Robert Hof

Robert Hof is editor in chief of SiliconANGLE. Email: robhof@siliconangle.com

Latest from Robert Hof

In a big surprise, Pentagon grants Microsoft $10B JEDI cloud contract over Amazon

Microsoft Corp. today won the Department of Defense’s hotly contested $10 billion, 10-year cloud computing contract, beating out frontrunner Amazon Web Services Inc. Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing unit had been the presumed favorite for the plum contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI, for well over a year partly thanks to its ...

Legendary venture capitalist Don Valentine dies at 87

Don Valentine, the longtime founding venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital who led investments in Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corp., Electronic Arts Inc. and many other iconic Silicon Valley firms, died today at age 87 at his home in Woodside, California. As Sequoia itself said in a post today on its site, “Remembering Don Valentine,” he’s ...
ANALYSIS

Despite AWS cloud growth, Amazon shares sag on lower forecast

Updated: The cloud no longer is lifting Amazon.com Inc.’s business into the sky, at least not from investors’ point of view. The retail, media and cloud giant today said revenue at its Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud computing unit continued to slow but still rose 35%, to $9 billion, in its third quarter, maintaining its ...

AWS announces full lineup for Intersect, its first public music and tech festival

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Amazon Web Services Inc. is serious about mounting a full-blown public music festival in Las Vegas in early December. Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing operation this morning announced a fleshed-out roster of artists set to perform at its Intersect Music Festival, which will be held Dec. 6 and 7 at ...

Partly cloudy: As AWS growth slows to 37%, Google Cloud hits $8B run rate

Updated: Amazon Web Services Inc.’s growth has fallen to its lowest point since it began reporting separate results, up 37% from a year ago, but Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing unit still drove most of the second-quarter profits reported today by the retail and tech giant. Meantime, Google LLC owner Alphabet Inc. today reported better-than-expected earnings ...

Facebook earnings beat back bad news, but privacy issues may slow sales

Updated: Beating back weeks of negative publicity all the way into today, Facebook Inc. reported better-than-expected second quarter results on strong sales of mobile ads on its core app and Instagram.  The social networking giant has been buffeted by a seemingly endless series of bad news, challenges and gaffes — most recently the imposition early today ...

Shades of South by Southwest: Amazon to hold music fest at re:Invent cloud conference

In a twist on the annual South by Southwest event that added a large tech component to its music festival, Amazon Web Services Inc. plans to hold a full-blown music festival at its annual cloud conference in December. Tweeted quietly late last week from a new Twitter account, the Intersect festival is billed as “a new festival ...

Salesforce aims to bring more common sense to AI

Machine learning and deep learning have produced plenty of breakthroughs in recent years, from more capable speech and image recognition to self-driving cars. But one big problem with these artificial-intelligence techniques that attempt to mimic how the brain works is that the neural networks they employ don’t have the common-sense knowledge and context that people ...

VMware to acquire Avi Networks to make data centers cloudier

In a continuing bid to help data centers become more cloudlike, VMware Inc. today said it plans to acquire Avi Networks Inc. for an undisclosed price. Avi provides application delivery services to large enterprises such as Deutsche Bank, Cisco Systems Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. with what it calls a multicloud fabric, in particular helping balance application loads ...

Big bets, billion-dollar failures: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on how to succeed in business

In a rather rare public appearance, Amazon.com Inc. founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos provided no news but offered up a few of his well-honed tips for creating and building successful businesses at a “fireside chat” today. The only exciting moment at the retail and tech giant’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas was when a ...