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For all the massive activity and excitement around generative artificial intelligence, you had to squint to see the impact on the earnings results of the big cloud and other tech companies this past week.
At Supercloud 4, our two-day free editorial event, we looked at why that’s the case, and dug deep with a great roster of guests into where it’s going next. TL;DR: everywhere. You can catch the highlights that stood out to me below and watch all the interviews at the event by registering here — pick and choose from the list just below, which also has the writeups if you want a quick summary. It’s all you need to get up to speed on this revolutionary technology.
We also covered a lot of other AI and cloud news this week, including the emerging trend toward doing more AI workloads outside the cloud, as well as new attacks and defenses in cybersecurity.
TheCUBE analysts Dave Vellante and John Furrier discuss that and other news, along with their weekly rants, on theCUBE Pod weekly podcast, out now on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly Breaking Analysis, coming over the weekend, that will dig into where AI is showing up, or not, in the latest tech earnings reports, and when it might finally appear.
The economist and author Robert Solow famously said in 1987, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Today the same goes for generative AI, granting of course that it’s at a much earlier stage than computers in the late 1980s.
The point is, so far gen AI mostly isn’t yet showing up in the earnings numbers for tech companies, even for some such as Google parent Alphabet that have plenty of AI chops and new services. And that makes sense: The enterprises they sell to are taking it slow, as enterprises do, even for a hot new technology such as this one — one, by the way, that often has issues with verisimilitude and data security.
There are some glimmers. Microsoft, not surprisingly given its high-profile relationship with gen AI darling Open AI and its ability to infuse that AI into its many enterprise services, turned in strong results and attributed some of that strength to demand for AI services — specifically three percentage points of growth. Even IBM credited its AI efforts, though it’s not clear exactly where those showed up.
Still, profits may be a while coming. Microsoft reported its capital spending jumped 70% from a year ago, and Alphabet also reported a rise of 11%, both attributing much of those increases to infrastructure spending to support all that AI work.
Nasdaq stocks tanked more than 2% Wednesday and almost another 2% Thursday as investors looked askance at Alphabet’s uninspiring cloud results and Meta Platform’s outlook, and worried Amazon’s earnings might fall short. As it turned out, the results were pretty good! Amazon’s stock rose more than 8% on Friday as they looked past Amazon Web Services revenue coming in just short of forecasts, and a muted outlook.
Perhaps they picked up on an intriguing bit on the conference call about coming deals, where CEO Andy Jassy mentioned “several deals in September with an effective date in October that won’t show in any GAAP reported number for Q3 but the collection of which is higher than the total reported deal volume in all of Q3.” And as John Furrier pointed out, AWS has signed some significant AI deals with the likes of Adidas, Booking.com and Anthropic. That bodes well for the fourth quarter and beyond.
Meanwhile, Intel managed a beat despite its many struggles for relevance. CEO Pat Gelsinger talked up Intel’s chances in AI: “Training of these large models is interesting, but the deployment of those models, the inferencing use of those models, is what we believe is truly spectacular for the future,” he said. “Some of that will run on the accelerators, but a huge amount of that is going to run on Xeons.” He may not be entirely wrong, but Arm and its partners will have a thing or two to say about that.
Cloud revenue miss drags on Alphabet’s stock, despite strong results overall
Microsoft posts strong results on growing demand for AI services
Amazon delivers strong earnings and revenue beat, but cloud growth remains sluggish
Furrier’s analysis: Analysis: Amazon earnings show AWS’ importance, but it needs gen AI production workloads
IBM beats expectations as AI powers software revenue growth
Intel beats expectations, reveals new foundry customers and traction in AI, sending its stock higher
Meta beats expectations but uncertainty over Middle East war weighs on stock
ServiceNow tops analysts’ expectations, sending its stock higher
Juniper beats expectations as enterprises step up hardware spending
Despite earnings and revenue beat, F5 shares drop slightly on outlook miss
Mobileye shares climb on strong third-quarter results
From hype to reality, the true state of AI adoption
AI model training rekindles interest in on-premises infrastructure
How companies are scrambling to keep control of their private data from AI models
Enterprise software developers prepare for generative AI’s ‘productivity revolution’
Developers are embracing AI-enabled tools. Here’s how that’s changing the way they code
The analysis:
Unpacking generative AI: Where hype meets reality in enterprise tech, as Supercloud 4 kicks off
Navigating the AI landscape: Supercloud 4 Day 1 insights
Navigating the AI wars: TheCUBE analysts kick off Supercloud 4 Day 2
Experts from Microsoft, Google and Salesforce discuss AI’s future impact
Gen AI meets supercloud to supercharge the enterprise: Supercloud 4 event final analysis
And the interviews (with more still to come):
Riding the wave of gen AI: AWS outlines advances at Supercloud 4
AI for next-gen cloud: Transforming traditional industries and scaling for nontech sectors
SAS draws from lengthy analytics history to build generative AI tools for expanding use cases
Dell’s chief AI officer on harnessing AI for industry innovation and market growth
The human factor in AI: How startups are personalizing the enterprise AI experience
Navigating the data arms race: Challenges and opportunities for AI in the modern era
Generative AI: Intel exec on revolutionizing enterprises and redefining computing
