Nvidia came through on earnings this week, with little sign of slowing growth, but investors apparently didn’t like the lower gross margin and knocked shares down more than 8% Thursday. It almost counts as a win given the sky-high expectations.

It was a mixed bag for other enterprise tech providers too, as whatever AI-driven boost they’re getting, enterprise customers are not yet spending enough to swing the needle. Snowflake, Workday and Nutanix surged, but not so much Dell, NetApp, HP, Pure Storage and Salesforce (which said its highly touted Agentforce services won’t contribute much to earnings until 2026). As theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and George Gibert have noted, a better data stack needs to arrive before agents can take off.

AI uh-oh? Microsoft scrapped some data center leases, though it seems far from a stampede away from AI infra spending just yet, especially with Apple and Alibaba doubling down. Meta, in fact, is looking at spending $200 billion on a single AI data center. Plus, the demanding new AI models keep on coming, this week alone from OpenAI, Tencent, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Anthropic and more.

Indeed, IBM is getting busier with AI, buying DataStax and debuting new Granite AI models. On the cloud front, it also just closed its $6.4 billion HashiCorp acquisition. No wonder CEO Arvind Krishna was bullish last month.

Amazon finally upped the ante on AI with Alexa+, to pretty good reviews.

Dell aims to help telecom providers finally move to the cloud and its shares got a one-day boost as a result.

DOGE looks more and more like ransomware, says security expert Bruce Schneier. Except we can’t pay it to stop. Speaking of Elon Musk, how much more obvious does corruption need to be before anyone who can do something about it … does something about it?

Quantum computing is drawing more attention from investors as the picks and shovels of Quantum Machines get a $170 million boost. And Amazon also introduced its first quantum chip, or at least the possibility of one.

Next week is MWC, where theCUBE will be onsite in Barcelona for interviews and analysis. And there will be earnings from more enterprise bellwethers such as Broadcom, Marvell Semi, HPE, MongoDB, Okta, Box and CrowdStrike.

This week’s OMG news (I thought this was a Onion article at first): Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, Katy Perry to lead Blue Origin all-women crewed mission. DEI may be dead on Earth, but I guess it’s OK in space?

Here’s all the news from this week, and you can hear more about this and more in John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube:

AI and data: IBM makes some noise, and so do rivals

Money matters

IBM buys DataStax to boost its watsonx data platform for AI applications

Microsoft scraps some data center leases as Apple, Alibaba double down on AI

Salesforce strikes multibillion-dollar deal to bring its AI agents to Google Cloud

MongoDB acquires embedding model provider Voyage AI

AI observability startup Arize AI raises $70M Series C round

Exclusive: former Snowflake execs raise $5M for agentic AI that simplifies data operations

AI-native accounting startup Quanta Financial raises $4.7M to automate bookkeeping in real time

Exclusive: ClarityQ raises $3.7M to apply AI to digital product usage analysis

WilsonAI raises $1.7M in pre-seed funding for ‘AI paralegal’

New models and services

OpenAI expands LLM lineup with new general-purpose GPT-4.5 model

IBM releases new Granite 3.2 family of models that include reasoning when you want it and some deeper analysis by Dave Vellante: IBM Granite 3.2 Ups the Ante on Open, Efficient, and Trusted Enterprise AI

Amazon debuts LLM-powered Alexa+ with expanded automation features

Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet reasoning model can think for as long as you want

Microsoft releases new Phi models optimized for multimodal processing, efficiency

Tencent releases new AI model it says is faster than DeepSeek-R1

Meta reportedly planning to launch standalone Meta AI app

ChatGPT Plus gets a huge deep research upgrade

Perplexity AI is building a web browser for ‘agentic search’

Google launches free Gemini Code Assist tier for individuals

Cisco expands partnership with Nvidia to drive enterprise AI adoption

IDC debuts AI-fueled software procurement analysis service

Alibaba makes AI video generation model free to use globally

Olas launches decentralized AI marketplace where AI agents can hire each other

Couchbase enables more nimble agentic AI development with Nvidia’s NIM

Pinecone updates its vector database for “knowledgeable AI apps”

CalypsoAI launches cybersecurity leaderboard for AI models

StudyFetch’s new conversational AI-powered tutor is a ChatGPT for students

Akool unleashes enhancements to its AI human 3D avatars connected to LLMs

Research

Strange: Researchers puzzled by AI that praises Nazis after training on insecure code

There’s even more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE

Around the enterprise: Nvidia comes through, mostly

Interesting piece by Ben Thompson of Stratechery: AI Promise and Chip Precariousness But his prescriptions ultimately seem unlikely to happen and not all of them, especially re: Intel, seem like a good idea. But like others, he calls for an end to chip export limitations.

