AI Infrastructure

Delray Beach – September 13, 2026 -- The global data center energy storage systems market is set to grow from $5.17 billion in 2026 to $10.48 billion by 2032, a 12.5% compound annual growth rate, according to a new MarketsandMarkets report.

AI and cloud expansion drive storage demand across hyperscale facilities

Hyperscale, colocation, and enterprise data centers serving BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing, e-commerce, and IT & telecommunications clients are reinforcing power infrastructure as AI workloads strain grid capacity. Cloud & hyperscale data centers are projected to post the fastest growth among data center types at a 14.8% CAGR through 2032, commanding the largest revenue share as operators scale computing capacity requiring uninterrupted power.

Ft. Lauderdale – September 13, 2026 -- Z Squared Inc. (Nasdaq: ZSQR) closed its all-stock acquisition of Paradox Data, LLC, gaining an energized computing campus in El Dorado, Arkansas, with an existing 8.0 MW electric service arrangement and a phased target of 150+ MW of AI-ready capacity.

Deal closes with zero cash and no debt financing

Z Squared paid entirely in stock for Paradox Data, LLC, acquired from Paradox Infrastructure LLC, incurring no cash outlay or debt at closing. The transaction hands the company its first owned, energized computing site, the Union County Campus, as it builds out an AI colocation business.

Riyadh – September 13, 2026 -- NourNet, a Saudi digital services provider, closed its participation at LEAP 2026 by unveiling a beta AI Agent Platform and expanding its flagship data center to 10 MW and up to 750 racks.

NourNet's new platform keeps AI workloads inside the Kingdom

The AI Agent Platform combines Agentic AI with Inference-as-a-Service, letting organizations build, deploy and operate intelligent agents that automate operational tasks, execute multi-step workflows and interact with enterprise data. Hosted entirely within NourNet's Saudi data centers, the platform offers Arabic-tuned and multilingual models while ensuring customer data and AI workloads do not leave the Kingdom.

Chandler – September 13, 2026 -- VIAVI Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAV) will present a full-stack data center test portfolio at booth 1001 during ECOC 2026, running September 21-23 at the FYCMA exhibition center in Malaga, Spain.

Hyperscalers push 1.6T rollouts while planning for 3.2T networks

Cloud providers are deploying 1.6T technologies within racks, across clusters and between data centers as AI infrastructure scales, with 3.2T architectures already in planning. These builds depend on 16x224G and 8x448G lane designs enabled by Silicon Photonics, Co-packaged Optics (CPO) and dense optical connectivity, driving sharp growth in fiber density and multifiber interconnects.

Düsseldorf/Prague – September 12, 2026 -- Polarise, a European sovereign AI cloud provider, has signed a cooperation agreement with Czech infrastructure operator Ceske Radiokomunikace (CRA) to secure 15 MW of capacity at CRA's new "Prague Gateway" data center in Jiloviste near Prague, along with exclusive rights for further expansion at the site.

Polarise enters Central Europe with its first confirmed site partnership

The deal marks Polarise's first concrete location partnership in its expanding network of AI-ready sites across Europe and its entry into the Central European market. Prague Gateway is a purpose-built AI data center designed for liquid-cooled infrastructure and compatible with current and future GPU generations, with operational readiness targeted for mid-2027 across multiple expansion phases.

Zurich – September 12, 2026 -- ABB has published a report with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) arguing that direct current (DC) technology is shifting from a niche application to a central component of industrial, commercial and digital power infrastructure, with decisions made over the next two to three years determining which market players lead the transition.

800 VDC distribution emerges as defining architecture for AI infrastructure

The report identifies AI data centers as the most immediate driver of DC adoption, finding that conventional electrical architectures are reaching practical limits as AI workloads push power density requirements higher. It concludes that 800 VDC distribution is emerging as the defining architecture for next-generation AI infrastructure, enabling operators to maximize compute capacity within constrained grid connections while improving energy efficiency.

Dubai – September 12, 2026 -- Flytxt's agentic AI platform Niya-X has won a Bronze Stevie Award in the "Best AI-based Solution" category at the 23rd annual International Business Awards (IBA), selected from over 3,400 entries submitted by organizations across 82 countries and territories.

Niya-X positions itself as an "AI Expertforce" beyond copilots and task-based agents

Flytxt describes Niya-X as moving past AI copilots that assist users and task-focused agents that automate work. The platform deploys domain-specialized AI experts designed to understand enterprise goals, formulate strategies, make decisions, coordinate actions and continuously learn from outcomes.

Dubai – September 12, 2026 -- Flytxt's agentic AI platform Niya-X has won a bronze Stevie Award in the "Best AI-Powered Product" category at the 23rd International Business Awards (IBAs), the company announced. The 2026 IBAs drew more than 3,400 nominations from 82 countries and territories, with winners scored by over 200 business professionals across specialized judging committees during an independent evaluation process in June and July.

Beijing – September 12, 2026 -- ModelBest, a Chinese AI startup, has released MiniCPM5-2B, a 2-billion-parameter open-source language model that ranks first on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index among open-source models under 4 billion parameters. The model, built in collaboration with the OpenBMB open-source community, also scored 20 on the Agentic Index, a metric measuring autonomous task-execution capability, outpacing peers in its size category.

Model runs agentic tasks natively on edge hardware without cloud dependency

MiniCPM5-2B natively supports tool calling, deep search, code generation, and multi-step reasoning despite its compact parameter count. ModelBest positions the release as evidence that increasing 'intelligence density' rather than scaling parameter counts can deliver strong performance within the compute, memory, and power constraints typical of edge devices such as PCs, smartphones, robotics, and IoT hardware.

Singapore – September 12, 2026 -- Accels has launched a combined AI infrastructure and financial services platform aimed at businesses building autonomous AI agents, betting that token consumption will replace seats and subscriptions as the core unit of AI economic activity.

Goldman Sachs projects a 24-fold surge in global AI token consumption by 2030

Separate industry forecasts cited by the company put annual token-related spending rising from roughly $200 billion today to as much as $2.5 trillion a year, driven largely by AI agents operating continuously rather than responding to occasional human queries.