A team of ten domino artists has set a new Guinness World Record for the most dominoes toppled in a three-dimensional pyramid, bringing down 29,193 tiles in a single chain reaction at a gym in Garden City, Michigan, on June 20.

Guinness World Records has officially certified the achievement, which was set by the FALLDOWN Domino Team led by Steven Price of Sprice Machines as part of a larger installation that incorporated no fewer than 123,456 dominoes in total.

The feat, documented in a YouTube video titled “123,456 Dominoes SUPERSIZED — FALLDOWN 2026,” has attracted widespread attention online for the scale and precision of its construction

Price has held four domino-related Guinness World Records previously and has served as a judge on Fox’s competition show Domino Masters. He holds a mechanical engineering degree, a background that is evident in the structural ambition of this project.

Building a 35×35 pyramid without triggering it

The three-dimensional pyramid that forms the centerpiece of the record sits on a base of 35 by 35 dominoes and rises in layers to a pointed apex. Constructing a 3D pyramid of this scale requires a level of precision that flat domino runs do not — every tile must be positioned accurately while the structure beneath it remains stable, and a single mistimed touch anywhere in the grid can bring the entire build crashing down prematurely.

Watch the video here.

The FALLDOWN team, which includes Michael Fantauzzo, Matt VanVleck, Gabe Dean, Alex Koops, Derek Koops, Stephan Burton, Brady Dolan, Evan Voeltner, and Aaron Bimrah alongside Price, spent multiple days installing the complete setup.

A world built from supersized everyday objects

The pyramid was not the only engineering feat in the room. The team built a themed installation around 123,456 dominoes arranged into giant versions of ordinary objects — enormous paperclips, oversized friendship bracelets, massive bonsai trees, school supplies and a rubber duck that appears mid-sequence.

These elements fed into a series of Rube Goldberg-style chain reactions that snaked through the entire installation before converging on the pyramid, making the final topple a product of everything that came before it.

Guinness required a traditional domino-to-domino start

The team had originally planned to use a special mechanical trigger to bring the pyramid down. Guinness World Records rejected the approach: to qualify for an official record, the entire chain must begin with a conventional domino touching the next in sequence, with no external mechanism initiating the fall. The team revised their plans accordingly, and the record-setting run began exactly as the rules required.

Price’s fifth Guinness record in domino art

The FALLDOWN record is Steven Price’s fifth Guinness certification in domino-related categories. His prior titles include the largest domino circle field, the longest domino wall, and the largest two-dimensional pyramid. Price first gained wider recognition as a 22-year-old when his Incredible Science Machine project, which involved 250,000 domino tiles, set records and went viral.

His YouTube channel, Sprice Machines, includes videos with over 30 million views, with the Lemonade Machine — a chain reaction that travels through an entire house to serve lemonade — among the most-watched.

Researchers at the University of Toronto Engineering have developed six new metal alloys using an artificial intelligence-driven discovery platform that could improve the durability of parts used in jet engines, nuclear power plants, and other extreme environments. The findings show that the AI-assisted system identified promising alloys within just a few weeks, significantly speeding up the search for high-performance materials.

These new alloys also work well with 3D metal printing, enabling the production be complex parts that are hard or impossible to produce with traditional methods.

AI speeds up alloy discovery

Led by Yu Zou, Canada Research Chair in Materials and Manufacturing for Extreme Environments, the team worked with Jason Hattrick-Simpers to build a system that uses computer modeling, machine learning, and robots to help with manufacturing.

Their method, called active learning, acts like a self-driving laboratory. Rather than testing thousands of metal combinations by hand, the system picks the best options, makes them, tests how they perform, and uses those results to guide the next experiments.

“There’s enormous demand for materials that can stand up to huge swings of temperature and pressure, such as what you would find inside a jet engine or in the steam generators inside nuclear power plants, anywhere conventional steel just can’t survive,” said Yu Zou, who led the project.

“We also need materials that can be printed layer by layer, enabling us to make components that can’t be created by traditional manufacturing processes. For example, to make a material that is both lightweight and strong, you can vary the composition: a hard, tough alloy on the outside to something softer and lighter on the inside.”

The project was partly supported by the University of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium, a group that uses AI and automation to accelerate the discovery of new materials.

