Big Tech escapes tariffs’ impact for now, but investors are wary – and should be – News

Investors mostly breathed a sigh of relief this week that Trump’s tariffs haven’t yet hit tech company earnings.

Alphabet, SAP, ServiceNow and most chipmakers managed to dodge the impact in their latest reports this week. But investors are understandably wary, because nobody knows what comes next: They knocked IBM’s stock down after it said it’s exposed to DOGE cuts given its large government business.

Intel remains a work in progress, at best. Its stock dived on disappointing guidance. And it reportedly is laying off an additional 20% of its staff — 20,000 people — following earlier rounds of downsizing. New CEO Lip-Bu Tan has a short runway to show how he’s going to turn it around.

Artificial intelligence agents are coming — but despite the enormous hype right now, it’s going to be awhile before most enterprises really embrace them beyond a few limited use cases. There’s just a lot of stepping stones to lay in data foundations and governance, software development tools and more before we get to the promised land of agentic AI.

A lot of startups are looking to provide those stepping stones, as AI tools companies continue to raise significant rounds — and some are already starting to sell out to the bigger firms.

Cybersecurity remains a bright spot in tech, with both a large number of new services introduced along with many new startup fundings this week — led by Chainguard raising $356 million at a $3.5 billion valuation.

Supposedly Elon Musk is stepping back a bit from DOGE to spend more time on his flailing Tesla, but I doubt we’re done with his mischief.

Google and Meta remain under fire from regulators and judges, as they each face the potential to divest or unwind significant parts of their businesses. But Meta also is struggling at its namesake metaverse business all by itself, laying off some staff in its mixed reality lab as AI has sucked all the air out of the room.

Another big slate of earnings hits next week, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Qualcomm and Meta.

The RSAC 2025 Conference starts Sunday, and News, theCUBE and theCUBE Research will be onsite with all the news, analysis and interviews.

Here’s all the news this week from News and beyond, along with analysis and some food for thought on AI:

AI and data: Agentic AI is coming — but slowly

Analysis

A couple of “not so fast” takes on agentic AI:

Breaking Analysis: The long road to agentic AI – hype vs. enterprise reality

How AI-driven development tools impact software observability

Weekend reading: a few widely ranging looks at the present and future of AI:

From Ethan Mollick: On Jagged AGI: o3, Gemini 2.5, and everything after

From Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor at Princeton: AI as normal technology

From the AI Futures Project: AI 2027

Policy

Former OpenAI staff and AI experts ask attorneys general to block for-profit conversion

Anthropic launches AI welfare research program These folks really need to stop with the woo-woo consciousness stuff. AI models, “reasoning” or not, are not conscious in any meaningful way, and won’t be no matter how much data is thrown at them.

Money matters

Datadog snaps up Metaplane to improve data quality for AI applications and systems

Supabase reels in $200M for its open-source relational database

Manychat gets $140 million to expand social chat with AI agents

Legal AI tech startup Noxtua raises €80.7M to help European lawyers automate their work

Ocient raises $42.1M more for its speedy data analytics platform

Product intelligence startup Bagel AI raises $5.5M to help companies build what their customers want

Startup Kollegio raises $2.8M for AI-powered college counseling service

New models and services

Docker to streamline and secure AI software delivery through containerization

Nvidia announces general availability of NeMo tools for building AI agents

Adobe unveils new Firefly generative AI models and creative tools

Microsoft will soon launch a new version of 365 Copilot app

Dataiku introduces AI Agents to unify and govern enterprise agent deployments

Character.AI unveils AvatarFX to make images into lifelike chatbots

Relyance AI’s new data tracking tool paves the way for greater AI accountability and explainability

Sumer Sports brings AI analytics to the NFL

Descope launches Agentic Identity Hub to simplify authentication for AI agents and workflows

Indicium launches IndiMesh to streamline enterprise AI and data delivery

IBM’s open-source TerraMind AI uses 9 data modalities to transform Earth observation

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

Around the enterprise: Tech earnings dodge tariff mess — so far

Money matters

Report: Intel to lay off 20%+ of its workforce in efficiency push

ChEmpower raises $18.7M to advance semiconductor chip polishing technology

Cloud Capital raises millions in funding to save customers millions on cloud costs

Tech earnings kick off in earnest:

Alphabet crushes expectations, with cloud, AI and search all showing strength

IBM beats forecasts and says it’s well-positioned to weather a trade war but stock falls on outlook

