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Technology July 18, 2026

New York Freezes Hyperscale Data Center Permits in First U.S. Statewide Moratorium

Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive order halts environmental permits for facilities drawing 50 megawatts or more for up to one year, putting the state's AI infrastructure pipeline on ice while regulators build a new review framework.

By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter Read the story →

More on the Technology desk

Technology Jul 17, 2026 Microsoft Routes Excel and Outlook Copilot Prompts to In-House MAI Models to Cut Inference Costs Bloomberg reported July 7 that Microsoft has begun handling tens of thousands of weekly Copilot prompts in Excel and Outlook with its own MAI models, directly reducing payments to OpenAI and Anthropic.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 15, 2026 Anthropic Opens Custom Chip Talks With Samsung as Compute Costs Climb The Claude developer is in early discussions with Samsung's foundry unit about a bespoke AI accelerator, its first move into custom silicon after years of renting capacity from Nvidia, Google, and Amazon.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 14, 2026 Cloudflare Opens Waitlist for Edge Payment Layer That Lets AI Agents Pay Per Request The Monetization Gateway uses the long-dormant HTTP 402 status code and stablecoin settlement to let any resource behind Cloudflare charge machine callers without accounts, subscriptions, or checkout pages.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 13, 2026 Anthropic Signs 20-Year Lease for 401 MW Kentucky Data Center on Former Aluminum Site The $19 billion deal with TeraWulf gives Anthropic dedicated, purpose-built compute capacity at a brownfield industrial site, with first power delivery not until late 2027.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 11, 2026 DeepSeek Moves Into Custom Silicon With Inference Chip Push The Chinese AI lab is developing its own chip for running models, a move that would cut its reliance on both Nvidia and Huawei and deepen a global race toward vertical hardware control.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 9, 2026 DeepSeek Moves Into Chip Design, Targeting Inference Silicon to Cut Nvidia and Huawei Dependence The Chinese AI lab is about a year into developing its own inference chip, according to Reuters, in a quiet push that mirrors moves by OpenAI and Anthropic while carrying an added layer of geopolitical complexity.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 8, 2026 Anthropic Locks In 401 MW Kentucky Data Center With 20-Year TeraWulf Lease A $19 billion deal for a former aluminum smelting site in Hawesville signals that AI labs are moving from renting cloud capacity to owning their infrastructure layer for decades at a time.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 3, 2026 Meta Plans to Sell Excess AI Compute as a Cloud Business Bloomberg reported July 1 that Meta is building an external cloud service under the name 'Meta Compute,' putting it on a collision course with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and the GPU neoclouds it currently pays to use.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 2, 2026 SpaceX Turns Colossus Into a Compute Landlord With $6.3B Reflection AI Deal The rocket company's Memphis data center now earns more than $80 billion in committed outside revenue through 2029, and its newest tenant hasn't shipped a single public model.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jul 1, 2026 Qualcomm Buys AI Software Startup Modular in $3.9 Billion Stock Deal The chipmaker is acquiring the hardware-abstraction platform to close the software gap that has kept Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem sticky with developers.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 29, 2026 Qualcomm Bets $14 Billion on Breaking Nvidia's Data Center Lock At its June 24 Investor Day, Qualcomm confirmed a $3.9 billion acquisition of AI software startup Modular and disclosed ongoing talks to buy chip designer Tenstorrent for up to $10 billion, a two-pronged push to build an Nvidia alternative from the silicon up.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 25, 2026 FERC Puts Six Grid Operators on 60-Day Clock for AI Data Center Rules The federal regulator bypassed the standard multi-year rulemaking process to force regional grid operators to justify or rewrite how large power users like AI data centers connect to the transmission system.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 23, 2026 FERC Orders Six Grid Operators to Justify or Rewrite Data Center Interconnection Rules In a unanimous June 18 vote, federal regulators gave the six major U.S. regional grid operators 60 days to defend or reform how they connect AI data centers and other large power users to the grid.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 19, 2026 NVIDIA and SK Hynix Sign Multiyear Deal to Co-Develop Memory Across Entire AI Hardware Stack The June 7 partnership locks in SK hynix as a co-engineer across Vera Rubin supercomputers, Vera CPUs, RTX Spark PCs, and Jetson Thor robotics, every major platform NVIDIA ships next.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 16, 2026 Anthropic Files Confidential S-1 as AI Lab IPO Wave Reaches Public Markets The Claude maker submitted its draft registration to the SEC on June 1, days after closing a $65 billion Series H, putting the structural question of how public markets price a frontier AI lab on the table for the first time.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 15, 2026 Apple Hands Siri's Inference Layer to Google Gemini in $1 Billion Annual Deal At WWDC 2026, Apple confirmed that a custom Gemini model now powers Siri AI, routing requests across three tiers: on-device, Private Cloud Compute, and Google's servers.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 14, 2026 Anthropic Files Confidential S-1 With SEC, Targeting IPO Near $965B Valuation The Claude maker formally started the public-offering process on June 1, ten days after OpenAI did the same, and its Public Benefit Corporation structure will test whether safety-mission governance can survive public markets.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 12, 2026 Microsoft Claims 1,000x Qubit Reliability Gain With Majorana 2 Chip, Cuts Quantum Timeline to 2029 A lead-based materials swap, not a software fix, is Microsoft's stated reason for the jump in topological qubit stability - but outside physicists say the fundamental question of whether these are real Majorana qubits remains unanswered.