In the August durable goods orders report released by the US Commerce Department on the 25th, orders for core capital goods, a leading indicator of private business investment, rose 1.6% from the previous month, beating the 0.5% increase forecast by economists polled by Reuters. The July figure was revised up to a 0.6% gain from an initial reading of unchanged. Core capital goods shipments rose 0.6% in August, after a 1.4% increase in July. Against the backdrop of building artificial intelligence-related infrastructure, corporate capital investment has posted double-digit growth for two consecutive quarters, underpinning the manufacturing sector and the broader economy. However, economists are warning that manufacturing could slow, particularly in areas with little connection to AI, amid rising crude oil prices, interest rates and US long-term bond yields.
Oracle Force Majeure Notice on Project Jupiter Fuels AI Financing Fears
Oracle has served a force majeure notice on its Project Jupiter AI data center development in New Mexico, which is being developed by Stack Infrastructure and owned by Blue Owl Capital. Oracle says there is no delay and that things are going as planned, but Reuters is reporting a potential one-year delay on the buildout. The notice has renewed concerns about Oracle's leverage and what one guest called potential over-financing, and it raises the broader question of whether slowing projects could threaten the AI investment case. Goldman Sachs estimates the major US hyperscalers will spend about $800 billion in 2026, rising to $1.1 trillion in 2027, and says roughly $300 billion in annual AI revenue will be needed in the next few years to break even on those CAPEX numbers. Goldman also estimates that AI users would need to spend roughly $1 trillion annually on AI applications for the hyperscalers to generate solid returns on investment and for the application layer to generate strong profit margins on their compute expenses.
Wison New Energies Unveils Floating Data Center Concept at Gastech 2026
Wison New Energies unveiled a floating data center concept at the Gastech 2026 conference in Bangkok, pairing its Floating Storage Regasification to Power technology with modular data-center infrastructure on a single offshore platform. The Floating Power Data Center, or FPDC, stores and regasifies LNG onboard and converts it directly to electricity for onsite computing racks, and the company is examining whether cold energy released during regasification could help cool the servers. The concept responds to mounting constraints on land-based data centers in the U.S., including multi-year grid interconnection queues, water-cooling objections and scarce land near metro and fiber hubs, as well as political backlash such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott's August directive to pause the state's data center permitting process pending a review of water and energy usage. Wison's most recent proof point in offshore execution came this summer, when it signed the EPCIC contract for the Baleine Phase 3 FPSO serving Eni's offshore field in Côte d'Ivoire, a nearly 308-meter facility designed to process 90,000 barrels of oil a day. At Gastech, Wison also signed a collaboration agreement with Shell to integrate Shell's Dual Mixed Refrigerant liquefaction technology into its floating LNG portfolio, the first time the process will be available across the wider FLNG market, and a strategic memorandum of understanding with Houston-based KBR covering engineering, advisory services and integrated project solutions. Norway's DNV granted the world's first FLNG ABATE Notation FEED Approval for Wison's Low Emission FLNG, and the Houston-headquartered American Bureau of Shipping granted Approval in Principle for Wison's Floating Storage and Regasification Unit design for ammonia.
AMD Market Cap Tops $1 Trillion as Lisa Su's September Run Continues
Advanced Micro Devices crossed the $1 trillion market capitalization mark for the first time on Monday, with shares surging 9.9% amid a broader tech-stock rally. The milestone caps a September in which CEO Lisa Su sat at President Trump's table during the state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping, two seats from Trump and next to Elon Musk, and rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange with first lady Melania Trump. AMD stock is up 193% year to date, far outpacing Nvidia's 22% gain. The chipmaker beat Wall Street expectations across the board for the second quarter, posting record non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.66 against consensus estimates of $1.61, with total revenue up 50% year over year to a record $11.5 billion and data center revenue more than doubling to $6.7 billion. AMD projected second-half 2026 server CPU revenue to grow 80% year over year and 70% in 2027, and expects data center revenues to more than double in 2027 with AI GPUs growing well over 100%. The company also unveiled its next-generation Instinct MI450 Series GPUs and 6th Gen EPYC Venice CPUs for its Helios rack-scale AI systems, alongside deals for Microsoft to deploy Helios across Azure AI services beginning in the second half of 2026 and for Anthropic to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of Instinct MI450 GPUs beginning in the first half of 2027, a deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars over time, with AMD committing to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic.