Active learning cuts the need for massive datasets

Most AI systems need a large amount of experimental data to make accurate predictions. This becomes a problem when researchers look at materials that have not been tested yet.

“One problem you often run into when trying to use AI to design materials is that most machine learning models require lots of data about material properties to learn from,” revealed Ajay Talbot, a Ph.D. student in Zou’s lab and lead author of the study.

“But if you’re working in part of the design space that hasn’t been explored yet, that data doesn’t exist, so you’re kind of flying blind.”

“The way we get around that challenge is to use data-lean models that essentially feel their own way along. Our active learning model strategically selects a few samples to manufacture and test, and the data from those experiments is fed back into the model to inform where we go next. It really speeds things up.”

<a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFYJV7WvtOM“>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFYJV7WvtOM</a>

New alloys outperform industry benchmark

To demonstrate the system, the researchers focused on compositionally complex alloys made from nickel, cobalt, and chromium. Within weeks, the automated platform identified six new alloy formulations with strong performance.

“One of the properties we were targeting was puncture resistance at temperatures of up to 1,112°F (600°C), which is what you’d find in the front section of a jet engine,” Talbot said.

“The industry standard in this space is nickel-based alloys such as Inconel 625. But we found one made of 12 percent nickel, 62 percent cobalt, and 26 percent chrome that was great for retaining hardness at extremely high temperatures. Even with just three components, our alloy outperformed Inconel 625, an alloy of more than 10 different elements, by 4.5 percent in our lab tests.”

The team also developed another alloy designed for hotter sections of jet engines, where temperatures can reach 1,832°F (1,000°C).

“One of the things that happens in an environment like that is the formation of oxide scale, which essentially means that your material is just getting burned away,” Talbot explained.

“We found a material made of 36 percent nickel, 14 percent cobalt, and 50 percent chrome that was extremely good for oxidation resistance at these high temperatures: It even outperforms Inconel 625 by 85 percent. We’re eventually aiming to ramp up to even higher temperatures, up to 2,192°F (1,200°C).”

Researchers plan to expand to more complex materials

The researchers say the current alloys represent an early demonstration of what the AI-driven discovery platform can achieve.

“This nickel-cobalt-chrome system has just three elements in it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively simple system,” he added.

“But it’s great for showing that this whole closed-loop discovery platform really works. What we want to do next is ramp up the complexity a bit more to make even crazier stuff, with maybe up to 10 or 12 different elements.”

“As you add more components, you can get different strengthening mechanisms, different kinds of useful properties. There’s a lot more out there just waiting to be discovered.”

The study was published in the journal npj Advanced Manufacturing.

A process called Alkaline Thermal Treatment (ATT) has been tested to turn mixed plastic waste into high-purity hydrogen fuel.

Researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Ewha Womans University in South Korea undertook this new study. This process eliminates the costly and laborious step of sorting plastic waste before recycling.

The single-reactor method successfully processes a mixture of the three most common, hard-to-recycle plastics: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and polypropylene (PP).

“We are solving two urgent global problems at the same time,” said Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. 

“Plastic waste is accumulating at alarming rates, and clean hydrogen is essential for decarbonizing energy. This technology tackles both of these challenges in a creative and scalable way,” the co-corresponding author added. 

Mixed plastic processing

Look around you. The water bottle on your desk, the crinkly shopping bag in your pantry, and the sleek dashboard of your car all share a drawback. Once you throw them away, the waste is almost impossible to recycle as a single stream.

A persistent challenge in global recycling is the labor-intensive requirement to sort plastics by type before processing. It leads to 79 percent of plastic waste ending up buried in landfills, while another 12 percent is burned away into atmospheric pollution. Only 9 percent ever get a second life.

But the new study overcomes this challenge. The team demonstrated a chemical technique that takes a chaotic, unsorted cocktail of the world’s three most common plastics and transforms it into hydrogen fuel. Interestingly, the method does it without releasing a single puff of carbon dioxide. 

Alkaline Thermal Treatment uses heat to trigger a reaction between sodium hydroxide and organic matter, generating hydrogen fuel in the process.

