Apple's CEO Opens New Store in Shanghai

FILE PHOTO: A man holds a bag with a new iPhone inside it in Shanghai, China September 22, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man holds a bag with a new iPhone inside it in Shanghai, China September 22, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
TT

Apple's CEO Opens New Store in Shanghai

FILE PHOTO: A man holds a bag with a new iPhone inside it in Shanghai, China September 22, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man holds a bag with a new iPhone inside it in Shanghai, China September 22, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo

Apple CEO Tim Cook opened Apple's new store in Shanghai drawing a large crowd on Thursday.
Some people queued up overnight, according to posts on Chinese social media.
Cook arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday, he said on his personal Weibo account.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is preparing to sue Apple for allegedly violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

Taking action against Big Tech has been one of the few ideas that Democrats and Republicans have agreed on. During the Trump administration, which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened probes into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
A DOJ spokesperson and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.



AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
TT

AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.

"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said, Reuters reported.

The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.

Its clients in Singapore, where it operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips, include Facebook owner Meta who uses SMC's cloud to run its Llama 2 AI model.

While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.

The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.

Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.

SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.