Power & Sites · United States

Data centers are turning to old jet engines as the wait for power grows

Credited to TechCrunch · techcrunch.com · 54m ago

Stuck in years-long lines for grid connections and new turbines, some AI data centers are making their own electricity with converted jet engines, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The engines, pulled from retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, aren’t anyone’s idea of a permanent power plant. But they’re another sign of how far power supply has fallen behind the AI buildout.

For companies stuck in those lines, the main draw of converted jet engines is how quickly the engines can be up and running. “It’s all about getting power as fast as possible,” Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen told the Times. With jet-powered units, “they can have a data center running in 24 months,” he said.

Hooking up 100 megawatts to the grid in Northern Virginia, by comparison, takes about seven years, according to the International Energy Agency. Most power capacity is expected to come on by 2031, an executive at Mitsubishi Power, one of the world’s top makers of power generation equipment told Bloomberg last week.

In some cases, these delays are already costing some data center operators business. Last month, Microsoft pulled out as the anchor customer for Nscale’s data center in Loughton, England, after the local utility said it couldn’t deliver enough power until the early-to-mid 2030s.

Elon Musk’s xAI is among the companies already using the engines, having installed eight converted jet-engine turbines in Mississippi to help power its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, the Times reported, citing state permits and satellite imagery. The units come from ProEnergy, which rebuilds a GE engine commonly found on Boeing jets.

In 2025, OpenAI followed Musk’s lead with gas turbines at its first Stargate site in Abilene, Texas. Crusoe, a Denver-based startup that builds AI data centers, is constructing that Abilene campus and ordered 13 of ProEnergy’s converted units in April.

In September, Crusoe walked away from a $1.25 billion deal to buy 29 natural gas turbines from Boom Supersonic, a startup developing a supersonic passenger jet that has also begun selling a version of that jet’s engine as a power plant for data centers. A Crusoe spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time that the company still plans to use turbines.

Currently the Trump administration is adding to the pressure by encouraging data centers to generate their own electricity.

Converted jet engines come with trade-offs, though: They’re less efficient and pollute more than turbines designed for conventional gas plants and it takes more of them to make the same amount of power, according to the Times. That may ultimately make converted jet engines a short-term play with some experts saying that efficiency and environmental concerns may grow in importance in a year or two.

Chips & SupplyUnited States

GlobalWafers to issue US$500m in bonds to Micron

Credited to Taipei Times · taipeitimes.comJust now

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CORPORATE RELATIONS: The 10-year convertible bonds would be issued to bolster ties between the companies following an agreement to collaborate

GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said it plans to issue unsecured convertible bonds of up to US$500 million in a private placement, with US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc as the sole subscriber.

Hsinchu City-based GlobalWafers said in a statement that its board approved the bond issuance plan at a meeting yesterday.

The 10-year convertible bonds would be issued to Micron to bolster ties with the US chipmaker following an agreement reached by the two companies in July to collaborate under a 10-year agreement.

The bonds would carry an annual coupon rate of 0.5 percent, GlobalWafers said.

The agreement is designed to combine long-term supply commitments with strategic financial cooperation to support the development of GlobalWafers’ US operations and enhance its capacity to supply advanced semiconductor wafers.

Under the arrangement, Micron is to subscribe to the bonds, providing GlobalWafers with US$500 million in financing.

“Our deeper collaboration with Micron reflects both the trust developed over many years and a broader industry shift from traditional supplier relationships toward sustained strategic partnerships,” GlobalWafers chairwoman and CEO Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said in the statement.

“By aligning customers’ future needs with timely manufacturing investment, we can reinforce supply chain resilience across market cycles and create sustainable value for the global semiconductor industry,” Hsu said.

The private placement plan is subject to shareholder approval, GlobalWafers said.

Ahead of the planned bond issuance, GlobalWafers completed a US$1.432 billion global depositary receipt offering in September to finance raw material purchases and overseas production expansion and enhance its financial structure. The offering was the third-largest global depositary receipt issuance by a Taiwanese company on record.

GlobalWafers said it posted net profit of NT$7.18 billion (US$219.2 million) in the first nine months of this year, or earnings per share of NT$15, close to the NT$15.29 recorded for the whole of last year.

Consolidated sales during the nine months fell 4.4 percent from a year earlier to NT$44.07 billion, the company said.

The board also approved a cash dividend of NT$6 per share based on earnings per share of NT$11.87 in the first half of the year.

GlobalWafers is to distribute a total of NT$3.169 billion in cash dividends on Jan. 22, after its shares go ex-dividend on Jan. 4, the company said.

GlobalWafers, which has expanded its operations significantly through mergers and acquisitions, operates 18 facilities in nine countries: Taiwan, China, the US, Japan, Denmark, South Korea, Italy, Malaysia and Singapore.