It was originally designed to extract hydrogen fuel from ocean biomass, such as seaweed. The researchers wondered if the same principles could dissolve our mounting plastic problem. 

While plastic bottles (PET) broke down easily during the process, shopping bags (PE) and food containers (PP) resisted the chemical attack due to highly stable, stubborn carbon-hydrogen bonds. 

To overcome this chemical defense, a thermal oxidation pretreatment was introduced. In this process, the mixed plastic was briefly exposed to mild heat in the air. After this, oxygen was introduced into the stubborn polymer chains, which created the reactive weak spots needed for the treatment to dismantle all three plastic types.

Eco-friendly process

Once activated, the unsorted plastic soup degrades beautifully inside a single reactor, pumping out hydrogen gas with a purity level exceeding 90 percent.

ATT process changes the game for environmental footprints by operating at temperatures around 400 degrees Celsius (752 F), which are cooler than those of extreme gasification methods.

Furthermore, the technique uses a sodium hydroxide reagent to capture the plastic’s carbon rather than venting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The carbon is permanently bound into a stable, solid mineral called sodium carbonate.

The researchers have already outlined a simple secondary process to turn that byproduct into calcium carbonate. That is the exact mineral used by the concrete and construction industries, locking the plastic’s carbon away forever in infrastructure.

The breakthrough is currently confined to precision laboratory settings. Significant optimization is required to scale the technology up for municipal recycling plants, and its long-term economic viability still needs to be rigorously tested.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A foldable, self-propelled pontoon barge has played a key role in rescuing more than 6,000 stranded students and staff from a flood-hit region in southern China.

The rapid-deployment vessel was used during evacuation efforts in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region after flooding due to Typhoon Maysak inundated communities, according to Chinese media reports. The modular barge can be assembled in just over 10 minutes, carry more than 500 people per trip, and transport loads exceeding 66.1 US tons. 

According to its manufacturer, the platform is engineered to operate reliably in harsh environments, including high-altitude regions up to 10,800 feet (3,300 meters) above sea level and areas with extreme cold.

Pontoon powers rescue

The self-propelled pontoon barge helped to evacuate more students and staff trapped after floodwaters nearly five meters deep cut off the campus.

The modular vessel, described by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning as “China’s real-life transformer,” played a central role in a large-scale evacuation at Guangxi Logistics Vocational and Technical College in Guigang, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported the South China Morning Post (SCMP). 

The rescue operation took place after torrential rains left the college campus submerged under nearly five meters (16.4 feet) of floodwater, cutting off thousands of people from surrounding areas. According to China’s state news agency Xinhua, conventional rescue methods initially struggled to cope with the scale of the emergency.

Emergency teams first relied on inflatable rescue boats and assault boats to reach those stranded. While effective for small-scale operations, these vessels could transport only a limited number of passengers at a time, making the evacuation process slow and difficult.

To accelerate the rescue effort, the state-owned China Anneng Construction Group, China’s emergency rescue force, deployed three heavy-duty self-propelled pontoon barges to the flooded area between Wednesday night and Thursday. The arrival of the modular barges dramatically increased evacuation capacity, allowing rescuers to move hundreds of people during each trip. By midday Thursday, every student and staff member had been safely evacuated, according to Guangxi Television.

Heavy-duty lifeline

The pontoon barge used in the operation measures approximately 60 meters in length and eight meters in width. It is capable of carrying more than 500 passengers in a single journey while supporting a total payload exceeding 66.1 US tons. Unlike conventional floating bridges or barges that require external towing, the vessel is equipped with its own propulsion system, enabling it to travel at speeds of up to 6.7 mph (10.8 km/h) even when fully loaded.

One of its biggest advantages is its rapid deployment capability. China Anneng said the modular system can be transported to a disaster site, assembled, and placed into operation in just over 10 minutes. Its foldable design allows emergency responders to quickly establish a large-capacity transport platform without relying on permanent infrastructure.

The rescue barge is regarded as one of China’s most advanced modular heavy-duty water rescue systems. It was specifically developed to address one of the biggest challenges during major floods—transporting large groups of people, emergency responders, vehicles, and heavy equipment across inundated areas or rivers made impassable by rising water, according to the SCMP.

