on safety and national security.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced a $75 billion data centre investment in France to address rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence. The first phase covers two sites in Lyon and Marseille totalling 2 GW of capacity. The joint announcement with French President Macron confirmed an EDF nuclear-power partnership.
Alphabet will ask shareholders to authorise issuing up to $80 billion in new shares. The company says most of the proceeds will fund Google Cloud data centres and custom TPU chips. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said the spending is needed to 'build out a durable AI franchise'.
ABC News Australia reports that an investigation into how AI chatbots respond to violent requests produced 'deeply disturbing' results. OpenAI denies that ChatGPT encourages crime, while a family has filed a lawsuit against the company.
According to Nikkei Asia, Japan and the United States have decided to invest 1 billion dollars in a joint artificial intelligence project named 'Genesis Mission'. The project aims to combine scientific research and computational infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific.
AI firm Anthropic said it confidentially filed its IPO S-1 prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move clears a major step in the race against OpenAI and will gauge Wall Street investor appetite for primary-market exposure to artificial intelligence.
A wave of AI data-centre investment in New Zealand is being framed as an opportunity for regional economic development and direct job creation. According to RNZ Business, investments around Christchurch and Hamilton have reached a total of 1.8 billion NZ dollars. Critics are flagging pressure on water use and the electricity grid.
SoftBank Group has overtaken Toyota in market capitalisation, becoming Japan's most valuable company on the back of artificial-intelligence investments. The Nikkei 225 index also broke through 67,000 points to a fresh record. SoftBank's stakes in OpenAI and Arm Holdings have driven the historic shift.
Japan, the United States and the Philippines plan to hold an investment forum in Manila in September that aims to position the Philippines as a regional artificial-intelligence hub. The forum will focus on semiconductor, data-centre and high-performance computing projects. The move is a counterweight to China's regional technology footprint.
South China Morning Post reports China has launched a new national evaluation framework to improve accuracy, reliability and transparency standards for artificial intelligence. Policymakers are moving to establish common standards for assessing the fast-evolving sector.
Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI assistant, has been valued at US$965 billion in its latest financing round, surpassing rival OpenAI as the world's most valuable AI start-up, Straits Times Business reported.