Generative artificial intelligence is driving a resurgence in cloud spending, as earnings results from Amazon Web Services and Google this week both saw upside from forecasts.

Even Microsoft’s disappointing Azure revenue forecasts came from not having enough infrastructure to support more business, a factor Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also mentioned — and excessive demand isn’t a bad problem to have, as problems go. But at the same time, there’s a big price: Spending to keep up with AI demand continues to be expensive, as Meta’s results also showed this week.

Meanwhile, money keeps pouring into AI companies such as Elon Musk’s xAI and Bret Taylor’s AI agent startup Sierra Technologies as well as more industry- and task-specific startups.

And new AI models and services keep getting churned out from OpenAI, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Salesforce and everyone else you can think of, with no slowdown in sight. The big one this week: OpenAI’s much-anticipated ChatGPT search. I’m sure it will be interesting, but don’t be ridiculous, it’s not going to put Google out of business anytime soon.

Intel got a rare boost by reporting a more positive quarter and outlook than expected and its stock rose 10%, though it remains in a deep hole. But AMD’s outlook sent investors to the exits.

Supermicro’s financial situation looks so bad to its auditors that they exited stage left, tanking the server provider’s stock to the tune of 33%. Its earnings report next week should be … interesting.

Indeed, next week is another big week for earnings reports, especially from chip companies such as Arm, Qualcomm, NXP Semiconductor and GlobalFoundries, as well as bellwethers such as Cloudflare and Datadog and a raft of software-as-a-service companies.

TheCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss this and other news in more detail on this week’s theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, arriving this weekend, for some lean-back reading.

Here’s what happened this week around the enterprise:

AI and data: ChatGPT search arrives

Opening thoughts from two conferences this week

On big data:

At TechCrunch Disrupt, there was a illuminating session called Beyond Snowflake and Databricks: Insights from the Frontlines of Data Transformation that indicated the big-data wars will continue for a while longer.

One reality, noted Jordan Tigani, co-founder and CEO of MotherDuck, which makes a cloud analytics database, is that “AI people and database people tend not to like each other very much. We’re going to need new tools to power AI/ML engineers.”

And the open data formats that Snowflake and Databricks are ostensibly touting? “Things are moving more slowly toward these open data formats than people expect,” he said. “Catalogs are a mess right now. Snowflake and Databricks are slow-walking the building of the open-source versions.”

As a result, he said, “the community needs to be stronger” in getting providers to become more open. “The reason people are moving to Iceberg is to remove lock-in or just lower cost,” he said, but both of those reasons are “lower priorities than other things,” like just getting the jobs at hand done.

In fact, contended Colin Zima, co-founder and CEO of the business intelligence platform Omni, Snowflake and Databricks “will actually diverge further over time. Databricks is underinvested in all the analytics problems and Snowflake will struggle to become an AI company. It’s very hard to overhaul your DNA.”

On what’s coming next in AI:

At Constellation Research’s CCE 2024 conference, the firm’s analysts weighed in on the next impacts of AI.

VP and Principal Analyst Doug Henschen noted that only 21% of enterprises they surveyed are meeting their goals for generative AI. The problem, he said, is a lack of data, in particular clean data. “Data access and cleansing will be key in 2025.”

Constellation Insights Editor in Chief Larry Dignan says generative and agentic AI are starting to transform the enterprise software business model. “In the next year or so, the whole way you buy software is going to change,” he said.

Andy Thurai sees a lot of companies cutting corners on making sure AI is under control. “AI will produce AI to monitor itself. There’s no going back if that happens,” he said. “Lawyers are going to have a field day.”

Liz Miller noted that “the lesson we’ve learned over the last several years of generative AI is when you automate bad processes, you still have bad processes.” She thinks “knowledge” will be the next frontier in 2025, not just big data. “Right now we’re drowning in data but dying of thirst,” she said.

Constellation founder Ray Wang said the key question coming is at what points in AI-driven processes that humans get inserted.

They all did a lightning poll on AI budgets next year and, surprisingly, most said AI budgets will be flat or worse. Did someone say trough of disillusionment?

