If OpenAI could just monetize all the ink that gets spilled on the company, perhaps it could justify raising such a crazy amount of money this week.
And get this: The $6.6 billion round, at a (gulp) $157 billion valuation, the biggest VC round ever, won’t even be enough to relieve CEO Sam Altman from having to go out and raise more next year to fund all those Nvidia chips and breakneck rate of new product development. Did someone say IPO? But we’ve seen this kind of frenzy many times before, and it often doesn’t end well.
Speaking of IPOs, Nvidia rival Cerebras just filed for one. Macro issues may be a bigger determinant than one hot chipmaker, but struggling VCs are sure hoping Cerebras kicks off a much-needed IPO cycle.
Meantime, plenty of picks-and-shovels AI companies — er, platforms — are already cashing in and spinning their own grand visions. VAST Data, for instance, aims to be the data operating system for AI.
That’s not all. Nvidia and Accenture see a lot of potential in the emergence of agentic AI, and so do others you may not have heard of. And though generative AI coding assistants aren’t new at this point, they’re still red-hot, as Poolside raises $500M for its own assistants.
AI safety remains a political hot potato as Gavin Newsom shoots down one bill, but that won’t be the end of it. The only question is whether any governmental oversight can keep pace with how fast AI is moving. TL;DR: No.
Ads are coming to Google’s AI Overviews. You knew this was coming, but it’s significant and a corrective to the assumption that generative AI will kill Google Search and Google’s lucrative search ads.
Events theCUBE will be covering next week include Teradata Possible in Los Angeles and Cloudera Evolve in New York, and I’ll be covering AMD’s Advancing AI event in San Francisco, where CEO Lisa Su will no doubt have some new silicon to talk about.
Catch today’s weekly theCUBE Pod with John Furrier and Dave Vellante, already up on YouTube, to hear more about this — especially their excellent analysis of the dynamics of OpenAI versus other AI leaders such as Google — and other news. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, coming this weekend.
Here’s the past week’s enterprise and related tech news from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
AI and data: Did OpenAI’s massive funding just signal peak AI bubble?
Headline news and analysis
OpenAI closes record $6.6B funding round at $157B valuation
Cisco nears investment in CoreWeave at $23B valuation (per Bloomberg)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom shoots down divisive AI safety bill SB 1047
Breaking Analysis: From LLMs to SLMs to SAMs, how agents are redefining AI
Living in the feed: Trust and AI drive strategic shifts for advertisers and content creators
AWS, Nvidia and others back new AI-enabled cancer research initiative
Coverage from Vast Data Cosmos:
Vast Cosmos: Powering AI and data innovation in real time
Vast Data announces InsightEngine, Cosmos community for faster AI adoption
With InsightEngine, Vast Data aims to be the data operating system for AI
And some interesting interviews and analysis from our Media Week NYC: theCUBE + NYSE Wired 2024 event, mostly on AI of course:
Causal AI: The next evolution in machine learning
Glean’s AI-driven enterprise search aims to ease enterprise woes
AI trends shaping the future: The role of data engineering and scalable platforms in industry transformation
Unlocking a multimodal future: How computer vision is revolutionizing data analytics and decision-making
New models and services
Microsoft enhances Copilot and Bing with new generative AI features
Kyndryl launches new consulting services for customers struggling with Copilot for Microsoft 365
OpenAI introduces new multimodal processing, AI fine-tuning tools at DevDay
OpenAI releases new ChatGPT tool for editing text and code
Nvidia and Accenture partner to foster development of AI agents
Google’s lightweight Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B hits general availability
Google brings ads to its AI Overviews, Lens search tools
Google Cloud beefs up database services for generative AI workloads
Meta advances generative AI video creation with Movie Gen
Liquid AI debuts new LFM-based models that seem to outperform most traditional large language models
Mostly AI aims to overcome the AI training plateau with synthetic text based on proprietary datasets
Google brings new AI features to ChromeOS and announces two new Chromebook models
Dataiku launches LLM Guard Services to enhance generative AI deployment at scale
Credo AI debuts Integrations Hub for embedded responsible AI
Sonar now inspects AI-generated code for glitches
Anaconda brings the power of large language models to laptops
Moveworks rolls out automation platform for building AI agents
More money matters
SoftBank expected to invest $500M in OpenAI as Apple exits funding round
Poolside raises $500M to take on GitHub and others with its AI coding assistants
Audio AI startup ElevenLabs may get a new round that could value it at $3B (per TechCrunch)
Eon raises $127M to simplify access to cloud data backups
Oracle to invest $6.5B+ in AI and cloud computing in Malaysia
Microsoft to invest $4.8 billion on AI, cloud infrastructure in Italy (per the Wall Street Journal)
Crescendo raises $50M for its AI-powered customer service platform
DataPelago raises $47M to optimize hardware for analytical workloads
Qodo raises $40M to advance AI-driven code integrity solutions
Resolve AI launched its AI tools for automating software operations as it announced a hefty $35M seed round from Greylock and Unusual Ventures.
