In an op-ed in Le Monde, groups fighting data center projects warn of the water and electricity use and the loss of farmland these sites bring. They frame local opposition as a stand against the broader AI build-out.
Smartphone shipments dropped 22% in the third quarter of 2026, hit by a component shortage tied to AI demand. Samsung and Apple were affected, but Chinese manufacturers suffered the most.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center's AI Factory Accelerator Programme is now fully running after a pilot, offering startups sovereign compute, technical support and training. Many of the participating companies are also part of NVIDIA's Inception startup programme.
To meet demand for the memory chips packaged alongside AI GPUs, Samsung is building a huge manufacturing complex in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. Three fabs already run around the clock and a fourth is coming online.
The number of neoclouds, which rent out AI computing power, has exploded over the past four years. Wall Street is watching closely because their business model, which moves tens of billions of dollars, raises questions.
HSBC's chief executive cautioned that not every data center, the campuses housing the servers behind AI and cloud computing, will be a sound investment despite the AI boom.