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WHTop → 📋 News → Starcloud Raises $250M at $2.3B Valuation to Scale AI Data Centers in Space
Starcloud Raises $250M at $2.3B Valuation to Scale AI Data [...]
Starcloud Raises $250M at $2.3B Valuation to Scale AI Data Centers in Space
📅 - Starcloud has raised another $250 million at a $2.3 billion post-money valuation, giving the orbital data center startup capital to expand manufacturing, secure launch capacity and deepen its work with NVIDIA. The round takes total funding to $450 million, while the company pursues an unusually capital-intensive plan to deploy high-performance AI infrastructure in space at global scale.
The financing says almost as much about investor tolerance for expensive AI infrastructure as it does about space computing. Manhattan West led the Series A extension, with existing backers including Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX and 776 returning. NVIDIA and Cisco Investments joined as new investors, [...][... Check source for end of article ...]
📅 - AI and Cloud Expansion Run Into a Critical Engineering Gap - The infrastructure boom is running into a labor constraint that capital cannot quickly fix. Data-center operators, cloud teams and enterprise software groups are all struggling to recruit experienced specialists as AI workloads raise technical demands. The result is higher compensation, heavier consultant use and growing execution risk across projects that companies increasingly consider critical to expansion plans.
The numbers are coming from different corners of the market, but they point in the same direction. Uptime Institute says more than half of data-center owners and operators surveyed in 2026 had trouble finding qualified candidates, even as rack densities rise and outage costs [...]
📅 - AI Data Centers Drive Chip Spending to $1.6 Trillion in 2026 - Gartner expects AI data centers to absorb a growing share of global semiconductor spending, with the research firm forecasting total chip revenue of $1.6 trillion in 2026. For infrastructure buyers, the bigger issue is not the headline number. It is the widening cost footprint across memory, networking, power management, CPUs and optical interconnects across dense AI clusters.
The forecast points to a semiconductor market growing far faster than the underlying enterprise economy. Gartner expects worldwide revenue to rise 92% from $809 billion in 2025, before reaching roughly $1.9 trillion in 2027. Much of that acceleration comes from memory rather than another sudden doubling of [...]
📅 - NVIDIA AI Server Prices Rise Over 15% as Memory Costs Surge - NVIDIA is preparing price increases of more than 15% on some AI servers as memory costs surge, according to Bloomberg, exposing a new pressure point in data center economics. The increases are expected on systems shipping in early 2027, including configurations using Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell chips, as HBM and server DRAM supplies remain tight globally.
The reported increases are significant partly because NVIDIA has had enough margin in its accelerator business to absorb plenty of component inflation without immediately passing it through. Now memory appears expensive enough to alter that calculation. Bloomberg reported that server manufacturers supplying large operators including [...]
📅 - Google Cloud Takes Larger Role in Verizon Network Automation - Google Cloud and Verizon are deepening their relationship around enterprise AI, but the more consequential piece sits below the chatbot layer. Verizon plans to use Google Cloud as a data platform partner for autonomous network operations, combining AI models, unified data infrastructure, and connectivity to predict faults, automate responses, and reshape how infrastructure is run at scale.
The partnership extends well beyond customer-facing Gemini deployments. Verizon says it is building an autonomous network intelligence framework intended to identify and resolve network anomalies before subscribers are affected. Google Cloud will supply part of the underlying data and AI environment, [...]
📅 - Micron Opens U.S. Training Center for Memory Manufacturing Expansion - Micron has opened a 60,000-square-foot training center in Boise as it prepares for a much larger expansion of U.S. memory manufacturing. The facility is less about classroom space than production readiness: advanced fabs need technicians who can maintain tools, run processes, and keep output stable. For AI infrastructure buyers, labor is becoming another supply-chain constraint at scale.
Micron is building that workforce alongside substantial manufacturing capacity. Its first new Boise fab is under construction, with meaningful DRAM output projected for 2027, while the company plans two leading-edge fabs in Idaho and additional facilities in New York. Micron says its U.S. manufacturing [...]
📅 - IBM Unveils Dual-Architecture Processor for Z and LinuxONE - IBM has unveiled its first dual-architecture mainframe processor, bringing native Arm execution into future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems while preserving IBM's own instruction set on the same cores. The move opens a route for Arm software into mission-critical enterprise computing, although buyers still lack the benchmarks, pricing, and availability dates needed to judge its commercial impact.
The technical proposition is unusual. IBM is not placing separate Arm and Z cores in the same package. Each of the processor's 11 cores is intended to execute Arm instructions alongside IBM Z or LinuxONE instructions concurrently. The design uses a 2 nanometer process, runs above 5.7 GHz, includes AI [...]