Theme

Burning molecules to mint tokens

Explore this theme’s evidence over time →

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

Welcome to December 15, 2025 (theinnermostloop.substack.com)

The compute buildout expressed in commodities: record copper, gas plants bought outright, and the grid reorganized around inference.

Development timeline

Newest reporting dates first. Reporting dates may differ from event dates.

2026-10-09: Oracle reportedly trucks gas at a substantial premium

2026-09-17: Amazon signs a large generator supply deal

2026-08-02: Used electric vehicles appreciate as war-priced gasoline bites

2026-07-26: A validated process strips 90% of long-lived waste from spent fuel in a day

2026-07-18: A rival may rent a lab up to $10 billion in GPUs under a deal the lab proposed

2026-07-15: A lab runs 59 unpermitted turbines, double what it admitted

2026-07-08: A Nobel laureate unveils a uranium-free laser-fusion plant

2026-07-07: A fourth microreactor reaches criticality as gas demand is forecast to contract

2026-07-02: A nuclear startup makes electricity and spends it on an AI chip

2026-06-28: A fusion prototype triples its plasma by mechanical compression alone

2026-06-22: An oil major signs a twenty-year deal to power one datacenter

2026-06-21: The US becomes the world's largest oil exporter

2026-06-17: A company wins the first license to build a fusion plant

2026-06-12: US solar outproduces coal for the first time

2026-06-05: A private fusion prototype burns D-T fuel past 150 million degrees

2026-06-01: The memory makers pass the oil majors

2026-05-25: Wind and solar pass gas worldwide for the first time

2026-05-18: A $67B utility merger forms a colossus across the datacenter belt

2026-05-17: ASML partners on an Indian foundry aiming at chip peerage by 2032

2026-05-15: Nvidia's chief says computing will need a thousand times today's energy

2026-05-13: A startup raises $65M to beam power to existing satellite solar arrays

2026-05-13: A datacenter campus adds nineteen gas turbines in two months

2026-05-12: Transformer demand rises 274% with four-year lead times

2026-05-11: Gulf datacenter traffic runs on fiber strung beside oil pipelines

2026-05-08: Europe weighs restricting US clouds from sensitive government data

2026-05-05: Banks scramble to offload datacenter debt as wave power is funded

2026-05-05: Nvidia says its China market share is zero and policy backfired

2026-04-27: Meta signs for a gigawatt of power beamed from orbit

2026-04-26: A wartime energy shock pushes forty nations toward nuclear power

2026-04-23: Solar posts the largest single-year growth ever recorded for any source

2026-04-20: A wartime gas spike turns electrification into a hedge

2026-04-17: Britain asks households to consume more during renewable peaks

2026-04-09: Germany builds the tallest wind turbine inside a coal mine

2026-04-07: The first megawatt-class hydrogen turboprop flies

2026-04-05: Half of planned US datacenters may slip for want of transformers

2026-04-05: Renewables are 85.6% of new global capacity

2026-04-02: Europe urges citizens to stay home amid an energy crisis

2026-03-29: Microreactors could reach criticality by Independence Day

2026-03-28: Plasma ignites inside a fusion rocket engine

2026-03-25: Microsoft rents a 700-MW site built for its rivals

2026-03-24: A consortium plans over a trillion for energy, minerals and chips

2026-03-23: A photonics supplier rises 780% in a year

2026-03-20: Chinese-backed solar supplies a tenth of Cuba's electricity

2026-03-20: Nvidia's answer to thermal limits is radiating into vacuum

2026-03-17: Sodium-ion batteries halve stored energy costs on the grid

2026-03-13: Europe's Commission chief calls the nuclear drawdown a strategic mistake

2026-03-06: The NRC issues its first commercial advanced reactor permit

2026-03-04: A fund puts $876M into fuel cells on the thesis that power is the limit

