UPDATED 11:29 EST / JULY 18 2025

AI

AWS CEO Matt Garman bets big on AI agents – but so are OpenAI and everyone else

At AWS Summit NYC this week, Amazon made a concerted push to help enterprises field artificial intelligence agents, and we had all the news and interviews, including Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman.

Hardly one to be left out, OpenAI introduced a ChatGPT agent to enable browsers to accomplish multistep tasks. Meantime, OpenAI is tapping Google now for GPU power. Still left out, though: AWS.

Model Context Protocol servers, for enabling easier connections between AI models and agents and external tools, data and services, are the hot thing these days, as both Oracle and JFrog joined the MCP party this week.

The AI investing frenzy continued, led this week by the $2 billion funding of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines. Apparently it actually plans to release a product soon!

The mass data center buildout also isn’t slowing down, as Meta announced plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI megafactories. It’s enough, Gartner said, to lift tech spending almost 8% this year, overcoming a slowdown on the legacy side.

TSMC continues to be one big beneficiary, as its earnings reported this week demonstrated. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will benefit too, not least because they’re cleared to sell certain GPUs in China now. Intel’s still the odd one out as it continues to downsize, cutting 5,000 more people.

Earnings season gets underway in earnest next week with many industry bellwethers: Alphabet, IBM, SAP, Intel and Mobileye, NXP Semi, ServiceNow, Texas Instruments, Pegasystems and Tesla.

Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news this week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:

AI and data: Amazon’s agentic future

AWS Summit NYC

Our extensive coverage of how AWS is reaching deeper for AI leadership, rolling out a flurry of new services for enterprises to field agents — as Runtime’s Tom Krazit succinctly put it, it’s hoping agents are the new cloud:

In big AI agent push, AWS debuts new development tools, vector-optimized object store

1Password brings MCP Server for Trelica to AWS Marketplace AI Agents category

AWS launches Kiro: a ‘spec coding’ developer environment integrated with AI agents

AWS expands modular AI vision with agent Marketplace debut

AWS debuts Bedrock AgentCore to move AI agents from pilot to production

AWS empowers devs with Kiro, AgentCore and an agentic AI roadmap

Spec-driven coding gets an AI boost with AWS’ Kiro IDE

CrowdStrike sees cybersecurity innovation hitting warp speed with agentic AI

AWS leads the charge in neuro-symbolic AI for smarter, safer intelligence

Modernizing the machine: Platform innovators lead the next generation of enterprise AI

More from John Furrier’s exclusive midyear interviews with AWS executives, including Matt Garman

Exclusive: Amazon CEO Matt Garman bets on an agentic future

Exclusive with Amazon Bedrock chief Atul Deo: AWS’ big bet on cheaper AI — and a new breed of software agent

‘The bottom turtle’: Amazon’s storage workhorse is getting an AI upgrade

Policy

Interesting paper from many AI leaders calling for monitoring of “thinking” models: Chain of Thought Monitorability: A New and Fragile Opportunity for AI Safety

Meta won’t implement voluntary AI guidelines proposed by EU

Indonesia to establish AI center of excellence with support from Nvidia, Cisco and Indosat

New models and services

The self-writing internet: Is Dfinity’s Caffeine AI a wakeup call for application developers?

OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT agent to automate multistep browser tasks

Mistral AI brings deep research to Le Chat, alongside image editing, voice mode and more

Oracle launches MCP Server to bring natural language AI to its core database

JFrog launches MCP Server to connect AI agents with developer tools

Reflection AI’s autonomous coding agent Asimov learns from more than just code

Kyndryl’s new Agentic AI Framework can help enterprises knuckle down on AI agents

Anthropic upgrades Claude Code with visibility dashboard for software teams

Report: Claude users experienced unannounced usage limit reductions

Exclusive: Krisp launches VIVA development kit to enhance accuracy for voice AI agents

Lightricks’ latest release lets creators direct long-form AI-generated videos in real time

Data fabric startup Promethium enables self-service data access for AI agents

Qdrant launches Cloud Inference for multimodal vector search with higher speed and lower cost

Coralogix launches MCP Server to give AI agents direct access to observability data

