This week, it was reported that Beijing was weighing delaying the planned $69 billion acquisition of VMware Inc. by Broadcom Inc. It’s a move that would follow the United States placing new restrictions on artificial intelligence chip exports to China.

Industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) analyzed that news and much more on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast. It brought to mind memories of Dell Technlogies Inc. acquiring EMC Corp. back in 2015 and the restrictions enforced by China in that case, according to Vellante.

“I don’t remember the specifics, but they threw in the sort of last minute, no merger for you unless you do this,” Vellante said. “There may be something similar with Broadcom, or maybe it’s just retaliatory because of the ‘no chips for you’ act.”

It may just be a “paper tiger,” in Furrier’s view. Broadcom president and Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan is looking to integrate VMware to reshape Broadcom, according to some of Furrier’s sources inside the company.

“It’s basically a high-level merger. I won’t say equals, because Broadcom is clearly in charge,” Furrier said. “But Broadcom is clearly now signally publicly that VMware will reshape what the new Broadcom will look like.”

That tracks with analysis from theCUBE earlier this year. At that period of time, the narrative was that it was the closing of the chapter of VMware to the new chapter of Broadcom plus VMware.

“Broadcom never really nailed it on software. They had CA, they’ve got Symantec. But with VMware, and you pointed this out on one of your Breaking Analysis, this is the crown jewel of software,” Furrier said. “The word coming out of the VMware community, and some of the insiders at Broadcom are telling me is, that our narrative of chips to apps is absolutely the key.”

Supercloud 4 and the AI wave

The explosion of AI continues to transform enterprises across industries, which will be of key focus during SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s next supercloud event. Running live October 24-25, “Supercloud 4: Generative AI Transforms Every Industry,” will be presented by SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s live streaming studio.

The new AI wave can be seen as being similar to the PC wave from a productivity standpoint, according to Vellante. When PCs came onto the scene, it created a massive productivity boom, with everyone being able to take advantage of the web.

“You were able to get over the top providers, you were able to get startups like eBay and Amazon, you were able to see companies like Dell go from mail order to Internet order,” Vellante said. “To me, this AI wave is like both the personal productivity impact of the PC, and the transformative industry paradigm shift of the web and the internet.”

The generative AI conversations scheduled for Supercloud 4 are likely to be very broad and targeted around such areas of interest, according to Furrier. The event is scheduled to bring together AI executives, experts, technologists, investors and thought leaders to explore the key trends surrounding generative AI, supercloud and the future impact on the enterprise world.

“I’m pumped looking at some of the early interviews, Dave, Supercloud 4. That should be a must-watch, must-listen-to event,” he said. “We have so many people lined up for that.”

Big earnings week coming up

Next week, Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC are due to report earnings. The big focus will be on cloud platforms, and there are some interesting statistics to keep an eye on, according to Vellante.

“I’ve been covering this since probably 2013, 2014, trying to do quarterly estimates,” Vellante said. “For the first time ever, in Q1 2023, the sequential growth of the big four clouds, AWS, Azure, GCP and Alibaba, did not grow.”

However, Vellante said he has growth rates accelerating in the fourth quarter, with his expectation that the point at which measurable impacts of AI for cloud vendors start to be seen. There won’t likely be huge incremental impacts this quarter, for instance, with AWS just having made capabilities generally available, Vellante noted.

“It’s not going to hit revenue in a big way. Even Microsoft’s been conservative on its guidance, as has Google,” Vellante said. “We’ll see if there’s any meaningful measurable impact in Q3. We’d better see it in Q4, or this AI hype is going to run out of steam.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Joe Biden, 46th president of the U.S.
George H. W. Bush, 41st president of the U.S.
Osama bin Laden, militant and founder of al Qaeda
Paddy Cosgrave, founder and former chief executive officer at Web Summit
Ori Goshen, co-founder and co-CEO at AI21 Labs
Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom
Joe Tucci, chairman and co-founder at Big Growth Partners
Larry Ellison, chairman of the board and chief technology officer at Oracle
Paul Gillin, enterprise editor at SiliconANGLE Media
Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO at SiMa Technologies
Ben Kus, chief technology officer at Box
Tren Griffin, entrepreneur
James H. Clark, founder of Netscape
Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Charles Fitzgerald, consultative strategist and investor

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Photo: SiliconANGLE