It was an exciting change of scenery on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast, as theCUBE Research’s Executive Analyst John Furrier was on location at the New York Stock Exchange with theCUBE East. The Super Studio on the East Coast and news on Meta Llama spending momentum were some of the main focuses for Furrier and theCUBE Research Chief Analyst Dave Vellante.

“We are opening up our access point to theCUBE network, expanding our subnet here in New York, of which we have a huge fanbase from our big data days in Hadoop, which we had activated such a great audience here,” said Furrier (pictured, right). “The tech scene is exploding, and the merging of the capital markets with NYSE’s network that Brian Baumann [director of capital markets at NYSE] has been putting together.”

The digital wired community combined with theCUBE is bringing networks together in an informal way, according to Furrier. There’s been an exceptional explosion of value creation at play “through meeting people and content creation,” Furrier explained.

“As the world spins, generative AI, the open source idea of content really having that platform leverage, allows our services from a content standpoint to be more acute, better service to our sponsorships,” he said.

Meta Llama spending momentum news

A notable development tracked in this week’s Breaking Analysis involves a premise in the power law, among others. The torso, instead of being a hard right angle, was going to get pulled up and to the right with open-source and third-party models, according to Vellante (left).

“For the first time ever … Meta Llama has overtaken Microsoft and OpenAI for the number one spot in terms of spending momentum in the ETR data. I got permission to release this. It’s preliminary data, but I got permission to drip it out prior to the survey closing,” Vellante said of the Meta Llama spending momentum. “That is huge. I mean, even if they’re on par, this just underscores your point that you’ve made many times.”

The Meta Llama spending momentum illustrates that open source, ultimately, is a force that is unstoppable. And it actually represents adoption, according to Vellante.

“It’s really adoption, because you’re spending your time. Llama is open source, so it’s free, but there’s a lot of effort in terms of staffing and skills and other infrastructure that goes into that,” Vellante said. “That is spending, but the [Meta Llama spending momentum] is now number one. That is huge news, in my view, and exactly what we said was going to happen with the power law. Anthropic is right there, too, as one of those third parties pulling up that torso.”

The latest OpenAI drama and what’s next

There was drama swirling around OpenAI LP this week, as CTO Mira Murati announced she would leave the company. It’s the latest in a long line of executive departures at the company.

“On the one hand, let’s face it. They started this whole thing off. But it’s a lesson in how not to launch a company as a non-profit and then try to go to a for-profit. It is just not a great formula,” Vellante said. “The flip side is doable, if you have a for-profit company, and you can invest in a non-profit arm. That’s imminently viable, but there’s a brain drain there.”

General artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC, meanwhile, is reportedly looking to raise new funding on a valuation of up to $40 billion. The fact of the matter is the little guys are starting to swarm up in the startup community, according to Furrier.

“We always said we worried about the big whales, the rich getting richer, but you’re starting to see about $20 million to $40 million Series As around agents, enterprise agents. Nurix AI just raised $27.5 million,” Furrier said. “DeepOpinion raised 11 million euros to assist in enterprise business for AI agents. Again, the software is not the business model. The business model is business model, not the tool.”

Companies can’t just adopt a tech stack and have no process, according to Furrier. They must have the culture, process, tech stack and the IT.

“The user experience, user interface, user delight has to be addressed with the process for the new technology in the back end,” Furrier said. “It’s the first time in my career I’ve ever seen this happen, on both those theaters of innovation. It’s either been one or the other, front end or back end.”

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

Brian J. Baumann, director of capital markets at NYSE
Jon Fortt, journalist
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle
Arvind Jain, CEO at Glean Technologies
Sam Seely, co-founder and CEO at Knock Labs
Noam Schwartz, co-founder and CEO at ActiveFence
Jonathan Del Valle, head of investor relations at BOXABL
Kirk McKeown, co-founder of Carbon Arc
Don Muir, co-founder and CEO of Arc Technologies
Dave Donatelli, CEO of Riverbed Technology
Sarbjeet Johal, founder and CEO of Stackpane
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI
George Gilbert, principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Mike Wheatley, senior writer at SiliconANGLE Media
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms
Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of Credo AI
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel
Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst of theCUBE Research

Here’s the full theCUBE Pod episode:

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Photo: SiliconANGLE