Regulators are circling ever closer to big tech companies — the latest being Google, which the Federal Trade Commission more than hinted this week should be broken up.

It’s not at all certain that will happen, since it’s up to the judge in the Google v. Epic Games case, but it’s clear that Big Tech is headed for a reckoning at some point.

On the other hand, Big Tech also remains a force to be reckoned with itself. That California artificial intelligence bill, SB 1047, which would put in place a lot of oversight over how AI models are developed to avoid disasters such as huge AI-driven cyberattacks or creation of a weapon of mass destruction, now looks to be somewhat less onerous as it passed a key committee Thursday, thanks to input from Anthropic and others. But a lot of Silicon Valley folks still think it could stunt innovation.

AI keeps fueling chip demand, as Foxconn’s and Applied Materials’ earnings showed this week. But Intel can’t seem to find the party and investors remain restless, not to mention litigious. But AI-powered services and new models keep on coming, so the boom may keep going for awhile despite worries about overfunding and repeated stumbles on implementation and legal issues and innumerable other risks.

Google keeps plugging away at the phone business with new Pixels, though — no surprise — they seem to be as much a vehicle for its many new AI products. Meantime, former CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt blamed Google’s slow-moving AI results on remote work, then says he misspoke, though it’s rather clear what he meant. The question is whether his view is a little out of date — it does seem like the company’s making quicker progress in AI lately.

Back in the mainstream enterprise, things are still up and down. As expected, Cisco laid off thousands, as despite positive earnings, its transformation into a software company plods along. For its part, Hewlett Packard Enterprise remains acquisitive, buying Morpheus Data to boost its hybrid cloud ambitions.

Politically backed cyberattacks are accelerating ahead of the U.S. elections. It’s not going to get better the closer we come to November.

Is it even worth mentioning Elon Musk’s glitch-plagued conversation with Donald Trump? No — you’ve heard it all before.

Instead, let’s celebrate the life of Susan Wojcicki, seminal in Google’s founding and later CEO of YouTube as it transformed into a media powerhouse, as well as one of the steadiest and nicest people in tech, which shouldn’t be notable but it is.

Next week, look for earnings reports from Palo Alto Networks, Snowflake, Zoom, Synopsys and Workday.

SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss this and other news in more detail on this week’s theCUBE Pod, out now on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, this weekend.

Here’s the big news of the week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:

AI and data: Big bucks, big challenges

Food for thought: Eric Schmidt says Google’s trailing in AI because of remote work, then recants, but it’s clear what he thinks. He might have a point, but whatever issues Google has in AI surely transcends where people are working.

Maybe it won’t be as bad as the Valley has been saying (maybe): California advances AI regulation bill amid Silicon Valley concerns

Judge rules artists’ copyright claims against AI companies can proceed

Money matters

New report finds companies in US and UK plan to boost spending on AI

Speaking of big spending on data and AI: Bloomberg reported that Databricks paid almost $2 billion in June to acquire Tabular, which was reportedly making only $1 million in annual recurring revenue.

Universal Music Group, Meta expand license agreement covering AI, music revenue and more

Caresyntax raises $180M for its surgical data management platform

Housing and healthcare AI startup EliseAI raises $75M and hits unicorn status

Decentralized AI network Sahara raises $43M to tackle copyright and transparency in training data

FactoryOps startup Guidewheel gets $31M to make machines smarter with plug-and-play sensors

AI data development platform startup Encord raises $30M

AI code review startup CodeRabbit raises $16M to help developers debug code faster

Goodfire AI raises $7M to demystify AI systems using mechanistic interpretability techniques

Ragie launches with $5.5M in funding to ease RAG application development

Cosine raises $2.5M for its ‘uncannily human’ AI coding assistant Genie

New models and services

Elon Musk’s xAI debuts new Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini language models But it didn’t go very well: X slammed for lack of guardrails on Grok image generation

Hermes 3, a super-creative version of open-source Llama 3.1 AI model, even struggles with inner conflict

Anthropic speeds up its AI model access times with prompt caching

Snowflake launches AI-powered Cortex Analyst query generator into public preview

Google rolls out AI Overviews to more countries amid publisher scrutiny

GitHub rolls out AI-powered Autofix Copilot to catch and fix vulnerabilities in code

Linux Foundation’s latest initiative aims to promote ‘irrevocable’ open-source AI models

Sakana AI creates an ‘AI Scientist’ to automate scientific research and discovery

Pindrop says it can detect deepfake audio with 99% accuracy

Primate Labs launches Geekbench AI tool to test real-world device AI performance

Toolkit from Tavus lets developers create video ‘digital twins’ that converse just like humans

In case you weren’t sure what AI stuff to worry about, here are hundreds of things to keep you up at night: What are the risks from artificial intelligence? A comprehensive living database of over 700 AI risks categorized by their cause and risk domain

Analysis from Intellyx’s Jason Bloomberg on AI’s impact on the automation of work: Knowledge work automation in a post-RPA world

And analysis from Zeus Kerravala on Nvidia: NVLink and NVSwitch are Nvidia’s secret weapon in the AI wars

We’ve been adding more interviews and stories from our recent editorial event and special report Supercloud 7: Get Ready for the Next Data Platform. If you want to get up to speed on the latest in data platforms and their central role in the new era of AI — and who doesn’t? — from the key leaders at Databricks, Snowflake, Google and hot startups, as well as thought leaders and practitioners, sign up and watch the free online event on demand.