But others such as Barney Pell, venture partner at Radical Ventures, are more optimistic. “This time it’s real in a way it hasn’t been,” he said about AI. But he sees the proper focus not on artificial general intelligence but humans plus AI — and also neural networks plus symbolic systems, not just gen AI. The biggest issue? trust. “Most enterprise projects fail because no one trusts them,” he said.

One promising avenue I touched on a bit in last week’s This Week in Enterprise came up again in a somewhat different way: the need for AI systems to be trained on more than just language. Denise Hold, founder and CEO of AIX Global Media, a sort of AI startup promoter, said spatial web technologies that are programmable, based on sensory information, are being developed to create a “grounding level of reality.”

AI adviser Cassie Kozyrkov had the quote of the week, on the difference between machine learning and AI: “If it’s written in Python, it’s probably machine learning. If it’s in a PowerPoint, it’s AI.”

Money matters

Breaking Analysis: Generative AI adoption sets the table for AI ROI

Elon Musk’s xAI reportedly in talks to raise new funding on $40B valuation

Generative AI agent startup Sierra Technologies raises $175M at $4.5B valuation

Read AI lands $50M in new funding as it strives to become everyone’s AI copilot

AI contact center provider Regal closes $40M round to scale personalized customer interactions

Zenity raises $38M to secure enterprise AI copilots and low-code app development

Brightwave raises $15M to accelerate financial research with AI

Diffblue raises $6.3M for autonomous AI-powered test generation platform

Policy

Report: Chinese researchers used Llama 13B to build chatbot optimized for military use

OSI clarifies what makes AI systems open-source, but most ‘open’ models fall short

White House limits AI and chip investments to China over national security concerns

Nvidia needs EU approval to buy AI startup Run:ai, regulators say

New models and services

OpenAI adds LLM-powered search engine to ChatGPT

Apple releases first batch of Apple Intelligence features, debuts new iMac

Alexa AI upgrade delayed to 2025 as Amazon hits major roadblocks

GitHub Copilot goes multimodel, adding support for Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude LLMs

Salesforce launches Agentforce AI agent platform into general availability

Nvidia hands out blueprints for the creation of scalable ‘AI factories’

Google reportedly developing new AI that can automate web browsing tasks in Chrome

Google brings grounding with search to Gemini in AI Studio and API

Gemini in Android Studio rolls out more AI-powered development features

Meta reportedly developing custom search engine for its Meta AI chatbot

Amazon Q introduces AI-powered inline chat directly in the code editor for developers

Dremio throws its support to Polaris data catalog and expands deployment options for Iceberg lakehouse

Pegasystems moves the needle on generative AI development with Pega Infinity updates

Creatio combines multiple AI types in new release of its no-code platform

Moveworks taps agentic AI to aid in enterprise search

Patronus AI debuts API for equipping AI workloads with reliability guardrails

TigerEye’s new AI Analyst offers enhanced decision-making in sales and revenue operations

Securiti launches Genstack AI to enhance secure enterprise generative AI adoption

Tabnine unveils AI developer ‘coach’ with personalized code review agent

There’s more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE

Around the enterprise: AI drives revenue upside, cost downside

Earnings

Alphabet’s stock jumps as cloud fuels strong revenue growth Also: Russia hits Google with astronomical fine over YouTube bans That’s a lotta rubles.

Microsoft’s AI bet pays off as Azure revenue grows, but stock falls on infrastructure supplier delays

Cloud growth helps Amazon to another earnings beat, and its stock jumps

Meta’s stock heads south on slow user growth and ongoing infrastructure investments

Intel surprises Wall Street with solid earnings and revenue, but success in AI remains elusive