Diligent launches ACL AI Studio to streamline governance and risk data analysis

Cloudian releases PyTorch connector with RDMA support for faster AI data processing

LG AI Research partners with FriendliAI to launch AI model EXAONE 4.0 for public use

Money matters

Thinking Machines, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, raises $2B in seed funding

AI coding assistant startup Cognition acquires rival Windsurf

OpenAI taps Google Cloud to access much-needed GPUs for ChatGPT

Pentagon aims to bolster national security with major investments in US AI firms

OpenEvidence raises $210M on $3.5B valuation to expand AI-powered medical search and decision tools

AI vibe coding startup Lovable raises $200M at $1.8B valuation

Fully licensed generative video AI model startup Moonvalley raises $84M

BrightAI raises $51M to ease infrastructure maintenance with AI

Unify lands $40M to help sales teams engage high-intent buyers

Vultron raises $22M to power ‘agentic operating system for federal procurement

Heron raises $16M to automate document-heavy work

IntuigenceAI raises $10M and launches AI engineer platform IntuiAI

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

Around the enterprise: AI dominates IT spending

Money matters

Meta to invest ‘hundreds of billions’ in new multi-gigawatt AI data centers

Apple is spending $500 million in government-backed rare minerals program

Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending to grow 7.9% in 2025

TSMC’s quarterly profit jumps 60% on continued AI chip demand

Chip gear provider ASML shares drop 11% on cautious 2026 growth outlook

HPE inks cooperation agreement with activist investor Elliott

Hadrian gets $260M in funding to accelerate defense industry manufacturing automation

GigaIO secures $21M Series B round to scale AI inferencing infrastructure solutions

Transit software startup Via confidentially files for an IPO (per TechCrunch)

Synopsys closes $35B acquisition of Ansys

Photonics processor maker Q.ANT raises $72M to transform AI computing

NetBox Labs, the central nervous system for AI data centers, gets $35M in funding

New products and services

Google reveals plans to combine ChromeOS and Android

Extreme Networks launches Extreme Platform ONE into general availability

NetBox Labs, the central nervous system for AI data centers, gets $35M in funding

C-Gen.AI’s new GPU orchestration platform promises to boost AI data center efficiency

Tetrate steps up to handle traffic management for AI agents powered by multiple LLMs

Policy

Nvidia, AMD to resume AI chip exports to China

ServiceNow’s Moveworks takeover gets in-depth antitrust review (per Bloomberg)

Meta execs settle with board in $8B lawsuit over data harvesting scandal

We have lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: Google expands its AI cyber push

Google expands AI-driven cybersecurity efforts with updates ahead of Black Hat and DEF CON

Security pioneer John Watters leads new cyber risk intelligence company iCOUNTER

Lansweeper acquires Redjack to expand passive asset discovery and mapping capabilities

Empirical Security raises $12M to build custom AI models for enterprise cyber defense

StrongestLayer secures $5.2M to combat emerging AI-driven email threats

Index Engines secures patent for AI-driven ransomware detection process

Little-known Microsoft program could expose Defense Department to Chinese hackers (per ProPublica)

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere around tech: Uber buys into robotaxis

Uber to deploy 20,000 autonomous taxis in partnership with Lucid and Nuro

Indian startup QpiAI gets $32M to supercharge AI development with quantum computing

It was a week for drone technology:

Mobile drone manufacturing startup Firestorm Labs raises $47M

Drone startup Xtend raises $30M more in funding

Drone services operator FlyGuys wants to connect AI applications to real-world aerial data after raising $13M

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

Comings and goings

Intel cuts more than 5,000 jobs across four states as restructuring accelerates

Data graph platform Apollo GraphQL co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Matt DeBergalis is moving up to CEO, succeeding co-founder and CEO Geoff Schmidt, who will remain at Apollo in a new role focused on advancing the company’s technology and the GraphQL ecosystem.

Former Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow exec Paul Smith will join Anthropic as chief commercial officer.

What’s next

Earnings season gets into full swing:

Monday, July 21: NXP

Tuesday, July 22: SAP, Texas Instruments, Pegasystems

Wednesday, July 23: Alphabet, IBM, ServiceNow and Tesla

Thursday, July 24: Intel, Mobileye

Image: SiliconANGLE/Reve

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