FT : Battery start-ups see ‘crazy’ demand to smooth power surges in data centres

Battery start-ups see ‘crazy’ demand to smooth power surges in data centres
Rapid growth of clusters of processors for AI training drives need for energy storage

Battery start-ups are moving into AI data centres where their specialist technology helps to smooth split-second power surges, driving what executives describe as “crazy” demand.

The rapid growth of AI data centres is creating a profitable niche for the battery makers, as operators seek technologies capable of responding to energy surges that can be equivalent to the electricity demand of a small town, occurring multiple times per second.

Alsym Energy, a US sodium-ion battery start-up backed by an investment arm of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, said interest had soared over the past three months from data centre operators seeking ways to manage the frequent power transients caused by AI computing.

These extreme energy fluctuations meant that the facilities were otherwise not able to connect to the grid, Alsym chief executive Mukesh Chatter told the FT. “Battery has become an essential component, not a desired component of data centres,” he said.

Sodium-ion batteries could discharge power more quickly than traditional lithium-ion products, making them suitable for balancing AI-driven fluctuations, he said.

During conventional computing, processors tend to operate independently. But the thousands of processing units operating in synchrony during AI training and, increasingly, inference workloads — the process of running AI models — draw and shed power almost simultaneously.

Kazuhiro Sugiyama of Dutch semiconductor designer Fortaegis Technologies said this created the swings of tens of megawatts in as little as one thousandth of a second.

Existing backup systems and gas turbines are not designed to respond to millisecond-scale movements, the battery executives say.

The opportunity for specialist battery companies comes at a time when electric vehicle battery demand is challenged by the slowing pace of production and fierce competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Volkswagen-backed QuantumScape, a solid-state battery developer originally focused on EVs, said it was in talks with data centre equipment companies about supplying its technology.

Chief executive Siva Sivaram told the FT that the data centre market “clearly” offered better margins and could help the company reach profitability sooner.

Nyobolt, a UK battery start-up, said it was shipping samples to data centre customers, with installations planned for next year. Chief executive Sai Shivareddy said its system allowed hyperscalers to run processing unit clusters at “full power” without breaching grid connection limits, avoiding the throttling of AI workloads that could cost operators “millions of dollars a minute”.

In many countries, electricity grids are already struggling with congestion and years-long connection queues as renewable energy projects and large power users compete for access to limited network capacity.

The new market began drawing wider attention late last year after companies including Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Elon Musk’s xAI warned about severe energy disruption caused by the latest AI servers, said Caitlin McManus at BloombergNEF.

BloombergNEF estimates the battery capacity for this kind of power smoothing will be a fraction of the broader energy storage market. Established battery manufacturers such as South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and China’s CATL would retain an advantage over the start-ups by relying on existing products, and could scale production more rapidly, it said.

But the battery start-ups believe it will remain an attractive niche, as intense competition and Chinese overcapacity continue to squeeze profit margins elsewhere in the industry. 

Prime Batteries Technology, a Romanian battery producer focused on high-end energy storage systems, said data centre customers were far less sensitive to battery costs than developers of renewable energy projects, instead prioritising rapid deployment and energy security.

Vicentiu Ciobanu, Prime chief executive, said it was important to establish an early presence because demand from data centres was likely to scale “super fast” and was unlikely to become commoditised. “When we are looking into other segments like EVs or energy storage systems, definitely, it’s a bloodbath,” he said.

FT : BAE lands funding lift from UK spending on next-generation combat jet New t

BAE lands funding lift from UK spending on next-generation combat jet
New technology is speeding up development and cutting costs of military equipment

Engineers at BAE Systems’ base in north-west England have been replacing the engine in a new-generation combat aircraft — in a “virtual reality cave”. No grease, no hand tools; the work was done digitally, proving all the parts will fit years before any metal has to be cut.

The test aircraft being built by BAE is a critical stepping stone for the technologies that will go into the Global Combat Air Programme, the big winner in the UK government’s controversial and much-delayed Defence Investment Plan.

BAE, along with its GCAP programme partners Italy’s Leonardo and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is among the corporate beneficiaries from Britain’s 10-year military spending plan. The tri-national project, which aims to put supersonic fighter jets equipped with cutting-edge weapons in the skies by 2035, secured £8.6bn worth of funding over the next four years — above the expected £6bn. 

Both Charles Woodburn, BAE’s chief executive, and chair Cressida Hogg were in the front row to watch Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announce the details earlier this week. The defence plan, said Woodburn, provided “much-needed clarity for industry and a clear strategic direction for our armed forces”. 

The money earmarked for GCAP from the UK government paves the way for a long-term international contract expected in the coming days between the three nations and their respective defence champions.

