Cointime reports: Riot Platforms shares jumped after the bitcoin miner disclosed a $28 billion AI lease and sold BTC to finance its AI expansion. Hut 8 shares sank after the miner reported falling revenue and rising costs ahead of its major data center leases generating income.
Cointime reports: Voters in at least 29 US communities backed measures to curb data centers, creating new obstacles for the infrastructure powering AI. The votes centered on concerns over electricity bills, water supplies and public oversight, the issues dominating local debates over data center development.
Cointime update: Coinbase’s x402 protocol revives the web’s long-unused HTTP 402 status code, enabling AI agents and applications to pay for APIs and data in stablecoins such as USDC. The protocol repurposes the 402 “Payment Required” response as a machine-readable payment request, so autonomous software can settle API and data access directly on-chain. Coinbase has positioned x402 as payment infrastructure for an agent-driven web.
Cointime reports: Microsoft and Alphabet shares rose while Nvidia and Tesla fell after a Democratic election sweep, leaving the tech and AI sectors split as investors reassess Washington’s approach to AI and Big Tech. The divergent moves underscored a divided market reaction to the political shift.
Cointime update: Riot Platforms has signed a $28 billion AI lease covering its entire Corsicana campus, the miner disclosed. Riot has sold 20,264 BTC this year to help fund its data-center buildout, while mining still supplied about 64% of third-quarter revenue. The deal marks a further shift by the bitcoin miner into AI hosting capacity.
Cointime reports: AMD reported fiscal Q3 revenue of $13.377 billion, up 45% year over year and above the roughly $13.06 billion consensus, with adjusted EPS of $2.09. Data center revenue reached $8.546 billion, up 97% and about 64% of total sales, as MI450 GPUs and Helios rack systems began ramping with Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as early customers. AMD guided Q4 revenue to about $17 billion and said data center sales would rise roughly 50% sequentially, sending shares up as much as 7.5% after hours.
Cointime update: OpenAI said future AI data centers could be rebranded and designed to ease pressure on power grids by cutting electricity demand during emergencies, the ChatGPT maker stated. The company framed the facilities as grid-protection assets rather than pure power drains. No timeline or specific site was given for the approach.
Cointime reports: Anthropic’s Claude AI model is becoming cheaper to use, with prices falling, but the company’s computing expenses grew faster than sales in the latest quarter. The widening cost-sales gap poses a challenge for the AI developer as it prepares for an initial public offering.
Cointime update: Changpeng Zhao, in his first interview since the Binance hack, said AI is accelerating cyberattacks and called for the crypto industry to form a security alliance. The former Binance CEO made the remarks as the exchange continues to deal with the aftermath of the breach. He did not provide details on the alliance’s structure or membership.