Intel’s stock dives on lower guidance as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan outlines long-term vision

SAP tops earnings forecast, says tariffs haven’t disrupted its pipeline

Tesla stock rises despite earnings miss as Musk shifts focus back to company

ServiceNow dodges tariff and DOGE threats, beating forecasts and raising guidance

SK Hynix quarterly profit soars 158% to top estimates as chip demand surges on AI boom

Global chipmaker STMicroelectronics sees Q2 revenue boost

Cyber firm Check Point Software edges past earnings estimates but stock drops almost 4%

Workflow automation platform Pegasystems earnings beat expectations, stock jumps 29%

Policy

Paul Graham criticizes Palantir over ‘ImmigrationOS’ contract with ICE

Foreign students face deportation under Trump immigration crackdown

FTC sues Uber over Uber One subscription billing practices

Worrisome, to say the least: DOGE is just getting warmed up (per Wired)

New products and services

Lenovo announces new ‘AI-ready’ infrastructure systems in its largest-ever storage refresh

Visa announces product design platform to streamline payment app development

Google scales back cookie-focused Privacy Sandbox initiative

Respondology raises $5M to help brands moderate social media comments

In a First, Scientists Sent Quantum Messages a Record Distance Over a Traditional Network (per the Wall Street Journal)

We have lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: Full speed ahead

Analysis

Cyber risk management takes center stage during ‘The ART of Security Summit’

New services

Veeam debuts data resilience maturity model to help enterprises reduce cyber risk exposure

BlinkOps launches no-code custom cybersecurity AI agent builder

1Password launches Agentic AI Security and extends XAM platform capabilities

Harness and Traceable launch cloud-native security service for modern applications

Dashlane launches AI-powered Omnix platform to tackle phishing and shadow IT

Action1 expands enterprise capabilities with advanced autonomous patching and analytics

Snyk API & Web simplifies app security testing with AI-powered tools

Cycode introduces new cybersecurity features for development teams

Permiso launches unified identity security platform for cloud and on-premises environments

Strider upgrades Spark platform to deliver faster threat intelligence against nation-state attacks

Semperis debuts Ready1 to streamline enterprise cyber crisis response

Money matters

Socket acquires Coana to enhance static analysis and reachability in software composition analysis

Open-source code security startup Chainguard raises $356M at $3.5B valuation

Endor Labs raises $93M to secure AI-generated code from vulnerabilities

Sentra lands $50M to scale cloud-native data security and AI safeguards

Cynomi nabs $37M for its AI-powered vCISO platform

Push Security raises $30M to expand browser-based identity threat detection

Cloud security startup Reco raises $25M in funding

Browser security startup SquareX nabs $20M in funding

Miggo Security raises $17M to advance real-time application threat protection

Jericho Security raises $15M to enhance AI-powered employee cybersecurity training

Scamnetic lands $13M to scale up its AI-driven scam defense platform

Hopper raises $7.6M to accelerate software development with streamlined risk management

SixMap raises $7M to expand enterprise-grade attack surface management

Security operations startup Kenzo raises $4.5M to expand AI-powered platform

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere around tech: Google and Meta under fire

Google hits back as DOJ pushes to break its stranglehold on web search

OpenAI says it would jump at the chance to buy Chrome from Google I bet. But I doubt it happens.

EU issues €700M in fines to Apple, Meta over DMA breaches

Instagram co-founder supports FTC’s case in landmark Meta monopoly trial

But in another way, Meta itself may take care of downsizing itself: Meta cuts jobs at its Reality Labs mixed reality unit

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

Comings and goings

Teradata appointed former Thoughtspot exec Sumeet Arora chief product officer.

Data platform Starburst appointed former Moveworks head of engineering Jitender Aswani SVP of engineering.

Christopher Burger is new chief information security officer at F5.

What’s next

Events

April 28-May 1: RSA Conference, San Francisco: TheCUBE will be onsite for interviews and analysis, and so will News for all the news.

Earnings: Another big week:

Monday, April 28: NXP Semi, Cadence, F5

Tuesday, April 29: Commvault, Samsung, Tenable, Freshworks, Seagate, Snap

Wednesday, April 30: Western Digital, Extreme Networks, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Confluent, Equinix, OpenText, Robinhood

Thursday, May 1: Amazon, Apple, Block, Atlassian, Twilio, Five9, Juniper

Image: News/ChatGPT