Hardware - The Batch | DeepLearning.AI

Bar chart of 2024 vs. 2025 capital expenditures for Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, showing projected increases.

Business

Big AI Spending Continues to Rise: Tech giants increase cloud spending to meet growing infrastructure demands

Top AI companies announced plans to dramatically ramp up their spending on AI infrastructure.

Workflow for inverse design using deep learning to predict S-parameters and radiation in structures.

Machine Learning Research

Generated Chip Designs Work in Mysterious Ways: Researchers used deep learning and an evolutionary algorithm to design chips in minutes

Designing integrated circuits typically requires years of human expertise. Recent work set AI to the task with surprising results.

GIF of two humanoid robots walking, one on grass and the other on a paved surface.

Hardware

Humanoid Robot Price Break: Unitree and EngineAI showcase affordable humanoid robots

Chinese robot makers Unitree and EngineAI showed off relatively low-priced humanoid robots that could bring advanced robotics closer to everyday applications.

GB10 Superchip architecture with Blackwell GPU and Grace CPU.

Hardware

AI Supercomputer on Your Desk: Nvidia introduced Project Digits, a $3,000 home supercomputer for AI models

Nvidia’s new desktop computer is built specifically to run large AI models.

A hand holding a snow globe with skaters and a snowman.

Machine Learning Research

Smaller Is Beautiful: Compact AI models redefine efficiency, bringing advanced capabilities to everyday devices

For years, the best AI models got bigger and bigger. But in 2024, some popular large language models were small enough to run on a smartphone.

Pile of discarded green circuit boards from electronic devices.

Hardware

Garbage Out: Generative AI and GPU boom spawns growing e-waste problem

Rapid progress in generative AI comes with a hidden environmental cost: mountains of obsolete hardware.

Grounding DINO animation depicting object detection with bounding boxes on images.

Hardware

Object Detection for Small Devices: Grounding DINO 1.5, an edge device model built for faster, smarter object detection

An open source model is designed to perform sophisticated object detection on edge devices like phones, cars, medical equipment, and smart doorbells.

Robotic arms collaborating to fold a red garment on a table.

Hardware

Household Help: π0, a machine learning system for household robotics

A new generation of robots can handle some household chores with unusual skill.

Hardware

Further Chip Restrictions on China: TSMC stops advanced chip production for China on U.S. orders

The largest manufacturer of AI chips told its Chinese customers it would stop fabricating their most advanced designs, further limiting China’s access to AI hardware.

Comparison of Minecraft terrain with and without player modifications.

Machine Learning Research

No Game Engine Required: AI creates an interactive Minecraft-like world in real time

A real-time video generator lets you explore an open-ended, interactive virtual world — a video game without a game engine.

Person sitting by a campfire holding a stick, looking worried in a dark setting.

Tech & Society

AI Burns All the Energy: Will AI’s growing power demands drain the grid?

The globe’s growing AI infrastructure requires huge amounts of electricity, possibly more than power providers can generate responsibly. Could AI models suck energy resources dry?

Nuclear power plant cooling towers emitting steam into the sky.

Tech & Society

AI Giants Go Nuclear: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft bet on nuclear power to meet AI energy demands

Major AI companies plan to meet the growing demand with nuclear energy.