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California Data Center Intel
Latest data center news, projects, power and policy across California — updated daily.
Recent California data center news
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Experts “bullish” new industrial cycle on way for SoCal
Industry experts report a recovery in Southern California industrial real estate driven by AI and data-center demand; Dedeaux Properties says capital outreach has recently reversed.
- Main announcement: Industry observers including Rishi Thakkar (Dedeaux Properties) and Jason Hans (Affinius Capital) say the Southern California industrial market is recovering with sales volume rising and demand for sophisticated, taller industrial space driven by AI and data centers; Dedeaux reported having more than $1.3 billion in assets under management and noted a reversal in capital engagement.
- Background and details: The article cites Greater Los Angeles Q4 sales volume of $1.2 billion (CBRE), notes a 5.2% vacancy rate in Greater Los Angeles vs 6.7% nationwide, and highlights power capacity as a near-term constraint for new development, with contractors’ hard costs having declined and new deliveries expected late 2027 into 2028.
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3 Men Charged with Conspiring to Smuggle U.S. AI to China
Federal prosecutors charged Super Micro Computer senior vice president Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw and two affiliates with conspiring to smuggle U.S.-assembled servers containing advanced Nvidia chips to China.
- Charges and timeline: The indictment alleges Liaw, Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang, and contractor Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun schemed between 2024 and 2025 to divert server shipments, directing a company in Southeast Asia to place $2.5 billion in orders from Super Micro Computer and diverting at least $510 million worth of assembled servers to China; Chang is identified as a fugitive, Liaw was arrested and released on bail, and Sun was arrested and held for a bail hearing.
- Mechanics and context: Authorities allege use of fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and a pass-through company to conceal true clientele; the article notes existing U.S. export controls on Nvidia AI chips (policies under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump) and includes statements from the FBI, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, Super Micro Computer, and NVIDIA confirming legal and compliance concerns.
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Energy Vault continues to diversify as it experiences Q4, full year 2025 growth
Energy Vault has released its Q4 and full year 2025 financial results, reporting 2025 revenue of US$203.7 million and improved profitability metrics.
2025 financial results and guidance: Energy Vault reported 2025 revenue of US$203.7 million (up 340% YoY from US$46.2 million), GAAP net loss of US$103.6 million (improved from US$135.8 million), Adjusted EBITDA loss of US$21.2 million (improved from a US$58 million loss), adjusted net loss of US$42.1 million (improved from US$65.4 million), and total cash (including restricted cash) of US$103.4 million as of 31 December 2025. The company attributes improvement to entry into AI infrastructure, increased ESS projects in Australia, and initial revenue from its wholly owned Asset Vault operating projects. It expects 2026 revenue of US$225 million to US$300 million, factoring in US battery delivery schedules, third-party project timelines, Asset Vault operating-asset revenue, and initial modular data centre/AI infrastructure income.
Background, partnerships and projects:Asset Vault is Energy Vault’s wholly owned subsidiary for developing, constructing, owning, and managing storage assets worldwide; Energy Vault also supplied BESS technology for a 320 MWh Australian project scheduled for completion later in the year. In February, Energy Vault finalised a supply agreement for 1.5 GWh of US-manufactured sodium-ion batteries from Peak Energy and will collaborate to integrate Peak Energy’s Na-ion cells with Energy Vault’s proprietary digital stack to accelerate deployment, enhance safety, and reduce costs by eliminating “complex legacy systems.”
- Energy Storage Summit USA 2026: 24-25 March 2026, Dallas, TX; agenda/subjects include FEOC challenges, power demand forecasting, and managing the BESS supply chain; ESN Premium subscribers have an exclusive discount on tickets.
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How to Build an Affordable Energy Future
NRDC will develop and release a series of papers called the Build Clean Agenda focused on three areas of reform to speed clean energy and infrastructure deployment.
- Main action: NRDC will publish a multi-paper Build Clean Agenda to modernize laws and permitting, level the playing field for clean energy, and design projects that benefit communities; it calls for U.S. renewable energy production to roughly quadruple, and for at least tripling grid capacity over the next 25 years, and highlights the Western Solar Plan identifying 31 million acres for siting solar on public lands.
- Background and specifics: The piece documents concrete barriers and numbers: the oil, gas, and coal industries receive $34 billion in annual federal subsidies; a 2025 partisan tax bill risks an estimated half a trillion dollars of private clean-energy investment and may raise consumer fuel/energy costs $78–$192 per year; it cites projects like the Grain Belt Express facing multi-year delays and supports targeted reforms such as expanding the “One Federal Decision” approach and giving a federal lead (e.g., FERC) authority to coordinate interstate transmission permitting where uniform standards are met.
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US Roundup: solar-plus-storage projects advance across the country
Google and DTE Energy have announced plans to develop a data centre project in Michigan (Project Cannoli) supported by 1,600MW of solar PV and 450MW of energy storage, with Google funding the resources and DTE operating them under a 20-year Clean Capacity Accelerator Agreement (CCAA).
- Main announcement: Google and DTE will deliver 1,600MW of solar PV paired with 450MW of storage (specified as 400MW/1,600MWh BESS plus 50MW of LDES), under a 20-year CCAA; Google will provide DTE with approximately 300MW of Zonal Resource Credits (ZRCs) at no cost and commit US$10 million to programmes to reduce household energy bills in Michigan.
