Market Movers Today -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49206INVESTING. 

Note: disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 

 

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A Musical Interlude

Link here.

AI -- Large Data Centers -- HEB -- Stargate -- Rambling -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49205AI. 

Spoiler alert: a great lead-in but ran out of time to finish my thoughts on this. So, you will be disappointed how this rambling ends. 

About two blocks down the road from us a huge new HEB grocery store is going in. It was announced maybe three years ago. I don't know, I can't recall, but certainly there were rumors and then the announcement two to three years ago. It's a big, big deal. It's going to be a huge HEB grocery store. 

HEB is one of only a handful of Texas state icons:

• HEB (including Central Market)
• Bucc-ee's
• Dallas Cowboys
• Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
• South Padre Island

And that's it. So, it's a big deal when a new HEB goes in.

Rumors / announcement / news, maybe two years ago, maybe three years ago.

Then last fall, autumn of 2024, we started seeing surveyors and wooden stakes going into the ground where the new HEB was going to go.

Then, they broke ground earlier this year, maybe it was March. I chronicled the first week and every week after that for awhile before I got bored.

So, today, huge progress. We're starting to see cement walls going up.

Real progress. So, I asked Google Gemini when this new HEB was supposed to open. Answer: second half of 2026.

So, two years of construction, from when the wooden stakes first went in until the grand opening.

Two years for a grocery store.

Hold that thought. 

Stargate. Abilene. Announced in the Oval Office January 21, 2025 -- could be off a bit on the date, location but it's close. Fact-check it, please.

So, today, September 23, 2025, the largest data center (fact-check please) in the world is operational. The project was announced in January this year. Announced. I don't know when they broke ground; sometime after the announcement,obviously. 

Today, it's operational. 

And that's just the first cluster in a series of data centers in the Stargate Project.

Seven months from announcement to breaking ground to being operational.

It will take two years to build a grocery store -- and the half of that footprint is devoted to parking. LOL.

Cost of that Stargate campus? $2 billion all in?

The cost of an HEB grocery store runs from $20 million to $40 million depending on size, site, and specials.

Two years to build a $40 million grocery store; eight months for a $2-billion-large-data center.

Oracle is leasing this facility. Say what? We'll get back to this later.

Oracle is taking the lead on TikTok.

I am beginning to think that mom-and-pop investors can't invest in AI fast enough. I'll come back to CNBC later.  

I have to quit, but I think folks know where I'm going with this. 

See disclaimer.

**********************************
Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

Briefly:

• I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
• If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.
• I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.
• Longer version here.

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A Musical Interlude

Link here.

Re-Posting -- Daily Activity Report -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49204B.

Re-posting. I posted this earlier this afternoon but have had some long non-Bakken posts which "buried" this story. 

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Back to the Bakken 

Wow, I don't think I've seen a two-page daily activity report -- perhaps in the early days of the boom -- long forgotten.

WTI: $63.70.

Active rigs: 34. 

Eight new permits, #42331 - 

• Operators: XTO (6); Petro-Hunt (2)
• Fields: Grinnell (Williams); Little Knife (Billings)
• Comments:
• Petro-Hunt has permits for two wells, NWNE 17-144-98, Tachenko, 
• to be sited 525 FNL and 2439 FEL; and, 
• Hurt, sited 525 FNL and 2571 FEL;
• XTO has permits for six wells, SENE 13-154-96, GBU Artemis (4); GBU Artemis Federal (2), 
• to be sited 2175 FLS and 1365 / 1565 FEL.

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 40513, 1,372, Neptune Operating, Foster 4-9-16 1H, Williams County;
• 40903, 1,063, CLR, Corsican Federal 9-15H, Mountrail County;
• 41640, 997, Neptune Operating, Foster 4-9-16 4H, Williams County;

Stargate -- Update -- How In The World Did We We All Miss This! September 23, 2025

Locator: 49203AI.

Updates

September 25, 2025: from Beth. Stargate. Unprecedented. 

Original Post 

Don't take this out of context and this is not investment advice but I'm beginning to wonder if investors can keep up with all these opportunities. Has anyone ever seen anything like this ever before? The AI revolution? The Fourth Industrial Revolution? The Six Industrial Revolution? 

By the way, has anyone noticed the laptops being used by ESPN now? 

Stargate. Tracked here on the blog. On wiki. Announced January 21, 2025; operational today.

