AI
AI
AI
SpaceX’s stratospheric IPO hopes, OpenAI’s ridiculous round and the agentic AI gap
Can Elon Musk pull off the mother of all IPOs?
This week his SpaceX reportedly filed confidentially for a $75 billion initial public offering that could value it at $1.75T. It would be the largest IPO ever, and investors seem to be lining up. Given the state of the world and the economy, there’s a lot hopium getting smoked, so we’ll see if Musk can make it happen.
Meantime, OpenAI closed its own ridiculously huge pre-IPO round, a record-breaking $122 billion that brings its valuation to $852 billion. Oddly, it’s spending some small part of that on a podcasting company; so much for that focusing it’s supposedly doing. One way or another, we’ll know this year if this the peak of artificial intelligence expectations or the beginning of a new era of AI-driven prosperity.
OpenAI’s path into the enterprise, led by Microsoft, may be paying fewer dividends for Microsoft than it and its investors might have hoped, but it’s clearly trying to forge its own path in addition, this week launching three new high-speed voice and image models. But it’s not alone, of course, as Google and Alibaba launched new models as well.
And despite its travails lately, including an embarrassing leak of its Claude Code source code, Anthropic is still chugging ahead, reportedly buying a startup called Coefficient Bio for $400 million-plus.
Salesforce didn’t get all that much attention this week from its announcement that it’s transforming its personal agent teammate Slackbot into the ultimate work assistant, with 30 new AI features. It’s perhaps a limited start, but it may hold a lot of appeal given how central Slack is to many teams and companies.
For all of that, it’s best to mind the agentic AI gap, say Dave Vellante and David Floyer in their latest Breaking Analysis: While AI vendors sprint, enterprises are just crawling with AI agents. As they write, “Closing the agentic gap requires new technology, business and operational models that can be executed securely and safely.”
Does Lip-Bu Tan know something the rest of us don’t about Intel’s prospects? Two years after selling a stake in its Irish chip manufacturing facility, Intel announced plans to buy back the shares for $14.2 billion, a move seen as a sign of optimism. Still remains to be seen.
On the event front, things keep heating up, as they will well into the summer. Next week it’s the HumanX AI conference in San Francisco and Nutanix.NEXT in Chicago.
Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news, analysis and AI craziness this past week from SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Research and beyond:
AI and data: The agentic gap
Analysis, opinion and food for thought
Breaking Analysis: The agentic AI gap: Vendors sprint, enterprises crawl
Microsoft closes worst quarter for stock since 2008 on AI concerns: ‘Redmond is in a pickle’
Nations priced out of Big AI are building with frugal models (per Rest of World)
PitchBook: US venture funding surges to record $267B as OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI dominate AI deals
Scaling industrial AI is more a human than a technical challenge
You can’t FinOps your way out of AI cloud costs
Money matters
OpenAI closes record-breaking $122B funding round that brings its valuation to $852B
OpenAI acquires tech industry podcast company TBPN Wut? As Kara Swisher wrote: “But if you want to buy a mirror to admire yourself without feedback, you emperors without clothes, knock yourself out.”
Anthropic buys stealth Dimension-backed Coefficient Bio in $400M+ stock deal (per Eric Newcomer)
LLM developer Mistral AI raises $830M in debt financing to add data center capacity
Coder secures $90M investment to optimize development environments
AI-generated code verification startup Qodo raises $70M
Cognichip raises $60M to reinvent chip design with physics-inspired AI models
Sona raises $45M to help businesses manage frontline operations with AI
Sett raises $30M to grow agent-based AI platform for game studios
Generare raises $23.2M to discover unknown molecules and advance new drugs
Jimini Health raises $17M for its clinically supervised mental healthcare chatbot app
Nomadic is making video data searchable for AI model training after raising $8.4M in funding
Alien raises $7.1M to build identity infrastructure for humans and AI agents
Omniscient raises $4.1M for AI-driven decision intelligence platform
SAP buys Reltio to pull in more outside data for AI agents
New models and services
Salesforce transforms Slackbot into the ultimate work assistant with 30 new AI features
Microsoft launches new high-speed voice and image models
Microsoft accelerates agentic automation with Copilot Cowork for complex workflows
Google’s new Gemma 4 models bring complex reasoning skills to low-power devices
Alibaba’s Qwen launches new flagship LLM with Qwen 3.6-Plus
Cursor refreshes its vibe coding platform with focus on AI agents
AWS pushes to automate application monitoring and penetration testing with AI agents
Niobium brings fully encrypted AI workloads to the cloud with The Fog
