California Data Center Intel

Recent California data center news

• Jan 14, 2026

  Patented: Machine Learning Treatment for Depression and More North Texas Inventive Activity

  The Board of Regents of the University of Texas System, Stanford University, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs have been granted a patent for a machine-learning method to identify depression patients likely to respond to antidepressant treatment.

  • Main announcement: The three institutions received USPTO Patent No. 12490933 for a method that uses machine learning to identify subjects with depression who will respond to antidepressant treatment, listing Madhukar Trivedi among the inventors; the patent application listed is 19072469 on 03/06/2025 (278 days app to issue).
  • Background and context: The article is a Dallas Innovates weekly patents roundup reporting 100 patents granted in the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metro for the week of 12/9/25 (ranked No. 11 of 250 metros); it catalogs numerous other patents and top assignees (e.g., Texas Instruments Inc. (10 patents), Toyota (9), Samsung (7)) and provides USPTO links for individual patents.
• Jan 14, 2026

  Climate Change Solutions - January 13, 2026

  The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) announced its first Congressional briefing of the year, a wildfire solutions briefing on Tuesday, January 27, hosted with the Federation of American Scientists.

  • Main announcement: EESI will host a Congressional briefing titled “Igniting Innovation: Progress and a Path Forward for Wildfire Policy” on Tuesday, January 27, 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (reception to follow) at Russell Senate Office Building, Room SR-385 and online; RSVP available on the EESI briefing page and a reception follows the briefing.
  • Background & related actions: The newsletter summarizes recent federal actions signed by the President including MAPWaters (P.L. 119-62) improving recreational waterway data collection, Save Our Seas 2.0 (P.L. 119-65) reauthorizing EPA marine debris programs, Great Lakes Fishery Research Reauthorization (P.L. 119-67) for USGS research funding, and La Paz County Solar Energy and Job Creation Act (P.L. 119-68) (expected to create more than 700 jobs and provide enough solar and battery capacity to power about 75,000 homes); it also notes wildfire costs of $424 billion annually and highlights EESI coverage on data center water use (cited by multiple media outlets).
• Jan 14, 2026

  Vistra to Bolster Gas-Fired Fleet by 5.5 GW With $4B Cogentrix Acquisition

  Vistra Corp. has executed definitive agreements to acquire Cogentrix Energy from funds managed by Quantum Capital Group in a $4 billion transaction announced Jan. 5, 2026, adding 10 natural gas plants (5,496 MW) across PJM, ISO New England, and ERCOT.

  • Main announcement & deal specifics: Vistra will acquire 100% ownership of the Cogentrix portfolio for $4 billion, adding 5,496 MW of modern natural gas capacity (10 plants) and increasing Vistra’s total generation footprint toward ~50 GW; the transaction is subject to FERC, DOJ (HSR), and state regulatory approvals and is expected to close mid-to-late 2026. The deal includes acquiring the remaining 25% interest in the Patriot and Hamilton-Liberty plants and excludes Cogentrix’s Cedar Bayou 4 (550 MW), which Cogentrix will retain.
  • Background, financing, and timing context: The acquisition follows Vistra’s October 2025 purchase of Lotus Infrastructure gas assets for $1.9 billion (2,600 MW) and is supported by capital markets actions including $2.25 billion in senior secured notes (Jan 2026) and a prior $2 billion secured notes issuance (Oct 2025); Vistra expects mid-single-digit accretion in 2027 and high-single-digit average accretion (2027–2029) to Ongoing Operations Adjusted Free Cash Flow before Growth per share. Regulatory reviews (notably FERC Section 203) will examine competitive impacts in PJM and ISO-NE.
• 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).