Chris Campbell:

U.S. Defense Department Awards Contracts to Google, Musk’s xAI

OpenAI, Alphabet's Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk's AI firm xAI have won contracts of up to $200 million each, aimed at scaling up adoption of advanced AI capabilities in the U.S. Department of Defense, the government agency said on Monday.

The contracts will enable the DoD to develop agentic AI workflows and use them to address critical national security challenges, the department's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said.

"The adoption of AI is transforming the (DoD's) ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries," Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty said.

U.S. government agencies have been expanding their use of AI, driven by a White House order in April promoting adoption. President Donald Trump has also moved to soften regulation on the technology by revoking a 2023 Biden-era executive order, which sought to reduce AI risks through mandatory data disclosures.

Separately on Monday, xAI announced a suite of its products called "Grok for Government", making its advanced AI models — including its latest flagship Grok 4 — available to federal, local, state and national security customers.

⇒ Read More Here

Ray Blanco:

Nvidia, AMD to Resume AI Chip Sales to China in U.S. Reversal

Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. plan to resume sales of some AI chips in China after securing Washington’s assurances that such shipments would get approved, a dramatic reversal from the Trump administration’s earlier stance on measures designed to limit Beijing’s AI ambitions.

U.S. government officials told Nvidia they would green-light export licenses for its H20 artificial intelligence accelerator, the company said in a blog post on Monday — a move that may add billions to Nvidia’s revenue this year, restoring its ability to fulfill orders it had written off as lost due to government restrictions.

Nvidia designed the less-advanced H20 chip to comply with earlier China trade curbs from Washington, which Trump’s team tightened in April to block H20 sales to the Asian country without a U.S. permit.

AMD received similar assurances from the US Commerce Department and plans to restart shipments of its MI308 chips to China once licenses for sales are approved, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Shares of AMD jumped as much as 8.5% after markets opened in New York while Nvidia rose as much as 5%.

⇒ Read More Here

James Altucher:

Mark Zuckerberg Says Meta Is Building a 5GW AI Data Center

Meta is currently building out a data center, called Hyperion, which the company expects to supply its new AI lab with five gigawatts (GW) of computational power, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Monday.

Zuckerberg said Hyperion’s footprint will be large enough to cover most of Manhattan. Meta spokesperson Ashley Gabriel said that Hyperion will be located in Louisiana, likely in Richland Parish where Meta previously announced a $10 billion data center development. Gabriel says Meta plans to bring two gigawatts of data center capacity online by 2030 with Hyperion, but that it would scale to five gigawatts in several years.

Zuckerberg also noted that Meta plans to bring a 1 GW super cluster, called Prometheus, online in 2026, making it one of the first tech companies to control an AI data center of this size. Gabriel says Prometheus is located in New Albany, Ohio.

Together, Prometheus and Hyperion will soak up enough energy to power millions of homes, which could pull significant amounts of electricity and water from neighboring communities. One of Meta’s data center projects in Newton County, Georgia, has already caused the water taps to run dry in some residents’ homes.

⇒ Read More Here