2026-03-03: The grid revives 765-kV lines not built since the 1980s

2026-02-26: Bavaria puts €400M into a stellarator

2026-02-25: The US plans a record 86 GW of new capacity in a year

2026-02-24: US battery storage quadruples in three years

2026-02-23: An index strips out AI and loses 45% of the benchmark

2026-02-20: A shadow grid of off-grid gas plants forms around datacenters

2026-02-18: Geothermal is contracted to power a datacenter to 2030

2026-02-16: A nuclear reactor is airlifted for the first time

2026-02-12: A 20-kW laser downs drones over US soil

2026-02-11: Nuclear batteries are 3D-printed to run for years

2026-02-10: California air quality improves with EV registrations

2026-02-09: China adds 434 GW of wind and solar in a year

2026-02-08: A state gives away chargers that siphon car batteries for the grid

2026-02-02: Renewables and batteries will be 99.2% of new US capacity

2026-01-30: The US triples planned gas capacity, a third of it on-site

2026-01-27: Rocket engine technology cools datacenters with liquid CO2

2026-01-26: A fridge-sized machine makes fuel from electricity and air

2026-01-25: China consumes twice US electricity as datacenter load jumps 17%

2026-01-24: Cooling, not chips, delays Colossus 2 to May

2026-01-15: Coal generation falls in China and India for the first time since 1973

2026-01-14: Power is beamed from an aircraft by laser

2026-01-14: Microsoft hires 570 energy specialists and offers to pay its way

2026-01-13: Gasoline falls below $3 as Norway goes 96% electric

2026-01-13: The largest US grid expects 4.8% annual demand growth for a decade

2026-01-12: A magneto-conversion battery quadruples energy density

2026-01-12: SpaceX flies the first mission to a perpetual-sunlight orbit

2026-01-10: OpenAI and SoftBank put $1B into SB Energy

2026-01-09: Meta contracts 6.6 GW of nuclear

2026-01-07: Trump Media scouts a 50-MW fusion site

2026-01-06: The DOE puts $2.7B into domestic enrichment

2026-01-06: A solid-state battery charges in five minutes

2026-01-06: xAI buys five 380-MW gas turbines

2026-01-05: A truck takes 1.2 MW of charge

2026-01-04: Cybercabs roam Austin as a solar supercharging oasis opens

2026-01-04: Meta powers a 200-MW cluster with four kinds of turbine

2026-01-04: Desert heat derates Stargate UAE from 1.3 GW to 1 GW

2026-01-03: 38% of datacenters expect to make their own power

2026-01-02: China's EAST reactor breaks the Greenwald density limit

2026-01-02: Fusion reactors could mint gold as a side business

2026-01-02: Idaho receives fuel for a mobile microreactor

2026-01-01: Goldman finances 5 GW of private power campuses

2025-12-31: Aircraft turbines are converted into datacenter power

2025-12-30: Denmark energizes Northern Europe's largest battery park

2025-12-30: The DOE moves to fast-track datacenter grid connections

2025-12-29: Orbital inference is projected 1000x cheaper by the 2030s

2025-12-29: Renewable capacity has grown 30% a year for three years

2025-12-28: Japan restarts Fukushima to feed the AI buildout

2025-12-28: Developers install aircraft engines to bypass the grid

2025-12-27: Stargate UAE tracks toward a 1-GW on-site gas plant

2025-12-25: An 1885 Japanese cable maker's stock rises 1,400%

2025-12-24: Bitcoin mining ETF surges 90% as miners retool for AI

2025-12-23: Alphabet buys Intersect Power for $4.75B and a 15 GW pipeline

2025-12-23: A satellite images the waste heat of a 700-MW mine from orbit

2025-12-22: China builds the largest solar park on the Tibetan Plateau

2025-12-20: The CFTC pilots energy commodity swaps for AI

2025-12-19: Anthropic secures 2.3 GW from repurposed Bitcoin miners

2025-12-18: The Permian Basin is turned into a compute cluster

2025-12-16: Ford pivots EV capacity to 20 GWh of datacenter storage

2025-12-15: Apollo commits $3B to buy gas plants for compute

2025-12-15: Copper hits a record $12,000 per ton on datacenter demand

2025-12-15: Solar-plus-storage becomes competitive with new gas around the clock

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Burning molecules to mint tokens
Innermost Loop KB — secondary record
Reporting date: unknown
KB permalink: https://nicholsn.github.io/innermost-loop-kb/themes/burning-molecules-for-tokens
Attributed sources:
- Welcome to December 15, 2025 — https://theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/welcome-to-december-15-2025
This citation does not imply independent verification of linked-source claims.

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