New artificial intelligence models keep arriving every day — make that several times a day now, judging from the list below — and you have to wonder if customers can keep up. What do you bet your company on, when an even shinier new one arrives by lunchtime?
Moreover, doubts remain about whether the current crop will be enough to get AI where all its fans hope. What all these models need to get better, among other things, is more data — real, not synthetic data, which can lead to model collapse.
Problem is, the people providing all that data — novelists, actors, musicians and, um, journalists — remain unhappy and litigious. The divide is only growing wider, as Perplexity’s perplexing post blaming media makes apparent. Maybe getting $500 million more in funding at an $8 billion valuation makes you feel a little bold.
Given the glut of models, it’s no surprise that a lot of AI services being rolled out from Microsoft, UiPath, Cisco Systems, Informatica and more are in the vein of making it easier to use the models. That includes agents, such as Anthropic’s new Claude model that lets AI models connect directly to your PC — though the security implications of that are scary.
Still, AI also isn’t yet lifting all enterprise boats, as earnings this week from IBM, ServiceNow, SAP and others signal a mixed bag for tech suppliers. We might get more answers from next week’s earningspalooza, which includes Alphabet/Google, AMD, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Intel.
In other news besides AI this week, Arm threatened to cancel Qualcomm’s license to use its instruction set, but it’s not yet clear if that’s just a negotiating tactic. The next 60 days should be interesting.
The platforming of cybersecurity — I can’t bring myself to use the “word” platformization — is prompting some serious alliances, such as IBM and Palo Alto Networks. Dave Vellante’s latest Breaking Analysis interview with execs from each company lays it all out.
TheCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss this and other news in more detail on this week’s theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, arriving this weekend for some lean-back reading.
Here’s what happened this week around the enterprise:
AI and data: New AI models and their skeptics
Headline news and trends
Andy Kessler is an AI skeptic, at least in the short term, in his Wall Street Journal column: AI can’t teach AI new tricks: A lack of human prose leads to what’s called ‘model collapse’ and pure gibberish.
Longer-term, which could still be relatively short in AI time, I wonder if there will be more of a focus beyond language as the chief AI driver. After all, humans learn to function fundamentally by moving through space and time, secondarily through language. That’s why we can learn and adapt to new situations so fast, with very few examples and data, and we don’t hallucinate like large language models (though perhaps that’s less obvious in this political season). I think we’re likely to see much more capable AIs that are trained on motion as well as language — call them large motion models? Some people already have. But I’m thinking even more broadly, like Numenta founder Jeff Hawkins, who contends the human brain actually uses tens of thousands of models. Which is to say, we have a long way to go before we get to true intelligence and reasoning by AIs, let alone artificial general intelligence.
White House issues memorandum on AI use in national security initiatives
Thousands of creatives join forces to combat AI data scraping
This kind of adversarial attitude by Perplexity, not really backed by facts, could come back to bite it. Seems unwise. As TechCrunch puts it: “Throughout the blog, Perplexity does not mention or address the central claim of the lawsuit: that Perplexity allegedly copies content at a massive scale from publishers, then competes with them for the same audience.”
U.K. watchdog probes Alphabet’s deal with Anthropic — not long after it started doing the same for Amazon’s Anthropic deal.
LinkedIn hit with $334M fine for violating GDPR
New models and services
IBM releases new Granite foundation models under ‘permissive’ Apache license
Microsoft brings autonomous agents to Dynamics 365 and Copilot Studio
UiPath is marrying generative AI with robots to accelerate business automation
And some analysis from UiPath Forward: AI agents for automation reshape enterprise efficiency and decision-making: Industry analysts weigh in and The next phase of AI: Orchestrating agents and robots to streamline enterprise workflows
Anthropic releases improved Claude models that can control your computer Rachel Tobac of SocialProof Security, however, worries about the security implications, tweeting in a thread worth reading in full: “Breaking out into a sweat thinking about how cyber criminals could use this tool. This easily automates the task of getting a machine to go to a website and download malware or provide secrets, which could scale attacks (more machines hacked in a shorter period of time).”
Anthropic introduces a new feature that lets it write data analysis with JavaScript
Stability AI releases next-gen open-source Stable Diffusion 3.5 text-to-image AI model family
Cohere announces Aya Expanse multilingual AI model family for researchers
Cisco’s Webex Contact Center platform gets agentic AI-powered chatbots And analysis from Zeus Kerravala: Analysis: At WebexOne, Cisco debuts AI-driven tools to enhance employee collaboration and customer service
Meta debuts slimmed-down Llama models for low-powered devices
Meta’s Spirit LM generates more expressive voices that reflect anger, surprise, happiness and other emotions
Haiper debuts new flagship video generation model
Runway’s Act-One uses smartphone cameras to replicate facial expression motion capture
JetBrains launches Mellum, an AI model built to assist developers with code completion
Genmo introduces Mochi 1, an open-source text-to-video generation model
Informatica’s blueprints outline how to build generative AI apps in the cloud
Asana’s AI Studio promises to transform work management with smart workflows and task automation
Freddy AI Agent from Freshworks promises quick deployment and autonomous support
Zencoder launches to bring AI coding agents to software development
Doubling down on AI and splitting at BMC Connect 2024
Well, that’s a niche application: Law enforcement tech startup Flock Safety uses AI to shut down muscle car sideshows
Money matters
Report: AI search startup Perplexity in talks with investors over $500M funding
Pegasystems tops Q3 earnings estimates, stock rises 12%
Thomson Reuters acquires agentic AI accounting assistant firm Materia
Carbon Robotics raises $70M to scale up AI-powered robotic farming solutions
Concentric bags $45M to expand its AI-powered data cataloging tools
Stream.Security secures $30M to enhance AI-powered cloud threat management
Fixify nabs $25M for its AI-supported help desk service
Pantheon AI, a San Francisco-based AI-enabled property technology firm, announced it raised $25M in funding.
