Trump’s high tariffs, imposed late Wednesday, somehow managed to surprise investors, as tech stocks, and just about all stocks along with our 401(k)s, tanked Thursday and looked to be on an even steeper fall Friday — and many observers think even now the market isn’t pricing in the full impact.
It’s hard to see how all this doesn’t drive us into a recession, and even harder to see why Trump is doing it. There’s no 3D chess here, only a checkerboard kicked onto the floor by a petty, malignant narcissist. (Ask me what I really think.)
Meanwhile, it looks like those tariffs and the market meltdown have put the kibosh on planned initial public offerings, such as Klarna and StubHub. Stablecoin provider Circle finally filed to go public, but it will be interesting to see how soon that will happen now. Only sort-of bright spot: CoreWeave’s seeming dud looks a little better as its stock rose well above its initial price and remains there.
Intel and TSMC have been discussing a preliminary deal for a joint venture to operate Intel’s chip factories, with TSMC taking a 20% stake. But it sounds quite uncertain right now, and how helpful this will be to Intel, and by extension U.S. chip manufacturing, depends on the details — which are sparse at this point.
Elsewhere on the chip front, Qualcomm is getting more acquisitive, looking at buying chipmaker Alphawave, on top of buying Vietnamese artificial intelligence research group MovianAI earlier this week and Edge Impulse last month.
OpenAI raised a ridiculous amount of money, a record-setting $40 billion — so much that it utterly skewed the latest venture capital stats. As capable as the company is, a valuation of $300 billion leaves absolutely no room for error, even if the errors aren’t its own. Indeed, Trump’s tariffs could slow down AI growth by making data center components more expensive, and already Alibaba and Microsoft are slowing their data center spending.
Yet the AI funding keeps on coming: Alphabet spinout Isomorphic Labs also bagged $600 million and Runway AI $308 million. One rather concerning observation on generative AI from a new Gartner report: “Consumers are not chasing these features. As the manufacturers embed AI as a standard feature in consumer devices, consumers will be forced to purchase them.” Hmm.
But AI is about to reset the cybersecurity industry, as Dave and Zeus outlined in the latest Breaking Analysis. And sure enough, a new study shows AI is now outperforming human red teams. Moreover, investors and cyber companies are betting on the reset, as ReliaQuest raised $500 million and Cyberhaven snagged $100 million for their AI-driven cyber tools, and others such as Solarwinds and Exabeam upped their AI games.
The TikTok drama drags on as Trump said he would sign an executive order to extend the ban by 75 days — apparently after China indicated it would reject the deal over tariffs.
Here’s the news from this week from News and beyond:
AI and data: Open cash register for OpenAI
Money matters
OpenAI bags $40B in funding, increasing its post-money valuation to $300B
Siemens to buy life sciences R&D company Dotmatics for $5.1B
Alphabet spinout Isomorphic Labs raises $600M for its AI drug design engine
AI video generation startup Runway raises $308M round backed by Nvidia
Gartner forecasts worldwide generative AI spending to reach $644B in 2025 Interesting quote from Distinguished VP Analyst John-David Lovelock, building on the forecast that 80% of that spending will be on hardware such as servers, smartphones and PCs: “Consumers are not chasing these features. As the manufacturers embed AI as a standard feature in consumer devices, consumers will be forced to purchase them.”
