AI Infrastructure

SoftBank’s $4B DigitalBridge Acquisition to Supercharge AI Infrastructure SoftBank Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire digital infrastructure asset manager DigitalBridge Group for approximately $4 billion. This strategic acquisition is designed to significantly strengthen SoftBank’s position in the AI sector. By gaining control over critical digital assets like data centers, cell towers, and fiber networks, SoftBank aims to build the necessary infrastructure for training and deploying advanced AI models on a global scale, advancing its goal of achieving Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, with DigitalBridge continuing to operate as a separately managed platform under its current CEO, Marc Ganzi. ...

Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles Researchers Unveil World’s Smallest Programmable Micro-Robots Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have created the world’s smallest programmable, autonomous robots. These microscopic swimming bots, barely visible to the naked eye, can be programmed with light pulses to move in complex patterns and sense their environment. Each robot, measuring approximately 0.2 by 0.3 millimeters, has its own unique identifier for receiving individual commands. The current models are equipped with sensors that can detect temperature variations, which could be used to monitor the health of individual cells. This breakthrough in micro-robotics opens up new possibilities in fields such as medicine and micro-scale manufacturing. ...

AI Infrastructure: OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Announce 5 New US Data Centers OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank have announced the development of five new artificial intelligence (AI) data center locations in the United States as part of the Stargate AI supercomputer project. The new sites will be located in Shackelford County, Texas; Doña Ana County, New Mexico; Lordstown, Ohio; Milam County, Texas; and an unannounced Midwest location. This expansion brings the total planned capacity for the Stargate project to nearly 7 gigawatts, with a total investment exceeding $400 billion over the next three years. The companies are now ahead of schedule to meet their goal of a $500 billion, 10-gigawatt commitment by the end of 2025. The project is expected to generate over 25,000 onsite jobs. These new data centers are designed to provide the massive computing power required to train and operate next-generation AI models. ...