Plus, Chinese internet company Baidu reports lower revenue but doubles its profit. And truck maker Scania agrees to buy Northvolt’s heavy industry business. Charlotte Gartenberg hosts.
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[00:00:31] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, February 18th. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg for The Wall Street Journal. We are exclusively reporting that an investor group is planning one of the world's largest data centers for artificial intelligence in South Korea. If completed as envisioned, the AI data center will cost as much as $35 billion to build and have up to 3 gigawatts of power. That's nearly three times the planned capacity of a complex in Texas,
[00:00:59] backed by OpenAI and SoftBank as part of their Stargate project. Power remains a constraint as AI models have become more complex and need more number-crunching chips that require a lot of electricity. Chinese internet company Baidu reported lower revenue for the third straight quarter but also doubled its profit. The search engine giant's growing AI business partly offset weak advertising demand.
[00:01:25] While analysts estimated a 5% drop in revenue, the company said that fourth quarter revenue fell 2.4% to roughly $4.7 billion. Net profit soared to nearly $713 million from about $357 million. And truck maker Scania has agreed to buy Northvolt's heavy industry business as the battery maker continues to work through a restructuring process as part of a Chapter 11 filing.
[00:01:53] The business, Northvolt Systems Industrial, was established in 2018 and currently employs around 300 people in Stockholm, Sweden and Gdansk, Poland. As part of its bankruptcy restructuring, it has already agreed to sell its stake in battery recycler Hydrovolt to Norsk Hydro, as well as its share of a battery joint venture to partner Volvo Car. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out tomorrow's Tech News Briefing podcast.