Amid a glut of funding for artificial intelligence companies, there’s understandably increasing concern among investors this past week, apparent in disappointment in the earnings results of a number of technology companies, whether all this will pay off.
We’re at the point in the investment cycle where it’s hard to tell, though to my eyes, it seems like the usual hype cycle — which doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone will win. Look out below.
Meantime, governments around the world are increasingly getting involved in everything AI, from trying to tamp down the problems to probing potential antitrust issues.
Our latest editorial conference, Supercloud 7: Get Ready for the Next Data Platform, this week featured luminaries such as Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and Snowflake founder Benoit Dageville, plus many more examining what’s coming next for the tricky task of handling the central commodity of the AI era: data. Check out all the coverage below. It’s free on-demand as well.
Next week look for our new Cybersecurity Special Report ahead of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, where theCUBE, theCUBE Research and SiliconANGLE will be onsite live with news, interviews and analysis.
Next week we’ll also be covering earnings from key tech companies such as Palantir, GlobalFoundries, Uber and Lyft, Fortinet, Rapid7, Extreme Networks, Digital Ocean and more.
SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante will discuss this and other news in more detail on theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, out this weekend.
Here’s the big news of the week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
AI and data: Supercloud 7 reveals the next data platform
Headline AI news
Concerns multiply about whether gen AI investment is going to end badly, and it’s a lot of investment: $1 trillion over the next five years, according to the Dell’Oro Group just in data center spending: Why OpenAI could lose $5B this year (from The Information) and Investors are suddenly getting very concerned that AI isn’t making any serious money (from Futurism.com) and Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence frenzy: a bubble full of problems, bound to burst? (from the Mercury News) Even AI leader Microsoft elicited some investor grumbles with its $19B in cash capex in its most recent quarter. But it’s complicated, not least since Meta investors didn’t seem to mind its big AI spending: How deliciously binary: AI has yet to pay off – or is transforming business Most likely: It’s still early and this is how the rollout of new technologies works.
Meantime, amid continued problems of hallucinations and deepfakes with gen AI, companies are trying to come up with fixes: Meta faces AI accuracy issues as tech industry tackles hallucinations, deepfakes And so are the feds: Entertainment industry gets behind new bill that will outlaw AI deepfakes
Indeed, governments are increasingly getting their claws into the business: UK regulator seeks feedback for potential probe into Google-Anthropic partnership and EU calls for help with shaping rules for general purpose AIs (from TechCrunch) and New U.S. Commerce Department report endorses ‘open’ AI models (from TechCrunch)
Midrange and open-source large language models earn top marks in new AI accuracy benchmark
Can generative AI enable contact centers to deliver on their promise?
Supercloud 7: Get Ready for the Next Data Platform
A few takeaways:
- The next data platform is about allowing any computing engine to access data no matter where it is. “It’s about opening up the data elements, making them coherent and then building new intelligent applications on top of that,” said theCUBE Research Chief Analyst Dave Vellante.
- The point of control for data is shifting from the database management system to the governance layer, driven by the rise of open table formats. “The trend is here, open data formats are driving the landscape governance layer shifting and that’s enabling AI intelligent data applications,” theCUBE Research analyst John Furrier said. “That’s the trajectory.”
- The shift toward open data formats and governance is seen as fundamental to the future of data platforms, enabling more seamless and efficient data management. The survey conducted by theCUBE Research and ETR revealed that while only 15% of respondents currently use open data formats, a significant number are planning to adopt them, indicating a strong trend toward more open and accessible data environments, according to Furrier. “As infrastructure closes the loop and gets stronger, the data layer’s going to change very rapidly,” he said.
- For all the talk about the battle between Databricks and Snowflake, the big cloud providers are likely to get a significant part of the data platform business. A joint survey by theCUBE Research and Enterprise Technology Research show that while 64% leaned toward Databricks, and 49% leaned toward Snowflake, 34% also expressed an affinity for hyperscaler offerings. “The data platform vendors think they’re adding new workloads and expanding their total addressable market and reaching new personas, but what’s actually happening is they’re bumping into new competitors,” analyst George Gilbert explained. “That number of 34% for the hyperscalers is significant. They are going after that open data for building applications and the data platform vendors aren’t always the best equipped.”
- AI agents, which can undertake a number of tasks semi-autonomously, aren’t here yet but there’s widespread belief that they’re coming: “Gen AI today is that assistant who’s helping you code faster,” said Yasmeen Ahmad, product executive for data, analytics and AI at Google Cloud. “But as we move into this agentic world, we’re seeing agents being able to actually learn tools and build pipelines on the behalf of the data engineer and actually accelerate data analytics to a degree that’s never been seen before.” But the bottom line is the era of AI agents, already touted as the next step beyond generative AI, is years away.