Reuters, two hours ago! Link here. 

Project announced January 21, 2025.

Operational as of today.

Posted five hours ago. This is Oracle and OpenAI.

A credible source suggests ground is being broken at a second site, Houston, TX. I have no idea on the veracity of this statement. 

 From Google Gemini AI overview:

From the linked CNBC article;

ABILENE, Texas — OpenAI and Oracle are betting big on America’s AI future, bringing online the flagship site of the $500 billion Stargate program, a sweeping infrastructure push to secure the compute needed to power the future of artificial intelligence.

The debut site in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, is up and running, filled with Oracle Cloud infrastructure and racks of Nvidia chips.

The data center, which is being leased by Oracle, is one of the most notable physical landmarks to emerge from an unprecedented boom in demand for infrastructure to power AI. Over $2 trillion in AI infrastructure has been planned around the world, according to an HSBC estimate this week.

OpenAI is leading the way. OpenAI is not yet public.

In addition to the $500 billion Stargate project, the startup on Monday announced an equity investment deal with Nvidia that will add an estimated $500 billion worth of data centers in the coming years. Since 2019, Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, providing loads of access to Azure credits. Additionally, OpenAI contracts with smaller cloud companies for additional compute capacity and help operating its infrastructure.

One building on the Abilene site is operational while another is nearly complete. The campus has the potential to ultimately scale past a gigawatt of capacity, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC. That would be enough electricity to power about 750,000 U.S. homes.

The data center construction plans are important enough that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally engaged in last-minute negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the weekend to get in on the action, CNBC reported earlier on Tuesday.

Micron -- Earnings -- Quarter Ending August, 2025

Locator: 49202CHIPS.

HBM4: SK Hyinx vs Micron. SK Hyinx has the inside track. Ask a chatbot to compare HBM4, SK Hyinx vs Micron. 

Earnings today: 

From X: links may not be provided. Easy to find by going to x and searching ticker symbol mu.

This chart blows me away:

**********************************
Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

Briefly:

• I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
• If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.
• I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.
• Longer version here.
  
  
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Futurum AI Fifteen

From Linked In: posted two months ago (summer, 2025)

Futurum Equities, part of The Futurum Group compiled a list of 15 non-Magnificent 7 companies reckoned to play a significant role in the AI rollout. 

This list is called the Futurum AI Fifteen, and categorized into three layers: Control, Operating, and Expansion. 

These layers represent different roles in the AI economy, from foundational hardware to platforms and emerging applications. 

Here they are: 

• Control Layer: 
• Companies providing the physical infrastructure for AI, such as semiconductors, networking, memory, and chip fabrication: 
• AMD ($AMD)  
• ARM ($ARM)  
• TSMC ($TSM)   
• Broadcom ($AVGO)   
• ASML ($ASML)  
• Qualcomm ($QCOM)  
• Micron ($MU)  
• Cisco ($CSCO) 

 

• Operating Layer: 
• Companies focused on AI platforms, applications, and security, enabling AI deployment and monetization:  
• Palantir ($PLTR)  
• ServiceNow ($NOW)   
• Oracle ($ORCL)   
• Snowflake ($SNOW)   
• IBM ($IBM)   
• CrowdStrike ($CRWD)   
• Palo Alto Networks ($PANW)  
• Cloudflare ($NET)   
• Salesforce ($CRM) 

 

• Expansion Layer: 
• Companies in adjacent or emerging AI-related fields with high-growth potential, such as specialized databases or energy solutions for AI:  
• Oklo ($OKLO)   
• MongoDB ($MDB)   
• Astera Labs ($ALAB)   
• Adobe ($ADBE)

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Lumen Technologies

Presentation, September 23, 2025

Link here. 

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GLW 

 

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AAPL  

 

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SCHB

 

Unfortunately No Analysis Of The $130 Million -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49201TAXES.

Tag: North Dakota budget 

Doing the math, it's truly a non-story.

Link to the story here, no analysis. 

The budget for the 2026-2027 biennium is the most recent one being considered, with a total proposed spending of $19.90 billion. 

The $130 million is largest it will be, gradually decreasing over four years.

$250 million / $19.90 billion = 1.26%?

Fever Control -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49200TYLENOL.

99% of folks don't understand the importance of fever control. 

Eight New Permits; Three DUCs Reported As Completed -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49199B.

