News linked to both this project and an event.
According to TechFlow Research, Bank of America's July 22 report pointed out that NVIDIA and AMD are engaged in a battle for definition in the Agent CPU field. NVIDIA unveiled the Vera CPU architecture last week, featuring 88 custom ARM cores and 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth, arguing that single-core performance determines agent response speed, emphasizing "faster". AMD responded at Thursday's AI Day, stating that its EPYC 9965 rack-level throughput in a 100kW deployment is already 2.4 times that of Vera, arguing that concurrent throughput determines production-grade AI efficiency, emphasizing "more". BofA believes the underlying thread of the x86 vs ARM battle is equally critical; the decades of optimization barriers of x86 in the enterprise software stack cannot be replaced overnight. BofA expects AMD will redefine metrics rather than compete on benchmarks; the real winner is the one that can get the industry to accept its framework. BofA maintains Buy ratings for NVIDIA and AMD, with price targets of $350 and $620 respectively, believing this is not a zero-sum game, both can win, just via different paths.
Odaily, July 21 - Microsoft and French AI startup Mistral AI announced an expansion of their strategic partnership on July 21, signing a multi-billion dollar agreement centered on European AI infrastructure to enhance AI computing capabilities in the region. Under the agreement, Microsoft will leverage Mistral's expanded European GPU infrastructure to support its cloud computing and AI services. This infrastructure will be based on thousands of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs.In terms of products, the Mistral Medium 3.5 and OCR 4 models are now available on the Microsoft Foundry platform, and Mistral Medium 3.5 has also been integrated into Microsoft Copilot Studio for agent applications, document processing workflows, and industry-customized workflows. Additionally, the two parties will expand AI deployment options through Azure and Azure Local, supporting cloud, cloud-connected, and fully offline environments, targeting industries with high data compliance requirements such as finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.
AMD has officially launched its first rack-scale AI system for artificial intelligence, Helios. This is seen as AMD's key product to rival Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin AI systems. It has been adopted by enterprise customers including Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Oracle, as AMD seeks to mount a more direct challenge to Nvidia in the AI infrastructure market.Microsoft announced it will deploy the AMD Helios system in its Azure data centers, becoming the latest customer to adopt the platform. AMD stated that Helios is expected to begin shipping to customers later this year and will be used to support frontier AI model inference, Azure AI services, and enterprise-level AI applications. Data from market research firm Futurum Group shows that Nvidia currently holds over 95% of the data center GPU market share, while AMD holds approximately 4.5%. Analysts believe that if Helios deployment goes smoothly, AMD has the potential to capture 20%-25% of the market share in the future, corresponding to a potential market space worth hundreds of billions of dollars. (CNBC)
: The South Korean government plans to invest approximately 4 trillion won next year to procure 10,000 of NVIDIA's latest Vera Rubin GPUs, aiming to support the expansion of public-facing services such as "AI for All" and the construction of a national-level AI infrastructure. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to extend the "Project for Strengthening the Foundation for Utilizing AI Computing Resources" and configure all GPUs introduced next year as Vera Rubin. This project entrusts private companies, such as cloud service providers operating data centers, with the entire process of GPU procurement, construction, and service provision, funded by the government budget. Over the past two years, through this project and other means, the South Korean government has secured over 30,000 GPUs, providing them to both the public and private sectors. Compared to the previous generation Blackwell architecture, the Vera Rubin offers up to a 6-fold improvement in training performance and over an 8-fold improvement in inference performance. A source from the Ministry of Science and ICT stated that the specific GPU procurement plan and budget size have not yet been finalized. Industry insiders mentioned that current data center space is insufficient, making it challenging to secure large-scale new resources by next year. The government is currently evaluating various alternative plans.