It will be welcomed by Japan in particular, which had become increasingly alarmed at the lack of funding committed by the UK. An interim contract to allow work on the project to continue, agreed in March, ran out at the end of June.

“I’m relieved that the pause only ended up being three months,” Eisaku Ito, chief executive of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, told the FT. A flexible approach was necessary in international projects, he added.

The news will have been cheered at BAE’s fighter jet factories in Samlesbury and nearby Warton where engineers have been working on the development of the supersonic test aircraft. A UK-only initiative that includes more than a hundred smaller businesses in the supply chain, it will be Britain’s first demonstrator jet in 40 years, when BAE when the UK unveiled the one-off test aircraft for what would become the Eurofighter Typhoon flying today.

“It’s not just what we are designing, but the ways in which we are designing,” said Tony Godbold, engineering director of the future combat air system at BAE, during a site tour earlier this year. 

The work at the Samlesbury facility in Lancashire is one example of how the industry is using new technology to shape military procurement with the promise of speeding up development and cutting costs. The learnings from the test aircraft will help to inform work on the tri-national GCAP aircraft.

In the VR cave, through the use of headsets, engineers have been learning how to perform complex tasks and test processes before anything is built in real life, allowing them to anticipate problems before they occur.  

Similarly, test pilots have already flown more than 300 hours in a simulator and provided feedback, helping to inform decisions on the aircraft’s controls. 

Advanced manufacturing methods, including the use of 3D printers and digital design tools, are helping to speed up processes.

Thanks to such technological advances, the company was able to perform “engineering things, processes in minutes and seconds which took me, 20 years ago, months”, said Herman Claesen, managing director of future combat air systems.

With the VR cave, the company was “already exploring and finding out things that on the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft . . . you wouldn’t have found out until you were actually on the front line or you had the aircraft sitting in front of the hangar”, he said. 

Godbold said the demonstrator was also forcing BAE’s workers to relearn old skills and “muscles that we haven’t exercised for a long time”, such as in designing the airframe. 

Milestones expected this year include the final assembly of the front, centre and rear fuselage at Samlesbury. The sections will then be moved by road to the Warton site. If all goes to plan, the demonstrator will be ready to fly by the end of next year and the trials will determine what the final jet for GCAP — dubbed Tempest in the UK — will look like.

Despite the long lead time and questions among some defence experts whether expensive fighter jets still have a future in modern warfare given the rapid development of drones, Claesen said the company was well aware it could not “design something that’s obsolete when it goes into service”.

“The model and the philosophy is that in principle, you can actually walk up to the aircraft and squirt new software in it and off you go, which you can’t do with legacy platforms.”

FT : EU weighs weaker data centre climate rules in win for Big Tech Past proposa

EU weighs weaker data centre climate rules in win for Big Tech
Past proposals for strict rules on renewable energy certificates have been dropped after heavy lobbying, draft shows

The EU is set to bow to pressure from tech groups by proposing they can use cheaper offsets to counter the climate impact of gas-powered data centres, according to draft rules seen by the FT.

The EU has been trying to balance its climate goals with efforts to become more competitive and build out AI infrastructure to compete with the US. The bloc hosts the world’s second-largest data centre hub after North America, according to industry data.

It is preparing to significantly water down plans for a “traffic light” system that rates data centres based on energy and water use, according to a draft proposal set to be discussed by member state experts on Thursday.

A previous draft in March stipulated that data centres could only offset fossil fuel emissions by investing in clean energy certificates from projects commissioned in the past decade that produced power in roughly the same time and place as the data centre.

But companies and lobby groups, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and the European Data Centre Association, all wrote to the EU to ask it to drop various requirements, citing the risk of higher costs.

The latest draft from June 30, seen by the FT, adopts these requests and also says certificates from nuclear energy could be considered, in a boost for nuclear-reliant countries such as France.

That means a data centre running through the night on Germany’s grid, which continues to use coal, can still cancel out its emissions by relying on certificates linked to solar power produced during the day in Spain.

Some accounting and climate change experts say such certificates do little to curb emissions.

“If data centres are not powered by new, local renewables matched in real time to their energy use, they will drive up demand for volatile imported gas,” said Killian Daly, executive director at EnergyTag, a think-tank. He added that this could lead to higher energy prices and “hobble energy security”.

European Commission officials and member state energy experts were due to meet on Thursday to discuss the latest proposal, people familiar with the matter said. An official noted the proposal was not final and was still subject to feedback from Thursday’s meeting.