DFW, north Texas: I don't know what the high was today but right now, 5:52 p.m. CT it's 96°F here in north Texas, DFW. 

A little history: 

"The establishment of the French Republic on the autumnal equinox of 1792 (September 21, 1792 -- exactly 233 years ago this week) was the decisive moment of the Revolution -- the point at which France separated from a thousand-plus-past and became ruled by its people. It joined the United States as the second such nation, and men like Thomas Jefferson cheered.

The French celebrate their birthday on Bastille Day, July 14. The storm of the Bastille, that day, in 1789.

The guillotine was invented by a physician who was commissioned to devise / discover / develop a "humane death machine." The machine was adopted on March 20, 1792. March 20 would be on/near the spring equinox. And finally, the name of the physician: Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.

Whatever Happened to the Metric System? How America Kept Its Feet, 
John Bemelmans Marciano, c. 2014; 
Bloomsbury Publishing House, 
chapter 5, page 59 and following. 

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Back to the Bakken 

Wow, I don't think I've seen a two-page daily activity report -- perhaps in the early days of the boom -- long forgotten.

WTI: $63.70.

Active rigs: 34. 

Eight new permits, #42331 - 

• Operators: XTO (6); Petro-Hunt (2)
• Fields: Grinnell (Williams); Little Knife (Billings)
• Comments:
• Petro-Hunt has permits for two wells, NWNE 17-144-98, Tachenko, 
• to be sited 525 FNL and 2439 FEL; and, Hurt, sited 525 FNL and 2571 FEL;
• XTO has permits for six wells, SENE 13-154-96, GBU Artemis (4); GBU Artemis Federal (2), 
• to be sited 2175 FLS and 1365 / 1565 FEL.

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 40513, 1,372, Neptune Operating, Foster 4-9-16 1H, Williams County;
• 40903, 1,063, CLR, Corsican Federal 9-15H, Mountrail County;
• 41640, 997, Neptune Operating, Foster 4-9-16 4H, Williams County;

Lilly To Build A String Of Four Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plants In The US -- 2nd One Announced Today: Houston, TX

Locator: 49198LILLY.

The string of four pharmaceutical plants appear to be in the $5 billion to $6 billion range.

The first, slated for the Richmond, Virginia, area, at $5 billion was announce earlier this month.

Today, Lilly announced the second location: Houston, Texas. I believe Houston, in the past has been ranked as having the "heaviest, most obese population" in the United States by some surveys. The new plant: $5.9 billion.

The US city with the largest number of overweight / obese individuals (2025): link here. 

Texas has six cities on the list, including Houston (#33) and a city in Texas, McAllen, is at the top of the list (#1). Number 2? Little Rock, AR.

California, priding themselves on In-N-Out and encouraging a healthy lifestyle, also have six cities on the list, including two in the sushi belt: San Francisco and San Jose. Having said that, most of the California cities, except for Riverside (#47) are near the bottom of the 100-city list.

It's hard to tell for sure, but it appears that the state with the most cities on the list is North Carolina. The state has ten cities on the list. It includes one of the nation's largest enclave of US Navy (Virginia Beach), as does another US Navy town, San Diego. 

States with no cities on the list: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Vermont, Delaware.

Source: WalletHub

Holy Mackerel -- The President's Teleprompter At The UN Is NOT Working -- September 2023

Locator: 49197UN.

What are the odds this is/was not a coincidence?

Zilch.  

Meanwhile, amazing to see those representing the White House sitting along the US ambassador to the UN. 

The US ambassador to the UN was confirmed by the US Senate only four days ago, September 19, 2025 -- last Friday. It took four months to get the nomination confirmed.

• Key details of the confirmation: 
• confirmation vote: The Senate approved Waltz in a 47-43 vote. 
• previous nominee: Waltz was nominated by President Donald Trump in May 2025, following the withdrawal of the original nominee, Representative Elise Stefanik, over concerns about the Republican Party's narrow House majority. 
• previous role: Prior to his confirmation, Waltz served as President Trump's national security adviser. 
• timing: The confirmation ended an eight-month period during which the U.S. did not have a permanent U.N. ambassador. 

States it again: number of illegal aliens now entering the US -- zero. None. Nada. Zilch. Nil.  

Summarizes his overseas visits. 

The president looks incredibly well-rested, and certainly not his age.

