Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is getting put through a ringer, isn’t he?
First Trump says he should be fired, then he praises him to the skies, then he apparently wants the government to buy a stake in the company — though given it’s Trump, that’s far from certain. But if that sounds weird, think what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang must be thinking: Trump demanded and apparently will get 15% of revenue from AI chip exports to China.
New-age search engine Perplexity made an audacious $34.5 billion bid to buy Google’s Chrome browser, which is not even for sale yet, pending a court decision. But it reportedly had to raise a new round to show it’s serious, which remains in doubt despite its claim that it has several venture funds interested in backing its bid.
It turns out OpenAI’s celebrated launch of GPT-5 wasn’t so great after all, with lots of problems and complaints. It’s never a good thing when you have to restore access to the older model — especially when rivals are happy to step in provide their product for free.
It’s still party time in crypto, as cryptocurrency exchange Bullish went public, seeing its shares more than double on the first day.
Enterprise earnings reports were another mixed bag this week, as Cisco Systems outperformed thanks to AI infrastructure deals, but Applied Materials plunged after a downbeat forecast that signals potential trouble for the chip industry, and AI cloud data center provider CoreWeave tanked as capacity constraints and the expiration of the IPO stock-sale lockup by insiders spooked investors.
Up next week are earnings reports from Palo Alto Networks, Workday and Zoom.
You can dig deeper into this and more news on John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, up now on YouTube.
Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news and analysis this week from News and beyond:
AI and data: OpenAI’s stumble
Analysis and research
The AGI debate is misguided. The bigger potential is Enterprise General Intelligence
A practical framework for CIOs to succeed in the agentic era
Researchers jailbreak GPT-5 with multi-turn Echo Chamber storytelling
Policy
Report: US government placing trackers in AI server shipments to enforce chip export controls
Money matters
Nvidia backs $500M funding round for Cohere at $6.8B valuation
AI coding assistant startup Cognition reportedly raises nearly $500M on $9.8B valuation
Elon Musk to sue Apple over ChatGPT’s App Store ranking
DeepSeek R2 model release reportedly held back by faulty Huawei chips
Oof: C3.ai fell more than 27% on revenue miss, management shakeup
AI startup Landbase buys AI startup Adauris to enhance inbound go-to-market automation
Reddit says its blocking the Internet Archive to stop sneaky AI scrapers accessing its content
Squint gets $40M in funding to accelerate human-to-machine collaboration in manufacturing
Arintra raises $21M Series A to expand beyond autonomous medical coding
Sola Solutions raises $17.5M to enhance enterprise process automation
Seoul-based Datumo raises $15.5M to take on Scale AI, backed by Salesforce (per News)
Former Google Distinguished Engineer David Petrou raises $8M to launch ‘social AI’ startup Continua
Datasite, provider of workflow collaboration and automation solutions for M&A and investment, acquires agentic AI company Blueflame
Refold AI raises $6.5M to simplify enterprise software integrations and APIs
Archestra raises $3.3M to secure enterprise use of AI agents and MCP servers
New models and services
OpenAI restores GPT-4o access in ChatGPT after user complaints
Elon Musk’s xAI opens Grok 4 access to free tier as GPT-5 backlash grows
Google’s Gemma 3 270M is a compact yet powerful AI model that can run on your toaster
Nvidia debuts next-gen agentic AI and reasoning robotic models at SIGGRAPH 2025
NSF and Nvidia partner develop fully open AI models to lead US science innovation
Nvidia releases massive AI-ready European language dataset and tools
Startup led by Parag Agrawal launches research platform for AI applications
A Michigan elementary school is kicking off a new era of generative design
Ai2 releases an open AI model that allows robots to ‘plan’ movements in 3D space
Brightwave’s new platform orchestrates autonomous agents to create extensive research reports on any topic
Bright Data debuts free tier of The Web MCP to support real-time AI interaction with the web
Sentry launches MCP Server Monitoring to give developers deeper operational insight
Vercel’s v0.app launches, allowing anyone to create and deploy a working app or website using prompts
Sentient launches The GRID to connect and make money from open AI agents
House of Highways launches an AI travel companion for nomadic RV living
There’s even more AI and big data news on News
Around the enterprise: Trump’s Intel about-face
Analysis
Wrapping up the meaning of recent results from cloud computing leaders: Breaking Analysis: Cloud Quarterly: Azure AI pop, AWS supply pinch and Google execution
Policy
The “policy” behind these deals looks at best like China’s government-controlled economy, which would be bad enough, but — somebody’s got to say it — it looks even more like the shakedowns of a gangster. When are we going to admit as a country that this kind of thing isn’t good for anybody but, maybe, Trump and his cronies?