The vessel is manufactured by China Harzone Industry Corporation, a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC). The company says the platform is designed to operate reliably in demanding environments, including high-altitude regions up to 10,800 feet (3,300 meters) above sea level and areas experiencing extremely cold temperatures.

CSSC noted that the high-tech rescue platform has been widely deployed in domestic emergency response operations since 2020. Its successful use during the Guangxi floods demonstrates how rapidly deployable modular engineering systems are becoming an increasingly important tool for large-scale disaster response, enabling emergency teams to evacuate thousands of people far more quickly than traditional rescue boats alone. thousands of people far more quickly than traditional rescue boats alone.

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The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) has selected a consortium led by Thales and Leonardo to deliver a new generation of secure deployable communication and information systems for the Alliance’s Allied Special Operations Forces Command (SOFCOM). The award marks the first phase of a broader NATO initiative aimed at strengthening digital connectivity, operational resilience, and command capabilities for special operations forces.

Under the contract, the two European defence companies will provide six Deployable Points of Presence for Special Operations Component Commands (DPOP SOCC), along with operator training and long-term support. These mobile headquarters are designed to give NATO Special Forces secure command-and-control capabilities that can be rapidly deployed in demanding operational environments.

Secure communications, resilient networking

The deployable systems will combine secure communications, resilient networking, high-performance computing, and advanced IT infrastructure while maintaining a reduced electromagnetic and physical signature. This design enables forces to establish operational headquarters quickly without compromising security or mobility. The systems will also support classified, multi-domain information sharing and enhanced cybersecurity, ensuring interoperability across NATO forces and partner nations.

“Thales brings end‑to‑end expertise in secure information and communication systems, deep knowledge of NATO’s reference architecture, and a long track record of delivering projects to the Alliance,” said Alexandre Bottero, Vice President, Networks and Infrastructure Systems, Thales.

“By combining this expertise with Leonardo’s capabilities, we are harnessing the best of European industry in a modular, upgradable, and field‑proven system, providing NATO Special Forces with next‑generation deployable CIS.”

A notable feature of the programme is the introduction of real-time Full Motion Video (FMV) sharing between separate deployable systems, a capability being fielded for the first time in a NATO special operations communications network. The addition is expected to improve situational awareness, intelligence sharing, and mission coordination during complex operations.

Thales and Leonardo will oversee lifecycle support

Beyond delivering the systems, Thales and Leonardo will oversee lifecycle support, upgrades, maintenance, and user training to ensure the platforms remain operational and adaptable as mission requirements evolve. The project also brings together industrial expertise from across the Alliance, with key technologies contributed by companies in the United Kingdom and Germany.

The collaboration combines Thales’ experience in secure communications and NATO network architectures with Leonardo’s expertise in deployable command post solutions. Together, the companies aim to provide NATO with a modular, scalable, and future-ready communications capability capable of supporting special operations in increasingly contested environments.

“Leonardo’s experience, developed at Italian level through the delivery of complete Regimental and Divisional Command Post capabilities, enables the introduction of modular NATO-ready systems based on fixed and expandable shelters,” said Antonio Levato, SVP Air and Land Systems Land and Sea Business at Leonardo Electronics.

“The strength of the design stems from the close collaboration between industry and the end user, who has chosen Leonardo as both the System Integrator and the Design Authority for Italian command post. This partnership among two major players of the European defence industry allows to combine Leonardo’s field proven deployable solutions with Thales experience in NATO’s secure communications programs.”

The programme underscores NATO’s continued investment in modernizing command, control, communications, and information systems as the Alliance prepares for evolving security challenges. By enhancing secure connectivity and rapid deployment capabilities, the new systems are expected to strengthen operational readiness and improve coordination among multinational special operations forces during future missions.

The U.S. Air Force has carried out its first missile launch from a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), an important step in developing semi-autonomous drones that can fly with piloted fighter jets. In the test, announced on June 15, 2026, the Anduril-built YFQ-44A fired an AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missile at a digital target over California’s Mojave Desert.

This demonstration marks another milestone in the Air Force’s ongoing testing of Collaborative Combat Aircraft. The drone managed most of the mission by itself, but a human operator gave the final approval to launch the missile, following U.S. policy that requires people to control lethal weapons.