Numa raises $32M to develop AI tools for car dealerships
Snowflake, Databricks back $20M round for AI data management startup Voyage AI
Harmonic Security raises $17.5M to protect sensitive data from leaking during AI use
There’s moreAI andbig data news on SiliconANGLE
Around the enterprise: Will Cerebras kick off AI IPOs?
Nvidia rival Cerebras Systems files to go public
VC market experiences broad decline in Q3 as deal volumes drop across US, Europe and Asia
Coverage from Anyscale Ray Summit:
The AI revolution unfolds: Outlining AI infrastructure scaling and complexity challenges
Uber’s journey to hybrid cloud AI with Anyscale Ray and Kubernetes
AI-driven filmmaking: How Runway is transforming visual storytelling and creativity with Gen-3 Alpha
Three insights you might have missed from Ray Summit
In other news
DigitalOcean launches Nvidia H100 GPU-powered virtual machines for small developer teams
Intel and Google Cloud launch Confidential Computing Instances powered by 4th Gen Xeon processors
Submer raises $55.5M to scale sustainable immersion cooling for AI and data center servers
OpenStack releases 2024.2 Dalmatian with AI and security enhancements
SolarWinds launches next-generation observability platform with enhanced hybrid IT capabilities
ServiceTitan expands AI-powered solutions for contractors with new sales and contact center tools
The top five AI lessons learned from IBM’s presence at SaaStr 2024
We have more news oncloud,infrastructure andapps
Cyber beat: The hammer comes down on Russian cyber attackers
Attack & response
Justice Department and Microsoft target Russian phishing campaigns with domain seizures
AUKUS nations impose sanctions on Russian cybercrime group Evil Corp
Elastic report highlights growing cyber risks from AI-driven phishing and deepfakes
New services
Exabeam unveils first product updates and new service following LogRhythm merger
Akamai enhances API security with new native connector for Connected Cloud
Intel and Google Cloud launch confidential computing instances powered by 4th Gen Xeon processors
AuthenticID’s new image comparison tool helps to stop fraudsters bypassing visual ID checks
Darktrace expands AI detection to Azure for faster, agentless deployment
Safe Security launches Safe X to help CISOs prioritize cyber risks with AI
Metomic unveils AI-powered data classification solution for Google Workspaces
Red Sift introduces Radar to help security teams address email and domain exposures
Silverfort’s new incident response solution prioritizes identity security for faster attack containment
Money matters
Dragos acquires Network Perception to enhance operational technology network visibility
Cloud security firm Apono raises $15.5M to expand AI-powered access management
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech
Epic Games sues Google, Samsung over ‘Auto Block’ mobile cybersecurity feature
Texas AG sues TikTok over breach of new child safety law
Autonomous warehouse robotics platform company Dexory raises $80M
3Laws nabs $4.1M in seed funding to make autonomous robots safer to operate
Five takeaways from New York Climate Week and the Global Citizen Festival
And check out more news onemerging tech,blockchain and crypto andpolicy
Comings and goings
Anthropic hired OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma (per TechCrunch)
Zscaler hired Adam Geller, formerly with Exabeam and Palo Alto Networks, as chief product officer.
Language AI firm DeepL appointed former Uber, Salesforce and Personio exec Sebastian Enderlein chief technology officer and former Adobe and Motorola exec Steve Rotter chief marketing officer.
JP Vasseur, formerly a 25-year engineering veteran at Cisco Systems, has joined Nvidia as senior distinguished engineer and chief architect of AI and networking.
Surabhi Gupta, most recently SVP and head of engineering at Robinhood, is Klaviyo’s new CTO.
Tim Brooks, co-lead for development on OpenAI’s video generator Sora, is joining Google’s DeepMind (per TechCrunch)
What’s next
Oct. 7-10: Teradata Possible, Los Angeles: TheCUBE will be there on Oct. 8 with interviews and analysis.
Oct. 9-10: Cloudera Evolve24, New York City: TheCUBE will be there on Oct. 9 with interviews and analysis.
Oct. 10: Advanced Micro Devices’ Advancing AI, San Francisco. SiliconANGLE will be there with all the news.