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan set to meet with Trump to discuss his business dealings And then, magically:
Trump apparently reverses stance on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, hailing his success as an ‘amazing story’
And… Intel shares jump on report that US government could buy stake
Nvidia, AMD to pay US government 15% of revenue from AI chip exports to China In more detail: What else to know, from the Wall Street Journal
Money matters
Perplexity AI makes audacious $34.5B all-cash bid for Google’s Chrome browser
And to show it’s serious: Perplexity reportedly seeking new funding on $20B valuation one month after $100M raise
Workday acquires Flowise to boost AI-powered workflows
Report: AI cloud operator Lambda could raise funding at $4B+ valuation
Cloud startup Vercel fields offers for $9B valuation (per The Information)
AI chip startup Rivos reportedly seeking up to $500M in funding
NeoLogic raises $10M to develop power-efficient server processors
Infinity Loop raises $5M to expand contract intelligence platform
Earnings:
AI infrastructure deals fuel strong earnings for Cisco
Circle posts strong quarterly growth, but shares drop on proposed stock sale
CoreWeave’s stock crumbles on wider-than-expected loss
Applied Materials’ stock plunges on a downbeat forecast that signals more misery for chipmakers
Quantum computing company Rigetti’s earnings and revenue miss estimates and stock falls 4%
Chinese PC maker Lenovo fiscal Q1 profit doubles, revenue up 22%
New products and services
Dell and HPE extend AI infrastructure lines with new Nvidia-powered systems
SiMa.ai launches Modalix, a next-gen system-on-chip for physical AI into production
Policy
Australian court finds Apple and Google breached competition rules with app stores
We have lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat: Exchange server alert
Attack & response
Nearly 30,000 Microsoft Exchange servers remain unpatched against critical hybrid flaw
Nearly half of enterprises tested had passwords cracked in Picus Security report
Study finds newer LLMs introduce more severe coding bugs despite higher benchmark scores
Abnormal Security finds law enforcement email accounts sold for as little as $40 on dark web
New services
Palo Alto Networks adds quantum readiness and AI-driven protections in PAN-OS 12.1 Orion
SonicWall launches Generation 8 firewalls with unified management and built-in zero trust security
Money matters
1Kosmos raises $57M to advance passwordless authentication and global identity security expansion
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech: Crypto parties on
Shares of crypto exchange Bullish jump 120%+ in trading debut
HTC unveils Vive Eagle AI-enabled smart eyewear to take on Meta
Apple reportedly targeting 2027 release for tabletop robot with movable display
High Court rejects Wikipedia’s challenge to UK online safety laws
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings
The AI talent wars rage on:
Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI, is leaving the company to focus on AI safety
Anthropic nabbed Humanloop team as competition for enterprise AI talent heats up (per News).
Cohere hired longtime Meta research head Joelle Pineau as its chief AI officer (per News).
Microsoft to integrate GitHub more closely with its CoreAI unit after CEO Thomas Dohmke‘s departure
SnapLogic founder and CEO Gaurav Dhillon is retiring.
OpenText ousted CEO Mark Barrenechea, plans to exit ‘noncore assets’ (per CRN). Executive Vice President of International Sales James McGourlay will replace him on an interim basis.
LaunchDarkly co‑founder Edith Harbaugh is returning as CEO. Dan Rogers, who had been CEO since February 2023, has moved to executive chair of the board. Marcus Holm, formerly chief revenue officer, has been promoted to president.
Cato Networks promoted Eyal Heiman to chief technology officer.
F5 laid off more than 100 employees as part of product organization shifts (per CRN).
What’s next
Earnings
Monday, Aug. 18: Palo Alto Networks
Thursday, Aug. 21: Workday, Zoom
Photo: Robert Hof/ News
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