Money matters

Endpoint management startup NinjaOne raises $500M at $5B valuation

IBM completes $6.4B HashiCorp acquisition following regulatory approvals

Intel delays $28 billion Ohio chip factory in New Albany again, to 2030 or 2031

Edera raises $15M to expand workload isolation technology and AI security

Ethos raises $6M to enhance model risk management for financial institutions

Earnings:

Nvidia’s sales leap 78% as it starts producing more next-generation Blackwell GPUs

Plus, its H20 chip orders jump as Chinese firms adopt DeepSeek’s AI models (per Reuters)

Infra roundup on Dell, HP and NetApp: Dell targets $15B in AI server sales this year, but it’s not enough for investors

Snowflake’s stock surges on earnings crush and revenue beat

Salesforce delivers strong AI growth but disappoints on fiscal 2026 forecast

Workday’s stock pops as it reports strong earnings beat and targets federal customer wins

VMware defections propel Nutanix to another strong earnings and revenue beat

Pure Storage tops earnings expectations but guidance tanks shares

C3 AI reports strong revenue growth but forecast disappoints investors

Couchbase shares rise despite mixed quarterly results and lower outlook

Elastic delights investors with earnings and revenue beats

Digital Ocean stock jumps 10% on earnings beat

Zoom reports earnings beat but first-quarter guidance disappoints investors

Autodesk announces 1,350 job cuts following strong quarterly earnings

Backblaze CFO says restructuring should lift its stock out of the doldrums

Synopsys shares gain on stronger-than-expected earnings forecast

Expensify shares rise 15% after stock buyback announcement and improved Q4 earnings

AvePoint shares tumble as Q4 earnings miss overshadows revenue beat

Duolingo shares dip despite Q4 revenue beat, strong guidance

New products and services

Dell rolls out cloud transformation services for telecom providers

Arm to support more intelligent applications at the edge with Armv9 Edge AI Platform

Adobe unveils Photoshop iPhone app with numerous free features

Red Hat broadens virtualization options in latest OpenShift release

StorOne upgrades its storage platform with new data tiering, recovery features

We have plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: DOGEware

Attacks

Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier’s summary of recent actions points out how much DOGE and other Trump directives are using ransomware criminal’s playbook: Trump 2.0 Brings Cuts to Cyber, Consumer Protections “We’re in four-alarm fire territory.”

Um, what? Report: Defense Secretary Hegseth orders Cyber Command to halt Russia planning Security expert Brian Krebs is not impressed.

$1.5B in cryptocurrency stolen from Bybit in attack linked to North Korean hackers

CrowdStrike report finds surge in malware-free cyberattacks and AI-driven threats in 2024

Money matters

Microsoft invests undisclosed amount in data protection firm Veeam

Mimic raises $50M to advance enterprise ransomware defense

RAD Security raises $14M to expand AI-driven cloud security platform

New services

Zscaler launches Asset Exposure Management for enhanced cyber asset tracking

Rapid7 expands Exposure Management service with improved attack surface visibility and context

Snyk launches Secure Developer Program to strengthen open-source security

New NTT DATA and Palo Alto Networks offering enhances private 5G security for industry

Fortanix expands data encryption platform to address AI and quantum computing threats

F5 expands application security with new platform and AI-powered automation tools

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Quantum chips, picks and shovels

Amazon debuts its first quantum chip ‘Ocelot’ prototype with novel architecture

Quantum hardware startup Quantum Machines raises $170M in funding

AI will assess controversial email sent by Elon Musk asking government workers to justify their jobs

Mass resignations at DOGE after staff refuse to be part of cutting public services So we don’t know who officially runs a “department” that’s running roughshod over the whole federal government? Crazy.

Meta issues apology after Instagram started flooding people’s feed with obscene content

SEC says most meme coins are not securities So, like, don’t buy those dogs. Caveat emptor.

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

Comings and goings

Microsoft to discontinue Skype after more than 20 years

Google Cloud security exec Sunil Potti to depart (per CRN)

Google announces layoffs in its HR, cloud units as part of ongoing cost cuts (per CNBC)

Elastic hires former Grammarly and HashiCorp exec Navam Welihinda as its new chief financial officer.

Progress Software appoints Ed Keisling chief AI officer

OpenText appoints Chadwick Westlake CFO, succeeding Madhu Ranganathan.

On May 5, Microsoft’s Skype will shut down for good (per Ars Technica).

What’s next

March 3-6: MWC25: TheCUBE will be onsite in Barcelona and SiliconANGLE will have the coverage of what used to be called Mobile World Congress.

Earnings: 

Monday, March 3: Okta, GitLab

Tuesday, March 4: Box, CrowdStrike

Wednesday, March 5: Marvell, MongoDB

Thursday, March 6: HPE, Broadcom, HashiCorp, Samsara, Domo

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram