Huawei Says it Has Made Huge Strides, from Operating Systems to AI 

A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
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Huawei Says it Has Made Huge Strides, from Operating Systems to AI 

A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 

China's Huawei Technologies said on Friday it had made breakthroughs in fields from operating systems to artificial intelligence, and that it had taken the company 10 years to do what the United States and Europe took 30 years to achieve.

Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, was speaking at the opening of a three-day developer conference in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, where he said the company's Harmony operating system was now available on more than 900 million devices.

"Harmony has made major breakthroughs. You can say in 10 years we've achieved what it took our European and American counterparts more than 30 years to do, in terms of building the core technology of an independent operating system," Yu said.

The company's Ascend artificial intelligence infrastructure - the most powerful from a Chinese company - was now the second most popular after Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI chips, Yu added.

Operating systems and other software have been dominated by Europe and the United States for a long time, although the era of internet of things has given Huawei an opportunity to overtake them, he said.

In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei's HarmonyOS, its in-house version of the operating system, surpassed Apple's iOS to become the second best-selling mobile operating system in China behind Android with a 17% market share, research firm Counterpoint said.



Microsoft Deal Signals Booming Demand from Data Centers to Power AI

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
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Microsoft Deal Signals Booming Demand from Data Centers to Power AI

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

US utilities are finally signing concrete supply deals with data-center operators as the artificial-intelligence wave sparks a surge in power demand, paving the way for higher profits in the coming quarters.

Data centers are expected to account for 8% of the power generated in the US by 2030, compared with 3% in 2022, according to a Goldman Sachs report in May.

Here are some deals announced by utilities in 2024, according to Reuters.

Constellation Energy signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft to restart one of the units at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

Under the agreement, the utility will provide 835 megawatts (MW) of energy to the tech giant's data centers. The deal would also mark the first ever restart of a nuclear power plant in the US after it was shut down.

Ameren signed a supply deal with a data center with a power capacity of 250 megawatt (MW). It has also received expansion commitments and executed new contracts for more 85 MW of additional load for smaller data centers and other industries across Missouri and Illinois.

Alliant Energy said it has executed multiple power supply deals with data centers, but did not disclose details.

Exelon said it is in the engineering phase for more than 5 GW of data center capacity. Some data-center customers have also made deposits for ComEd - Exelon's subsidiary - to order transmission and breakers, the firm said during a post-earnings call.

American Electric Power signed letters of intent to power an additional 15 GW of data centers by the end of the decade.

Xcel Energy will supply power to Meta Platforms' data center in Minnesota, expected to come online in late summer 2025.

Entergy has received legislative approval for investment in transmission and generation to serve Amazon's upcoming Amazon Web Services (AWS) facility in Mississippi. Pinnacle West Capital has more than 4,000 MW of committed data center customers, not including the backlog of more than 10,000 data center requests it has received.

AES signed an agreement with Google for 310 megawatts to support its Ohio data centers.

It further expanded a previously announced partnership with Google and signed a 15-year power purchase agreement for 727 megawatts in Texas. Talen Energy announced a deal to supply electricity and its 960-megawatt data center campus to Amazon's AWS in Pennsylvania.

NextEra's renewables segment saw a rise of 3 gigawatts (GW) worth of renewables and storage projects in second quarter, including Google's 860 megawatts (MW) demand for its data center power.