Fiber interconnects for the networks, under the skies.
Copper for the DACs in their halls of concrete.
Smart buildings and factories, wherever you find them.
But all the solutions are discrete.
In the hands of Amphenol, where CommScope’s assets lie:
One interconnect shop to rule them all?
Buy the company that designed them,
And in the data center, bind them,
In the hands of Amphenol, where CommScope’s assets lie.
With copious apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien — now that you have whetted your news appetite with my attempt at LOTR-meets-tech poetry, read on for the actual facts of Amphenol’s $10.5 billion interconnect play, plus a great read from James Blackman on the value vs. the cost of AI infrastructure … which, one might say, comes down to what is most precious to us. Well met!
Kelly Hill
Executive Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top 3
Amphenol’s double take: Amphenol is buying CommScope’s interconnect business to boost its position in data center and smart buildings. Amphenol’s CEO said: “The fundamental thing that excites us is their strength in fiber optics.”
Time to count AI’s value: Given the enormous sums and power in play, it sounds churlish – even tone-deaf – to say all of the AI industry is somehow misunderstood. But something doesn’t add up.
Apple boosts AI capex: Apple is set to boost capital spending to scale its private cloud compute infrastructure, building out first-party data centers and AI hardware to support a private, hybrid AI strategy.
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AI Today: What You Need to Know
Splitting the AI infra bill: Meta plans to sell $2B in data center assets to attract external funding for its AI infrastructure rollout, reflecting a broader tech shift amid soaring AI costs and continued high capital spending.
Measuring AI’s intelligence: Are AI models actually solving problems, or just repeating answers they learned from the internet? Google has introduced a new gamified “arena” for AI model benchmarking.
DeepMind’s deepest mind: DeepMind supremo Demis Hassabis talks about all the big challenges and opportunities with AI – and sounds more balanced, reasonable, and realistic than some of the messianic twits at rival firms.
AI infra $$$: AI infrastructure, railroads and telecom … what do they have in common? Investment frenzies. Investor and engineer Paul Kedrosky draws parallels and runs the numbers, while noting that AI infra is swiftly depreciating tech.
Amazon buys in GA: Amazon has purchased nearly a thousand acres near I-75 in Lamar County, Georgia, which is south of Atlanta, sparking speculation that a data center complex might be coming to the area.
Fueling up a data center: Honda, Mitsubishi and Tokuyama began to operate a data center using by-product hydrogen and a stationary fuel cell (FC) power station designed to reuse fuel cells from electric vehicles.
Cable vulnerabilities: Tensions with Houthi rebels in the Red Sea illustrate the vulnerabilities of the major undersea cable networks in the area and their global importance. Cable owners are investing in multiple redundancies.
A trio of fiber deals: Three strategic fiber deals signal a shift toward scaled infrastructure, rural expansion, and capital efficiency as fiber cements its role in powering AI, cloud, and enterprise growth.
LG’s B2B AI strategy: LG’s AI research arm is focused on developing B2B AI models, including an on-prem agent and a model for health diagnoses, with the goal of being able to plug AI into company workflows.
AI in food packaging: Nestle and IBM Research are using generative AI to identify new packaging solutions, with a focus on scaling up use of recyclable materials and paper-based alternatives to plastics.