Harness launches features to help dev teams coordinate releases to keep up with the AI coding era
Oumi aims to simplify and automate custom AI model development
ZeroEyes expands AI-based threat detection into the physical realm to secure public spaces
Datadog debuts Experiments to unify product testing and observability data
Celigo lets business users build and govern AI-driven workflows
HubSpot flips AI pricing on its head with outcome-based Breeze agents
Lazarus AI debuts its Applied Intelligence Engine to help enterprises move pilots into production
Softr launches AI-native no-code business software building platform
Axonis launches community-led growth network for enterprise AI adoption
Around the enterprise: Nvidia splashes cash on Marvell
Money matters
Intel to repurchase Apollo’s stake in Ireland fab for $14.2B
CoreWeave closes $8.5B financing facility to expand its AI cloud platform
Nvidia invests $2B in Marvell as part of new interconnect partnership But apparently it’s about more than that
Rebellions lands $400M in funding to lead the South Korean revolt against Nvidia chips
Space data center startup Starcloud raises $170M at $1.1B valuation
ScaleOps reels in $130M to make cloud environments more efficient
Monarch Quantum contracts with $55M growth round to scale quantum photonics infrastructure
Noon raises $44M to eliminate the gap between design and code
Treeline raises $25M from a16z and others to reinvent IT services
Soma Energy, a startup founded by former Amazon energy managers, launches AI platform for power producers and data centers with $7M in funding (per GeekWire)
Penguin Solutions posts better-than-expected sales, stock jumps
New products and services
Cloudflare debuts EmDash to challenge aging WordPress with AI-native CMS
Cyber beat: AI coding danger signs
Attacks and warnings
Hackers compromise popular Axios Javascript library with hidden malware
Anthropic accidentally exposes Claude Code source code in npm packaging error
OpenAI Codex vulnerability enabled GitHub token theft via command injection, report finds
Google finds quantum computers could break bitcoin’s encryption sooner than expected
Identity theft becomes the new perimeter as attackers bypass security defenses
New services
Acre Security launches Acre Via AI assistant for physical access control systems
Exabeam expands Agent Behavior Analytics to secure AI agents across ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini
Cato Networks launches modular adoption model for SASE Platform
zeroeyes
ISC2 brings AI security into the heart of cybersecurity certifications
Money matters
Cybersecurity services startup Tenex raises $250M in funding
Depthfirst raises $80M to expand AI-native security platform and train domain-specific models
Linx Security raises $50M in new funding to grow identity and access platform
Alcatraz raises $50M to bring Apple Face ID-style security to physical buildings
Huskeys launches with $8M to modernize WAF security with Edge Security Management
Elsewhere in tech: SpaceX to the stars
SpaceX reportedly files for $75B public offering that could value it at $1.75T
Saronic raises $1.75B at $9.25B valuation to gear up autonomous ship production
Whoop’s wearable fitness tech lands $575M at $10.1B valuation
MemQ raises $10M to advance scalable distributed quantum networking
New Quanscient and Haiqu algorithm targets scalable fluid simulations on quantum computers
Comings and goings
Data integrity provider Precisely hired software industry vet Walid Abu-Hadba as CEO, succeeding Josh Rogers.
Snowflake named sales VP Jonathan Beaulier chief revenue officer, and to assuage concerns such a move might raise, it reaffirmed earnings guidance. Former CRO Mike Gannon left for “personal reasons.”
Broadcom appointed Amie Thuener chief financial officer, effective June 12 following the retirement of Kirsten M. Spears.
Xerox tapped Louie Pastor as CEO after Steve Bandrowczak stepped down (per CRN).
Oracle is cutting thousands in its latest layoff round as it continues to expand AI spending.
Data center operator Stack Infrastructure announced three new execs. Mike Casey, previously chief technology officer, is now chief operating officer for Americas. Kevin Hughes was promoted to the newly created role of chief external affairs officer for Americas. And Addam Friedl was appointed CTO of Americas.
Former AppOmni and Axonius CRO Nick Degnan joined agentic AI cybersecurity firm Kai as CRO.
Microsoft energy VP Bobby Hollis has left for parts to be announced this month.
Intel appointed former Zoom Chief Operating Officer Aparna Bawa EVP and chief legal and people officer.
What’s next
Events
April 6-9: HumanX, San Francisco.
April 7-9: Nutanix.NEXT, Chicago. TheCUBE will have live coverage and analysis on April 8 *
April 13-15: Qlik Connect, Kissimmee, Florida. TheCUBE will have live coverage and analysis on April 14. *
April 14: HPE World Quantum Day, online event by theCUBE *
April 14: Oracle Data Deep Dive NYC, online from the NYSE *
* Sponsored events
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