Ended seven wars. Or six. I missed it. but he cites 6, 7, or 10 depending on the mood he's in. LOL.

I have to pull up that clip of UN during his first term, one of my favorite clips. One thing that caught my attention: he doesn't appear to have aged at all. Link here.

Wow. 

All of a sudden, the CNBC video of the speech is locking up.  

 

Holy Mackerel: Dow Is Up Almost 300 Points In Early Trading -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49196MARKET.

It must be all that money on the sideline coming into the market this week. LOL.

 AAPL: flat. 

A day of rotation.

BRK-B: is having a good day. Finally. 

Market movers (link here). 

Dow, Gold -- Both Hit Record High -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49195COINS.

Updates

Later, 1:17 p.m. CT: I did not listen to JPow's comments and haven't watched CNBC since earlier this morning, but I saw the headlines at the CNBC site with regard to JPow's comments. The headlines suggested several things to me:

• one: the Fed follows the stock market more than they let on; 
• two: JPow was getting into areas with regard to the market that might be considered outside his lane of concern (reminiscent, Alan Greenspan, 1996); 
• three: the economy is doing worse than he lets on and raises the question:
• four: was the Fed behind / late when they finally cut that quarter point; and,
• five: was the delay entirely political. 

Original Post  

I've read somewhere that silver is actually doing "better" than gold.

I have not checked. I don't know. I don't care.

I collect silver coins, not for their investment value. I learned late in life that silver coins are an incredibly bad way to invest in "pure" silver.

But over the decades, I've built up a pretty nice silver coin collection that will be handed down to the grandchildren. I don't know what the coins will be good for except to, maybe, encourage the grandchildren to learn about Alexander Hamilton. LOL.

One of the four founding fathers.

Soldier, statesman, diplomat, and financier.

Tinker, tailor ...

Dow Jones Industrial hits a new record high. 

Oh, back to silver. I lost my train of thought. The US mint has added a "Privy Mark" to the US Silver Eagle. Purely a gimmick. Purely for collectors. Purely for suckers. Last week, I ordered a small number of the 2025 silver eagles with the Privy Mark. LOL.

Any number of links, this one from bullionexchanges: 

A "privy mark" refers to a small symbol or mark on a coin that is typically used to denote a specific mint, mintmaster, or a special occasion. Privy marks are often added to commemorate historical events, anniversaries, or to indicate a special edition of a coin. 

When choosing between the same coin, one with a privy and one without, here the things to consider: 

• Privy coins are usually in limited mintage. which make them more rare.
• The privy design usually commemorates an event or concept, and has a theme.
• To some, there is an added aesthetic value in a privy. 
•  Coins with privy may be a part of a larger collection. 
• For collectors, privy coins create a diverse collection. 

In summary, a "privy mark" is a small symbol or mark on a coin that serves various purposes, including denoting a specific mint or commemorating historical events. When deciding between a coin with a privy mark and one without, consider factors like limited mintage, the significance of the privy design, and the potential aesthetic value. Privy coins can also be part of larger collections, adding diversity for collectors.

GPUs, CPUs, NPUs, Packaging, And All That Jazz -- Part 4 -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49194JAZZ.

This is a part of the continuing series. It took a long time to get to where I was going. LOL. 

So this is part 4.  

See this post.  

All that jazz, part 1.

All that jazz, part 2. 

All that jazz, part 3.  

New wrinkle: chip-packaging. Integrated circuit packaging. 

I'm not quite sure if folks are all speaking the same language when they talk "chip-packaging."

So, let's ask the question: is Apple's SOC M4 chip an example of "chip-packaging"?

Yes, while the M4 is fundamentally a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) that integrates multiple components onto a single die, the term "chip-packaging" can still apply, especially considering advancements in 2.5D packaging techniques like SoIC (System-on-Chip-in-package) that Apple may use or research for future, more advanced chips like the M5. The M4 itself contains integrated CPU, GPU, NPU, and DSP, which are themselves multiple "chips" integrated onto a single substrate, making it a prime example of an SoC that relies on sophisticated packaging to function.

That's all I need to know. 

This is why Apple's "M" chip was revolutionary.  

Apple's M4 chip, wiki. 

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Chip Packaging Plants In The US 

The next question: how many chip-packaging plants are being built in the US like the SK Hynix facility in West Lafayette, Indiana?