Drone completes air-to-air engagement sequence

The test happened in restricted airspace over California’s Mojave Desert as part of the Air Force’s work to prove the YFQ-44A’s combat abilities.

During the test, the aircraft used Anduril’s Lattice software to find, track, and lock onto the target, then figure out how to intercept it. The onboard system handled these steps, and a human supervisor on the ground gave the final order to fire.

This test was different from earlier drone launches, where people on the ground controlled the flight. Here, the aircraft managed the mission steps on its own, except for the operator’s approval to release the weapon.

A key rule of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program is still in place: the aircraft cannot fire weapons by itself. Every launch must be approved by a human operator, who stays in control during the mission.

Test follows months of phased evaluations

This live-fire test followed earlier trials this year, in which the aircraft carried dummy weapons during flight. Those tests collected data on how the aircraft performed and how it managed the extra weight.

Engineers then verified communication links between the aircraft and its weapon system. They ensured that commands from the operator were sent and executed correctly during practice runs before moving on to live-fire tests.

“Moving from inert carriage earlier in the year to this weapon release demonstrates program maturity, allowing us to validate our digital integration models with actual data,” said General. Dale White, portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems. “These tests provide operational validation that Collaborative Combat Aircraft can execute the weapon employment sequence autonomously within pilot-defined parameters, accelerating capability delivery to the warfighter.”

Air Force says capability is moving closer to deployment

The missile launch was supported by the 412th Test Wing’s Air Dominance Combined Test Force. This team includes active-duty members, government workers, and contractors who make sure models and procedures are safe for live-fire tests.

“This live-fire test is an important next step in the development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach. “We’re one step closer to delivering capabilities to the warfighter.”

According to the Air Force, the CCA program’s goal is to have combat-ready, semi-autonomous aircraft that help U.S. airpower reach farther, see more, and survive better in tough situations. The Air Force is also accelerating development and testing, bringing these aircraft closer to deployment in real missions.

Wisconsin has committed up to $55 million in incentives to help Realta Fusion build its new headquarters and fusion research facility in Madison, a move aimed at strengthening the state’s position in the emerging fusion energy industry.

The funding package will support development of “The Realta Forge” at OM Station, the site of the former Oscar Mayer plant. Realta plans to build its prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine, called Hammir, at the facility and expects to create more than 600 technical and non-technical jobs.

According to the company, the incentive package includes about $37.5 million in state sales and use tax exemptions, up to $15 million in performance-based enterprise zone tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and $2.8 million in tax increment financing from the City of Madison.

Realta said it evaluated sites in Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, and other states before deciding to keep the project in Wisconsin, where it was founded.

State backs fusion

The company expects to break ground on the facility before the end of the year. Once completed, The Realta Forge will serve as Realta’s headquarters and dedicated research and development center for advancing its compact magnetic mirror fusion technology.

“We spent the better part of the past two years searching across the country to find the most favorable business environment and the most attractive site to build our R&D facility, and we found it in our own backyard,” said Realta CEO Kieran Furlong.

The company says its CoSMo fusion systems are based on the magnetic mirror concept, which uses magnetic fields to confine high-temperature plasma. Unlike conventional power plants, fusion aims to generate electricity by fusing light atomic nuclei, producing large amounts of energy without carbon emissions during operation.

Realta added that the Hammir prototype will help demonstrate the company’s fusion approach before commercial deployment.

“In terms of cash today, avoided costs tomorrow, and accelerating progress, this is the most impactful state-supported fusion deal ever done in the United States,” said Realta VP of Technical Development Dominick Bindl.

Building regional hub

The announcement follows Wisconsin’s passage of Act 165 earlier this year, becoming the first standalone state law in the United States to exempt capital expenditures on fusion energy projects from state sales tax. State officials say the legislation is intended to attract companies developing next-generation energy technologies.

“Fusion energy is not only good for our planet and our power grid, but it plays to all of our strengths as a state with our world-class research universities, research laboratories, and an incredible manufacturing and supply chain network supported by our dedicated and highly skilled workforce,” said Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers.

Madison also approved $2.8 million in tax increment financing tied to job creation at the OM Station redevelopment. According to the company, it is the city’s first tax increment financing package for private-sector job creation in a decade.