- Additional details & background: The filing identifies the site as Project Cannoli (potentially in Van Buren Township); Google recently closed a US$4.75 billion acquisition of TPG Rise Climate’s Intersect Power stake and has announced multi‑billion data centre and AI capital plans (Google cited US$40 billion for three Texas data centres and US$185 billion in AI‑related capex for the year). Related US project announcements in the article include: Sunraycer (620MWdc solar, 477MWh BESS in Texas), Invenergy/SRP SunDog (200MW solar + 200MW/800MWh BESS in Arizona), Idemitsu Azalea (60MW/152MWh operating in California), and Clēnera’s US$304 million financing for the 120MW/400MWh Crimson Orchard project in Idaho.
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Jensen Huang After the Keynote: Inside Nvidia’s GTC 2026 Press Briefing
Nvidia (Jensen Huang) framed the company as building “AI factories,” emphasizing inference, token economics, and ecosystem orchestration.
- Main announcement: Jensen Huang presented Nvidia’s strategic shift to an inference- and token-centric model, arguing data centers must become “token manufacturing systems”, and confirming Nvidia is helping finance customer data center buildouts with partners including CoreWeave, Nscale, and Nebius. He cited a “trillion-dollar visibility” figure for Blackwell and Vera Rubin through 2027 (figure described as “trillion-dollar visibility” in the briefing).
- Background and other details: Huang detailed Nvidia’s broader infrastructure role: co-inventing co-packaged optics with TSMC (~100 patents filed across the supply chain), production ramping for co-packaged optics, resumed manufacturing and license activity for H200 systems in China, and noted the complexity of relocating 40% of Taiwan chip capacity to the United States as a longer-term goal.
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Suman Kanuganti: Why Telcos, Not Tech Giants, Will Power the AI Grid
NVIDIA is positioning the “AI Grid” and the piece urges telcos to build identity-bound AI memory using existing telco networks.
- Main announcement/action: NVIDIA is promoting an “AI Grid” at NVIDIA GTC to move AI workloads onto networks and enable distributed, identity-bound memory; the article asserts telcos are best positioned to deliver this by leveraging identity, authentication, and billing capabilities and placing memory near the tower/device/person.
- Background and details: The piece is an Expert Opinion by Suman Kanuganti, Co-Founder and CEO of Personal AI (since 2020); it highlights Personal Language Models (PLMs) as memory-first AIs, claims Personal AI is NVIDIA’s top independent software vendor (ISV) for telco and that PLMs deliver 10-30x better cost efficiency versus traditional large language models; it references NVIDIA GTC as the event illuminating this vision.
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The Interconnection Queue Continues to Be a Barrier to American Economic Competitiveness
The U.S. Department of Energy directed FERC to initiate a rulemaking for load interconnection, and the authors (RMI) call for expanded, nationwide reforms to generator interconnection to speed studies and reduce costs.
- Main action & proposed reforms: The article urges scaling existing reforms nationally (building on FERC Order 2023, issued summer 2023) and advancing additional measures that speed study processing and reduce network upgrade costs (e.g., advanced software automation, evaluation of grid-enhancing technologies (GETs), transparency on network upgrade timelines, co-located load/generation planning, and fair competitive fast-tracks).
- Key facts & context: The piece cites >2.2 terawatts in interconnection queues, an average interconnection timeline of nearly five years in 2024 (vs under two years in 2008), that only 19% of projects requesting interconnection between 2000–2019 had reached commercial operation by end of 2024, and an RMI analysis that incorporating GETs in PJM could enable 6.6 GW of new generation and yield ~$1 billion annually in production-cost savings at a $0.1 billion installation cost.
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Zadara aligns AI cloud platform with NVIDIA security guide
Zadara has announced alignment of its multi-tenant AI cloud platform with NVIDIA’s Software Reference Guide.
- Alignment scope and implementation: Zadara says its platform implements NVIDIA design expectations including full-stack workload isolation, network partitioning, per-tenant data volume separation, VM-based GPU tenancy, and tenant-controlled orchestration patterns; Zadara will present this approach at NVIDIA GTC in San Jose (booth 7034).
- Background, partners and deployment details: The offering targets cloud providers, telecoms operators, and managed service providers, supports NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet and NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, operates more than 500 edge clouds globally, and is being brought to market via partners including Micro Support Group (US northeast) and BCN (which says it deployed Africa’s first Neutral AI Factory).
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Berkeley Lab Takes Major Step Toward Doudna with Delivery of Early Access System, Cech
NERSC has announced delivery and installation of the NERSC-10 Pilot Early Access System (EAS) named Cech at Berkeley Lab to prepare for the full-scale NERSC-10 production system, Doudna.
- Main announcement: NERSC received the NERSC-10 Pilot Early Access System (EAS) called Cech, which is being installed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the EAS is a smaller test system to refine assembly, delivery, installation, and integration processes ahead of deploying the full production system Doudna in late 2026 (also referenced as “end of the year” in comments). Key technical details: 72 NVIDIA Grace CPUs, 144 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, 5.76 petaflop/s FP64 and 1.44 exaflop/s NVFP4 capability, networking via NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand, Dell IR7000 direct liquid-cooled racks, first U.S. deployment of Rittal in-row V3.5 coolant distribution unit, and Dell’s PowerCool Enclosed Rear Door Heat Exchanger (eRDHx) claiming up to 60% reduced cooling costs versus traditional options.
- Background & implementation details: The EAS (Cech) is a public–private partnership involving NERSC, Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, and VAST Data; it will be used for software stack development (Omnia, OpenCHAMI), benchmarking, telemetry/monitoring, storage integration with Community File System and HPSS, and ESnet connectivity. The EAS is explicitly a testing/development milestone (not yet available to users) to ensure a smooth deployment of the full Doudna production system; the article is an announcement of this delivery and installation milestone.