It’s set to be a strong fall window for theCUBE, with big events such as KubeCon and CloudNativeCon coming up in Salt Lake City, as well as SC24 in Atlanta.

The fall event window, as well as what looks like it could be an artificial intelligence election, were big subjects for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) to dive into on the latest episode of theCUBE Podcast.

This week also brought some notable earnings into focus. In this era, where significant investments of billions of dollars matter, the proof has to be in the pudding, according to Furrier.

“That’s revenue. When you look at the earnings … Microsoft, Meta, AWS, Apple, they’re all going to have questions. What’s the business model?” Furrier asked. “AI is changing multiple things at the same time.”

Shifting to real-time, connected ecosystems

In the current era, there’s a top-down management philosophy of the business model and bottoms-up adoption of the tools and technology platforms that are being restructured in real time, according to Furrier. That’s a notable power dynamic.

“It potentially could be a good power dynamic or a negative power dynamic, depending on how you look at it,” he said. “But at the end of the day, the cash flow has to support, one, that CapEx build-out. And two, the additional services revenue and subscription revenue that comes from it.”

That’s complicated by the fact that companies are starting to move from classic software-as-a-service ecosystems on cloud to connected ecosystems. The last generation saw either annual license or platform fees for subscriptions, according to Furrier.

“Now, usage becomes big. So, you’re starting to see the formation of these GPU clouds. You’re starting to see, beyond the API, where you have gen AI engineered into each other’s platforms,” Furrier said. “Whether you’re a hyperscaler like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, the best clouds are engineering solutions for integrating into their ecosystem partners.”

That’s because they have to exchange data, not just push data to another API, Furrier added. They have to have state and data exchange in real time.

“That’s why the CapEx build-out is so high, because we require new technologies to do that. That’s why Nvidia’s kicking ass, because they have it,” Furrier said. “You have this connected ecosystem, and that’s going to change the applications big time, because that’s going to make them have to be smarter and more intelligent. That’s where the game is.”

A look ahead to SC24 and more

TheCUBE will be at SC24 in Atlanta from 11-19 to 11-21. The event will turn into an AI show, which is a tell-tale sign, according to Furrier.

“If you look at the shows coming up, what I’m looking really hard at is SuperComputing, re:Invent, CES and then how these other shows build their apps on top of the infrastructure game,” he said. “I think, right now, as we’ve been saying, the infrastructure game is hot, mainly because that’s where the fixes need to go.”

KubeCon and CloudNativeCon is also just a couple of weeks away. All told, players are just continuing to invest money, because whoever can swim the fastest out to the boat owns it, according to Furrier.

“Amazon is clearly saying, ‘We will not stand still in this AI game.’ Ruba Borno has reorganized the startup group. They’re going to get behind startups,” he said. “I’ve got an exclusive coming up with Matt Garman, the CEO of AWS. I’m going to fly out to Seattle for a one-on-one for our re:Invent preview, our annual trek out to Seattle. Hopefully, get to see Andy Jassy as well.”

The AI election?

Technology has become increasingly important in election campaigns, and 2024 has been no exception, with what could one day be viewed as an AI election. Looking back, 2012 was really the first time the United States saw effective use in social media, according to Vellante.

“We used to interview guys from the Obama campaign on theCUBE, and they talked about how they used data and social, and so that was kind of the big data era and social era,” Vellante said. “Then 2016, it was like the big talk with weaponization, and 2020 was all about fake news.”

What story is eventually written about the 2024 election remains to be seen. But it’s possible that it may start being described as an AI election, Vellante added.

“Is one side going to be more effectively using AI, or is the state of AI today just too nascent, like dial-up, where it’s not as effective, or maybe it’s hallucinating, giving them the wrong data?” he asked. “It’d be interesting to see the postmortem on what role AI plays.”

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

Trinity Chavez, lead anchor at NYSE
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel
Jeff Bezos, chairman at Amazon
Kamala Harris, 49th United States vice president
Donald Trump, 45th U.S. president
Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Joe Rogan, American podcaster
JD Vance, U.S. senator
John Markoff, science and technology journalist
Pat McAfee, American sports analyst
Charles Fitzgerald, consultative strategist and investor
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
David Floyer, analyst emeritus at theCUBE Research
Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS
Babe Ruth, legendary professional baseball player
Mookie Betts, American baseball outfielder
Dave Roberts, Japanese-American baseball manager
Erik Brynjolfsson, American academic
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI
Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI
Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Ray Kurzweil, American computer scientist and author
George Gilbert, senior analyst at theCUBE Research
Nicholas G. Carr, American journalist and writer
Andy Kessler, American investor and author
Hillary Clinton, former United States Secretary of State

Here’s the full theCUBE Pod episode:

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Photo: SiliconANGLE