AI
AI
AI
AI lifts Alphabet to $4T valuation, but competition remains fierce
Google parent company Alphabet hit the $4 trillion mark this week, second only to Nvidia in market capitalization, and no wonder.
It kept showing off its newfound AI prowess, as Apple will use Gemini in the background for Siri, and Google released a new personalization tool for Gemini as well as a new protocol for agentic shopping. But as CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) surely knows, the competition remains fierce, as Anthropic released Cowork, an AI companion for Claude Code, that’s getting a lot of plaudits even though it’s not widely available yet.
As for Nvidia, it reset AI factory economics again at CES. TheCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and David Floyer contends it’s actually widening the gap with all the competitors out there from startups to Google.
That isn’t stopping investors in AI chip startups such as Cerebras and Etched.ai from continuing to plow ahead with big fundings. And maybe they have a point, at least in Cerebras’ case: it got OpenAI’s blessing in the form of a $10 billion-plus contract for compute. No doubt Cerebras’ new IPO filing is coming soon.
If so, it needs to get in line. This year’s IPO derby gets underway next week with expected offerings from BitGo — just a warmup for many more much bigger ones likely to come, possibly Anthropic and OpenAI. Motive was also scheduled, but The Information reported late Friday that it’s delaying its marketing of the offering.
Meantime, AI is starting to transform retail, as John Furrier outlined in an analysis out of the National Retail Federation’s annual show in New York, which was an AI lovefest.
Microsoft this week charted a bold path to data center power independence. Given the specific promises, it’s on the hook now to deliver.
CrowdStrike struck again, buying Seraphic Security for a reported $400 million, as the consolidation trend in cybersecurity continued.
Meta keeps playing musical chairs, laying off 10% of its virtual reality staff while creating a new unit for all that AI infrastructure it’s building. For that matter, the whole AI industry looks like a revolving door, especially at Thinking Machines, the Mira Murati AI startup that’s hemorrhaging people back to OpenAI whence they came.
And finally, Intel will kick off the enterprise tech earnings season next week.
Here’s all of this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news and analysis from SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Research and beyond:
AI and data: Don’t drag your feet on AI factories
Analysis and food for thought
Nvidia resets the economics of AI factories, again
Retail 2026: When AI becomes the operating system
Gartner says worldwide AI spending will total $2.5 trillion this year. Money quote from Distinguished VP Analyst John-David Lovelock: “Because AI is in the Trough of Disillusionment throughout 2026, it will most often be sold to enterprises by their incumbent software provider rather than bought as part of a new moonshot project. The improved predictability of ROI must occur before AI can truly be scaled up by the enterprise.”
Indeed, we still need way better AI, if a Workday survey this week is any indication: Some 85% of respondents said AI saved one to seven hours a week, but more than a third of the time savings is lost to correcting errors, rewriting and verifying content, and just 14% reported consistently positive outcomes from AI.
Rich countries’ greater use of AI risks deepening inequality, Anthropic warns
Matthew McConaughey trademarks himself to fight AI misuse (per Wall Street Journal)
Online music store and community Bandcamp has banned AI-generated music from its site
New models and services
Apple will use Google’s Gemini models to power new Siri release
Google introduces Personal Intelligence personalization tool for Gemini
Google debuts Universal Commerce Protocol to streamline agentic shopping automation
Late-breaking Friday: OpenAI to start testing ChatGPT ads across free, Go tiers
Anthropic’s Cowork is a more accessible version of Claude Code
Anthropic pushes into healthcare to help patients understand their medical records
MongoDB combines database and embedding models for simplified AI development
And more reporting from MongoDB’s event in San Francisco Thursday: Data retrieval and embeddings enhancements from MongoDB set the stage for a year of specialized AI
Fetch.ai launches FetchCoder V2 to help developers ship autonomous agents
Salesforce makes revamped Slackbot generally available
Box unlocks agentic data extraction to help companies dig up insights faster
Tines launches AI interaction layer to unify agents, copilots and workflows
DianaHR deploys onboarding agent to cut HR’s paperwork gravity
JumpCloud unveils new AI capabilities to secure and manage enterprise AI adoption
Everseen adds a conversational intelligence layer to its AI theft-prevention system
Zeus Kerravala’s wrap on Jensen Huang’s keynote: Five thoughts from Nvidia’s keynote at CES
Money matters
Robot software startup Skild AI raises $1.4B round backed by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos
Nvidia, Lilly to invest up to $1B in new AI medical research lab
Database maker ClickHouse raises $400M, acquires AI observability startup Langfuse
Parloa raises $350M to make enterprise customer experience fully conversational
Onebrief raises $200M at $2.15B valuation, acquires Battle Road Digital
French fighter company Dassault invests $200M in autonomous drone startup Harmattan AI
Real-time voice AI unicorn Deepgram raises $130M to streamline human-to-machine interactions
Manufacturing automation software startup Tulip hits unicorn status with $120M raise
Higgsfield raises $80M on $1.3B valuation to scale AI video platform
Sovereign AI unicorn webAI’s value soars to $2.5B after ‘double-digit’ funding round
Cloudflare buys Human Native to strengthen licensed data access for AI developers
