It’s no surprise that entrepreneurs with a pedigree like Ilya Sutskever’s can raise a billion dollars, as the OpenAI co-founder did this week for his startup, SSI. And he wasn’t alone, as Nvidia and others also invested in two other startups, Sakana AI and You.com.
But investors are getting restless, as Nvidia stock also got hammered this past week and it faces antitrust challenges. AI is producing real results, but that doesn’t mean the investment side hasn’t gotten ahead of itself.
Indeed, judging from this week’s spate of earnings reports, investors are generally souring on enterprise companies, as the likes of Broadcom and HPE are getting AI boosts in revenue but there’s less certainty on how long that will last and how profitable it will be.
Amid simmering worries about the impact of AI on society, the workforce and, well, just about everything else, there’s a surge in interest in “AI for good” and safe AI. The newly launched Cosmos Institute aims to make sure humans remain in the loop. And this week governments agreed on an AI safety treaty.
Intel seems to be flailing after a disastrous quarter that may force it to divest operations and manufacturing processes that aren’t up to snuff yet. Pat Gelsinger knew he had a big job ahead of him when he took the CEO job three years ago, but his bold plans look decidedly shakier now.
It’s becoming clearer every day that Russia is using cyber warfare and social media to interfere in elections, not to mention the Ukrainian government. Those “influencers” who took the money from sources now alleged to be the Russian government are crying that they’re the victims, but tens of millions of Americans sick of this kind of propaganda artificially dividing the country would beg to differ.
Next week is Oracle Cloud World, and we’ll have the news on its renewed cloud efforts, as well as its earnings report Monday. Then there’s a really busy week after that, with Dreamforce, CrowdStrike Fal.con and mWISE.
SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss this and other news in more detail on this week’s theCUBE Pod, out now on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, this weekend.
Here’s this week’s top news and newsiest topics from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
AI and data: How long can the money geyser blow?
The bottomless well of AI funding continues, but one has to wonder how long this can keep up: The never-ending AI funding boom: Ilya Sutskever’s SSI raises $1B+ as Nvidia invests in two startups That follows last week’s news that OpenAI is looking to raise billions of dollars at a $100 billion valuation.
Indeed, worries about the sustainability of Nvidia’s market cap is, and by extension the AI boom, tanked the market Tuesday, per Reuters: Nvidia suffers record $279 billion loss in market value as Wall Street drops
But enterprises are still buying so far: OpenAI hits new milestone with 1M paying business users across enterprise services
Size wars: My GPU farm is bigger than yours: Elon Musk’s xAI launches ‘Colossus’ AI training system with 100,000 Nvidia chips But rivals have their doubts, according to The Information.
When you get this big and you have 90% of a market, you’re going to get unwanted attention, justifiably or not: Nvidia faces increased antitrust pressure as Justice Department sends subpoena requests But theCUBE Research analyst David Linthicum thinks the market, as usual, may move too fast for the courts to make much difference: Do Nvidia’s pending antitrust charges threaten its supreme reign in the AI chip market? Indeed, Nvidia said later that it hasn’t actually received a subpoena.
Thoughtful corrective on generative AI: Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model? And another one, even deeper and more compelling, from Ted Chiang in The New Yorker: Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art Both of them get to the feeling of hollowness I can’t shake from so much gen AI-produced content, and it doesn’t seem like the answer will be more data and better algorithms.
Then there’s this guy: US man raked in millions from AI-generated songs played by bots on streaming platforms
One organization aims to focus on AI for good — good for humans, that is: AI nonprofit Cosmos Institute launches new research initiatives, venture arm
There’s some governmental consensus on AI safety, though the implementation details aren’t yet clear: US, UK, EU and others sign landmark AI safety treaty And startups are seeing opportunity in safer and more compliant AI: Root Signals raises $2.8M for its AI reliability monitoring platform and Sedric AI raises $18.5M to expand compliance-dedicated LLM platform for finance
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator won’t pursue a probe of Microsoft’s acquihire of Inflection AI’s staff
New models and services
Salesforce releases AI ‘large action models’ to power autonomous agents with data and actions
Revefi raises $20M to launch world’s first-ever AI data engineer
YouTube works to address AI-generated content management for creators with new tools
Multimodal search startup Objective debuts Anton, an AI agent that evaluates search results with humanlike precision
Anthropic introduces Claude Enterprise plan with double context window, enhanced security
Stability AI launches three most advanced text-to-image models on Amazon Bedrock
Microsoft to announce ‘next phase of Copilot’ with rebranding Sept. 16 (per The Verge)
Red Hat brings its AI-optimized Linux platform to Dell’s PowerEdge servers and launches RHEL AI platform for hybrid cloud generative AI development
InfluxData revamps its time-series database offerings with faster query performance and lower latency
Couchbase’s Capella Columnar paves the way for developers to build more adaptive applications
Seekr debuts SeekrFlow platform for training and deploying trustworthy enterprise-ready AI
There’s moreAI andbig data news on SiliconANGLE
Around the enterprise: More bad news for Intel
Report: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to reveal new plan to cut costs and sell off business units
Another couple of blows to Intel’s foundry ambitions: New Intel chip production process reportedly underperformed in Broadcom test as next-gen process shelved
Intel debuts efficiency-optimized Core Ultra 200V processors for laptops
Verizon acquires Frontier for $20B to expand fiber network services However, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett calls it an “absolutely atrocious idea,” since it doesn’t offer much additional coverage opportunity.