AI Overview 

There are multiple chip-packaging facilities in various stages of planning and construction in the US, including the SK Hynix facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, but a precise number isn't available because the term "like the SK Hynix facility" isn't specific to the type of plant. However, there are numerous investments in US chip manufacturing, including packaging plants, due to the CHIPS and Science Act and increasing global demand for advanced semiconductors.

Okay, since AI can't deal with that question, let's ask it another way, "chip-packaging plants in the US." This was much, much more helpful.

Major US-based chip packaging plants are operated by Intel and are located in cities like Hillsboro, Oregon; other chip packaging and testing companies, such as Amkor Technology and American Semiconductor, also have operations in the US. Additionally, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is expanding its advanced chip packaging capabilities in the United States, with a significant operation in Arizona.

The specific sites listed by AI Overview:

• Intel, Hillsboro, Portland, OR
• Amkor Technology: collaborating with TSMC but site not mentioned
• American Semiconductor: no specifics mentioned
• TSMC: Phoenix, AZ

Other notable locations:

• AZ: TSMC
• OR: Intel in Hillsboro
• TX: Intel
• NM: Rio Rancho, NM, Intel
• WA: TSMS in Camas, Washington 

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Amazing -- Incomprehensible

In my mind, the company that put SoC / chip-packaging "on the map" and has been delivering SoC / chip-packaging since 2020 is Apple / Apple Silicon. 

Mainstream tech media is only now focused on SoC / chip-packaging. 

And here we have AI / Google Gemini not even mentioning Apple / Apple Silicon. 

The more I read, the more impressed I am with what Apple has done.  

**********************
The $64,000 Question

AI Overview / Google Gemini prompt:

In my mind, SoC and/or chip-packaging is only now (2025) becoming mainstream, something focused on by mainstream tech media. When do you think SoC and/or chip-packaging became mainstream and which company was most responsible for this new focus in tech? 

Long, long, long answer here. Link here. . 

Short answers in that long, long, long answer:

Company most responsible for new focus:

While multiple companies played a role in the technical innovation, Apple and AMD can be credited with making SoCs and advanced packaging a topic of mainstream tech discussion.

Apple: 

Apple's transition to its own silicon starting in 2020 put a spotlight on the power and efficiency benefits of an integrated System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design. For mainstream consumers, the M1 and subsequent M-series chips provided a clear, real-world demonstration of what was possible with custom chip design. The media focused heavily on the performance leap of the new Macs, attributing it to Apple's design strategy.

AMD:

In the PC space, AMD was instrumental in driving the "chiplet" concept into the public conversation. Starting in 2019, AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors used a modular chiplet architecture that allowed the company to offer highly competitive products against Intel. This led to frequent mainstream tech reporting comparing the architectural philosophies of the two chip giants.

Why 2025 feels like the tipping point:

Your perception that this is a mainstream focus "only now (2025)" is understandable because of several converging trends:

• The AI demand curve: The current AI boom is pushing the limits of chip design and has made advanced packaging and multi-chip solutions essential for power and performance.
• The impact of Apple Silicon: The market-wide ripple effect of Apple's success with its M-series chips continues to drive interest and investment in advanced chip design.
• Public awareness of manufacturing: The geopolitical focus on semiconductor supply chains, highlighted by the pandemic and the CHIPS Act, has educated the public and the media on the importance of the technical details of chipmaking and packaging.

Future Of TikTok -- CNBC Interview -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49195TIKTOK.

Current view held by "AI Overview": 

The TikTok algorithm for US users will be run by Oracle under a new deal transferring TikTok's US operations to a majority American-owned joint venture, while ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, retains a stake in the venture. Oracle will lease a copy of the algorithm, oversee its security, and work with the US government to prevent improper manipulation, ensuring the US version of the app is controlled by American investors.  

Consortium.

Details remain murky. 

Oracle oversight. 

Ticker ORCL:

Vera Rubin -- Vera -- Rubin -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49193VERARUBIN.

For the archives.

From the blog, August 14, 2025. 