- Leading-edge enterprises are driving a lot of these changes and more to come. “It’s interesting to me when you hear companies like Walmart and companies like TransUnion talk about how they’ve essentially built an abstraction layer to hide the underlying complexity of all these clouds and create a developer experience that’s consistent across those clouds, irrespective of the physical location,” said Vellante. “To really take advantage of artificial intelligence, it needs supercloud — that’s going to be one of the superpowers.”
And here’s our coverage of the event, with more interviews and stories coming in the next few days. Watch anytime on demand.
First, some TL;DR posts from our analysts:
AI and data platforms: TheCUBE analysts highlight the future of data governance and security
Snowflake vs. Databricks: Analysts dissect survey results showing joint customer interest in open table formats
Supercloud 7 interviews highlight evolving impact of AI and data governance
And here’s some perspective from companies aiming to provide the new AI tools for data analysis, and gain a competitive advantage:
The future of data platforms: The future of data platforms: Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi highlights key roles of open formats and AI
Strategic shift: Snowflake co-founder Benoit Dageville on embracing open standards with open-source Polaris
Microsoft advances data management with open formats and AI integration
Solving the decentralized data strategy’s pitfalls: an analysis of Nextdata’s hourglass construct
Unified AI data pipelines: Vast Data tackles scale and traffic challenges
Google aims to transform enterprise data with multicloud integration and AI
And views from the customers:
How Walmart’s cloud platform fosters speedy AI development
Gen AI and data governance: TransUnion’s blueprint for the future of data platforms
AI money matters
AI search engine startup Perplexity launches revenue sharing program for publishers
Altana raises $200M for its supply chain analytics platform
Protect AI raises $60M to secure AI and ML from unique security risks, a day after acquiring SydeLabs to red-team LLMs
Gradient AI secures $56M to enhance insurance industry efficiency
Credo AI raises $21M to help enterprises deploy AI safely and responsibly
Hyperbolic Labs raises $7M for its blockchain-based AI network to use idle GPU capacity
New models and services
Amazon introduces new AI model to make checkout-free ‘Just Walk Out’ stores even better
Zuckerberg unveils new advances in computer vision AI at SIGGRAPH
Google Cloud announces new data innovations to support AI applications
Google’s lightweight Gemma LLMs get smaller, but they perform even better than before
Google debuts new AI-powered Chrome features to make browsing easier
Stability AI releases super-fast model for 3D asset image generation
Contextual AI nabs $80M for its ‘RAG 2.0’ platform
GitHub introduces AI model playground for developers to test and compare LLMs
Writer releases new specialized AI models for healthcare and financial services
There’s more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE
Around the enterprise: AI isn’t boosting earnings much yet
Earningspalooza
- Strong Microsoft results dampened by slight miss on cloud sales
- Amazon’s stock slides on revenue miss, sluggish cloud growth and lower guidance
- Intel’s stock craters as it reveals plan to cut 15,000 jobs, 15% of its workforce
- Apple beats analysts’ expectations thanks to strong iPhone and iPad sales
- AMD steps up to rival Nvidia in AI chip sector, as huge revenue gains send its stock higher
- Shares of Arm and Qualcomm wobble after hours, despite solid earnings and revenue beats
- Meta’s stock rises on strong earnings, revenue growth and confident outlook
- Cloudflare’s stock jumps as it cruises to a solid earnings and revenue beat
- Tenable shares drop 10% after revised revenue guidance and potential sale reports
- Arista seizes the AI networking opportunity with strong earnings beat and revenue growth
- Kyndryl raises earnings forecast on strong consulting growth
- Informatica shares fall slightly on mixed second-quarter earnings
- Commvault tops first-quarter expectations amid subscription growth
- SolarWinds stock edges down despite earnings beat and guidance raise
- Samsung second-quarter operating profit soars 1,458% as AI demand remains strong; results top estimates (from CNBC)
- Freshworks shares up 5% as customer service and support firm beats on earnings
- Network security firm F5’s stock makes strong gains on solid earnings beat It also said CFO Frank Pelzer will retire in the fourth quarter, replaced by Edward Werner, its current SVP of finance.
- Western Digital Q4 results surpass estimates as cloud revenue grows 21% (from Seeking Alpha)
- Confluent shares tumble on soft guidance after revenue miss
- Twilio shares rise 6% on strong earnings and guidance boost
- Mobileye shares drop on lowered full-year guidance
- RingCentral tops earnings and revenue forecasts, but stock edges down
- OpenText reports Q4 revenue down 9% to $1.4 billion, raises FY 2025 margin targets
- Atlassian reports solid earnings but projects weaker growth in fiscal 2025, and stock falls 14%
- Coinbase and Block shares rise as both impress in second quarter
- Snap shares plunge 18% on revenue shortfall and lower-than-expected guidance
- Despite continuing losses, Appian beats earnings forecasts, so it’s not clear why its stock plunged 20%
- Computational intelligence firm Altair tops revenue expectations
Other money matters
EU regulators unconditionally approve HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks
ESG compliance startup osapiens closes $120M funding round
Checkly nabs $20M for its synthetic application monitoring platform
Virtual networking startup ZeroTier raises $13.5M to juice product development
Open-source startup FOSSA acquires developer tool community StackShare
More news and analysis
Paul Gillin provides a case study in migrating to the cloud: A close look at JPMorgan’s aggressive cloud migration
Ampere Arm server processors to get 512 cores, AI accelerator (analysis from The Next Platform)
There’s plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat: CrowdStrike oopsie costs Delta $500M
Coming Sunday: Our Cybersecurity Special Report ahead of Black Hat USA next week in Las Vegas, anchored by Paul Gillin’s feature on the continuing problem of security tool sprawl and what impact AI might have on it.
Money matters
Software supply chain management startup Lineaje raises $20M
Israeli developer observability startup Lightrun raises $18M, launches new AI debugger
Delta CEO says CrowdStrike-Microsoft outage cost the airline $500 million (from CNBC) And that’s just one company
Attack & response
IBM reports average breach costs hit record $4.88M in 2024, up 10% from last year
Florida-based blood donation nonprofit OneBlood struck by ransomware attack
Zimperium warns new ‘SMS Stealer’ malware is actively intercepting onetime passwords
New products
New features in Cohesity Data Cloud boost generative AI detection and recovery
PagerDuty expands generative AI solutions for tackling outages and incidents
Opal Security updates platform for enhanced identity and access management
Fortanix expands Key Insight to enhance cryptographic security across hybrid environments
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech: VCs (and others) for Kamala
Apple asks court to dismiss Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit
Not everyone in tech is supporting Trump, despite recent stories — far from it, as More than 100 venture capitalists, founders and others come out for Kamala Harris
Meta agrees to pay $1.4B to settle Texas illegal biometric data gathering lawsuit
Nvidia expands microservices library and support for 3D and robotic model creation
Senate passes controversial bills designed to protect children online
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings
Anyscale, the company behind the open source AI framework Ray, named onetime Aruba Networks founder Keerti Melkote CEO.
Character.AI co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google, per TechCrunch. Character.AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas and some other employees are also joining Google. Dominic Perella, Character.AI’s general counsel, will be interim CEO at the startup. Google is signing a nonexclusive agreement with Character.AI for its tech, but most of the staff is staying there.
Vikram Ramesh, formerly head of global marketing at Google Cloud Security, joined security and information event management firm Adlumin as chief marketing officer.
Abby Kearns, a longtime tech executive at Puppet, Cloud Foundry Foundation and Pivotal Software, among others, is new chief technology officer at marketing analytics firm Alembic.
CISA names Lisa Einstein, its former senior adviser for AI, first-ever chief artificial intelligence officer.
Team software veteran Atlassian is seeking a chief revenue officer, as Chief Sales Officer Kevin Egan leaves the company at month’s end.
App building platform Airtable has acquired Dopt, which helps other startups build product onboarding experiences for new users, for an undisclosed sum. Dopt will wind down Aug. 15 and its team will join Airtable’s AI group. (per TechCrunch)
What’s next
Black Hat USA, Aug. 6-7: TheCUBE, theCUBE Research and SiliconANGLE will be there with live coverage. And check out our Cybersecurity Special Report posting over the weekend, with a deep dive into the continuing cybersecurity tool sprawl and how AI may worsen it, as well as all the developing news and analysis at the event.
Another big lineup of earnings:
Monday, Aug. 5: Palantir
Tuesday, Aug. 6: GlobalFoundries, Uber, Fortinet and Rapid7
Wednesday, Aug. 7: Extreme Networks, Lyft, JFrog, Equinix and Robinhood
Thursday, Aug. 8, Digital Ocean, Dropbox, Rackspace, Five9, Amplitude and Expensify