There’s more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE

Around the enterprise: More layoffs at Cisco

Cisco reveals plan to cut thousands of jobs as it beats earnings forecast And analysis by Zeus Kerravala: Five takeaways from Cisco’s fourth quarter

HPE to acquire Morpheus Data to round out hybrid cloud orchestration capabilities

Foundry Technologies launches resellable GPU instances for more cost-effective AI

This doesn’t seem to reflect well on Intel’s ability to be a major foundry player: Report: SoftBank held talks with Intel about developing an AI chip

RISC-V chip startup Akeana launches with $100M+ in funding

UK antitrust watchdog launches inquiry into Synopsys’ $35B Ansys acquisition

Cockroach Labs changes its self-hosting license to a single enterprise model

Autonomous factory firm Hadrian buys Datum Source to cater to defense industry startups

Foxconn posts higher profit, record revenue on AI server demand (per the Wall Street Journal)

Applied Materials delivers record third-quarter sales as AI fuels chip demand

Texas Instruments wins $4.6B in CHIPS Act financing for three new fabs

An underappreciated challenge for the AI economy: Chipmakers face a labor crisis (per the Financial Times) McKinsey has some solutions: Reimagining labor to close the expanding US semiconductor talent gap

Meantime, Intel’s foundry business increasingly looks like an albatross, commendable as CEO Pat Gelsinger’s attempt to revive domestic chipmaking may be: Intel’s legal troubles mount after plunging stock sparks yet another court battle (per the Register)

There’s plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: Political cyberattacks accelerate

Money matters

Kiteworks raises $456M to secure file transfers in the enterprise

Mimecast acquires Aware to enhance security and compliance in workplace collaboration tools

Attack & response

Trump campaign says it was hacked as Microsoft details Iranian targeting

Russian state-sponsored phishing campaign targets Western NGOs and diplomats

Iranian backed group steps up phishing campaigns against Israel and US, according to Google

2.7B records stolen from National Public Data released for free on hacking site

New report identifies critical vulnerabilities found in open-source tools used in AI

NIST releases new standards for post-quantum cryptography

Google to remove potentially risky app from Pixel devices following security report

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Lina Khan keeps gunning for Google

FTC enters Google v. Epic Games case and hints that Google should be broken up Hmm… But the Justice Department is also suing Apple for exploiting its iPhone dominance to make it harder for consumers to switch — presumably to Android. So would a Googleless Android improve that competitive situation? Seems unlikely. But a breakup still seems somewhat unlikely, and it’s likely to be appealed anyway.

Elon Musk’s X conversation with Donald Trump marred by technical failures

EU Commissioner just warned Elon Musk over dangerous content and it backfired badly

FTC cracks down on fake reviews and influencer misconduct with new rule

EU issues request for information to Meta in connection with DSA probe

Google announces new lineup of AI-powered Pixel 9 phones, Pixel Watch 3 and more

Apple reportedly moving forward with iPad-like home device with robotic arm

As much as we worry about tech’s runaway impacts, sometimes it’s simply miraculous: ALS sufferer ‘speaks’ for first time in years with groundbreaking brain implant And, why yes, there’s an AI angle.

Waymo to start testing fully autonomous vehicles on San Francisco freeways

Federal appeals court rules that geofence warrants are unconstitutional

Quantum Circuits raises $60M to build scalable error-correcting quantum platform

Lockheed Martin to acquire struggling satellite maker Terran Orbital in $450M deal

And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy

Comings and goings, and a passing

Tech industry mourns the passing of former Googler and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki at age 56

Cisco Systems puts Jeetu Patel, executive vice president of its security and collaboration business units, in charge of networking as well, as former networking head Jonathan Davidson becomes an adviser to CEO Chuck Robbins. Once Splunk is fully integrated, its product line also will become part of the unified product team.

Identity security firm SailPoint Technologies announced the appointment of Gary Nafus, formerly with Microsoft, to be chief sales officer role and the promotion of Matt Mills to president.

Exposure management firm Tenable names cloud security expert Shai Morag chief product officer. He had joined Tenable in 2023 through the acquisition of Ermetic, a cloud-native application protection platform startup, where he was co-founder and CEO.

Conversational AI and automation firm Uniphore appoints Ravi Mayuram chief technology officer.

What’s next

Earnings

Monday, Aug. 19: Palo Alto Networks

Wednesday, Aug. 21: Snowflake, Zoom, Synopsys and Zuora

Thursday, Aug. 22: Workday

Events

Aug. 26-28: VMware Explore, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE and theCUBE will be onsite with all the news, plus interviews and analysis.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram