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UK’s Nscale to supply Microsoft with 200,000 Nvidia AI chips in major data center deal

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Nscale, a British artificial intelligence infrastructure company backed by Nvidia, announced on Wednesday that it will supply around 200,000 Nvidia AI chips to Microsoft under an expanded partnership aimed at scaling data center capacity across Europe and the United States.

While the financial details were not disclosed, the Financial Times reported that the deal could be worth up to $14 billion, based on similar contracts. The agreement will be executed in collaboration with Dell Technologies, which will help deploy the AI hardware across Microsoft’s hyperscale facilities.

The rollout will begin next year, with Nscale supplying Nvidia GPUs from its data centers in Texas and Portugal, the company said. The project also includes a joint venture with Norway’s Aker, which will provide 52,000 additional GPUs from Nscale’s hyperscale AI campus in Narvik, Norway.

The partnership reflects the surging demand for AI computing power, as tech giants including Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet race to build infrastructure capable of training and deploying massive AI models. According to Citigroup, global AI-related infrastructure spending is expected to surpass $2.8 trillion by 2029.

Nscale, which raised $1.1 billion in September from investors including Aker and Finland’s Nokia, said the funds will accelerate its data center expansion and position the company as a key player in the global AI supply chain.

Broadcom unveils Thor Ultra networking chip to challenge Nvidia in AI data centers

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Broadcom has launched its new Thor Ultra networking chip, designed to help companies build massive artificial intelligence computing systems by linking together hundreds of thousands of processors — escalating its rivalry with Nvidia in the race to dominate AI infrastructure.

Unveiled on Tuesday, the Thor Ultra chip enables data center operators to connect far more AI processors than before, making it easier to train and deploy large models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The launch follows Broadcom’s announcement on Monday of a major deal to deliver 10 gigawatts of custom chips for OpenAI starting in 2026, further challenging Nvidia’s dominance in AI accelerators and networking technologies.

“The network plays an extremely important role in building these large clusters,” said Ram Velaga, Broadcom’s senior vice president. “So I’m not surprised that anybody in the GPU business wants to participate in networking.”

AI has become a $60 billion to $90 billion market opportunity for Broadcom by 2027, according to CEO Hock Tan, split between networking chips and custom data center processors built for companies such as Google and OpenAI. In 2024, Broadcom reported $12.2 billion in AI revenue, and in September it disclosed a $10 billion unnamed customer for its AI chips.

The Thor Ultra doubles the bandwidth of its predecessor and acts as a vital link between AI systems and the rest of the data center, improving data transfer speeds and scalability. Engineers developed it alongside Broadcom’s Tomahawk networking switches, refining every detail from power consumption to thermal management.

While Broadcom does not sell servers directly, it provides reference designs for partners to build upon. “For every dollar we invest in our silicon, our ecosystem partners invest six to ten times more,” Velaga said, emphasizing the company’s design-first strategy in the AI infrastructure market.

Intel unveils new AI data center chip “Crescent Island” to relaunch AI ambitions

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Intel has announced plans to launch a new artificial intelligence chip for data centers next year, marking a renewed effort to reclaim ground in the booming AI hardware market dominated by Nvidia and AMD.

The new GPU, named Crescent Island, will prioritize energy efficiency and be optimized for AI inference workloads, Intel Chief Technology Officer Sachin Katti said at the Open Compute Summit on Tuesday. “It emphasizes our focus on inference, optimized for AI, and for delivering the best performance per dollar,” Katti said.

The announcement represents Intel’s latest bid to reenter the AI race after CEO Lip-Bu Tan pledged to restart the company’s stalled AI programs, including the Gaudi and Falcon Shores lines. Despite trailing competitors, Intel hopes to capture a meaningful share of the rapidly expanding data center market fueled by generative AI adoption since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut.

Crescent Island will feature 160 gigabytes of memory, though slower than the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AMD and Nvidia’s top-tier AI chips. The chip will be based on Intel’s existing consumer GPU architecture, underscoring the company’s modular approach that allows customers to mix and match chips from multiple vendors.

Intel also committed to releasing new data center AI chips annually, matching the cadence of rivals AMD, Nvidia, and major cloud providers developing their own silicon.

The move follows Nvidia’s $5 billion investment in Intel, which gave it a 4% stake and launched a partnership to co-develop future AI and PC chips. Katti said the collaboration aims to ensure Intel CPUs remain integrated into AI systems worldwide as the company seeks to position itself as an indispensable player in next-generation computing.