RESERVES ADEQUATE: The central bank governor rejected claims that Taiwan was facing a cash shortage, saying that its financial system had ample savings The New Taiwan dollar’s 3 percent fall this year despite record exports and a widening trade surplus stems from foreign investors cashing in on the local stock market’s technology-driven rally and moving funds overseas, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told lawmakers yesterday. The NT dollar has become one of Asia’s weakest-performing major currencies this year. Foreign investors have reaped substantial gains from Taiwan’s surging stock market, prompting them to sell shares and rebalance their portfolios, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei. Their withdrawals have added to downward pressure on the NT dollar, offsetting support

‘ON SCHEDULE’: Chief executive officer Rick Tsai said that TSMC ‘remains our most important partner’ as MediaTek seeks to meet robust customer demand Chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it has secured a second customer for its customized artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator for data centers, while volume production of a second-generation chip for an existing customer is on track for early 2028, potentially easing market concerns about possible delays. This is a new customer and, crucially, not from China, MediaTek said. The remarks were meant to dismiss speculation that ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), the parent company of TikTok, was the second customer for MediaTek’s new customized AI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business. “It is on track, on schedule. We understand there is some noise about the

ROOM TO GROW: The company’s biggest bottleneck is still space, chief financial officer Joseph Tung said, adding that it was scouting existing factories to acquire ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday raised its annual capital expenditure budget for the third time to US$11.5 billion, driven by expectations that customer demand next year would continue to outpace capacity, particularly for its leading-edge advanced packaging (LEAP) technologies used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips. ASE, the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, plans to add US$1 billion to its US$10.5 billion outlay on capacity expansion. About 60 percent of the US$500 million equipment budget would be allocated for LEAP and 40 percent for mainstream packaging technology capacity, ASE chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) told an online investors’

OUTLOOK: Tech stocks worldwide have come under selling pressure ever since last month, and Taiwan’s stock market is not expected to be spared, an analyst said The TAIEX is expected to face heavy downward pressure today after American depositary receipts of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday plunged 5.95 percent, tracking a broader sell-off in US tech stocks on Wall Street amid concerns over massive artificial intelligence (AI) spending. Disappointing sales at some US technology companies spurred the worst drop for stocks since June, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index falling 2.86 percent on Friday, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 7.20 percent and the S&P 500 fell 1.8 percent, breaching its 100-day moving average. Chipmaker Intel Corp and social media firm

Original · Taipei Times

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Chips & Supply · United States

Entegris Enters Silicon Carbide and Diamond-Enabled Thermal Management Materials Market for AI Advanced Packaging

Credited to Semiconductor Digest · semiconductor-digest.com · 3h ago

Entegris, Inc., a supplier of critical advanced materials and process solutions for the semiconductor and other high-technology industries, today announced two important milestones in its strategic expansion into the market for silicon carbide (SiC) and diamond-enabled thermal management materials solutions for next-generation AI advanced packaging.

“Growth in AI compute, from model training to inference, is intensifying power and heat-management demands in data centers,” said Olivier Blachier, President, Materials Solution and SVP, Chief Innovation Officer at Entegris. “We are excited to announce that Entegris is entering this fast-growing market to bring necessary innovation to meet our customers’ chip and package level materials demands.”

First, Entegris has completed its acquisition of Advanced Abrasives Corporation, a New Jersey -based specialty producer of diamond-made precision super-abrasive consumables used in hard-substrate polishing processes. The acquisition builds on Entegris’ existing SiC CMP solutions capabilities that span slurries, pads, cleans and surface conditioning, as well as on its intellectual property portfolio in materials science and surface engineering. In connection with the acquisition and following strong customer engagement, Entegris plans to invest in a new manufacturing line in Taiwan to bring these SiC solutions to market, while continuing U.S.-based exploratory research and development for next-generation thermal interface materials.

Furthermore, Entegris has entered into a long-term development partnership with Element Six, a global leader in synthetic diamond, part of De Beers Group, designed to accelerate the integration of diamond-enabled thermal management solutions into advanced packaging. The strategic collaboration will focus on scalable, cost-effective wafer-level and heterogeneous integration approaches that can reduce manufacturing complexity, minimize thermal boundary resistance and support the performance requirements of next-generation logic and memory chips and their 3-D integration.

“Thermal management is emerging as a critical industry challenge. We believe the move from conventional heat-spreading materials to novel materials and engineered thermal interfaces will mark a major shift in semiconductor manufacturing,” said Mr. Blachier. “Our goal is to facilitate better heat dissipation without compromising performance or reliability. We’re helping customers make that transition through materials innovation and integration at scale.”

At its upcoming Capital Markets Day on November 9, 2026, in New York, Entegris will present its advanced thermal management platform strategy.