Salesforce set to buy cloud data backup specialist Own Company for $1.9B in cash
Nvidia joins $160M investment into data center builder Applied Digital
Google announces Android 15 release and brings new features to devices
Salesforce enhances basic features for Sales Cloud and Service Cloud customers
HPE to pursue Autonomy damages claim against estate of Mike Lynch
Productivity platform startup Cortex raises $60M to strength platform capabilities
Laravel raises $57M to expand team and support open-source development
Paylocity is acquiring corporate spend startup Airbase for $325M (per TechCrunch)
Data privacy and compliance firm Kiteworks is acquiring secure web forms provider 123FormBuilder
Observability startup Fiddler Labs is quietly (with only an SEC filing) raising $21.8M
A couple of VMware Explore wraps:
Broadcom bets on profitable private cloud solutions with VMware acquisition
Five thoughts from VMware Explore 2024
Earnings
Broadcom’s stock falls on weak outlook, despite strong AI chip sales and VMware bookings
HPE beats expectations but its stock falls on concerns about AI server profitability
Growing demand for AI helps UiPath deliver strong revenue beat and upbeat guidance And Chief Financial Officer Ashim Gupta adds chief operating officer to his title.
Zscaler stock falls on weak outlook amid revenue and earnings beats
C3 AI fails to make progress on profitability and its stock plummets
Couchbase’s stock crumbles on anticipation of significant growth slowdown And it appointed Josh Harbert chief marketing officer
GitLab raises its full-year outlook, sending its stock higher in extended trading
PagerDuty lowers its full-year sales forecast and its stock falls hard
Smartsheet reports strong quarterly growth amid private equity acquisition talks
Asana’s revenue outlook falls short as shares decline 13%
Docusign posts earnings beat and turns to next leg of post-pandemic strategy (per MarketWatch)
Samsara stock rises as earnings and revenue top estimates and guidance is in-line (per Investor’s Business Daily)
There’s plenty more news oncloud,infrastructure andapps
Cyber beat: The Russians are already here…
Cadet Blizzard hacking group linked to unit of Russia’s GRU
Five Russian GRU officers and one civilian charged for conspiring to hack Ukrainian government
Palo Alto Networks closes acquisition of IBM’s QRadar SaaS assets
Absolute acquires Syxsense to expand automated endpoint security
Kaspersky offloads U.S. antivirus customers to Pango Group (per Axios)
Vanta enhances vendor risk management with automation and customizable rubrics
SlashNext’s Project Phantom targets obfuscation techniques with advanced browser security
Morecybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech: … and they’re messing with our elections
US sanctions Russians over alleged election interference campaign using social media influencers
Brazil’s Supreme Court upholds X ban, Starlink won’t comply
Clearview AI fined €30.5M in the Netherlands over its facial recognition database
Telegram investigated in South Korea over surge of sexual deepfake content
Internet Archive loses appeal, court rules e-book lending is copyright infringement
And check out more news onemerging tech,blockchain and crypto andpolicy
Comings and goings
SAP CTO Juergen Mueller to leave over unspecified ‘inappropriate’ behavior (per Bloomberg)
Amazon hires founders of AI robotics startup Covariant
Former Flex exec Gus Shahin is now EVP of business technology operations at NetApp.
Freshworks appoints former ServiceNow VP of Engineering Murali Swaminathan chief technology officer
Former F5 Networks Chief Product Officer Kara Sprague is security firm HackerOne’s new CEO, succeeding Marten Mickos.
What’s next
Events: Fall busy season gets into full swing after VMware Explore kicked it off last week
Sept. 9-12: Oracle Cloud World, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE will have all the news.
Sept. 17-19: Dreamforce, San Francisco: SiliconANGLE will be onsite with all the news, along with interviews and analysis from theCUBE and theCUBE Research in partnership with the NYSE.
Sept. 17-18: CrowdStrike Fal.con, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE will have the news, and theCUBE will be onsite with interviews and analysis.
Sept. 18-19: mWISE, the Mandiant Worldwide Information Security Exchange, Denver:TheCUBE will be onsite with interviews and analysis.
Earnings
Monday, Sept. 9: Oracle and Rubrik
Thursday, Sept. 12: Adobe