With construction expected to begin later this year, Realta said the facility will become the center for development of its magnetic mirror fusion technology while helping establish Wisconsin as a growing hub for fusion research, advanced manufacturing and high-skilled engineering jobs.

Electra has selected Safran Helicopter Engines to supply the turbogenerator for its EL9 Ultra Short aircraft under a production agreement that will run for the life of the program. The deal gives the Virginia-based aircraft developer a key propulsion partner as it works toward Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and commercial service by 2030.

The agreement includes an initial order for 250 TG600 turbogenerators. Electra expects production to increase as demand grows for the EL9, a hybrid-electric aircraft designed to operate from landing areas as short as 150 feet. The capability could allow flights from locations that cannot support conventional commercial aircraft.

Hybrid system selected

Safran’s TG600 will generate 600 kilowatts of electrical power for the EL9’s hybrid-electric propulsion system. Engineers based the unit on the company’s Arrano helicopter engine, which delivers an 18% improvement in fuel efficiency over the previous generation of engines.

The system also integrates two GENeUS electric generators developed by Safran Electrical & Power. Earlier this month, Safran completed the first bench test of the flight-ready turbogenerator at its facility in Bordes, France. The company plans to use that hardware during the EL9’s initial flight-test campaign.

Electra CEO Marc Allen called the agreement an important milestone for the aircraft program. He said Safran’s expertise in hybrid-electric propulsion and long-term commitment would help bring the EL9 into commercial service.

Safran Helicopter Engines CEO Cédric Goubet said the contract formally launches the company’s turbogenerator business. He added that combining Safran’s engine technology with its electrical systems expertise creates a propulsion package tailored for the EL9’s performance goals.

Designed for short fields

Unlike conventional regional aircraft, the EL9 relies on hybrid-electric propulsion and blown-lift technology to achieve extremely short takeoffs and landings. Electra says the aircraft needs only about 150 feet of runway, opening access to small airfields and other locations closer to population centers.

The company believes that capability could reshape regional transportation by reducing dependence on major airports for shorter trips. Electra describes the concept as “Direct Aviation,” allowing travelers to fly closer to their origin and destination instead of connecting through large airport hubs.

FAA certification work is already underway under Part 23 regulations. Electra expects the aircraft’s first flight in late 2027 or early 2028 before targeting entry into service in 2030.

Growing production plans

The Safran agreement follows other commercial milestones for the EL9 program. Earlier this year, Bristow Group signed a pre-delivery payment agreement that secured the first production delivery slot through binding commercial terms, subject to aircraft certification. Electra also released market projections suggesting demand for between 12,000 and 16,000 aircraft during the first decade of Direct Aviation operations across the United States.

If those forecasts materialize, the EL9 would represent a new category of regional aircraft that combines electric propulsion with conventional turbine power. Electra and Safran aim to deliver an aircraft capable of connecting communities that currently lack practical commercial air service while reducing fuel consumption compared with traditional regional aircraft.

Elon Musk has reportedly acquired APR Energy, a company known for supplying rapidly deployable power generation systems. The move could help meet the growing electricity demands of his artificial intelligence venture, xAI. Details of the deal surfaced through regulatory filings rather than an official announcement from Musk or his companies.

APR Energy specializes in temporary and mobile power solutions, offering gas turbine and reciprocating engine systems that can be transported quickly and brought online in a short period. The company’s fleet is capable of generating more than one gigawatt of electricity, making it a valuable asset for organizations requiring large amounts of power without waiting for permanent grid infrastructure.

Strategic step to support xAI’s expanding computing operations

The reported acquisition is widely viewed as a strategic step to support xAI’s expanding computing operations. As AI models become larger and more sophisticated, the data centers that train and run them require enormous amounts of electricity. Securing reliable power has become one of the biggest challenges facing AI developers, especially as utilities struggle to keep pace with rising demand.

The turbines could emit over 2,000 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, according to the environmental groups. In Boxtown, the predominantly Black neighborhood closest to the facility, the cancer risk already runs four times the national average. xAI officials said they planned to “copy and paste” the same turbine strategy for Colossus 2, reported Electrek.

