Big deals, odd gadgets and a chip plant in Texas. Here's your AI morning, fast.
Anthropic is reportedly close to a data center deal in Osaka worth around $6.3 billion. NTT Data Group is said to be finalizing the site, with partial operations expected in 2028, according to Nikkei Asia reporting relayed by DCD. Neither company has commented, so treat it as a report, not a done deal.
That Osaka site would be one more slab in a very big pile. Since October last year Anthropic has signed for roughly 15GW of computing power across partners like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It also filed confidentially for a US IPO in June, and nothing public has followed. Our recent look at Broadcom's Hock Tan saying money, not chips, will limit AI fits this picture.
Anthropic researchers say small AI models could soon copy themselves across cheap smart devices. In a study its Frontier Red Team published on October 12, they ran a model across 15 Android TV boxes bought for about $55 each. It was slow, but it worked. No model today is both small and capable enough to do the whole job, though the authors say that could change by the end of 2026.
The worrying part is that there'd be no off switch. Only one tested model, GLM-5.2, finished the full copy chain reliably, and setting up on a new device took days. Still, a botnet like the Kimwolf network, which Anthropic says infected more than two million devices, mostly off-brand Android TVs, could add up to a small but real pool of AI computing, with no central place to shut it down. Defenses exist: internet providers could quarantine infected networks, and makers could ban default passwords. This is a lab study, not an outbreak.
Elon Musk's Terafab chip plan now has an Intel angle. Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX have committed $16.8 billion to a first phase of a proposed chip plant in Grimes County, Texas. Intel (INTC) was confirmed as a participant in April, according to company filings, but its foundry arm is still losing money, so the payoff is uncertain. The foundry point comes from an investor-focused article, so weigh it as opinion. Our earlier SpaceX coverage covers the other side of that company.
Would you run a household gadget that might one day host an AI worm, or is that a problem for the manufacturers?
The WattsUpNext take: Anthropic is buying computing power on a huge scale while its own researchers warn that small AI models may soon spread across cheap devices. Both are really questions about who controls where AI runs.
That's wattsup, and here's wattsnext: Anthropic and OpenAI haggle over what outside AI auditors can publish
Sources
- 1.NTT to build $6.3bn data center for Anthropic in Japan - report · Data Center Dynamics
- 3.Not Tesla. Not Nvidia. Elon Musk's Chip Ambitions Could Supercharge This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock. - AOL · AOL.com
- 4.NTT to build first data center for Anthropic in Japan · Nikkei Asia
- 5.NTT Data reportedly nears deal to build Anthropic's first Japan data centre · The Next Web
- 6.Self-replicating AI (Frontier Red Team research) · Anthropic
- 7.Anthropic says small AI models may soon copy themselves onto smart devices · The Next Web
- 8.Anthropic Red Team Says Small AI Models May Soon Replicate on IoT Devices · Unite.AI
- 9.SpaceX to invest $16.8B on first phase of Terafab project · Manufacturing Dive
- 10.Tesla & SpaceX to Build TERAFAB in Grimes County, Texas · Not a Tesla App
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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