Italian energy giant Enel is betting on small modular nuclear reactors as part of a partnership with Ansaldo, one other Italian energy company, and Leonardo, a defense contractor. There is a new company are expected to be announced in the coming days.

Enel has already done this agreement with small modular reactor startup Newcleo to develop fourth-generation nuclear reactor technology. Enel-Ansaldo-Leonardo’s new enterprise and the deep pockets of its backers could put additional pressure on other small modular reactor (SMR) startups which have had difficulty constructing plants. Enel’s global revenues alone represent roughly 4% of Italy’s GDP.

Over the past decade, a slew of new firms have emerged to commercialize smaller reactors. Most of today’s new reactors are large, capable of delivering 1,000 megawatts of electricity, and take years to construct, often exceeding budget. SMR startups, on the other hand, focused on mass production and quick installations.

Still, none of these startups have built a reactor on a industrial scale. Several of them are still in the design phase, and people who have emerged have faced obstacles: the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission rejected Oklo’s 2022 permit application, NuScale’s first contract was canceled in January and the reverse merger of X-Energy lost in 2023

But as demand for electricity grows for AI data centers, tech firms are betting that a new wave of nuclear firms can satisfy their energy thirst. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have focused on nuclear energy in recent months.

By the same logic, Enel and its partners are searching for to create new nuclear energy. Flavio Cattaneo, Enel’s CEO, said the company had achieved between 40 to 50 letters of interest from parties wishing to construct data centers in Italy. Until recently, nuclear power in Italy was not an option as the Italian electorate voted against nuclear power plants twice, once in 1987 and again in 2011. However, the current government has stated that it plans to develop new regulations until the end of this yr lift the ban.

These three firms have been considering some form of cooperation for years. Leonardo is there cooperates with Enel generate more of its own energy, while Enel and Ansaldo signed an agreement in March to explore SMR technology. Also in March Newcleo in hand with Enel. (Ansaldo was previously owned by Leonardo, then generally known as Finmeccanica; two division in 2013)

For now, Enel is proceeding cautiously: Cattaneo has said SMR plants will come online in about 10 to fifteen years, which is at odds with the timeline of several other SMR firms. Startups could have to face a wealthy competitor, but at the very least they may have some respite.

Wade Institute of Technology (WIT), a Silicon Valley-based experiential college for students of African descent pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and arithmetic (STEM) fields, announced that it’s accepting applications for the 2025 Wade Scholarship Program (WSP) ).

To qualify for the scholarship, applicants should be admitted to a graduate program ranked in the U.S. News & World Report’s Top 30 U.S. Engineering Schools and/or to an engineering program at any Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).

“There has been an alarming decline in the number of Black STEM professionals, who were already woefully underrepresented in these fields,” said WIT Executive Director Booker T. Wade, Jr. “This scholarship helps reduce the financial burden that is often a factor in black students dropping out of the educational process. We are committed to promoting greater diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM through expanded educational opportunities.”

WSP scholarship recipients receive up to $50,000 for tuition, on-campus housing, meals and other expenses or fees. Applicants should have a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited U.S. college or university or its equivalent from a world institution.

Minority Television Project Inc. (MTP), owner and operator of public television station KMTP-TV 33 in the San Francisco Bay Area, is providing funding for the scholarship. Through the support of each WIT and WSP, MTP is working to bring about revolutionary changes in the technology ecosystem.

Since this system launched in 2021, there have been 26 WSP scholarship recipients. Applications for 2025 scholarships should be submitted no later than January 17, 2025. International students are eligible to apply, but must have already got U.S. residency status or a visa.

Prospective WSP Fellows will likely be evaluated on independent pondering, purposeful leadership, civic mindedness and undergraduate achievement. Additional information on requirements and a link to the applying portal will be found at wadescholarship.org

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Graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips on which most AI models run, are power-hungry beasts. As GPUs are increasingly incorporated into data centers, artificial intelligence will increase electricity demand by 160% by 2030, Goldman Sachs estimates.

This trend just isn’t sustainable, says Vishal Sarin, an analog circuit and memory designer. After greater than a decade within the chip industry, Sarin launched Sagence AI (previously called Analog reasoning) to design energy-efficient alternatives to GPUs.

“Applications that could make practical AI computing truly ubiquitous are limited because data-processing devices and systems cannot achieve the required performance,” Sarin said. “Our mission is to break through the constraints of efficiency and economics in an environmentally friendly way.”

Sagence develops chips and systems to run AI models, in addition to software to program those chips. While there isn’t a shortage of corporations creating custom AI hardware, Sagence is somewhat unique in that its chips are analog, not digital.

Most chips, including graphics processors, store information digitally as binary strings of zeros and ones. In contrast, analog chips can represent data using a variety of various values.

Analog chips usually are not a brand new concept. Their heyday was from 1935 to 1980, helping, amongst other things, to model the North American electrical grid. However, the shortcomings of digital chips make analog solutions attractive again.

First, digital chips to require a whole lot of components to perform certain calculations that analog circuits can perform with just a number of modules. Digital chips typically need to transfer data forwards and backwards from memory to processors, which causes bottlenecks.

“All of the leading legacy AI silicon vendors use this old architectural approach, which is blocking progress in AI implementation,” Sarin said.

Analog chips like Sagence, that are “in-memory” chips, don’t transfer data from memory to processors, potentially allowing them to perform tasks faster. And by having the ability to use a variety of values ​​to store data, analog chips can provide higher data density than their digital counterparts.

However, analog technology has its drawbacks. For example, achieving high precision with analog chips will be harder because they require more precise manufacturing. They are also normally harder to program.

However, Sarin believes Sagence’s chips complement, not replace, digital chips, for instance to speed up specialized applications in servers and mobile devices.

“Sagence products are designed to eliminate the power, cost and latency issues inherent to GPU hardware while delivering high performance for AI applications,” he said.

Sagence, which plans to bring its chips to market in 2025, is working with “multiple” customers because it looks to compete with other analog AI chip corporations akin to EnCharge and Mythic, Sarin said. “We are now packaging our core technology into system-level products and making sure we fit into existing infrastructure and deployment scenarios,” he added.

Sagence has secured investments from backers including Vinod Khosla, TDK Ventures, Cambium Capital, Blue Ivy Ventures, Aramco Ventures and New Science Ventures, raising a complete of $58 million within the six years since founding.

Now the startup plans to raise capital again to expand its 75-person team.

“Our cost structure is favorable because we do not seek to achieve performance goals by migrating to the latest (manufacturing processes) of our chips,” Sarin said. “This is an important factor for us.”

The timing may be in Sagence’s favor. For Crunch BaseFunding for semiconductor startups appears to be returning after a weak 2023. From January to July, VC-backed chip startups raised nearly $5.3 billion — significantly greater than last yr, when such corporations reported a complete of slightly below $8.8 billion.

In this environment, chip production is an expensive proposition, made even harder by international sanctions and tariffs promised by the incoming Trump administration. Acquiring customers who’re “stuck” in ecosystems like Nvidia is one other uphill climb. Last yr, AI chipmaker Graphcore, which raised nearly $700 million and was once valued at nearly $3 billion, filed for bankruptcy after struggling to gain a powerful foothold out there.

To have any probability of success, Sagence will need to prove that its chips actually devour significantly less power and supply higher performance than alternatives, and that it may well raise enough enterprise capital funding to have the ability to produce at scale.