If anyone thought Google was going to continue to lose ground to Microsoft and OpenAI in the artificial intelligence era, its I/O conference this week in Mountain View proved that perception is premature at best.

The company introduced a raft of new features, including some coming shortly, such as an industry-leading 2 million-token context window for its Gemini chatbot — enough to put a couple of hours of video into it, for one. Google still is straining at times to show it can lead the new era of AI amid intense competition — 121 mentions in the conference keynotes alone — but it’s clear it’s marshaling all its forces to try.

On the cloud front, Amazon Web Services pulled a surprise move this week in replacing CEO Adam Selipsky with Amazon lifer Matt Garman. It’s not entirely clear why, but it will be soon as Garman promises “organizational changes,” and no doubt Job One is shoring up its AI offerings. Meantime, Intel also made a big personnel change, appointing outsider Kevin O’Buckley to run its chip foundry business.

You’d never know there’s even a soft landing in the economy if you look at all the money investors continue to put in AI and enterprise software — a stunning $7.5 billion in debt financing for AI cloud provider Coreweave, plus $100 million-plus rounds for Vercel, Sigma Computing, Harness, Weka and Alkira.

There’s another big week coming for events, with Microsoft Build, Dell Tech World, IBM Think and Informatica World. And it’s another notable week for earnings reports, including Palo Alto Networks, Zoom, Nvidia, Snowflake and Workday.

This and other news will be discussed in much more depth on John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out this afternoon on YouTube. Also, don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, due out this weekend.

Here’s this week’s roundup of those and other important tech stories from SiliconANGLE and beyond:

Google I/O should have been called Google A/I

All the news below, but a few random observations:

* AI was mentioned 120 times during I/O–make that 121 after CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned the count. Seemed like more.

* No new hardware! Instead, Google pre-announced the Pixel 8a before I/O. But it’s the hardware you didn’t see, all those servers and storage and networking, that matters for AI. “Our hardware investments are quite critical,” Jeff Dean, chief scientist at Google Research and Google DeepMind and currently co-lead of Gemini, told developers in a breakout session Wednesday, because it’s clear that the more data that can be crunched to power the AI models, the better they get.

* That’s how Google can offer an industry-leading (for now) 2 million-token context window for Gemini 1.5 Pro, which it previewed for developers, which means even two-hour videos can be input to produce useful answers. Seriously, why did anyone think Google would stay behind on something that requires massive scale and infrastructure — and a lot of data, which Google has in spades with YouTube, search and email? Pichai even talked about “infinite context” in the not-too-distant future. Yikes.

* What’s coming next? Dean wants to see the ability for models to deal with, say, 60 steps, which would involve the ability to break down complex requests into steps and have dialogue with person to clarify things. But he said that will require a lot of innovation in AI and machine learning algorithms.

* There was a crowd in the middle of I/O’s AI Sandbox, which displayed a range of things Google is enabling with AI, and no wonder: It was gathered around Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Developers were peppering him with questions, only a few of which I could catch. Among his somewhat paraphrased answers:

What are you doing here? Just learning, or so he seemed to say, but you have to think he knows just about everything going on in AI at Google already.

Can we fix AI hallucinations? “I wouldn’t be shocked if there were orders-of-magnitude improvements” before long, he said.

Aren’t you retired? “Yes, around COVID, but with this AI boom, as a computer scientist, I just had to be in it.” He didn’t say how, though he’s rumored to be more involved in Google’s AI efforts — not that most anyone at Google isn’t. “I can’t imagine a better time to be a computer scientist,” he added.

* There’s a lot of talk about how AI may replace people’s work, but it’s more complicated than that, said James Manyika, SVP of research, technology and society at Google. “A lot of these questions about technologies are really questions about us,” he said. “AI is holding a mirror to our face.” And he added a bit of a warning that tech companies themselves shouldn’t be making all the decisions: “Please don’t leave it to people like us.”

* Google’s doing a lot of research into quantum computing that doesn’t seem to have gotten much publicity. Erik Lucero, who leads Google’s production quantum hardware team in Santa Barbara, told me it even has a fab to produce quantum chips. For now it’s “very much a research tool,” Lucero said of the quantum efforts, but he hopes to have commercial systems by the end of the decade. Google must believe in it or you might think all its trimming of the last year or so would have hit home here.

* I got a look at Project Starline, Google’s telepresence system that uses AI, 3D imaging and other technologies to create a surprisingly realistic 3D image that almost feels like the other person is there – -complete with eye contact. Google announced a partnership this week with HP to commercialize it next year. I’m still not sure this kind of realism is necessary for communications, any more than others such as Cisco’s that I’ve seen over the years, but it sure looks good.

Google enhances Gemini Pro with more natural conversational abilities and improved understanding

Google is transforming search experience with generative AI overviews, planning and more

Google rolls out new AI models and tools for developers

Google releases second Android 15 beta alongside broader ecosystem updates

Google Cloud unveils the Trillium TPU, its most powerful AI processor so far

Google’s Project Gameface lets people control Android devices using gestures and facial expressions

Elsewhere in AI and data

OpenAI unleashes GPT-4o, a new flagship model with real-time multimodal capabilities

AI cloud infrastructure startup CoreWeave raises $7.5B in debt financing

Report: Snowflake in talks to acquire AI model developer Reka AI for $1B+

Stability AI reportedly holds sale talks amid cash crunch. But The Information reported that it’s talking with an investment group led by Sean Parker, Napster co-founder and Facebook’s first president.

