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Google jumps after announcing “significant, multi-million-dollar contract” with NATO to deliver sovereign cloud capabilities

Google is trading higher premarket after its cloud division announced “a significant, multi-million-dollar contract” with NATO’s Communication and Information Agency to deliver AI-enabled sovereign cloud capabilities.

Google Distributed Cloud will be leveraged by the Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center to “modernize its operational capabilities and handle classified workloads,” per the press release, which said these solutions would be provided in the coming months.

Google highlighted that its sovereign cloud environment is in a “hardened, air-gapped environment, disconnected from the internet and public cloud.”

“Multi-million” is small fries compared to the tens or hundreds of billions we’ve seen thrown around in recent AI compute deals. But this represents an immense potential opportunity to tap into demand from governments and international agencies that want to secure advanced computing resources.

Read More: Why countries are seeking to build “sovereign AI”

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Iren Cipher Mining Data Center Crypto Miners

JPMorgan lifts Cipher Mining to “overweight,” hikes Iren price target

The crypto-miner-turned-AI-data-center trade is back on Monday.

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Broadcom soars as rave reviews for Gemini 3 boost appeal of its custom chips

When spectators saw Michael Jordan blossom as a basketball star, it made them want to buy Nike’s Air Jordans.

Mizuho reckons there’s a similar halo effect for Broadcom based on the rave reviews for Google’s latest GenAI model, which include this ringing endorsement from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

“Gemini 3 was trained and powered on Google homegrown TPU chips, which benefits partner AVGO,” wrote Daniel O’Regan, Mizuho’s managing director of equity trading.

Custom chips (ASICs) are Broadcom’s specialty, and as O’Regan noted, Google and Broadcom codesigned these building blocks for Gemini 3. Boosts to Google’s capex budget have tended to buoy shares of Broadcom, since it’s a big beneficiary of these outlays.

The early positive reception to Gemini 3 implies that: a) Google will want to continue this relationship (and need more chips for training and inference!), and b) other GenAI developers might be more willing to pursue the custom chip route for AI models and inference, perhaps eating into market share for Nvidia’s GPU-based solutions.

To this end, Broadcom announced a collaboration with OpenAI in mid-October to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that GPU-centric data center solutions are superior because of how ubiquitous the firm’s CUDA software is in high-performance computing.

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Citi ups Oklo price target as company executes “on all fronts”

Citi analysts lifted their price target for aspiring nuclear power provider Oklo Monday, after meeting with management last week.

They cited progress on the company’s reactor licensing strategy, its new radioactive fuel supply business — part of an acquisition that closed in March — as well as Oklo’s ability to borrow at lower-than-expected costs recently.

Analysts led by Vikram Bagri, who have a “neutral/high risk” rating on the stock, lifted their price target to $95 a share from $68. (It’s currently trading around $90.) They wrote:

“The company is executing on all fronts with new supply contracts for long lead time items, a dual-track licensing approach, diversification through its radioisotope business, and the exploration of new avenues for fuel procurement. We lift our target price as we incorporate radioisotope business.”

In particular, they spotlighted Oklo’s strategy of pursuing licensing for its reactors on parallel tracks with both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — the traditional decider on all things nuclear in the US — and the Department of Energy, which under the Trump administration has begun issuing faster authorizations for initial development of experimental reactors, without applicants having to wait for full commercial approval of reactor plans from the NRC, as was previously typical. We recently wrote about that approach here.

Oklo has no revenue and Wall Street analysts don’t expect it to have any significant sales until 2028, when they project it will still be seeing losses.

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