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Deep & Emerging Tech·July 29, 2026·1 min read

Top Off-Grid Solar Firm Targets 1.5 Million Malagasy Customers

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Off-grid solar scaling to 1.5 million customers in Madagascar by 2030 is a reminder that energy access is increasingly a distributed, consumer-financed product, not just a grid capex story. If your product depends on reliable power or connectivity in emerging markets, assume leapfrog via solar + mobile money, not legacy utilities.

Deep & Emerging Tech

GlobalFoundries says the US plans to award it $300M in CHIPS Act funding to bolster R&D of silicon photonics tech to power more efficient AI data centers

$300M of CHIPS Act money into GlobalFoundries silicon photonics—per [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-award-globalfoundries-300-million-develop-faster-ai-chip-links-2026-07-29/)—is a bet that interconnect, not just GPUs, is the next AI data center choke point. If you’re planning multi-year AI infra, start asking vendors about photonics roadmaps and how they’ll change bandwidth, power, and topology assumptions.