Microsoft scales back global AI data center expansion plans amid emerging low-cost model trends
Global VC funding hits $113 billion in first quarter, driven by outsized AI deals
Data management startup Hydrolix reels in $80M
Qualcomm acquires MovianAI to bolster its AI capabilities
Unframe launches with $50M in funding to offer outcome-based AI solutions for businesses
DevOps startup Opsera raises $20M to accelerate software delivery with AI agents
Sourcetable gets $4.3M in funding to help everyone become a spreadsheet power user
AutonomyAI launches with $4M to build front-end development AI agents
FurtherAI gets $4M in funding to further AI automation in the insurance sector
Vallor raises $4M to advance AI automation for enterprise procurement
Policy
To its credit, Google is keeping the focus on AI safety as artificial general intelligence looms, with a new paper outlining more clearly what the actual risks are — four of them, in fact: Google DeepMind outlines safety framework for future AGI development
New models and services
OpenAI to launch its first ‘open-weights’ model since 2019
Google makes its reasoning-optimized Gemini 2.5 Pro model available in public preview
Microsoft extends Azure Foundry with new AI development tools
Exclusive: Panzura unlocks metadata from IBM Deep Archive files for AI training
Amazon introduces Nova Act, an AI agent that can use a web browser
AWS brings its generative AI assistant to the Amazon OpenSearch Service
Kong’s updated AI Gateway helps to secure AI model production deployments
Emergence AI is using AI agents to build new AI agents in real-time
Cognition AI launches revamped coding assistant Devin 2.0 with much lower starting price
Runway launches new Gen-4 AI video generator
French startup Gladia launches next-generation multilingual speech-to-text AI model Solaria
Oumi releases small-parameter hallucination detection model to open source
There’s even more AI and big data news on News
Around the enterprise: The Trump Slump arrives
Top news
Trump tanks tech titans (and ultimately almost everyone else): Tech stocks slump after Trump announces ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
Updated: TSMC reportedly discussing chipmaking joint venture with Intel
Selected coverage from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon
Agents, DeepSeek and MCP: Kubernetes adapts to the brave new world of AI
KubeCon day 1 keynote analysis: Taming multicloud complexity with cloud-native observability and automation
KubeCon London: Europe takes the cloud-native reins
New products and services
Lightmatter turbocharges GPU connectivity with its first photonics-based networking interconnects
Splunk boosts OpenTelemetry support in its observability framework
Parasail promises to power any AI workload with on-demand access to cloud-based GPUs
LoftLabs launches vNode to enhance secure workload isolation in Kubernetes
Money matters
Qualcomm weighing acquisition of publicly traded chip designer Alphawave
CoreWeave shares rip nearly 42% higher Tuesday, rising above IPO price
United Microelectronics shares close up 9% on report of potential GlobalFoundries deal
AMD completes acquisition of ZT Systems
Financial technology startup Plaid closes $575M investment at $6B valuation
Temporal raises $146M for its application reliability platform
AI data center infrastructure company Retym launches alongside $75M raise
Cerebras wins DARPA contract to build AI system with co-packaged optics
ControlTheory launches with $5M in funding to tackle observability cost and complexity
Penguin Solutions beats estimates and raises guidance on growing AI infrastructure demand
Progress Software pleases investors as it beats expectations and raises guidance
Intel has a new(ish) brand identity: “That’s the power of Intel Inside.”
We have plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat: The AI reset
Analysis
Breaking Analysis: Security do-over: How Palo Alto Networks sees the reset
And it’s coming fast: AI phishing hits its Skynet moment as agents outperform human red teams
Money matters
ReliaQuest raises $500M at $3.4B valuation to expand AI-driven cybersecurity
Cyberhaven nabs $100M for its AI-powered data protection platform
Adaptive Security raises $43M for its AI cyberattack simulation platform
Prowler raises $12.5M to advance its open-source driven cloud security platform
Red-teaming startup Yrikka launches with pre-seed funding to secure critical AI systems
Attack & response
Oracle denies cloud breach, while researchers point to credible indicators But then: Oracle reportedly informs clients of system breach following earlier denial
Cisco Talos report finds identity-based attacks drove majority of cyber incidents in 2024
JFrog report finds AI growth driving new software supply chain threats
Policy
Trump fires NSA director, deputy and ‘at least’ five NSC aides
New services
Exabeam introduces Nova AI agent to streamline threat detection and response
SolarWinds expands AI capabilities across observability and IT management portfolio
Google launches client-side end-to-end email encryption
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere around tech: Another crypto IPO
Stablecoin firm Circle seeks IPO following earlier SPAC setback
Humanoid robot creator Agility Robotics targets $400M funding round
Amazon to send 27 Kuiper communications satellites into orbit next month
Report: X could be looking at $1B fine from EU over illicit content and misinformation
D-Wave and Japan Tobacco use quantum to build a better AI model for drug discovery
As TikTok ban looms, Substack launches short video content
Tech upgrades to SF Giants’ Oracle Park aimed at removing friction from fan experience
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings
Nineteen-year Google veteran Sissie Hsiao, who led its consumer AI apps such as its chatbot Gemini, has stepped down and will take a break before picking up something else at Google. Josh Woodward, who leads Google Labs and oversaw the launch of NotebookLM, replaced her (per Semafor).
Joelle Pineau, Meta Platforms’ head of artificial intelligence research, said on LinkedIn that she will leave May 30, “taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”
Alteryx hired longtime Microsoft exec Ben Canning as chief product officer.
Data platform provider Nasuni appointed Veracode veteran Sam King CEO.
NinjaOne appointed John Sapone chief revenue officer
Monday.com also appointed a new CRO, Casey George, Qlik’s former EVP of global sales.
Intel Chief People Officer Christy Pambianchi is leaving to take the top human resources job at Caterpillar (per CRN).
WordPress creator Automattic laid off 16% of its staff, or 281 people, for all the usual corporate-speak reasons.
What’s next
April 9-11: Google Cloud Next, Las Vegas: News and theCUBE will both be onsite for all the news, interviews and analysis.
Image: News/Ideogram
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