California Data Center Intel

Recent California data center news

• Jan 14, 2026

  HCLTech Q3FY26 Earnings: “AI Is Now Embedded Across Every Major Engagement” As New Bookings Hit $3 Billion

  HCLTech released Q3FY26 results and used the earnings call to position AI, data centre infrastructure, telecom engineering and custom silicon as central to its growth strategy.

  • Main announcement/action: HCLTech reported Q3FY26 results for the quarter ended Dec 31, 2025, highlighted ~$3 billion in new bookings, Advanced AI revenue of $146 million (up 19.9% QoQ), consolidated revenue of Rs 33,872 crore (up 13.3% YoY) and consolidated net profit of Rs 4,076 crore (down 11.2% YoY); the board declared an interim dividend of Rs 12 per share and disclosed a Rs 956 crore compliance-related increase in employee benefits. The company announced OEM-aligned joint offerings and partnerships with Dell, Cisco, NVIDIA, AWS and Microsoft Azure, launched a physical AI lab with NVIDIA in Santa Clara, and said it has executed a large-scale engagement with a “top 10 global tech company”.

  • Background and additional details: HCLTech completed the acquisition of HPE’s Telco Solutions Business and announced purchases of Jaspersoft and Wobby (alongside earlier Zeenea), intending to combine Actian, Jaspersoft and Wobby into a unified end-to-end data and analytics platform enabling AI-powered natural language analytics; the company signalled a stronger focus on India as a domestic high-growth market, distinct from the GCC/global delivery model.

• Jan 14, 2026

  Microsoft tells communities it will ‘pay its way’ as AI data center resource usage sparks backlash

  Microsoft announced a new Community-First AI Infrastructure strategy in a blog post, committing to avoid increasing local residential power or water bills and to strengthen local water systems rather than burden them.

  • Main announcement: Microsoft will not pass increased electricity costs to residential customers, saying “We’ll pay our way,” and backing this with actions including support for new utility rate structures (example: Wisconsin) to charge data centers the true cost, contracting with MISO to add 7.9GW of new generation, pledging to reduce data center water use by 40% by 2030, and to replenish more water than it uses in the same districts (examples: water reuse in Quincy, WA; leak detection partnerships in Nevada and Phoenix). It also pledged to publish regional water-use data and fully fund required utility infrastructure.
  • Background and details: The announcement was published as a company blog post and references sector context such as the IEA projection that US data center electricity demand could more than triple by 2035; analysts Matt Kimball and Yaz Palanichamy are cited as framing these as established design principles and urging measurable, realistic sustainability metrics. Microsoft says it will collaborate early with utilities, pursue efficiency gains (including AI and new technologies like nuclear), and advocate for state and federal policies to make reclaimed/recycled industrial water a default data center supply.
• Jan 13, 2026

  Dallas’ CyrusOne Partners With Eolian on Data Center Campus in Fort Worth

  Dallas-based CyrusOne announced a partnership with Burlingame, California-based Eolian L.P. to co-locate large-scale data center capacity at the DFW7 campus adjacent to Eolian’s Chisholm Grid 100MW BESS in Fort Worth.

  • Partnership & deployment: CyrusOne will develop the DFW7 data center campus co-located at Eolian’s Chisholm Grid site (100MW BESS). Timeline: CyrusOne broke ground last April and expects to deliver capacity beginning in 2026. Infrastructure: The partners will leverage existing high-voltage transmission and adjacent substation capacity to accelerate time-to-market.
  • Eolian role & background: Eolian will modernize and upgrade one of Texas’ first utility-scale BESS systems; Chisholm Grid began commercial operations in the ERCOT market in 2021. Objectives: The campus is intended to support AI-driven compute growth, data center deployment, and long-term grid reliability while avoiding duplicative transmission or industrial real estate.
• Jan 13, 2026

  Six Stony Brook University Faculty Mentor Regeneron STS Scholars

  Stony Brook University announced that ten high school students mentored by six Stony Brook faculty were named among the top 300 semifinalists in the 2026 Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS).

  • Main announcement: Ten Simons Summer Research Program fellows, mentored by six Stony Brook faculty, were named among the top 300 Regeneron STS semifinalists; each semifinalist and their high school will receive $2,000. The article lists faculty mentors (Benjamin Hsiao, Mohammad Javad Amiri, Yuefan Deng, Zhenhua Liu, Howard Sirotkin, Nengkun Yu) and student projects such as stormwater remediation of 6PPD, AI-enabled drug discovery for oncogenic eIF4E, and Carbon-Aware Reserve Allocation and Checkpoint Scheduling for GPU Sustainability.
  • Background and details: The semifinalists were selected from >2,600 applicants representing 46 states, Washington, D.C., Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and 16 countries; 40 finalists will be announced on January 21 to compete for over $3.1 million in awards during a week-long event in Washington, D.C., March 5–11. The piece references the Society for Science administration of Regeneron STS and notes that since 1997 about 600 semifinalists have been mentored by Stony Brook faculty.
• Jan 13, 2026

  Can retired naval power plants solve the data center power crunch?

  HGP Intelligent Energy LLC has proposed repurposing nuclear reactors from the retired USS Nimitz to power a land-based data center project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

  • Project details: The proposal would redirect two retired naval reactors to an Oak Ridge data center, projected to produce about 450-520 mW of steady power (stated), enough to power roughly 360,000 homes or one data center; the plan requires 5 stages and is estimated to take a decade. The company proposes a revenue share with the government and creation of a decommissioning fund.
  • Costs, timeline, and regulatory context: The filing estimates rewiring costs of $1 million to $4 million per megawatt (USD) as a cheaper alternative to building new reactors; Bloomberg reported the plan and HGP’s application to the Department of Energy. The proposal faces regulatory and technical obstacles cited by JLL’s Kristen Vosmaer, including weapons-grade uranium possession restrictions, no NRC licensing pathway for military reactors, and the need for complete reconstruction to meet civilian safety standards. As an alternative, floating natural gas turbine barges are noted as deployable in 12–24 months within existing regulatory frameworks.
• Jan 12, 2026

  Trump’s EPA plans to ignore health affects of air pollution

  The Trump administration’s EPA is proposing to stop counting the value of human health (the value of statistical life) when regulating ground-level ozone and PM2.5 fine particulate pollution, according to a New York Times report.

