AWS aims its AI push at enterprises, and the chip industry dreams of an AI boom
Despite the seeming dominance of OpenAI and Microsoft in generative artificial intelligence, it’s becoming clear that the other cloud providers, not to mention AI startups, will make this anything but a winner-take-all business.
Amazon Web Services made it latest bid to be a major player at its summit in New York this week, aiming to steal a march in generative AI via enterprises, not just developers. That said, it also provided a boost for developers with this week’s introduction of App Studio.
The money keeps piling into AI as Skild AI, Hebbia, Hayden AI and others raise big rounds. And SoftBank bought Graphcore to boost its AI ambitions. But exits remain slow as initial public offerings are still in the doldrums and regulators give the side eye to big tech acquisitions — just look at Alphabet’s purchase of HubSpot getting called off on apparent concerns it could face antitrust scrutiny.
And some older companies aren’t yet benefiting from the AI boom. UiPath laid off 10% of its staff as returning CEO Daniel Dines tries to ensure its robotic process automation services remain relevant amid the gen AI boom. In a different industry, Intuit also announced cutbacks.
The chipmaking equipment industry is gearing up for a trillion-dollar AI chip opportunity. We’ll see if anybody but Nvidia gets the spoils, but energy concerns are likely to weigh in favor of alternatives to power-hungry graphics processing units. But there seems to be plenty of opportunity outside the cloud providers, as demonstrated in Paul Gillin’s story on how eBay does AI — on-premises, not in the cloud for the most part.
Here’s all the news this week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
AI and data: AWS is fully awake on generative AI
An interesting and contrarian case study by Paul Gillin: Where does eBay do most of its AI development? You might be surprised
The skinny from theCUBE Research analyst David Linthicum: Is the mainframe a viable option for generative AI?
Optimism abounds as semiconductor industry takes aim at AI-fueled trillion-dollar market
Lots of news and analysis from SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s unsponsored, onsite editorial coverage of AWS Summit New York:
AWS introduces App Studio to speed up application development with AI
Navigating the generative AI revolution: AWS’ Matt Wood weighs in on possible platform shift
AWS’ AI and sustainability push: theCUBE’s analysis from AWS Summit New York
Amazon updates its commitment to responsible use of generative AI
Transforming tech: AWS’ strategic AI integration and Marketplace evolution
Money matters
SoftBank buys Graphcore, the British chipmaking startup, to fuel its AI ambitions
AMD acquires language model developer Silo AI for $665M
Storj Labs buys GPU cloud company Valdi to offer on-demand storage and compute for AI workloads
UiPath lays off 10% of workforce in push for increased efficiency
Investor consortium acquires majority stake in Nasuni at $1.2B valuation
Skild AI raises $300M to build a general-purpose, AI-powered brain for any robot
Hebbia reels in $130M for its AI search platform
Vision AI startup Hayden AI raises $90M to boost public transit efficiency
Healthcare AI platform Regard raises $61M to advance AI-powered clinical insights
Jared Leto joins Index Ventures in $60M round for generative AI video startup Captions
Fireworks AI raises $52M led by Sequoia at $522B valuation
HerculesAI reels in $26M for its AI-powered data management toolkit
Intel Capital leads $15M round in AI construction tech startup Buildots
AI data reliability startup Soda Data raises $14M
Enso Technologies raises $6M to build an army of guided AI agents for SMBs
Other news and analysis
Salesforce powers new AI use cases with Data Cloud and integrated capabilities
Patronus AI open-sources Lynx, a real-time LLM-based judge of AI hallucinations
Salesforce pioneers application platform that unlocks generative AI and actions
Anthropic expands developer console for creating and evaluating AI prompts
Solo.io paves the way for smoother LLM connectivity with Gloo AI Gateway
Zeus Kerravala looks at big data in the Indy 500: Merging auto racing and high-tech data enables a faster ride for everyone
Check out more news on AI and data.
Around the enterprise
Alphabet calls off multibillion-dollar HubSpot acquisition
US announces $1.6B to fund research in advanced chip packaging technologies
Defense technology startup Helsing raises €450M at reported €5B valuation
Oracle offers shared Exadata-as-a-service at dramatically lower cost than for full instances
Boomi centralizes API discovery, management and governance with new control plane
Mirantis upgrades its OpenStack distribution with performance, AI optimizations
Alluxio says it can achieve 97% GPU utilization across a distributed filesystem
We’ve got lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and related enterprise news.
Cyber beat: Funding surges (along with attacks)
Money matters
Investor confidence boosts cybersecurity funding to $3.3B in second quarter
Command Zero launches with $21M to speed up breach investigations
Tracebit lands $5M in funding to enable mass adoption of cyberthreat deception techniques
Attack and response
Closing the barn door and all that, but badly needed: Snowflake introduces mandatory multifactor authentication following recent cyberattacks
AT&T discloses data breach affecting ‘nearly all’ cellular customers
New APT group CloudSorcerer uses cloud services to target Russian government entities
Security vulnerability in NSA training tool allowed unauthorized content modifications
BlastRADIUS vulnerability exposes legacy security flaws in widely used RADIUS Protocol
Cisco Talos details latest tactics employed by prolific ransomware groups
New ‘RockYou2024’ password dump raises global cybersecurity alarms
New ‘FishXProxy’ phishing kit lowers entry bar for cyberattacks
RansomHub publishes stolen Florida Health Department data after ransom deadline passes
Justice Department seizes domains linked to Russian disinformation campaign
Plenty more SiliconANGLE news on cybersecurity here.
Elsewhere in tech
Apple will open access to its iOS payment system to end EU antitrust probe
Samsung debuts Fold 6, Flip 6 alongside new Galaxy Ring and Watch Ultra wearables
Apple reportedly preparing new Apple Watch with chip, display upgrades
Metaverse platform Infinite Reality raises $350M at $5.1B valuation and acquires Landvault
Standard Bots reels in $63M for its AI-powered robotic arms
Partior, blockchain payment network backed by JPMorgan and Standard Charter, raises $60M
Bitcoin starts to recover after Mt. Gox trustee disbursements causes price plunge
Immunefi and Ethereum Foundation partner on crowdsourced network audit to boost blockchain security
Delivery Hero shares drop ahead of potential €400M+ antitrust fine
Check out all our news on blockchain, policy and emerging tech.
Comings and goings
Qumulo appoints former Arista exec Doug Gourlay CEO, eyeing growth in data systems storage market
Microsoft, Apple give up observer seats on OpenAI’s board amid regulatory scrutiny
Former Rapid7 President and COO Andrew Burton is new CEO of commercetools. He succeeds co-founder and CEO Dirk Hoerig, who will remain on the board and become chief innovation officer.
Intuit to lay off 1,800 employees, plans to rehire in new AI and customer roles
Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years, per VentureBeat
What’s coming next
Earnings season gets underway with two key semiconductor industry reports:
July 17: ASML
July 18: TSMC
July 16-17: International Chief Data Officer and Information Quality (CDOIQ) Symposium: TheCUBE Research will be there.
July 30: Supercloud 7: Get Ready for the Next Data Platform: Our latest Supercloud editorial event will look at the foundation for the new AI era, with lots of executives, practitioners, analysts and entrepreneurs from startups to established companies. Here are some of the topics we’ll be exploring. And get up to speed with our special section ahead of the event.
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