The world’s tech companies have for years insisted they can cancel out emissions through such clean energy investments. Amazon, Meta and Microsoft all have said they “match” 100 per cent of their fossil fuel energy use with clean energy certificates, even as the rising energy demands of AI push them to double down on gas power.

But Amazon on Wednesday published data showing its emissions from purchased electricity rising 34 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

Google earlier this week said its grid-based emissions from electricity use had risen 37 per cent. But, once offset by Google’s overall clean energy investments, these emissions fell slightly year on year.

A major corporate climate standard-setter, the Science Based Targets Initiative, last month watered down its own proposed rules on the topic following lobbying by the tech companies.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and is going through a historic heatwave. At the same time, it has outlined plans to triple data centre processing capacity in the next five to seven years.

The European Data Centre Association said it “supports transparent, credible and practical approaches to measuring and reducing emissions”.

Amazon and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Commission declined to comment.

FT : Record sea temperatures in June push world into ‘uncharted’ waters Global w

Record sea temperatures in June push world into ‘uncharted’ waters
Global warming and El Niño cycle combine to drive average to near 21C

A record global average sea temperature in June had pushed the world into “uncharted territory,” scientists said, as global warming and the El Niño cycle combine to increase the chances of more extreme weather ahead.

The daily sea surface temperature had surpassed the previous highs in the same month in 2023 and 2024, two European earth observation agencies confirmed.

It reached 20.96C on June 21, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, while this figure was put at 21C by Copernicus Marine.



The new record came just weeks after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the naturally occurring El Niño weather phenomenon had developed, with waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean near the equator becoming significantly warmer. 

“[The] unprecedented level of warming of the global extrapolar ocean” in June reflected both the “changing climate and the onset of an El Niño event whose strength . . . is likely to reach levels not seen in decades,” the European agencies said.

Carlo Buontempo, Copernicus Climate Change Service director, said the conditions “could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory”.

“With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months.”

During the last El Niño event from 2023 into 2024, global sea temperature repeatedly breached monthly highs. The cycle is linked with more extreme weather events, including flood and droughts in different parts of the world. 

Higher ocean temperatures can mean the atmosphere stays warmer for longer, while also providing extra energy and moisture for storms. 

The oceans have absorbed about 90 per cent of the world’s excess heat and about a quarter of human-caused carbon dioxide produced during the industrial era. Scientists are monitoring whether they may be reaching their limits.

Europe has experienced a severe heatwave in recent weeks, with new June air temperature records set in countries including the UK, France and Germany. The World Health Organization said the extreme weather had led to 1,300 excess deaths and caused school closures and rail disruption.

Michael Meredith, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, said the latest June sea temperature record was “very concerning”. 

While El Niño’s cycle was still in its early stages and not yet the dominant driver of global temperatures, he said, conditions could worsen significantly.

The global average temperature rise during the industrial era is estimated at about 1.4C by the World Weather Attribution scientific research group.

“The major concern is that the long-term warming trend, combined with shorter-term climate fluctuations, will drive more extreme weather, place additional stress on already-pressured ecosystems, and increase climate risks across the globe,” Meredith said.

FT : Democratic socialist wins Colorado primary in blow to party establishment M

Democratic socialist wins Colorado primary in blow to party establishment
Melat Kiros’s victory is latest challenge to Democratic Party leaders ahead of crucial US midterm elections

The US Democratic Party establishment has been rattled by another victory from the insurgent left after a longstanding incumbent was defeated by a 29-year-old first-time candidate in a primary election in Colorado.

Melat Kiros won the Democratic Party primary in Colorado’s first congressional district, which covers most of the Denver area, with 51.3 per cent of the vote on Tuesday.

Diana DeGette, who has represented the district in Congress for almost three decades, trailed on 41.7 per cent, with 93 per cent of votes counted, according to AP.

The upset is the latest in a string of defeats for longtime Democratic incumbents. Kiros was born in 1997, the same year DeGette was sworn in to Congress. Her victory underscores the growing power of the party’s left wing.

Kiros was endorsed by progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California Democratic congressman Ro Khanna. She was backed by Justice Democrats, the group that helped catapult Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress in 2018.

Her victory comes a week after three congressional candidates backed by New York City’s mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their Democratic primaries, ousting two sitting lawmakers from the party.

The wins have energised the left, who have hailed a new era for a Democratic Party still grappling with its electoral losses in 2024.

“Melat Kiros’s success against a 30-year incumbent shows that the public is done with a stale status quo,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

“Voters want a fighting Democratic Party that is not owned by corporate interests, and instead will shake up a broken economic and political system rigged for billionaires.”

But the results have prompted hand-wringing in the Democratic establishment and raised questions about whether the party needs fresh leadership heading into November’s midterm elections, when control of both chambers of Congress will be up for grabs.