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 10, 2026 Alphabet Prices $84.75 Billion Equity Raise to Fund AI Compute Buildout The Google parent upsized a planned $80 billion offering after pricing, with Berkshire Hathaway anchoring a $10 billion private placement - the proceeds earmarked entirely for data centers and compute capacity.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 9, 2026 Alphabet Prices $84.75 Billion Equity Raise to Fund AI Compute Buildout The Google parent upsized its offering from $80 billion after demand exceeded expectations, with Berkshire Hathaway committing $10 billion in a private placement - the largest equity raise in the company's history.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 8, 2026 GitHub Copilot Drops Flat-Rate Billing, Charges Developers by Token Starting June 1 Microsoft replaced Copilot's predictable monthly subscription with metered AI Credits on June 1, and developers running agentic workflows are projecting cost increases of 10x to 50x.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 5, 2026 Alphabet Prices $84.75 Billion Equity Raise to Scale AI Compute Google's parent company upsized the largest equity offering in corporate history, with Berkshire Hathaway anchoring a $10 billion private placement, as stated in SEC filings reviewed by ETL Newswire.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 3, 2026 Alphabet Raises $80 Billion in Stock to Fund AI Compute Buildout The offering, which includes a $10 billion Berkshire Hathaway private placement, is on track to be the largest equity capital markets transaction ever recorded, according to Bloomberg.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 2, 2026 Ohio Suspends Data Center Tax Break After Costs Blow Past Forecasts 11-Fold Gov. Mike DeWine paused new sales-tax exemptions for data centers after the program cost the state nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, versus a projection of $142 million.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 2, 2026 Ohio Suspends Data Center Tax Break After Costs Blow Past Projections by 11x Gov. DeWine halted new applications for a sales-tax exemption after the program's annual cost hit nearly $1.6 billion - against a state projection of $142 million - as a citizen drive moves to ban hyperscale facilities statewide.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 2, 2026 Spotify Launches AI Audiobook Tool as Indie Bookstores Hit a 3,417-Member High Spotify's new ElevenLabs-powered creation tool arrives just as the American Booksellers Association reports a 19% membership jump - two data points that map the strange, bifurcating shape of the reading economy in 2026.
Source: TechCrunch
Technology Jun 2, 2026 GitHub Copilot Drops Flat Subscription Pricing for Token-Based Billing, Triggering Developer Backlash A switch to usage-based 'AI Credits' went live June 1, replacing the predictable per-seat model that helped Copilot become the default AI coding tool for millions of developers.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 2, 2026 GitHub Copilot Drops Flat-Rate Billing for Token-Based Credits, Sparking Developer Backlash As of June 1, GitHub replaced its per-request subscription model with token-metered AI Credits, and developers running agentic workflows are reporting cost spikes of 10x to 50x overnight.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jun 1, 2026 Google Pushes Agent Tooling Into the Browser With WebMCP Standard at I/O 2026 Alongside Gemini 3.5 Flash and a revamped Antigravity desktop platform, Google proposed WebMCP - a browser-native standard that lets AI agents call structured web tools instead of scraping UIs.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Apr 29, 2026 Why AI Benchmarks Keep Winning Arguments They Should Be Losing The infrastructure and developer tooling world has a benchmark problem: the numbers travel faster than the caveats, and the caveats are usually the story.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Apr 15, 2026 Where Multi-Agent Systems Actually Break: A Field Guide to Production Failures The failure modes of multi-agent AI pipelines are distinct from single-model failures, and most teams discover this only after something expensive goes wrong.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Apr 1, 2026 The Hidden Cost Stack of Self-Hosting a Language Model Compute is the line item everyone quotes. It is rarely the largest problem once you account for what actually keeps a production model running.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Mar 25, 2026 The Case for Boring AI: Why Regulated Industries Should Stop Chasing the Frontier In healthcare, finance, and energy, the most valuable AI deployments share a common trait: they are not impressive at demos.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Feb 25, 2026 How Observability Grew Up: From Logging Afterthought to Infrastructure Category The path from printf debugging to a multi-billion-dollar tooling category is a story about what happens when distributed systems make the old monitoring playbook fail quietly.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Feb 18, 2026 The Compute Tax: Why AI Products Keep Running Into the Same Margin Wall Every AI product team eventually discovers that the unit economics looked fine in a demo environment and fall apart at scale. Here is why that keeps happening.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Feb 4, 2026 Why Platform Fees Became the Only Math That Works in Vertical SaaS Subscription revenue alone rarely justifies infrastructure-scale build costs. The companies that figured this out stopped calling themselves software companies.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jan 21, 2026 Latency Is the AI Feature Nobody Puts in the Press Release Speed is usually framed as a compute cost problem. In AI products, it is actually a product design problem, and the distinction matters more than most teams realize.
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter
Technology Jan 14, 2026 The Case for Edge Inference: Why the Last Mile of AI Deployment Is the Whole Game Running models in the cloud is the easy part. What happens when the network disappears, the latency budget runs out, or the data cannot leave the building?
By Theo Okafor, Staff Reporter

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