Infrastructure & Chips

• Alibaba prices HK$80 billion share placement to fund AI expansion

  Alibaba prices 710 million new shares at HK$112.70, directing all net proceeds to full-stack AI capabilities and infrastructure, pending expected August 26 closing.

• Pennsylvania imposes binding rules on AI data centers

  Pennsylvania’s Executive Order 2026-05 makes GRID requirements enforceable for data centers, adding local approval, reporting and energy-cost obligations.

• FreeToken runs frontier-scale MoE models on consumer GPUs

  FreeToken uses bandwidth-adaptive CPU-GPU execution and semantic caching to serve 35B to 753B MoE models on consumer and workstation hardware.

• Waymo reveals custom 5nm AI chip behind its robotaxi compute stack

  Waymo reveals a custom 5nm ASIC for robotaxi sensor processing, showing a hybrid edge AI architecture built around specialized and merchant silicon.

• Starcloud Raises $250M to Scale Nvidia-Powered AI Data Centers in Orbit

  Starcloud raises $250 million at a $2.3 billion valuation as Nvidia and Cisco back its orbital AI data-center scale-up.

• Nvidia backs massive OpenAI Ohio data center with up to $105 billion in guarantees

  Nvidia backs massive OpenAI Ohio data center with up to $105 billion in guarantees Nvidia has committed up to $105 billion in guarantees supporting OpenAI's long-term lease of a major AI data-center p…

• Brazil launches R$2.3bn sovereign AI infrastructure push across rival technology ecosystems

  Brazil is funding major AI infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Norte, raising strategic questions about sovereign compute, suppliers and governance.

• Google Deepens TPU Supply Chain With Performance-Linked Marvell Deal

  Google deepens its Marvell custom-silicon partnership across TPU infrastructure with performance-linked warrants tied to future purchases.

• AI data centers are moving toward power, not just users

  JLL data suggests new European hyperscale projects are moving farther from major hubs as power, land and grid access reshape AI infrastructure geography.