As Trump and Musk scramble everything, investors cool on enterprise tech’s prospects – News

President Trump’s chaos and Elon Musk’s mischief with his dubious DOGE coup squad continued unabated, with far too many bizarre, racist and probably illegal actions to list here, not to mention rampant conflicts of interest and security and privacy violations.

It’s affecting pretty much all of us, including enterprise and tech companies. With all the lawsuits filed to stop them, it’s going to be an unpredictable mess for a long time to come, and we know how much businesses and investors love uncertainty.

Back in the normal world, such as it is, OpenAI keeps scrambling to respond to DeepSeek with new services and an admission by CEO Sam Altman that the company so far has missed the open-source boat. It’s not certain a bill to ban DeepSeek’s use in the U.S. will make a difference. And other cheap models are arriving fast. None of this, however, is discouraging investors from continuing to plow big bucks into OpenAI, and others such as former OpenAI exec Ilya Sutskever’s startup SSI.

It was a week of disappointing earnings at several big enterprise tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon and chipmakers AMD, Arm and Qualcomm, as investors squinted to find enough AI upside to justify high capital spending — which most definitely is not easing despite the DeepSeek shock — and high stock prices. That said, some firms such as Palantir and NXP showed enough upside to please investors. And in cyber, Cloudflare and Fortinet both saw their shares rise on quarterly beats.

In 2025 predictions from theCUBE Research analysts, generative AI remains the big theme, in everything from networking and software development to cybersecurity and consumer services.

After attending IBM’s first Analyst Day in years, John Furrier contends it’s showing how IBM can help lead in the new AI era where open source could rule.

The explosion of gen AI-mediated data will require a return to the skills of reference librarians — or what dbInsight’s Tony Baer calls knowledge engineers.

Layoffs are on the rise at Salesforce, Workday, Hugging Face, Okta, GM’s Cruise, Sprinkler, Sonos and beyond, in part thanks to AI. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he’s hiring 2,000 salesforce for Agentforce but AI will make more near-term engineer hires unnecessary.

SailPoint has another initial public offering coming, raising perennial speculation that the IPO market may have an opening in 2025.

AI and data: Bring back reference librarians

Analysis

Data in the generative AI era: We need more knowledge engineers

IBM’s open-source playbook: The AI market shift, DeepSeek’s lessons and the future of AI development

Policy

US lawmakers introduce bill to ban DeepSeek on federal devices

The EU is now enforcing the AI Act, banning high-risk AI systems

Google quietly changes stance on using AI for weapons or surveillance

Former FTC chief Lina Khan thinks we should stop worshiping the tech giants. I didn’t always agree with her assessment of what’s a monopoly or what the fixes should be, and still don’t agree with her basic argument here that a lack of competition made DeepSeek’s recent breakthrough possible. That said, in the larger picture — which includes the considerable damage to democracy by some of these companies the last few years, the concentration of wealth that allows the likes of Elon Musk to invade and destroy governmental entities unilaterally and self-servingly, and the eagerness of most Big Tech companies to knuckle under to a manifestly incompetent president who is making even more a mess of everything this time around, including blatantly racist actions — well, I have to say we should have been listening to her and others who said the power of Big Tech and its leaders is too concentrated for anyone’s good, because it’s now more than apparent.

New models and services

OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now perform comprehensive research for its users OpenAI seems to be scrambling, as CEO Sam Altman admitted the company was on the “wrong side of history” when it comes to open-source AI.

And DeepSeek isn’t the only low-cost challenge: New LLM developed for under $50 outperforms OpenAI’s o1-preview

Google expands access to Gemini 2.0 AI models and debuts experimental versions

Mistral adds major updates to its AI assistant, mobile apps and high-speed responses

Report: Amazon tipped to ship revamped Alexa AI updates later this month

DOGE reportedly seeking to develop ‘GSAi’ government chatbot

Lightning AI moves into the AI marketplace with ready-made enterprise applications

Oracle boosts generative AI feature in its human capital management cloud application

Dynatrace debuts new AI, security features for its observability platform

Adobe’s Acrobat AI Assistant digs into contracts to help users understand what they’re agreeing to

Alluxio boosts performance for AI model training

Aerospike says it has achieved a milestone in NoSQL OLTP performance

Pipedrive introduces agentic AI teammates for the sales process

Presidio launches Private AI Accelerator powered by Nvidia for secure on-premises AI

Money matters

Ilya Sutskever’s SSI reportedly raising new funding at $20B+ valuation

Softbank set to invest $40 billion in OpenAI at $260 billion valuation, sources say OK, so it’s a little higher valuation, but wasn’t this reported last week? Pretty much.

Databricks buys the AI-powered data migration startup BladeBridge

Phenom acquires AI HR tech firm Edge to expand workforce planning

Productivity startup Tana launches with $25M in funding

Atombeam raises $20M for its codeword-based data transmission technology

TrueFoundry nabs $19M for its AI model management platform

DevAI raises $6M to automate infrastructure management with AI agents

Market research AI platform GetWhy raises $8.4M funding

Exclusive: GetWhys raises $2.75M seed round for AI-infused marketing research platform Hmm, one of those companies needs to consider a name change… or perhaps a merger.