Agentic AI startup CrewAI closes $18M funding round
With $13M in seed funding, DataCrunch wants to be Europe’s first AI cloud hyperscaler — powered by renewable energy (per TechCrunch)
Polish alternative to Snowflake and Databricks snaps up $11M for high-volume data analytics
Dunia raises $11.5M to accelerate electrochemical materials discovery
Hue raises $4.5M to expand AI-powered video platform for e-commerce
There’s moreAI andbig data news on SiliconANGLE
Around the enterprise: App store armageddon?
Money matters
Earnings:
IBM revenue misses, but execs say AI will drive future growth
ServiceNow delivers another earnings beat, but stock dips as guidance disappoints
SAP’s stock rises on fast-growing cloud revenue
Seagate stock falls despite beating earnings forecasts
Texas Instruments forecasts earnings below estimates on weak chip demand in industrial markets
Nvidia supplier SK Hynix posts record Q3 profit, beats forecasts
Western Digital stock jumps on better-than-expected earnings
Intel CEO Paul Otellini proposed buying Nvidia way back in 2005, but the board said no. Seems like Intel’s board has long been the problem, though in 2005, Nvidia wasn’t NVIDIA and $20 billion was a lot of money at the time.
A glimmer of hope for tech IPOs? Ingram Micro returns to public markets in $409M IPO
AI procurement platform provider Zip raises $190M, boosting valuation to $2.2B
Payment processing startup Finix closes $75M investment
Bluesky raises $15M to expand decentralized social network and developer ecosystem
In other enterprise news
This may turn out to be a seismic event or just a negotiating tactic: Arm moves to cancel Qualcomm’s instruction set architecture license
TSMC notifies US of potential attempt to make Huawei chip using its fabs
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset features world’s fastest mobile CPU: This could be a big deal. As Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Axios: “You may pick the agents of your choice, and once the agents understand what you want, the agent is free and not bounded by the OS, an app store or anything like that.”
Former Intel directors call on the chipmaker to split its fab and design units But The Register’s Tobias Mann begs to disagree with a reasonable argument.
We have more news oncloud,infrastructure andapps
Cyber beat: Platform wars
Attack & response
Breaking Analysis: How IBM and Palo Alto Networks team up to combat cyberthreats
Microsoft report: As US election nears, Russia, Iran and China step up influence efforts
IBM launches Guardium Data Security Center to address AI, quantum and hybrid cloud risks
SailPoint expands identity security platform with new cloud features, AI and automation
Google announces new AI-driven enhancements and security features for Chrome Enterprise and ChromeOS
Critical vulnerability in Fortinet’s FortiManager exploited in the wild
Money matters
Sophos to buy rival cybersecurity provider Secureworks for $859M
Socure to acquire Effectiv for $136M
Socket secures $40M to strengthen open-source software security
Cyber Guru raises $25M to expand AI-driven cybersecurity training platform
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech: Stripe buys a Bridge
Stripe acquires stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge
Qualcomm and Google to collaborate on more intelligent cars with integrated generative AI
Apple and Goldman Sachs ordered to pay $89 million after Apple Card failures
Warehouse robot maker Nimble raises $106M Series C funding round at $1B valuation.
Tesla shares surge 11% on strong earnings and promise of more affordable models in 2025
Freeform raises $14M to build an AI-powered 3D printing factory
Meta will employ facial recognition technology to fight celebrity scam ads
And check out more news onemerging tech,blockchain and crypto andpolicy
Comings and goings: a high-profile Google Cloud departure
ServiceNow named Amit Zavery president, chief product officer and chief operating officer, leading product and engineering. He hails most recently from Google Cloud, and Oracle before that.
Dr. Ronnie Chatterji, a Duke University professor of business and public policy and former White House CHIPS coordinator, named OpenAI’s first chief economist. Meantime, longtime OpenAI policy researcher Miles Brundage, a senior adviser to its AGI readiness team, has left to focus on research and aid the nonprofit sector.
What’s next
Events
Oct. 28-30: TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco
Oct. 28-31: Constellation Research’s Connected Enterprise, Half Moon Bay, California
Earnings: a huge week coming for enterprise tech:
Monday, Oct. 28: F5 Networks
Tuesday, Oct. 29: Alphabet/Google, AMD and Snap
Wednesday, Oct. 30: Extreme Networks, Microsoft, Samsung, Twilio, Meta, Confluent, Informatica, Tenable, Coinbase and Robinhood
Thursday, Oct. 31: Uber, Amazon, Apple, Intel and Atlassian