Huge reminder: two different business models -- this is an incredibly important distinction

• the cloud: Nvidia and almost everyone else;
• the edge: Apple 

In a nutshell:

• Nvidia Vera Rubin platform
• scheduled for release in 2H26 
• combination of a new Rubin GPU with the custom Vera CPU to created a powerful, high-bandwidth engine for science and AI
• a single rack offers 100TB of memory and 1.7 PB/s of memory bandwidth 
• the platform will include next-generation components, including HBM4 memory and NyLink 6 interconnects
• will be able to hand million-token and generative video
• HBM -- wiki -- an industry standard; adopted in 2013; iterations, HBM2, HBM3, and now HBM4 
• 3D-stacked synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) 
• NvLink 6: high-speed interconnect technology 

Rubin -- microarchitecture -- wiki. 

Nvidia is using its own Blackwell GPUs to accelerate the design of Vera and Rubin, as well as Rubin's successor, Feynman. 

Nvidia unveils Rubin CPX: a new class of GPU designed for massive-context inference. Link here. September 9, 2025. 

Vera Rubin: wiki. The origin of the naming of Nvidia's new chip.  

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More Background

Nvidia unveils Rubin CPX: a new class of GPU designed for massive-context inference. Link here. September 9, 2025: 

NVIDIA® today announced NVIDIA Rubin CPX, a new class of GPU purpose-built for massive-context processing. This enables AI systems to handle million-token software coding and generative video with groundbreaking speed and efficiency.

Rubin CPX works hand in hand with NVIDIA Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs inside the new NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL144 CPX platform. This integrated NVIDIA MGX system packs 8 exaflops of AI compute to provide 7.5x more AI performance than NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, as well as 100TB of fast memory and 1.7 petabytes per second of memory bandwidth in a single rack. A dedicated Rubin CPX compute tray will also be offered for customers looking to reuse existing Vera Rubin NVL144 systems.

“The Vera Rubin platform will mark another leap in the frontier of AI computing — introducing both the next-generation Rubin GPU and a new category of processors called CPX,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Just as RTX revolutionized graphics and physical AI, Rubin CPX is the first CUDA GPU purpose-built for massive-context AI, where models reason across millions of tokens of knowledge at once.”

NVIDIA Rubin CPX enables the highest performance and token revenue for long-context processing — far beyond what today’s systems were designed to handle. This transforms AI coding assistants from simple code-generation tools into sophisticated systems that can comprehend and optimize large-scale software projects.

To process video, AI models can take up to 1 million tokens for an hour of content, pushing the limits of traditional GPU compute. Rubin CPX integrates video decoder and encoders, as well as long-context inference processing, in a single chip for unprecedented capabilities in long-format applications such as video search and high-quality generative video.

Built on the NVIDIA Rubin architecture, the Rubin CPX GPU uses a cost‑efficient, monolithic die design packed with powerful NVFP4 computing resources and is optimized to deliver extremely high performance and energy efficiency for AI inference tasks.

Meta's Large Data Center In Louisiana -- RBN Energy Has Posted Full Blog -- September 23 , 2025

Locator: 49192META.

RBN Energy: Meta's massive data center development puts focus on Louisiana. Archived.

Data center mania is sweeping across the U.S., grabbing headlines and spurring investor interest. It has now reached Louisiana, where Meta is building one of the largest developments in the Western Hemisphere. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at two gigantic projects planned for Louisiana, the early challenges the Bayou State faced in luring developers, and why it may now be a strong contender to emerge as a major Southern data center hub after a relatively slow start. 

First, a quick refresher. As we discussed in God Blessed Texas, the Lone Star State is easily one of the nation’s leaders for data centers, with only Virginia edging it out in both data center counts and associated power demand. Texas hosts more than 350 data centers, far more than the two dozen or so operating in its neighbor to the east, but Louisiana has two hyperscale projects being built that are generating plenty of attention because of the size and capital involved. 

The $10 billion site being constructed by Meta in Richland Parish (more on this below) in northern Louisiana is slated to consume about as much power as the city of San Diego (though the city’s peak loads can be higher) and could boost the state’s electricity consumption by an eye-opening 15%.

Louisiana hasn’t always been on the radar for giant data center projects. It has historically lagged behind states like Texas because it lacked the basic infrastructure to lure those projects. The Dallas-Fort Worth area, a prime location for data center development (see Where You Lead I Will Follow), has benefited for years from a dense fiber-optic backbone and fast internet speeds (we’ll discuss this in further detail in a future blog), while Louisiana’s broadband network has ranked in the lower third nationally, without the speed or reach of many other states. Louisiana also didn’t offer many tax incentives to data center firms. Major tech firms want reliable fiber, steady power and business incentives. Without those, Louisiana wasn’t seen as especially attractive to data center developers.

