Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared plans to pour “hundreds of billions” into sprawling AI data centers that will rival Manhattan’s footprint and guzzle more power than some countries.  

Is this the way forward to AI superintelligence, or just a very expensive way to fry the grid?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Meta to build massive AI superclusters

• Pentagon gives $200M contracts to OpenAI, xAI

• Musk’s SpaceX may invest $2B in xAI

• BYD’s electric cars can now park themselves

• Quick hits on other major tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

🔥 Meta to build massive AI superclusters

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Meta will spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” building massive multi-gigawatt AI data centers, as part of his vision to create foundational superintelligent systems.

The details:

• Prometheus, the inaugural 1GW center, is slated to come online in 2026 in Ohio, while Hyperion, a Louisiana colossus, will scale toward five gigawatts.

• The upcoming data centers will demand massive power inputs, with Hyperion expected to sprawl to the size of Manhattan.

• Zuckerberg’s mission is to catch up to OpenAI and Google, seizing the pole position in artificial general intelligence.

• To fuel this moonshot, Meta has been poaching the world’s top AI talent with astronomical pay packages and unprecedented signing bonuses.

Why it matters: In full founder mode, Zuckerberg has been fast-tracking construction with prefab modules and reportedly even pitching tents to house AI clusters temporarily. Of course, each supercluster is a gleaming monument to energy consumption, sparking real fears about environmental costs on an epic scale.

OPENAI/XAI

🪖 Pentagon gives $200M contracts to OpenAI, xAI

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: The Pentagon announced that it is going full throttle on AI defense tech, handing out contracts worth up to $200M each to a quartet of AI powerhouses: Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI. 

The details:

• The Department of Defense (DoD) said that the contracts are geared to fast-track advanced AI adoption throughout the U.S. defense operations. 

• The mission: deploy next-gen AI — from agentic systems to LLMs — across battlefield ops, intel analysis, logistics, and enterprise command.

• Last month, OpenAI scored its $200M Pentagon contract, months after teaming up with defense tech startup Anduril to push AI for national security.

• Elon Musk’s xAI also just unveiled Grok for Government, a new suite making its AI models directly available to U.S. federal agencies.

Why it matters: The Pentagon is betting on private-sector speed and scale, moving away from purely defensive postures and putting advanced AI front and center in the American defense arsenal. Yet, as it taps into the best the tech industry has to offer, the line between military and consumer tech is getting awfully blurry.

SPACEX/XAI

🚀 Musk’s SpaceX may invest $2B in xAI

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Elon Musk is orchestrating a bold cross-pollination of his business empires as SpaceX reportedly gears up to invest a staggering $2B in his AI startup, xAI — one of the largest inter-company deals in Musk’s massive portfolio.

The details:

• The injection will form nearly half of xAI’s $5B equity raise announced in June, with an additional $5B in debt financing led by Morgan Stanley.

• It marks SpaceX’s first direct stake in xAI and a pivotal move to embed advanced AI into the core of its rocket and satellite operations.

• Starlink, SpaceX’s global satellite internet arm, reportedly already uses xAI’s Grok chatbot for customer service, with more partnerships on the horizon.

Why it matters: This potential deal intensifies Musk’s strategy of blurring the boundaries between his companies to outpace rivals like OpenAI and Google. Earlier this year, xAI merged with X, giving the combined outfit a hefty $113B valuation and access to both real-time data streams and vast social graph intelligence.

BYD

⚡️ BYD’s electric cars can now park themselves

Image source: BYD

The Rundown: BYD is rolling out its Level 4 (L4) autonomous parking system, and — in a major industry first — the Chinese EV juggernaut is taking full legal and financial responsibility for anything that goes wrong in the process.

The details:

• BYD’s new “God’s Eye” system enables full hands-free, driver-free autonomous parking, meeting Level 4 autonomy standards under specific conditions.

• The automaker has pledged full responsibility for any damage, injury, or property loss caused while its ADAS system is in control during parking.

• The L4 parking feature is being deployed via over-the-air updates to more than 1M vehicles in China, including budget models priced under $10K.

• God’s Eye uses a dense sensor suite, including cameras, radars, and lidars, designed to navigate complex parking environments independently.

Why it matters: Tesla offers Level 2 autonomy, while Mercedes-Benz’s Level 4 system is limited to a single airport parking lot in Germany. BYD, on the other hand, is way ahead of the competition with massive rollouts of its new L4 tech, over-the-air updates to even entry-level models, and full responsibility if something goes amiss.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

AI startup Cognition is acquiring Windsurf just days after Google snapped up the startup’s top executives and researchers in a $2.4B deal.

AI cloud computing startup Coreweave said it will spend up to $6B on a new AI data center in Pennsylvania, a week after acquiring crypto miner Core Scientific for $9B.

Meta is escalating its crackdown on “unoriginal” content by targeting accounts that repeatedly recycle others’ text, photos, and videos.

Tesla debuted in India, nine years in the making, with a new showroom in Mumbai featuring $70K Model Y electric vehicles.

MIT engineers created an under-the-skin implantable device that could save diabetes patients from dangerously low blood sugar.

Meta acquired Play AI, a startup specializing in AI-generated human-like voices, bringing the full team to its new superintelligence division.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launched Sun Day, a new open-source iOS app that lets users manually track their UV exposure and estimated vitamin D intake.

Stanford University researchers found that AI therapy chatbots powered by LLMs can introduce biases and failures with potentially dangerous consequences.

Space tech startup Firefly Aerospace filed for an IPO this year, publicly sharing its financials but leaving the IPO share count and price undisclosed.

Caltech scientists developed a wireless capsule that, when swallowed, can monitor the workings of your gastrointestinal tract and identify health conditions.

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Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team