Unlike traditional power plants that often take years to construct, APR Energy’s modular systems can be installed much more quickly. This flexibility could allow xAI to expand its computing capacity faster by providing temporary or supplemental electricity while permanent infrastructure is developed.

Increasing importance of energy security in AI industry

The move also reflects the increasing importance of energy security in the AI industry. Rather than relying entirely on local power grids, technology companies are exploring alternative ways to guarantee uninterrupted electricity for their data centers. Owning a company with mobile generation capabilities could give xAI greater control over its future expansion plans.

However, the reported deal has also drawn attention because APR Energy’s portfolio primarily relies on natural gas and diesel-powered generation. While these technologies offer dependable and rapid deployment, they also raise environmental concerns due to greenhouse gas emissions. The acquisition highlights the ongoing debate between the immediate energy needs of AI infrastructure and longer-term sustainability goals.

Industry analysts believe the purchase is another example of Elon Musk’s strategy of integrating critical parts of his businesses. By combining AI development with direct access to power generation assets, xAI could reduce operational risks associated with electricity shortages and accelerate the deployment of new computing facilities.

Although the reported transaction has generated significant interest, several details remain unclear, including the financial terms of the acquisition and how APR Energy’s assets will be integrated into xAI’s future operations. Neither Musk nor xAI had officially commented on the reported purchase at the time the information became public.

As competition in artificial intelligence continues to intensify, access to reliable energy is increasingly becoming as important as access to advanced chips and computing hardware. If the reported acquisition is confirmed, it could signal a broader trend in which leading AI companies invest directly in energy infrastructure to support their long-term growth.

Intel Foundry has become the first chipmaker to manufacture and ship a high-volume logic product using ASML’s High NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, marking a major step toward commercial adoption of the next generation of chipmaking technology.

The milestone applies to a subset of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake, built on the company’s Intel 18A process node. Intel said specific Intel 18A layers are now dual-qualified on ASML’s High NA EUV platform at its Oregon facility, with products shipping to customers at yields matched to the existing NXE platform.

The announcement signals a shift for High NA EUV from research and early testing into production manufacturing. Intel and ASML said the technology is being used on selected chip layers to collect manufacturing data and further optimize system setup, uptime, and production implementation before wider deployment in future process nodes.

High NA EUV is the next evolution of EUV lithography, offering higher resolution and improved process control for patterning increasingly smaller chip features. The technology is expected to help semiconductor manufacturers build denser and more complex chips while supporting future advances in computing and artificial intelligence.

Production milestone reached

ASML said the deployment builds on decades of collaboration with Intel to advance semiconductor manufacturing. The latest production milestone follows Intel’s installation of the industry’s first commercial High NA EUV system at its Hillsboro, Oregon, research and development site in 2024. The company later became the first to install and qualify ASML’s second-generation TWINSCAN EXE:5200B system, which delivers higher throughput, improved overlay accuracy, and an upgraded light source.

The Panther Lake processors are manufactured on Intel 18A, with High NA EUV used to pattern selected layers of the chips. Intel said the approach provides manufacturing experience while maintaining production performance on existing platforms.

“With increased resolution and better process control, the introduction of High NA EUV marks a substantial development in semiconductor lithography,” said Christophe Fouquet, ASML President and CEO. “We are proud to play a role in enabling the smaller, denser patterning that will accelerate advancements in AI and other emerging technologies.”

The companies said insights gained from production will help refine system setup, uptime and manufacturing processes, paving the way for broader adoption of the technology in future generations of semiconductor manufacturing.

Scaling future nodes

Intel described the milestone as an important step in integrating High NA EUV into commercial chip production at scale while maintaining manufacturing flexibility for future process technologies.

“This milestone reflects the close technical collaboration between Intel and ASML and shows how High NA EUV can be integrated into advanced semiconductor manufacturing at scale,” said Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel Foundry.

According to Intel, qualifying High NA EUV on selected Intel 18A product layers allows the company to continue delivering production output while evaluating how the technology can support future process nodes with higher performance, greater transistor density, and improved manufacturing flexibility.

With Panther Lake now entering high-volume manufacturing using High NA EUV, Intel becomes the first company to ship commercial high-volume logic products built with the technology, providing an early demonstration of how next-generation lithography can move from development into large-scale chip production.