Louisiana lawmakers made big changes to close the state’s broadband gap and quickly ramped up incentives to bring in Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. In 2024, the state received more than $1.3 billion in federal broadband funding to deliver high-speed internet statewide. State legislators also passed Act 730 (HB 827) in June 2024, which established generous sales tax rebates for data center equipment. That law paved the way for more tax incentives, including property tax abatements and payroll credits, all designed to attract data center projects. The process was fast-tracked, and lawmakers crafted legislation in a single session to seal the Meta deal. Those efforts gave Louisiana a compelling package for Meta to build in Richland Parish, including tax rebates on the billions of dollars it is spending on data center equipment.

It's very likely that with these changes, Louisiana is setting itself up to host more data centers. 

As we discussed recently in Won’t Get Fooled Again, we’ve been grappling with the challenges of tracking and ranking data center projects in Texas and Louisiana, in part to help us better assess their impact on power and gas demand in Gulf Coast gas markets, as tracked in our proprietary Arrow Model. In that blog, we explained that we’re using a scoring system that assigns each project a score from 1 to 3 based on public information. A project ranks as a 1 if it has an offtaker, a 2 if it also controls the site, and a 3 if construction is underway. Projects missing these criteria don’t make it into our detailed forecasts.

The Arrow Model carves up the region into pipeline “corridors” (aka arrows) that are used to determine changes in the region’s inflows, outflows and flows within each state via groups of pipes that serve similar markets from comparable supply sources. Data centers have been emerging as an important data input in the model because it’s likely their ongoing development will result in significant bump-ups in power and gas demand in various parts of Texas and Louisiana.

Next, we’re going to dive into two major projects under development in Louisiana.

Figure 1. Proposed LouisianaData Centers. Source: RBN 

Taco Tuesday -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49191LNG.

WTI: $62.88

RBN Energy: how LG exports came to dominate US natural gas and where the market is heading. 

Ten years ago, U.S. exports of natural gas in the form of LNG were a footnote in the market. But that all changed in 2016. In February of that year, the first shipment of LNG from the Lower 48 states set sail when the vessel Asia Vision departed from Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass export terminal in Louisiana. This was the culmination of a remarkable turnaround, not only at Sabine Pass, but for the U.S. natural gas market as a whole. Eight years earlier, Sabine Pass had been completed as an import terminal, as it was projected that the U.S. would face significant shortages of natural gas supplies. Shale turned that business model on its head. 

U.S. LNG exports also reshaped global trade patterns. Before U.S.-sourced cargoes hit the market, most LNG shipments were locked into destination-specific contracts, requiring delivery to a designated port. In addition, buyers were largely limited to long-term supply deals priced off crude oil through rigid formulas. The emergence of flexible, Henry Hub-linked pricing broke that mold, giving buyers new negotiating leverage and fostering a more liquid, globally interconnected LNG market.

Today’s RBN blog is the first in a multi-part series that will trace the rise of U.S. LNG exports, examine their influence on the global gas trade, and take a closer look at the quirky mechanics of LNG pricing.

History of U.S. Natural Gas Exports

U.S. pipeline exports of natural gas have been around for a long time, with small volumes moving to Canada and Mexico since the 1950s. There was nothing unusual about these cross-border pipeline flows. Growing supplies of U.S. gas in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s were able to meet increasing demand in the two neighboring countries with some relatively modest investment in gas pipeline infrastructure. By the early 1970s, about 1 Bcf/d of U.S. gas was flowing to Mexico and Canada.

There was another source of U.S. natural gas that did not have access to the North American gas pipeline grid. That was Alaska. The development of oil production from Alaska’s North Slope in the early 1970s provided an important new source of U.S. crude oil, which also came with significant volumes of associated natural gas. But there was no pipeline network to take that gas, and miniscule local demand. However, there was an alternative disposition — a relatively new technology at the time that would super-cool the natural gas down to the point where it would liquify, reducing its volume by 1/600th (see Figure 1 below), making it possible to transport the natural gas on specially designed ships to distant markets, such as Asia.

Figure 1. Natural Gas Volume Reduction When Liquified to LNG. Source: RBN  

Not Terrible Maps -- September 23, 2025

Locator: 49190MAPS.

Link here.