TECH NEWS

Orbital datacenter gold rush needs an environmental review, FCC told

Green groups want licenses frozen before a million satellites litter the exosphere

Environmental groups want the FCC to slam the brakes on orbital datacenters, arguing the agency shouldn't approve constellations they say would total more than a million satellites before taking a hard look at their environmental impact.

Earthjustice, acting on behalf of DarkSky International, Environment America, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed a petition this week urging the regulator to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before approving any of the pending applications.

The filing doesn't target any single company. Instead, it asks the regulator to put the entire emerging orbital datacenter sector on hold while it assesses the cumulative effects of proposals from SpaceX, Starcloud, Blue Origin, Cowboy Space, and any similar applications that follow. According to the petition, those proposals collectively seek "well over a...

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https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/recursive-superintelligence-self-improving-ai-funding.avif

Recursive is spending two-thirds of its funding on one AWS bill, and calls it small

Richard Socher’s new AI lab has just made an unusual bet with its money. Recursive has committed about $410m to a single, multi-year cloud contract with Amazon Web Services. That is roughly two-thirds of everything it has raised. The company left stealth in May with $650m at a $4.

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/07/ChipAgents.avif

Nvidia partner ChipAgents raises $60M for agentic chip design

ChipAgents, a startup building AI agents that design and test semiconductors, has raised $60 million. The company, a partner of Nvidia, is betting that the same agentic AI reshaping software can be turned on the painstaking business of making chips. The raise adds to an already busy year. ChipAgents closed

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/06/CMA.avif

UK regulator probes whether Microsoft misled 365 customers over Copilot price rises

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority has opened an investigation into how Microsoft sold its 365 subscriptions, asking whether the company misled personal and family customers when it raised prices and bundled in its Copilot AI assistant. The CMA announced the probe on 29 July, training its attention on the

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/07/apple-iphone-17-price-increase-japan-yen.avif

Apple raised its prices, then offered to rent you the phone instead

Apple has a new answer to the complaint that its products cost too much. Do not buy them. Lease them. On Tuesday the company launched Apple Upgrade in the US, a leasing programme run by the buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna. It covers the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad, and it

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Recursive is spending two-thirds of its funding on one AWS bill, and calls it small

Nvidia partner ChipAgents raises $60M for agentic chip design

UK regulator probes whether Microsoft misled 365 customers over Copilot price rises

Apple raised its prices, then offered to rent you the phone instead