  • Policy change: The EPA proposal would no longer count the value of human health when performing cost-benefit analyses for regulations on ozone and PM2.5; this change was reported by The New York Times and is described as overturning decades of practice.
  • Context and supporting details: The article cites long-established links between PM2.5/ozone and illnesses (asthma, heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, type 2 diabetes, low birth weight) and notes as many as 10 million deaths per year worldwide tied to PM2.5; it also gives a concrete data-centre example — xAI used “dozens of unpermitted natural gas turbines” to power its Colossus data center — and records support for the change from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (quote from Marty Durbin, president of the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute).
• Jan 12, 2026

  Reporter's Notebook: CES2026 Showed AI's Shift Toward Always-On Infrastructure

  At CES2026, multiple technology companies framed AI as an infrastructure challenge requiring systems that run continuously and reliably.

  • Main announcement/action: NVIDIA introduced the Vera Rubin computing platform and AMD showcased the Helios rack-scale system as integrated solutions for continuous AI workloads; AMD noted global AI computing capacity has grown roughly a hundred-fold since 2022 but remains insufficient for next-generation systems.
  • Background and details: Exhibits included industrial robots (Hyundai + Boston Dynamics’ Atlas), Caterpillar’s Cat AI Assistant for fleet and maintenance management, Waymo planning expansion to five additional U.S. cities later this year (current markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta), ASUS demoing WiFi 8 claiming 2x IoT coverage and sixfold P99 latency improvement, and wearable devices from Lenovo, Peri (perimenopause monitoring), and Dephy (Sidekick exoskeleton).
• Jan 12, 2026

  Mastering the architecture of hybrid edge environments

  Mary E. Shacklett (President of Transworld Data) outlines best practices for building a hybrid edge IT architecture for 2026.

  • Main announcement: Mary E. Shacklett recommends IT leaders build a hybrid architecture to manage rapidly growing edge sites in 2026, focusing on three critical areas: mature IT architecture elements, roles of IT and end users, and synergy between edge IT and central IT; she highlights mini-data centers, zero-trust networks, and the need to predefine interface protocols, devices, and hardware/software stacks.
  • Implementation details and background: The article describes concrete practices including use of AI and automated orchestration for at-site compute (examples: autonomous sensors; AI embedded in manufacturing applications), training tech-savvy users/super users for on-site support, adopting a “store and forward” data transfer model with majority uploads at night, and defining disaster recovery/failover with replication to cloud or corporate data centers (no financial figures or timelines beyond the 2026 context).
• Jan 12, 2026

  Meta Unveils Series of Major Nuclear Energy Deals to Power U.S. Data Centers, Support Clean Energy Goals

  Meta announced that it has signed a series of large-scale nuclear power agreements to support its expanding U.S. data center energy needs and clean energy goals.

  • Main announcement: Meta has committed to agreements supporting up to 6.6 GW of nuclear energy by 2035, including: TerraPower funding for two Natrium plants (345 MW baseload each, boostable to 500 MW for >5 hours, with rights to energy from up to six additional units; additional units anticipated as early as 2032); Oklo funding to advance a 1.2 GW power campus in Pike County, Ohio (Phase 1 targeted online as early as 2030, full incremental capacity by 2034); Vistra 20-year PPAs for more than 2.6 GW of zero-carbon energy (including 2,176 MW of operating generation and 433 MW of uprates) with Meta purchases beginning late 2026 and additional capacity added through 2034; and a prior June 2025 Constellation Energy agreement extending a plant life to supply 1.1 GW for 20 years.
  • Background and implementation details: The deals resulted from a U.S.-focused nuclear RFP launched by Meta in late 2024; TerraPower’s Natrium design integrates a sodium fast reactor with molten salt energy storage; Oklo is working with the U.S. Department of Energy and National Laboratories on advanced fuel recycling and has purchased over 200 acres in Pike County; Vistra’s agreements mark the largest nuclear uprates supported by a corporate customer in the U.S. to date. Implementation timelines are explicit: Constellation deal announced June 2025; Vistra purchases begin late 2026 with capacity additions through 2034; TerraPower additional units as early as 2032; Oklo Phase 1 as early as 2030 and full campus by 2034.
• Jan 12, 2026 · Rest of World

  Silicon, not oil: Why the U.S. needs the Gulf for AI

  The U.S. announced that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will join Pax Silica, a U.S.-led initiative to secure AI and chip supply chains and reduce Western reliance on China.

  • Main announcement and timeline: Qatar is expected to sign on January 12, 2026, and the UAE on January 15, 2026, joining existing members (Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Australia) in the Pax Silica declaration; the initiative began in December 2025 and is framed as a statement of shared principles to guide future cooperation.
  • Background, capital, projects and concrete details: Gulf entrants bring sovereign capital and power: QIA manages about $524 billion, UAE sovereign funds control more than $1 trillion; examples of existing commitments include OpenAI/SoftBank/Oracle’s $500 billion Stargate data center initiative, a $20 billion QIA–Brookfield JV to build AI data centers, and MGX’s $100 billion commitment with BlackRock and Microsoft; the Middle East Institute projects data center electricity demand will triple by 2030, and China currently controls ~90% of global rare earth processing.