The startup behind the deal announced on Monday that Amazon.com Inc. intends to test a new carbon-removal material for data centres, which are vulnerable to increasing emissions from the AI systems they support.
TakeAway Points:
- Amazon.com Inc. plans to pilot a new carbon-removal material for data centers, which are at risk of worsening emissions from artificial intelligence systems they power, a startup behind the deal said on Monday.
- According to the report, the new material adds up to an estimated 10% of the hourly charge to rent a GPU chip for training powerful AI—a fraction of carbon offsets’ price.
- The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China business was charged with record-keeping in connection with a ransomware assault in November 2023, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settled the accusations without levying a civil penalties.
Amazon will test a substance created by AI to remove carbon
In a twist, AI itself, from the startup Orbital Materials, is what designed the carbon-filtering substance, its Chief Executive Jonathan Godwin said.
“It’s like a sponge at the atomic level,” Godwin said. “Each cavity in that sponge has a specific size opening that interacts well with CO2, but doesn’t interact with other things.”
Potential cost-savings are partly the draw. The new material adds up to an estimated 10% of the hourly charge to rent a GPU chip for training powerful AI—a fraction of carbon offsets’ price, Godwin said.
At the same time, data centers are requiring more energy to sustain AI’s development and more water to keep them cool. That poses a challenge to companies like Amazon, which has committed to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
AWS partners with Orbital
Its unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is the world’s largest cloud-computing provider by revenue. It is piloting the novel material in one data center to start in 2025 as part of its three-year partnership with Orbital, Godwin said. The agreement also provides for Orbital to use AWS technology and to make its open-source AI available to AWS customers.
Howard Gefen, general manager of AWS Energy & Utilities, said in a statement the partnership would encourage sustainable innovation. Godwin declined to state the financial terms.
Orbital, which has operations in Princeton, New Jersey, and London, set up a lab about a year ago to synthesize substances that had been simulated by its AI, Godwin said. The startup aims to work with AWS to test still-more AI-generated materials to address water use and chip cooling in data centers.
Godwin co-founded the 20-person company, backed by Radical Ventures and Nvidia’s venture arm, among others, after helping lead materials science work for Alphabet’s DeepMind until 2022.
SEC settles with ICBC unit over ransomware attack
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has settled record-keeping charges against an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China unit concerning a November 2023 ransomware attack but decided not to impose a civil fine.
Monday’s accord resolves accusations that for nearly four months after the attack, New York-based ICBC Financial Services failed to keep its books and records current or send written notifications for securities-related transactions to customers.
The SEC decided against a fine in light of the ICBC unit’s “meaningful cooperation and extensive remedial measures.” It also said the causes of the attack included inadequate preparation for a potentially severe cybersecurity incident.
The ICBC unit did not admit or deny wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