The AI data and content wars rage on:

• OpenAI agrees to deal with Reddit to scrape its content for AI training
• Sony warning to AI firms: Hands off our music!
• Google faces fresh competition as TikTok and OpenAI team up for enhanced AI search

EU asks Microsoft to provide information about Bing’s generative AI features

AI chip company Cerebras announces major advances in materials science, sparse training and more

Bipartisan Senate group proposes $32B in annual federal funding for AI innovation

Voxel51 raises $30M to help companies refine their visual AI models

PolyAI raises $50M to enhance AI voice automation technology

Vectors, vectors everywhere:

Elastic’s new Search AI Lake enables highly scalable vector search for generative AI apps

Rockset launches native support for hybrid vector and text search to power AI apps

LanceDB raises $8M to speed up AI models with its open-source vector database

Around the enterprise

Longtime AWS executive Matt Garman to succeed Adam Selipsky as CEO John and Dave no doubt will have much more to say on theCUBE Pod. But clearly Garman will have a big focus on building up AWS’ stature in AI as a way to recharge growth at the cloud leader, and clarifying its role: Will it stick to its infrastructure knitting, providing mostly AI picks and shovels for developers, or will it move up the stack into AI-driven applications — or will Garman and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy — don’t doubt he will have a big hand in this — forge an entirely new vision for AWS’ next phase?

Despite revenue drop, Cisco beats expectations and ups full-year forecast, sending stock higher And Zeus Kerravala’s analysis: Behind the numbers: five facts About Cisco’s quarter

Arm reportedly set to enter AI chip market with first product next year

New Dell servers feature optimized cooling and Open Compute Project management

HPE’s GreenLake enhances data storage across the cloud and on-premises servers

Aurora ranks as world’s fastest AI supercomputer in latest TOP500 benchmark

NetApp unveiled new data storage infrastructure for enterprise AI workloads

Meta to shut down its Workplace business communications platform

Data observability platform Metaplane got an investment of an undisclosed amount from Snowflake Ventures

More action in quantum computing

Nvidia announces advances in scientific high-performance AI and quantum supercomputing

IBM expands quantum software kit Qiskit across the entire technology stack

Alice & Bob brings fault-tolerant Boson cat qubit quantum chip to Google Cloud Marketplace

Money keeps rushing into enterprise software

AWS plans to invest €7.8 billion into European Sovereign Cloud

Frontend development startup Vercel valued at $3.25B following new $250M round

Business intelligence startup Sigma closes $200M round at $1.5B valuation

CI/CD platform startup Harness raises $150M to accelerate software delivery

Data management startup Weka nabs $140M at $1.6B valuation

Alkira reels in $100M for its cloud networking platform

Squarespace to be taken private by Permira in $6.9B acquisition

Cyber beat

Consolidation warms up

LogRhythm and Exabeam announce merger to enhance AI-driven cybersecurity solutions

IBM and Palo Alto Networks forge security partnership with QRadar SaaS acquisition

Attacks and responses

FBI and DOJ seize control of infamous BreachForums hacking site

Cofense warns that sophisticated phishing campaign is targeting Meta business accounts

Google issues emergency Chrome update to patch critical new vulnerability

Infoblox uncovers Muddling Meerkat, which can control China’s Great Firewall

Christie’s auction house suffers cyberattack, disrupting art auction schedule

Open redirect vulnerabilities exploited in ‘cat-phishing’ attacks, HP warns

New services

Zscaler enhances AI data protection platform with new security innovations

Palo Alto Networks and Accenture expand strategic alliance with AI security focus

New Cycode marketplace aims to close supply chain security gaps with new integrations

At RSA Conference, AWS brings updates to Amazon Security Lake

Humanity Protocol raises $30M at $1B valuation for decentralized identification to rival Worldcoin

Elsewhere in tech

EU launches probe into Meta over compliance with child safety rules

Microsoft offers overseas transfers to China-based cloud and AI staff amid geopolitical tensions

US to raise tariffs on electric vehicles, chips imported from China

Billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a people’s bid to buy TikTok

Geomagnetic storm disrupts tractor navigation systems across numerous US farms

Comings and goings

OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever quits. As Wired notes, that means OpenAI’s entire long-term risk team is kaput. Money always trumps values.

Intel reached outside the company for an executive to run its Foundry Services, tapping Kevin O’Buckley, formerly with Marvell and GlobalFoundries, as SVP and GM of the high-profile unit. He succeeds Stuart Pann, who’s retiring after 35 years at Intel. Surely CEO Pat Gelsinger thinks O’Buckley is the right person for the job, but just as surely bringing in an outsider is a signal that Foundry will go its own way.

Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger has joined Anthropic as chief product officer.

Cohesity appointed Craig Martell, the Defense Department’s former chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, as its new chief technology officer.

SUSE appointed former Google exec Pilar Santamaria to be VP of AI.

Cloud developer tools startup Replit lays off 20% of its workforce amid generative AI push

What’s next

Lots of events!

May 20-23 Las Vegas: Dell Technologies World, covered onsite by theCUBE and theCUBE Research as well as SiliconANGLE

May 20-23, Las Vegas: Informatica World, covered onsite by theCUBE and theCUBE Research as well as SiliconANGLE

May 21-23, Seattle and online: Microsoft Build, SiliconANGLE will have all the news

May 20-23, Boston: IBM Think, SiliconANGLE will have the news

Earnings

Monday, May 20: Palo Alto Networks and Zoom

Wednesday, May 22: Nvidia, Snowflake, Synopsys and Zuora

Thursday, May 23: Workday

Photo: Google