806 AI News https://www.806ai.ai/ News, tools, and education for the age of AI — plain talk for working people in Lubbock, Texas, and around the globe. en-us West Texas is becoming the AI economy's power plant https://www.806ai.ai/west-texas/ https://www.806ai.ai/west-texas/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT A wave of hyperscale AI data centers and dedicated private power plants is landing from Abilene through the Permian to the Panhandle — Stargate Abilene is already live, and Aligned's 540 MW Project Caprock is rising just outside Abernathy. But only about 1–2% of the gigawatts requested from ERCOT are actually operating, and the state has now paused approval of new projects pending a statewide audit. Texas power demand just hit a record — so the state hit pause on new data centers https://www.806ai.ai/story/ercot-demand/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/ercot-demand/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT ERCOT's grid hit an all-time peak of 91.1 gigawatts in July and now forecasts demand could double within six years — but the interconnection queue got so large (474+ GW, ~90% of it data centers) that Governor Abbott ordered ERCOT and the PUCT to audit roughly 250–300 pending projects before approving any more. Anthropic is giving 10,000 scientists free access to Claude https://www.806ai.ai/story/claude-scientists/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/claude-scientists/ Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Anthropic opened a new Claude Team plan for scientists: free standard seats and discounted $15/month premium seats (an 80% cut, locked in for a year) for principal investigators at academic and nonprofit research institutions, with plans to expand beyond the first 10,000. OpenAI built its own AI chip to cut its dependence on Nvidia https://www.806ai.ai/story/jalapeno-chip/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/jalapeno-chip/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled Jalapeño, OpenAI's first custom AI chip — built for inference (running already-trained models, not training them) and, by OpenAI's own benchmarks, beating Nvidia's Blackwell chips on performance per watt in most tests. OpenAI wants an AI agent doing your desk work, not just answering questions https://www.806ai.ai/story/openai-presence/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/openai-presence/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT OpenAI introduced Presence, aimed at enterprises, and is folding browser- and desktop-level agent control — reading inboxes, using apps like Slack, Notion and Figma, taking approved actions — directly into ChatGPT, retiring its standalone Atlas browser in the process. Google's newest AI model makes fast, cheap coding help even cheaper https://www.806ai.ai/story/gemini-flash/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/gemini-flash/ Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Google released Gemini 3.7 Flash, a faster model built for coding and everyday AI-agent tasks — just three weeks after its predecessor, at introductory pricing about half of the previous model's cost per token. Total layoffs are down, but AI is still the #1 reason companies give for cutting jobs https://www.806ai.ai/story/ai-layoffs/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/ai-layoffs/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Challenger, Gray & Christmas's July report shows U.S. employers announced the fewest job cuts in two years — but AI was cited as the leading reason for the cuts that did happen, for the fifth month in a row, and AI-cited cuts for the year so far total nearly 113,000. A humanoid-robot maker just crossed 1,000 robots built — and one automaker is already using them https://www.806ai.ai/story/figure-bmw/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/figure-bmw/ Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Figure AI says it has built its 1,000th Figure 03 humanoid at its BotQ factory, now producing about one robot per hour, and BMW has expanded its use of Figure's robots at its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant to a more complex parts-sequencing job. Data centers are learning to run without water https://www.806ai.ai/story/water-cooling/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/water-cooling/ Tue, 05 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Microsoft has announced designs that use essentially zero water for cooling, and Oracle's upcoming Texas AI sites plan closed-loop systems. The power race is heading to orbit https://www.806ai.ai/story/orbital-power/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/orbital-power/ Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT Google has orbital AI tests planned for around 2027, and Musk has floated the same idea — putting AI in space to chase uninterrupted solar power, because Earth-side electricity can't keep up. They're restarting nuclear plants to feed AI https://www.806ai.ai/story/nuclear-restart/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/nuclear-restart/ Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT Three Mile Island is being brought back online under a 20-year deal to power Microsoft's AI. The companies building AI are starving for electricity and buying it decades ahead. Robots by the billions are the stated plan https://www.806ai.ai/story/robots-plan/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/robots-plan/ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Musk says there will eventually be more robots than people — 10 billion plus, targeted around $20,000 each. That's the long game every big AI company is building toward. The builders say AI passes the smartest human this year https://www.806ai.ai/story/davos-agi/ https://www.806ai.ai/story/davos-agi/ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT Elon Musk told the Davos crowd AI will be smarter than any human by the end of 2026 — and says it can already handle about half of white-collar desk work.