Apple beats Wall Street’s targets as iPhone 16 sales get off to a solid start

AMD’s guidance leaves investors wanting more, and its stock tumbles

Sluggish chip sales curtail Samsung’s profits, worrying investors

Uber stock tumbles despite earnings beat

Extreme Networks shares soar on lower-than-expected sales decline

Informatica lags Q3 earnings forecasts

Data streaming leader Confluent posts strong earnings, boosts year-end forecast

Cyber split: Check Point shares down, Commvault up on quarterly earnings

Tenable tops Q3 expectations but quarterly guidance underwhelms

SolarWinds Q3 earnings and revenue surpass estimates

F5 shares rise over 10% following earnings beat in latest quarter

Atlassian shares surge as subscription revenue drives strong earnings beat

Twilio shares surge over 10% on strong earnings and raised forecast

Juniper profit rises 22% on 5% revenue decline ahead of HPE acquisition

OpenText surpasses Q1 earnings estimates

Coinbase and Robinhood miss earnings estimates and shares drop

PayPal shares fall on revenue miss, soft guidance

Snap shares jump 10% on profit beat, stock buyback

In other news

Supermicro shares plummet 31% after auditor resigns

Wall Street giants to make $50B bet on AI and power projects (per WSJ)

OpenAI reportedly working with Broadcom and TSMC to develop custom AI inference chip

Siemens to buy Altair in $10.6B equity deal (per WSJ)

Israeli fintech company Melio hits $2B valuation with $150M raised for B2B payment expansion

Dropbox to let go 20% of its workforce amid growth push

GPU cloud operator GMI Cloud secures $82M investment

Google Cloud turbocharges its AI Hypercomputer stack with next-gen TPUs and bigger GPU clusters

Cisco debuts new Nvidia-powered data center systems for AI workloads

Microsoft says Google is running ‘shadow campaigns’ in Europe to influence regulators

We have more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: Armis bulks up

Money matters

Cybersecurity startup Armis closes $200M round at $4.2B valuation

Filigran raises $35M to help companies simulate and respond to cyberattacks

Israeli AI security startup Noma launches with $32M to secure the ‘data and AI lifecycle’

Attack & response

Zimperium warns of sophisticated ‘vishing’ tactics in new FakeCall malware variant

Phish ’n’ Ships: Human Security warns of fake shops exploiting payment platforms and SEO

New services

New Akamai Account Protector features target advanced fraud detection across user accounts

NTT DATA expands partnership with Palo Alto Networks to launch AI-powered cybersecurity service

Extreme Networks expands Universal ZTNA with enhance shadow IT and policy management tools

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Blockchain companies eye AI

Data privacy-focused Nillion network raises $25M to expand decentralized solutions

Blockchain firm Axal nabs $2.5M to build verifiable autonomous agent network

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

Comings and goings

Matt Wood, Amazon’s high-profile former vice president of artificial intelligence, is now PricewaterhouseCoopers’ first commercial technology and innovation officer.

Tuan Tran is stepping away as president of HP’s printing and imaging business to lead a cross-company AI strategy. Taking over the printing business is 30-year HP veteran Anneliese Olson.

Ex-Lacework CEO and Facebook VP of Engineering Jay Parikh will join Microsoft in an unspecified senior exec role (per CRN)

Data security firm Cohesity appointed former Rubrik VP of Products Vasu Murthy SVP and chief product officer.

Longtime Dell Technologies exec Jim Kelly, GM of Dell’s federal business, Jim Kelly, left to lead Google’s public sector business (per CRN).

F5 has a new chief financial officer, Edward Werner, replacing retiring CFO Frank Pelzer. 

Arjun Sethi joined as co-CEO of Kraken alongside David Ripley as the crypto exchange announced an unspecified number of layoffs. Decrypt also reported that Ethereum software giant Consensys Tuesday announced it had laid off 20% of its global workforce, or 163 employees. Later the same day, decentralized exchange dYdX said it cut 35% of its staff. All this comes as the price of bitcoin keeps soaring.

What’s next

Earnings: another huge week, especially for chip and SaaS companies:

Nov. 4: Digital Ocean, Palantir and NXP

Nov. 5: GlobalFoundries and Supermicro

Nov. 6: Kyndryl, Arm, Qualcomm, IonQ, Freshworks, Fastly, Duolingo and Lyft

Nov. 7: Datadog, Dynatrace, Appian, Cloudflare, Arista, JFrog, Rapid7, Fortinet, Dropbox, Five9, Block, RingCentral, Amplitude, Rivian, Expensify and Synaptics

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