Phenom acquires Included to expand agentic people analytics capabilities
GovDash secures $30M to expand AI-driven government contracting software
Converge Bio raises $25M to accelerate drug discovery using generative AI solutions
VoiceRun gets $5.5M in seed funding to give enterprises more control over voice AI agents
Nvidia’s NVentures backs Harmonic AI in funding round for mathematical superintelligence
Policy
After backlash, X restricts Grok from generating sexualized images of real people
Around the enterprise: Big bucks for AI chip startups
Policy
Late-breaking Friday: Google is appealing DOJ ruling on its search antitrust case
Money matters
Microsoft details plan to prevent its data centers from straining power, water resources
AI chip unicorns Etched.ai and Cerebras Systems get big funding boost to target Nvidia
OpenAI commits to buying $10B+ worth of AI compute capacity from Cerebras Systems
TSMC tops revenue expectations amid strong demand for advanced nodes
Alpaca raises $150M to grow its brokerage account management platform
Warehouse automation startup Mytra snags $120M in funding
Wasabi’s cloud storage service gets $70M funding boost
IO River raises $20M to decouple edge infrastructure from services
New products and services
Meta Platforms creates new organization to lead its AI infrastructure buildout
HPE Networking rolls out a bevy of retail products at NRF 2026
IBM launches cloud platform tuned for digital sovereignty requirements
Owkin unveils biology-focused AI agents for clinical research and drug discovery
Acronis launches Archival Storage to give MSPs long-term, compliant data retention
Presidio rolls out Adaptive Cloud Services on AWS for cloud operations and cost management
Cyber beat: CrowdStrike hoovers up another startup
Money matters
CrowdStrike acquires browser security startup Seraphic Security for $400M
Veeam acquires Object First in move to expand data resiliency (per CRN)
Torq raises $140M at $1.2B valuation to scale AI-driven security hyperautomation
Aikido Security raises $60M round at $1B valuation to unify application security
Novee launches with $51.5M to bring continuous AI offensive security to enterprises
Depthfirst secures $40M to expand agentic approach to software security
Attack & response
Trellix warns of advanced Facebook phishing using browser-in-the-browser attacks
Instagram denies data breach after password reset emails spark leak claims
New services
Nozomi Networks launches new Vantage IQ private AI assistant for OT and IoT security teams
Upstream partners with Škoda to strengthen connected vehicle cybersecurity
Elsewhere in tech: IPO for BitGo
Custodial wallet provider BitGo files for $201M public offering
Meta prepares new round of Reality Labs layoffs as AI takes priority
Meta to stop selling Quest headsets to businesses, discontinue multiple VR features
OpenAI invests in brain-computer interface developer Merge Labs
Defense Unicorns bags $136 million in funding to deliver secure military software updates
Irish startup Equal1 receives $60M to start deploying its scalable quantum computing tech
Project Eleven raises $20M to prepare cryptoasset blockchains for the quantum era
Konnex nabs $15M to decentralize autonomous robotic labor
Quantum software startup Haiqu raises $11M to launch hardware-aware operating system
Comings and goings: AI’s revolving door
Thinking Machines co-founders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz and founding team member Sam Schoenholz are leaving the fledgling AI lab, which was co-founded by CEO and former OpenAI exec Mira Murati, and rejoining OpenAI (per Wired). OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, shared the news in a memo to staff. A source close to Thinking Machines alleged that Zoph had shared confidential company information with competitors, though he has not responded to the allegation. According to Simo’s memo, Zoph told Murati Monday he was considering leaving and was fired two days later. Simo said OpenAI doesn’t share the same concerns about Zoph as Murati. In addition, The Information reported Thursday, Lia Guy and Ian O’Connell, members of technical staff at Thinking Machines Lab, are leaving — Guy to OpenAI, O’Connell to parts unknown.
Scott Rosecrans, AWS’ now-former vice president of AI sales and strategic pursuits, joined OpenAI as (per CRN).
Onetime Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is moving from chief product officer at Anthropic to co-lead Labs, its internal incubator. Also at Anthropic, Andrea Vallone, one of OpenAI’s senior safety research leads, joined its alignment team.
Open-source data science platform provider Knime appointed a new CEO, former Piano CEO Trevor Kaufman, replacing founder Michael Berthold.
HR software firm Oyster also has a new CEO: former Coople CEO Hadi Moussa. He succeeds founder and CEO Tony Jamous, who will become executive chairman.
Meta hired former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chair.
Airbnb named Ahmad Al-Dahle, a former leader of AI at Meta, its new chief technology officer.
Cloud security firm Zscaler appointed Dr. Swamy Kocherlakota EVP of agentic AI security engineering.
Enterprise AI firm Writer named Mina Alaghband its first chief customer officer.
Security veteran RSA hired Ryan Toben as CCO.
Anti-ransomware platform Halcyon appointed Ryan Schultz CCO.
Former CISA Director Jen Easterly is new CEO of the RSAC Conference.
Presidio tapped Dell veteran Chad Dunn to lead new solutions engineering unit (per CRN).
Cyber insurance firm Cowbell appointed Simon Hughes chief commercial officer.
AI development platform OutSystems named a new chief financial officer: former AppFolio CFO and ServiceNow exec Fay Sien Goon.
What’s next
Events
Jan. 19-23: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland
IPO watch:
Wednesday, Jan. 21: BitGo
Earnings:
Tuesday, Jan. 20: Progress Software
Thursday, Jan. 22: Intel, Mobileye
Photo: Robert Hof/SiliconANGLE
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