Centrist Democrats have argued that elevating democratic socialist candidates such as Kiros could damage the party’s brand nationwide, especially in the competitive states and swing districts that will decide the midterms.

Kiros made headlines in 2023 when she was fired from her role at corporate legal group Sidley Austin over her criticism of law firms’ response to campus protests after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

Republican leaders have been quick to claim that the democratic socialist candidates are representative of the wider Democratic Party.

US President Donald Trump last week called democratic socialists “hard core, godless Communists”, writing on Truth Social: “This is the most serious threat to our Country since its existence 250 years ago.”

Manny Rutinel, a progressive candidate in Colorado’s eighth congressional district, which spans an area north of Denver, also defeated a more moderate opponent to win his primary on Tuesday. Rutinel will face incumbent Republican congressman Gabe Evans in November.

Tuesday was not a sweep for progressive candidates, however.

In another high-profile primary in Colorado, John Hickenlooper, the state’s 74-year-old incumbent Democratic senator, easily saw off a challenge from the left by state senator Julie Gonzales, a 43-year-old former member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Gonzales, a labour organiser, had pitched herself as a younger, more progressive alternative. Hickenlooper, who was a two-term mayor of Denver before serving two terms as the state’s governor, has vowed that if re-elected it will be his final six-year term in office.

Colorado’s other Democratic US senator, Michael Bennet, meanwhile, lost a separate primary bid on Tuesday to be the party’s next nominee for state governor to Colorado attorney-general Phil Weiser.

While Weiser shared many of Bennet’s policy positions, he pitched himself as an outsider candidate more willing to stand up to Trump.

>>> US After Hours Summary: FIZZ +7.5% on earnings and special dividend; FC -22.

After Hours Summary: FIZZ +7.5% on earnings and special dividend; FC -22.6% and GBX -0.8% lower on earnings; AEO -1.7% on CFO change and reaffirmed guidance

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FIZZ +7.5% (also declares special dividend of $3.25/share),

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: CEPT +3.1% (Securitize completes business combination), BTGO +2.3% (adds day-one support for Robinhood Chain Mainnet), AVAV +2.1% (awarded a $500 mln Army contract), CLF +1.9% (awarded a $400 mln Defense Logistics Agency contract), INVX +1.6% (completes acquisition of TCO Group AS), XRAY +1% (PDS Health practices have surpassed 5 mln CEREC chairside restorations), VNOM +0.7% (completes acquisition of Riverbend Oil & Gas), QXO +0.7% (files for 19,352 share common stock offering, relates to TopBuild acquisition), WHR +0.5% (discloses restructuring actions related to closure of Supsa manufacturing facility), BLK +0.1% (Treasury selects two BlackRock funds for Trump Accounts)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FC -22.6%, GBX -0.8%,

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: CMCO -2% (names new CFO), AVR -1.9% (files for 5,385,000 share common stock offering, relates to warrants), AEO -1.7% (CFO transition; names next CFO; reaffirms guidance), LMT -0.5% (awarded a $347.5 mln Army contract ), JBIO -0.4% (License Agreement with Paragon Therapeutics), FICO -0.3% (applauds release of historical FICO Score 10T Data), AAPL -0.1% (Apple makes lobbying push to buy Chinese-made memory chips, according to Bloomberg)

WSJ : SpaceX Showed Investors Prototype of Elon Musk’s New AI Device The sleek,

SpaceX Showed Investors Prototype of Elon Musk’s New AI Device
The sleek, handset-like prototype was designed to integrate AI technology from SpaceX’s xAI

  • SpaceX has developed a prototype handset-like device, slimmer than an iPhone, to reshape AI interaction, showing it to investors.
  • The prototype, running a proprietary OS with xAI technology, aligns with Musk’s “everything app” philosophy for his ventures.
  • The project is an early-stage effort, with its future uncertain, amid other companies also exploring specialized AI hardware.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX SPCX -5.02%decrease; red down pointing triangle has developed a prototype for a handset-like device designed to reshape how humans interact with artificial intelligence that SpaceX has shown investors recently.

The rocket and AI company showed the prototype, which features a sleek design that is slimmer than an iPhone, to some investors and other stakeholders ahead of the company’s mega initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The device featured a sleek design that was slimmer than an iPhone, the people said.

The prototype was designed to run on a proprietary operating system and integrate AI technology from SpaceX’s xAI, some of the people said. The device would use a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, they said.

SpaceX told some investors that the project was at an early stage. The design could change and it is unclear whether such a device will be made.

Representatives for SpaceX and Qualcomm didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.