Anthropic, Microsoft Announce New AI Data Center Projects as Industry’s Construction Push Continues by Matt O’Brien
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new data centers in Texas and New York. Microsoft also on Wednesday announced a new data center under construction in Atlanta, Georgia, describing it as connected to another in Wisconsin to form a “massive supercomputer” running on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips to power AI technology. The latest deals show that the tech industry is moving forward on huge spending to build energy-hungry AI infrastructure, despite lingering financial concerns about a bubble, environmental considerationsand the political effects of fast-rising electricity bills in the communities where the massive buildings are constructed. Anthropic, Microsoft announce new AI data centers


Nvidia confirmed at its GTC conference Tuesday that Vera Rubin will succeed its Grace Blackwell lineup as the next generation of the company’s artificial intelligence systems. Blackwell chips have only recently started shipping in high volume, with the enhanced Blackwell Ultra lineup due to launch later this year. Rubin chips are expected to start shipping in the second half of next year. They’ll be monsters—at least according to the specs Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang laid out in his GTC conference keynote on Tuesday. The Vera Rubin systems will sport 3.3 times the computing performance of Blackwell Ultra. Vera Rubin Ultra—the enhanced version of the lineup expected to ship in the later half of 2027—will offer 14 times Blackwell’s computing performance. Analysts expect this series of Nvidia’s chips to generate nearly $40 billion in revenue in their first year of sales and more than $95 billion in their second year.