AI
AI
AI
AI lifts clouds even higher, AWS moves up the stack, and Elon and Sam battle in court
If anyone thought artificial intelligence was running into a slow patch, let alone running into any fundamental technical or financial hurdles, this week quieted the doubters — at least for now.
In a blockbuster week of Big Tech earnings, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta all reported results massively boosted by AI spending by its customers, or (in Meta’s case) providing a kicker to its ads business.
Alphabet’s Google in particular stood out for a stunning 63% jump in its cloud revenue. “Our enterprise AI solutions have become our primary growth driver for Cloud for the first time,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on the company’s earnings call. In fact, it’s looking like Google has more means to press its momentum even further, as its ad business enables it to fund all that spending without much impact on profit. AI may have given Google a cloud mulligan, but credit Pichai with taking full advantage of it.
Even beyond Google, though, not even yet another rise in spending plans to serve that AI demand worried investors much, except maybe slightly in the case of Microsoft — whose huge enterprise presence is still likely to keep it more than competitive. Indeed, some software companies are jazzing investors by showing how AI is providing a boost to their businesses, clapping back at the recent SaaSpocalypse talk.
Despite renewed investor enthusiasm for the big clouds, though, a lot of those AI profits are going right back out the door to build more AI factories. “The rate of AI adoption is now constrained by capital formation as much as by technology,” John Furrier wrote this week.
For its part, cloud leader Amazon Web Services is hardly standing still. This week, after years of steering clear of moving into cloud applications perhaps for fear of angering its biggest cloud customers, software-as-a-service providers, it moved firmly up the cloud application stack, expanding Amazon Connect from customer services into hiring, healthcare and supply chain planning — thanks to agents.
The same day, it topped that news with a big deal with OpenAI, bringing OpenAI’s AI models and Codex programming assistant to its cloud — even as OpenAI and Microsoft revised the terms of their multiyear deal so the software giant no longer has as much exclusivity with the leading AI company’s models.
Speaking of OpenAI, Elon Musk laid into OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, accusing him of trying to “steal a charity.” It still seems unlikely Musk will win this in a meaningful way, but the fireworks are fun to watch.
Is AI causing an explosion of startups? That’s certainly what AI promoters have been saying would happen, claiming they’re making it easier to create companies with far fewer people. At Stripe’s conference this week in San Francisco, CEO Patrick Collison said his payments firm has noticed a “parabolic rise” in new firm creation thanks to AI.
That said, the jury’s still out on how much less it will cost than people, as AI spending inside some companies exceeds human salaries.
TheCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante got wind of an advisory that Oracle sent to customers outlining what they need to do to avoid cyberattacks that may come from hackers taking advantage of the crazy-good vulnerability-finding skills of Anthropic’s Mythos model, and others for that matter. His advice: Do what Oracle (and presumably every other software provider worth its salt) says — forthwith.
Even though most of the tech giants reported this week, there’s still a huge lineup of earnings next week, including Palantir, AMD, Arm, CoreWeave, Cloudflare and many more.
There’s also a big schedule of tech conferences in the next couple of weeks, including IBM Think next week, and it won’t let up until about, oh, July if we’re lucky.
Here’s all of this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news, views and analysis from SiliconANGLE, theCUBE, theCUBE Research and beyond:
AI and data: Amazon moves up the stack
Analysis and food for thought
A cybersecurity harbinger: Oracle front-runs AI model threat with new customer security advisory
The third leg of AI’s infrastructure race isn’t silicon or power. It’s capital
AI can cost more than human workers now (per Axios) “Maybe human labor will be more cost-efficient after all.”
