With the new year in full swing, the mission for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) remains the same as it always has: Putting out great team coverage while using theCUBE Podcast as a place to riff. There was no shortage of suitable subjects on the latter front this week in the technology world.

“Man, the layoffs, just massive this year,” Furrier said on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast. “We said on an earlier pod that the planes will be falling out of the sky. That’s what the case is. Huge amount of layoffs.”

The market is hemorrhaging on many levels right now, and those not on the right side of history are going to be “roadkill,” according to Furrier. Meanwhile, there have been massive shifts in specific technology areas recently, including cryptocurrency.

“You have ETF trading on bitcoin. That should change it, but bitcoin is down,” Furrier said. “I have an opinion on the whole crypto thing. I think it’s going to mirror the dot-com bubble.”

Once the bubble bursts, things will return to normalcy, according to Furrier. Still, he’s “long on” both crypto and blockchain once all of that is out of the system.

Taking a look at the year ahead, 2024 is set to be an exciting time for theCUBE, with a number of tech events on the calendar. Among those events is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, starting on Feb. 26, and theCUBE’s next Supercloud event on February 13, with a focus on data and AI.

“Mark your calendars. If you’re interested in speaking and doing a panel [at Supercloud], let us know,” Furrier said.

From metaverse to AI

This week, Bloomberg posted a story about how Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s top priority shifted from the metaverse to AI. It felt similar to when Microsoft Corp. went all-in on the cloud, according to Vellante.

“Remember, they were sort of missing cloud — they were trying to put Windows on phones,” Vellante said. “I think that’s what Zuckerberg is doing. He’s like, ‘Hey, guys, let’s just pivot. You go hard after gen AI.’ And they seem to be getting a lot of traction. They’re showing up again in the surveys. Llama is outpacing some of the other proprietary models like Anthropic.”

There were other developments around gen AI this week, including Bloomberg reporting that OpenAI LP has signed up 260 businesses for the corporate version of ChatGPT. OpenAI also introduced the GPT Store, which allows users to find custom versions of ChatGPT.

“Now you have the Enterprise version — they launched the store on Wednesday. Customer versions of the chatbots are coming out,” Furrier said. “There’s people coming out, doing analysis, saying that good prompting of the bigger models is better than the specialized models.”

It brings up an interesting question. Can OpenAI continue to move the needle on innovation?

“It’s a matter of pace. Can they keep the pace between them and the second-place person?” Furrier asked.

Meanwhile, AI is bringing back several “stuck” industries, including areas such as smart home, automotive and smart manufacturing.

“These areas have been stalled. AI is bringing that back. Big discussion there,” Furrier said. “There’s so much happening in the world.”

High-profile layoffs

This past week saw a number of layoffs in the technology industry. Google LLC laid off hundreds of employees across the Google Assistant unit and other divisions, while Discord Inc. cut 17% of its workers.

While data for the latest ETR survey hasn’t been fully released yet, there is a drill down, according to Vellante. The survey is asking people whether budgets are going to increase or decrease.

“For those that said they’re going to decrease budget, they said, ‘What’s your number one?’ Or, what are the methods that you’re going to use to decrease the budget,” Vellante said. “Number one now is reducing staff.”

That’s 23% of the subsector that said they were cutting. But what’s really interesting is industry verticals and specifically IT, according to Vellante.

“It jumps up from 23% to 35% of those respondents saying that’s how they’re going to meet their targets. They’re going to reduce staff,” Vellante said. “The other thing is the layoffs are definitely higher in North America than they are in EMEA and very high in APAC. But that stands out in IT.”

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

Steve Mullaney, former president and CEO of Aviatrix Systems
Jake Kaldenbaugh, managing partner at CloudStrategies
Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research
Shelly Kramer, managing director and principal analyst with theCUBE Research
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
John Chambers, CEO of JC2 Ventures
Charles Fitzgerald, consultative strategist and investor
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel
Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom
Jas Tremblay, GM for data center solutions group at Broadcom
Bob Picciano, member of the advisory board from SolarWinds Worldwide
Ginni Rometty, co-chairman of OneTen, former CEO of IBM
Rob Thomas, SVP, software and CCO of IBM
Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Investment Management
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase
Gary Gensler, chairperson, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Henry Ward, CEO of Carta
Meg Whitman, former president and CEO of HPE, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya
Leo Apotheker, former CEO of HP and co-CEO of SAP
Alan Cohen, general partner at DCVC
Arun K. Subramaniyan, founder and CEO of Articul8 AI
Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS
Rebecca Knight, host of theCUBE
Jesse Rothstein, economist
Mark Bowling, chief risk, security and information security officer of ExtraHop
Stu Miniman, director of market insights for hybrid platforms at Red Hat
Doug Henschen, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research
Casey Newton, founder at Platform News
Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic Inc. and co-founder of WordPress
Keith Rabois, former general partner at Funders Fund
Alex Freedland, returning CEO of Mirantis
Jason Calacanis, internet entrepreneur
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
George Gilbert, principal analyst at TechAlpha Partners

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Photo: SiliconANGLE