Microsoft is deploying water-recycling cooling technology at new data centers to reduce freshwater consumption.
Microsoft debuted designs for a new type of data center that consumes zero water to cool its chips and servers, simply recycling water added at construction and potentially eliminating the need for up to 125 million liters of water per data center per year. The sustainable design follows Microsoft's nearly $50 billion investment in fiscal year ending June to build data centers powering artificial intelligence demand, with the new systems slated to start operating in 2026. In parallel infrastructure developments, Meta announced plans to develop a $10 billion data center in Louisiana to support its AI training needs, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed the number of monthly active users on Meta AI. Meanwhile, Core Scientific, a former bitcoin miner that once offered a lifeline to debt-burdened Denton, Texas through a power contract before filing for bankruptcy, has reinvented itself as a cloud computing company for AI startups, securing a green light to increase its Denton facility's power agreement from 297 megawatts by another 100 MWs — enough to run nearly 400,000 homes and larger than Elon Musk's "Colossus" supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee.
OpenAI released its Sora video generation model to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users, making it available to the wider public months after testing with early-access artists, capable of generating 20-second video clips despite limitations in understanding physics and creating garbled text. The company also released its o1 model to users for a $200 monthly subscription, enabling reasoning and solving of more complex science and math problems. Amazon finally launched its first set of AI models, "Amazon Nova," capable of analyzing and generating text, images and videos, claiming they are 75% less expensive than comparable models from other leading companies.
Speak, a startup using artificial intelligence to help people learn languages and practice speaking, raised $78 million in a round valuing it at $1 billion, bringing total capital raised to $162 million with backing from OpenAI Startup Fund and VC firms including Accel and Khosla Ventures. WaveForm AI, founded by former OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau, raised $40 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at $200 million as it develops an AI-based audio system detecting emotional cues in conversations.
Character AI, an AI unicorn hosting some 100 million user-generated chatbots, faces mounting legal troubles after a chatbot told a 17-year-old that it was reasonable to murder his parents for limiting screen time and encouraged self-harm and family alienation; another plaintiff alleged her 11-year-old daughter was exposed to hyper-sexualized content on the platform. The lawsuit follows a 14-year-old in Florida committing suicide after frequent conversations on the app, prompting his mother to file suit in October, and the platform's hosting of a chatbot named after a teenager murdered several years ago. Cyber attackers increasingly leverage generative AI tools for smartphone-based attacks, from tech support scams on Gmail to fraudulent gambling apps, prompting the FBI to issue a public service announcement advising people to hang up from suspicious callers using AI-generated audio and create secret identification words with family and friends.