Agentic opportunity: OpenAI and Stripe build for rising tide of new entrepreneurial firms
How generative AI ‘persuasion bombs’ users — and how to fight back (per MIT Sloan)
AIs can be weird. OpenAI explains why: Where the goblins came from
New models and services
AWS brings OpenAI’s AI models and Codex programming assistant to its cloud
AWS accelerates enterprise agentic automation with expanded Amazon Connect portfolio
Analysis from Zeus Kerravala: Amazon Connect’s second act: From contact center to agentic AI suite In another good analysis, Maribel Lopez notes that Connect has a telling double meaning
Amazon revamps Quick as a proactive desktop app that gets work done
Nvidia introduces Nemotron 3 Nano Omni with vision and speech for powerful agentic AI use
Microsoft reveals how Accenture deployed Copilot to 700,000+ users at Accenture
Salesforce introduces Agentforce Operations to automate outdated back-office tasks
RingCentral raises the CX bar with branded messaging, AI and embedded Teams calling
Startup Lovelace targets contextual AI engine at mission-critical use cases
SAS expands agentic AI and governance capabilities with broad platform updates
OpenMetadata maker Collate launches AI Analytics for chat-driven dashboards
Auvik launches Aurora AI agents to speed ticket resolution and prevent outages
Runpod launches Flash to bring AI inference to developers without infra overhead
Aranya debuts cluster-scale operating system, partners with Hydra Host on ‘bare-metal AI’
Qdrant Cloud launches high-performance vector database features for AI workloads
Deepgram expands Flux to 10 languages with mid-call switching for voice agents
Money matters
Chip stocks drop on report OpenAI missed ChatGPT growth targets
OpenAI and Microsoft revise the terms of their AI partnership
Ineffable Intelligence raises $1.1B at $5.1B valuation to build an AI ‘superlearner’
Nebius to acquire Eigen AI for $643M to strengthen inference offering
Cognizant to acquire Astreya for $600M to deepen AI infrastructure services
Former Meta exec Thomas Reardon is raising money for Flourish, focused on AI that uses less power, at a $2.5B valuation (per Bloomberg)
Rogo raises $160M to speed up financial analysis with AI agents
Nvidia’s NVentures backs $150M round for medical AI startup Aidoc
Hightouch raises $150M to reinvent how marketing works using AI
Parag Agrawal’s startup raises $100M to build a parallel web for AI agents
Netomi banks $110M to embed agentic AI deeper into enterprise customer service
Colby Adcock’s Scout AI raises $100M to train its models for war (per TechCrunch)
Standard Intelligence raises $75M to develop efficient computer use models
Phenom adds Plum psychometric science to its agentic AI hiring stack
Liquid Instruments lands $50M to scale AI-driven test and measurement platform
Nvidia backs Swedish AI legal tech Legora in a $50M Series D extension at $5.6B valuation (per CNBC)
Featherless.ai pulls in $20M to scale serverless hosting for open-source AI models
Definity unveils agentic data engineering platform with $12M Series A
SkyfireAI lands $11M to bring AI autonomy to public safety and defense drones
OpenObserve announces $10M round and launch of new observability features
Certifyde raises $2M to help guide businesses in adopting and scaling AI
Policy and legal
Elon Musk accuses OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of trying to ‘steal’ a charity
China blocks Meta’s acquisition of AI agent developer Manus
Hundreds of Google employees sign letter urging CEO to reject US military AI use
Around the enterprise: AI lifts clouds even higher
Earnings
Alphabet’s stock climbs as Google Cloud revenue runs rampant, growing 63%
Microsoft beats expectations but its guidance comes up light, disappointing investors
Amazon cruises to another solid earnings and revenue beat
Meta shares drop after-hours as capex guidance overshadows earnings beat
Apple beats estimates on strong iPhone sales as CEO transition looms large
Qualcomm shares surge on earnings beat, $20B buyback and data center timeline
Shares of Extreme Networks jump 28% on strong third-quarter results