Startup co-founders reveal their gen AI journeys and how they see the road ahead
The new digital frontier: Solving complex problems with AI superpowers
Google Public Sector CEO weighs in on how to manage the massive shift to AI
Google’s vision for industry transformation in today’s AI revolution
When ChatGPT meets big data: How ChaosSearch is changing data analysis using AI
How AI is revolutionizing sports: The NFL’s approach to enhancing experiences using technology
Transforming healthcare: The seismic potential of AI-powered healthcare solutions
Navigating the AI revolution: Industry insiders discuss opportunities and challenges
Snowflake’s AI integration: Vector indexing and language models unleashed
Unlocking enterprise value: Harnessing AI to tackle unstructured data challenges
Opening up the power of AI while safeguarding personal data sovereignty
Salesforce’s generative AI revolution: Transforming business workflows and data governance
Unpacking the interplay between generative AI and compute efficiency
Solving the latency issue: AI at the network edge
Discovering the ‘craft’ of user experience: How gen AI is transforming software development
AI requires going beyond reinventing the wheel for a seamless experience
The historical roots, present challenges and future possibilities of AI
From convergence to transformation: Gen AI’s impact on business speed
Efforts to rein in runaway AI get some legs: UN forms AI advisory board as model governance moves up the tech industry’s priority list
Databricks’ spending spree continues: Databricks acquires enterprise data replication startup Arcion for $100M
Faster LLM development: Predibase debuts SDK for training and serving open-source LLMs on low-cost cloud hardware
And more private as well: Credal and Datasaur target the enterprise demand for security-optimized AI models
Multimodal communications with generative AI: Cisco’s Webex AI combines audio, video and text intelligence to improve business communications And Zeus Kerravala’s nice analysis: Innovation galore At WebexOne: This isn’t your father’s Webex
Gotta wonder if business intelligence companies, not to mention data analysts, can leverage gen AI before it does them in: DataGPT uses generative AI to transform every employee into a skilled business analyst
Some very heavyweight backers, including luminaries from Google and Meta: Report: Generative AI search startup Perplexity AI seeking millions in venture capital funding
CentML raises $27M to speed up AI inference and training
SAP announces new generative AI capabilities to enhance customer experiences
Qualcomm introduces new AI-optimized handset and laptop chips
Eve raises $14M to launch personalized legal AI assistant
Ed Zitron has a point: AI Is Becoming a Band-Aid over Bad, Broken Tech Industry Design Choices (from Scientific American)
A few pieces of news highlight the fact that a growing chunk of AI work, even model training, isn’t going to happen in the cloud:
Look out Dell and HPE? This startup might steal their hybrid thunder: Intel backs $44M round for private cloud infrastructure startup Oxide Computer
Cloud deployment made easier for SMBs: OpsCanvas debuts platform to help businesses visually deploy cloud infrastructure
VAST Data and Lambda partner to offer optimal hybrid cloud-based AI training infrastructure
Another move to take generative AI to the data rather than the other way around: Nvidia and Lenovo team up to deliver powerful generative AI hardware in any location
AWS debuts EU-based sovereign cloud with dedicated data centers
Island nabs another $100M for its secure enterprise browser
Nvidia and AMD reportedly developing Arm-based PC processors
EnterpriseDB targets analytical ambitions with Splitgraph acquisition
WordPress.com parent Automattic acquires all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50M
Snowflake to acquire Ponder, expanding its Python capabilities for enterprises
(From VentureBeat)
NetApp debuts new flash arrays and cloud features at Insight 2023
Layoff watch:
RISC-V startup SiFive reportedly lets go most of its engineers and executives This is the second reference I’ve heard recently about RISC-V moving more slowly than some expected.
Regulation watch:
OK, yes, so Facebook and Instagram can be harmful. But “Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem”? Maybe parents have a wee bit of culpability here for their children’s health? Don’t tell me it’s impossible to control kids’ digital life. It is, if you look up from your own phone once in a while. US attorneys join forces alleging Meta causes serious harm to the minds of American youth
And this time, antitrust action from Japan: Japan’s antitrust watchdog begins probe into Google’s search engine dominance
Late-breaking news on SolarWinds, which hasn’t regained its footing since its huge breach: Observability provider SolarWinds reportedly exploring a sale
Bad guys target gen AI: Data poisoning is the latest threat for generative AI models
And use it for attacks as well: IBM study indicates near parity between human and AI phishing attempts
But Google’s on the case: Google expands Vulnerability Rewards Program to include generative AI threats
Phishing is getting alarmingly good, David Strom reports: Akamai research finds more sophisticated phishing threats in hospitality industry and New and more sophisticated phishing techniques leverage a variety of malicious tactics
DDoS attacks keep getting bigger too: Latest Cloudflare distributed denial-of-service report details record-setting attack
An especially worrisome “zero-click” attack method: A new and dangerous malware infects Roundcube webmail
Facebook isn’t safe either: The anatomy of Facebook malware-laced ads
AI for the forces of light: Darktrace debuts advanced cloud-native security solution with self-learning AI
Amazon joins the passwordless revolution: Amazon opens passkey support to users for passwordless login
Earnings next week: Many more! A sampling of what we’ll be covering: Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, Samsung, Check Point Software, Arista Networks, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Block, Dropbox
THANK YOU