According to TechFlow Research, Goldman Sachs' July 16 energy storage report pointed out that electricity demand from data centers is surging, traditional grid expansion requires four to eight years, and energy storage has become the fastest solution with a 12 to 18-month deployment cycle. Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030, behind-the-meter energy storage opportunities in the US will bring about 50GWh of increment, plus 11GWh from 800V DC data centers, total US energy storage deployment will reach 172GWh, significantly upwardly revised from the previous 112GWh. Globally, annual energy storage installations are expected to reach 2100GWh by 2040. Goldman Sachs believes energy storage is transitioning from renewable energy supporting equipment to a necessity for AI infrastructure, which will change the industry valuation logic. In terms of targets, FLNC (Buy) secured exclusive battery partner qualification for Nvidia DSX Vera Rubin, data center pipeline projects reached 12GW, up 30% sequentially; CATL (Buy) has about 30% global energy storage market share, already used in Shanghai SenseTime data center; Tesla (Neutral) 2025 energy storage deployment 46.7GWh, energy business 2028 estimated revenue 29 billion USD; Energy Vault (Neutral) received 6x EV/EBITDA valuation; LGES (Buy) North America ESS capacity expected to reach 50GWh by end of 2026. Canadian Solar, Ford, Samsung SDI, Shoals, Sungrow are also worth watching. Goldman Sachs emphasizes the need to distinguish those with real order support
According to monitoring by the BlockFlow KOL opinion aggregation platform, NVIDIA (NVDA) is collaborating with Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Noetra to build a 140MW AI factory, utilizing Vera CPU and Rubin GPU to support trillion-parameter model training and robot ecosystem development, with multiple KOLs optimistic about the prospects of this collaboration.
According to TechFlow Research, Goldman Sachs' June 30 AI Project Pulse Monthly Report shows that 7 major transactions tracked in June totaled nearly $7 billion. Argentum AI signed a $4.1 billion contract to deploy 27,000 GB300 GPUs for a leading AI company, supported by a 300MW Poland data center, going online in phases in 2026; India's Yotta Sovereign Cloud procured $2 billion worth of 20,736 B300s and 5,120 B200s, subsequently expanding to six Southeast Asian countries. Crypto mining farm AiOnX acquired 77% equity of Genesis Digital Assets for $500 million, converting 1.3GW of power from 15 mining farms to AI computing power. CoreWeave and Dell built the world's first fully validated Vera Rubin NVL72 rack, with 72 Rubin GPUs plus 36 Vera CPUs; NVDA confirmed mass production in the second half of 2026. SMCI raised $7 billion to address approximately $39 billion in backlog orders, covering more than 20 clients, with funds used to lock in upstream components in advance. Goldman Sachs simultaneously raised its global server market size forecast.
sources say NVIDIA has begun pitching its first independent central processing unit (CPU) product, Vera, to Chinese clients. Designed specifically for Agentic AI systems, the chip has entered mass production, marking NVIDIA's attempt to further expand its presence in the Chinese market with a CPU offering.According to sources, some Chinese clients have already shown interest in Vera. One major Chinese cloud computing company plans to procure over 300 servers equipped with dual Vera CPUs for testing, and will decide whether to expand procurement after the tests are completed.Built on the Arm Holdings architecture, Vera is NVIDIA's first independent CPU product. NVIDIA has previously stated that Vera's performance in AI agent-related computing tasks is 1.8 times that of comparable competitor products, and expects the product to contribute approximately $20 billion in revenue by the end of this fiscal year (ending January next year).The report notes that as the AI industry's focus gradually shifts from model training to inference computing, CPUs and custom chips are gaining more attention. Vera also positions NVIDIA to directly compete with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which have long dominated the server CPU market.Sources indicate that due to strict U.S. export restrictions on high-end GPUs, CPUs face relatively smaller regulatory hurdles in the Chinese market compared to GPU products. Currently, some Chinese clients plan to first deploy Vera chips for testing in overseas data centers. Meanwhile, software ecosystem compatibility and existing domestic AI chip deployment frameworks may still impact the subsequent large-scale adoption of Vera. (Reuters)
According to official announcements, Brevis Vera—the media authenticity verification tool launched by Brevis, a ZK-powered intelligent verifiable computing platform—is now fully open to the public. Users can capture images using any C2PA-compatible camera or smartphone. C2PA enables devices to cryptographically sign media content at the moment of capture, binding the content to the hardware and generating tamper-proof provenance metadata.