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

Around the enterprise: What’s coming in 2025

Analysis

Breaking Analysis: Predictions for 2025 from theCUBE Research’s top analysts

Money matters

SoftBank reportedly getting close to acquiring chipmaker Ampere in $6.5B deal

Programmatic ads platform StackAdapt snags $235M in funding

Field service engineer tech provider XOi raised $230M from KKR and acquired Specifx

Earnings roundup: a big but often disappointing week

Alphabet’s stock plunges on revenue miss and high AI spending

Amazon’s stock drops as cloud revenue comes up short and it doubles AI spending

AMD’s data center revenue comes up short, leaving investors dismayed

Qualcomm and Arm shatter Wall Street’s targets, but investors aren’t too happy

Chipmaker NXP’s stock rises on earnings surprise

Palantir stock climbs as strong earnings and guidance impress investors

Juniper’s revenue and profit rises on strong demand for AI networks

Kyndryl sales fall but management promises return to growth this quarter

PayPal shares drop 13% despite better-than-expected earnings

Affirm shares pop more than 10% on revenue beat

Uber shares drop 8% on mixed fourth-quarter results

Snap stock rises after earnings and revenue exceed expectations

Synaptics shares rise 4% on strong Q2 IOT segment revenue

OpenText top Q2 earnings, stock rises 5%

New services

Mirantis open-sources k0rdent Kubernetes management platform

Opera launches web browser focused on well-being and mindfulness

We have more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: SailPoint’s IPO rerun

Money matters

SailPoint targets $1.05B in Nasdaq IPO as Thoma Bravo takes company public again

AttackIQ acquires DeepSurface to strengthen security posture management

Arctic Wolf completes $160M acquisition of Cylance, launches endpoint security product (per CRN)

Turn/River Capital to take SolarWinds private in $4.4 billion deal

Code security startup Semgrep reels in $100M from investors

Employee cybersecurity startup Riot nabs $30M in funding

Astra raises $2.7M to simplify cybersecurity by mimicking hacker behavior with AI-powered solutions

Cyber earnings:

Fortinet, Cloudflare and Qualys report strong earnings and revenue growth

Tenable reports strong quarterly earnings and revenue growth but forecast falls short

In other news

Report: UK ordered Apple to implement backdoor in iCloud encryption system

New 7AI platform deploys autonomous AI agents to streamline security operations

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Musk’s cockamamie coup

Meanwhile, Musk solidifies his coup and I don’t use that term lightly: Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team gain access to sensitive US Treasury database and Concerns grow as Elon Musk’s DOGE team gains access to yet more sensitive government databases

Moreover, reports indicate extensive changes to the software have already been made. Even Facebook abandoned “move fast and break things” many years ago (though it might be coming back in the form of “masculine energy”), and now we’re supposed to think this philosophy works for government? TL;DR: It doesn’t.

And didn’t anyone vet these people? Apparently not.  Seriously, apparently not!  Makes you wonder what else was missed that could endanger national security. One of Elon Musk’s key DOGE team members, Marko Elez, quits after being outed as a racist And what a surprise, he’s getting hired back now!

And now a Treasury threat intelligence team is recommending that DOGE members be monitored as an “insider threat.” How bad does this have to get before we take it seriously?

Hey Tim Cook, how’s that $1 million inauguration donation and bended knees working out for you? Apple shares fall after China ponders mounting probe into App Store

Gee, I wonder who got Trump to concede here? Ontario cancels and un-cancels Starlink contract after tariffs concession But China still came back pretty hard with its own tariffs and Big Tech probes, as Apple and Intel just found out. And Canada remains PO’d.

Drone defense startup Hidden Level raises $65M for growth and security initiatives

Olas raises $13.8M to launch decentralized app store for AI agents

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

Comings and goings: lots o’ layoffs

Workday lays off 1,760 employees to focus on AI and platform innovation

Salesforce reportedly letting go 1,000+ workers in new round of layoffs

Hugging Face lays off 4% of staff (per The Information)

GM lays off half of Cruise employees as it shifts focus to advanced driver assistance

Okta lays off 180 In latest round of cutbacks (per CRN)

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has raided his former employer Google DeepMind, hiring three engineers: Marco Tagliasacchi, Zalán Borsos and Matthias Minderer, who will join the software and cloud giant’s new AI lab in Zurich.

Onetime OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is leaving Anthropic after only five months to join former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati’s stealth AI startup (per Fortune).

Michael Hurlston left as CEO of Synaptics, which makes chips for touchpads and related devices, to become CEO of optical component maker Lumentum Holdings. Synaptics CFO Ken Rizvi becomes interim CEO.

Cloud detection and response firm Mitiga has a new CEO: Charlie Thomas, former founding CEO of Deepwatch.

So does Cynet Security: former Connectwise CEO Jason Magee.

Salesforce appointed Robin Washington president and chief operating and financial officer.

Former SAP, Reltio and ServiceNow exec Venki Subramanian is Freshworks’ new SVP of product management for CX.

RIP, one of the greats: Silicon Valley venture capital pioneer and NEA co-founder Dick Kramlich, an early investor in Apple, died at 89.

What’s next

Earnings next week:

Tuesday, Feb. 11: GlobalFoundries, Confluent, Teradata, Lyft, Freshworks

Wednesday, Feb. 12: Rapid7, Robinhood

Thursday, Feb. 13: Datadog, CyberArk, JFrog, Informatica, Twilio, Applied Materials, Coinbase

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