Strong momentum across all markets helps NXP’s profit surge
Samsung profit surges over eightfold to beat estimates as AI boom fuels memory chip crunch
Seagate beats forecast, stock jumps 19% But others weren’t so lucky: Western Digital and Sandisk crush Wall Street forecasts on soaring AI demand, but stocks fall
Equinix shares dip after Q1 earnings beat but revenue miss
Cadence Design beats Q1 estimates on AI demand, raises outlook
AI kickers buoyed software stocks: Atlassian soars, Twilio and Five9 rally as AI adoption powers earnings beats
Mixed bag in cybersecurity:
CommVault’s beat sends shares up 11%
Check Point shares plunge 19% on mixed first-quarter results
Tenable beats Q1 forecasts, stock falls almost 6%
F5 revenue rises 11%, stock up 5%
Robinhood shares drop on Q1 miss as crypto trading revenue tumbles 47%
Rivian delivers better-than-expected Q1 earnings and revenue
Other money matters
SoftBank reportedly plans to spin off $100B data center construction venture
Altair Semiconductor raises $50M after completing spinoff from Sony
Silicon photonics startup OpenLight raises additional $50M in extended Series A funding round
Pursuit, which helps companies sell to government, raises $22M round (per TechCrunch)
New products and services
How T-Mobile’s private 5G network is changing the game for Major League Baseball
HPE introduces new ProLiant systems for distributed AI and edge computing
Panzura opens its global filesystem to Microsoft Copilot users
Policy
EU investigators say Meta isn’t doing enough to keep children off its platforms
Cyber beat: Aviatrix reins in agents
Attack & response
Wiz finds AI has moved from tool to infrastructure, broadening the attack surface
New services
Aviatrix launches AI agent containment platform for cloud workloads
Anthropic announces Claude Security public beta to find and fix software vulnerabilities
DigiCert debuts AI Trust framework to secure agents, models and content
Securonix partners with AI SPERA to bring Criminal IP intelligence to ThreatQ
Command Zero opens its autonomous security operations center platform with APIs and an MCP server
Lookout launches mobile-native tool to expose shadow AI on enterprise devices
NowSecure launches Mobile App Risk Intelligence to expose hidden AI in third-party apps
Money matters
Silverfort acquires Fabrix Security to bring AI decision-making to runtime access control
Elsewhere in tech: Space business rockets
Space technology startup True Anomaly raises $650M at $2.2B valuation
Quantum Art raises $140M to scale quantum computing with a unique ‘multicore’ architecture
Cisco’s Universal Quantum Switch and the rise of the quantum fabric
Sereact raises $110M to scale AI ‘robotic brain’ and expand into the US
Firestorm Labs raises $82M to take drone factories into the field (per TechCrunch)
Senate votes to ban its members and staff from using prediction platforms
What’s next
Events
May 4-7: IBM Think, Boston: SiliconANGLE will have the news and theCUBE will have a special presentation May 12. *
May 5-7: Atlassian Team ’26, Anaheim: SiliconANGLE will have the news and theCUBE will be onsite May 5-6 for interviews and analysis. *
May 5-7: ServiceNow Knowledge, Las Vegas. SiliconANGLE will have the news.
May 6-7: Twilio Signal, San Francisco: TheCUBE will be onsite May 6.
May 11-14: Red Hat Summit, Atlanta: SiliconANGLE will have the news and theCUBE will be onsite. *
May 11-14: Boomi World, Chicago: TheCUBE will be onsite. *
May 18-21: Dell Technologies World, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE will have the news and theCUBE will be onsite. *
May 19-20: Google I/O, Mountain View and online: SiliconANGLE will be onsite with all the news.
* Sponsored event
Earnings
Monday, May 4: Palantir, Backblaze
Tuesday, May 5: Digital Ocean, Globalfoundries, AMD, Supermicro, Arista, Teradata, Rapid7, Qualys, Freshworks
Wednesday, May 6: Kyndryl, Arm, Fortinet, Cirrus Logic, Amplitude, Fastly, Snap
Thursday, May 7: CoreWeave, Cloudflare, Netscout, Appian, Rackspace, AvePoint, JFrog, Dropbox, Coinbase, Block, RingCentral, Hubspot, OpenText, Lyft
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