AI lifts Alphabet to $4T valuation, but competition remains fierce – News

Google parent company Alphabet hit the $4 trillion mark this week, second only to Nvidia in market capitalization, and no wonder.

It kept showing off its newfound AI prowess, as Apple will use Gemini in the background for Siri, and Google released a new personalization tool for Gemini as well as a new protocol for agentic shopping. But as CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) surely knows, the competition remains fierce, as Anthropic released Cowork, an AI companion for Claude Code, that’s getting a lot of plaudits even though it’s not widely available yet.

As for Nvidia, it reset AI factory economics again at CES. TheCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and David Floyer contends it’s actually widening the gap with all the competitors out there from startups to Google.

That isn’t stopping investors in AI chip startups such as Cerebras and Etched.ai from continuing to plow ahead with big fundings. And maybe they have a point, at least in Cerebras’ case: it got OpenAI’s blessing in the form of a $10 billion-plus contract for compute. No doubt Cerebras’ new IPO filing is coming soon.

If so, it needs to get in line. This year’s IPO derby gets underway next week with expected offerings from BitGo — just a warmup for many more much bigger ones likely to come, possibly Anthropic and OpenAI. Motive was also scheduled, but The Information reported late Friday that it’s delaying its marketing of the offering.

Meantime, AI is starting to transform retail, as John Furrier outlined in an analysis out of the National Retail Federation’s annual show in New York, which was an AI lovefest.

Microsoft this week charted a bold path to data center power independence. Given the specific promises, it’s on the hook now to deliver.

CrowdStrike struck again, buying Seraphic Security for a reported $400 million, as the consolidation trend in cybersecurity continued.

Meta keeps playing musical chairs, laying off 10% of its virtual reality staff while creating a new unit for all that AI infrastructure it’s building. For that matter, the whole AI industry looks like a revolving door, especially at Thinking Machines, the Mira Murati AI startup that’s hemorrhaging people back to OpenAI whence they came.

And finally, Intel will kick off the enterprise tech earnings season next week.

Here’s all of this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news and analysis from News, theCUBE Research and beyond:

AI and data: Don’t drag your feet on AI factories

Analysis and food for thought

Nvidia resets the economics of AI factories, again

Retail 2026: When AI becomes the operating system

Gartner says worldwide AI spending will total $2.5 trillion this year. Money quote from Distinguished VP Analyst John-David Lovelock: “Because AI is in the Trough of Disillusionment throughout 2026, it will most often be sold to enterprises by their incumbent software provider rather than bought as part of a new moonshot project. The improved predictability of ROI must occur before AI can truly be scaled up by the enterprise.”

Indeed, we still need way better AI, if a Workday survey this week is any indication: Some 85% of respondents said AI saved one to seven hours a week, but more than a third of the time savings is lost to correcting errors, rewriting and verifying content, and just 14% reported consistently positive outcomes from AI.

Rich countries’ greater use of AI risks deepening inequality, Anthropic warns

Matthew McConaughey trademarks himself to fight AI misuse (per Wall Street Journal)

Online music store and community Bandcamp has banned AI-generated music from its site

New models and services

Apple will use Google’s Gemini models to power new Siri release

Google introduces Personal Intelligence personalization tool for Gemini

Google debuts Universal Commerce Protocol to streamline agentic shopping automation

Late-breaking Friday: OpenAI to start testing ChatGPT ads across free, Go tiers

Anthropic’s Cowork is a more accessible version of Claude Code

Anthropic pushes into healthcare to help patients understand their medical records

MongoDB combines database and embedding models for simplified AI development

And more reporting from MongoDB’s event in San Francisco Thursday: Data retrieval and embeddings enhancements from MongoDB set the stage for a year of specialized AI

Fetch.ai launches FetchCoder V2 to help developers ship autonomous agents

Salesforce makes revamped Slackbot generally available

Box unlocks agentic data extraction to help companies dig up insights faster

Tines launches AI interaction layer to unify agents, copilots and workflows

DianaHR deploys onboarding agent to cut HR’s paperwork gravity

JumpCloud unveils new AI capabilities to secure and manage enterprise AI adoption

Everseen adds a conversational intelligence layer to its AI theft-prevention system

Zeus Kerravala’s wrap on Jensen Huang’s keynote: Five thoughts from Nvidia’s keynote at CES

Money matters

Robot software startup Skild AI raises $1.4B round backed by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos

Nvidia, Lilly to invest up to $1B in new AI medical research lab

Database maker ClickHouse raises $400M, acquires AI observability startup Langfuse

Parloa raises $350M to make enterprise customer experience fully conversational

Onebrief raises $200M at $2.15B valuation, acquires Battle Road Digital

French fighter company Dassault invests $200M in autonomous drone startup Harmattan AI

Real-time voice AI unicorn Deepgram raises $130M to streamline human-to-machine interactions

Manufacturing automation software startup Tulip hits unicorn status with $120M raise

Higgsfield raises $80M on $1.3B valuation to scale AI video platform

Sovereign AI unicorn webAI’s value soars to $2.5B after ‘double-digit’ funding round

Cloudflare buys Human Native to strengthen licensed data access for AI developers

Phenom acquires Included to expand agentic people analytics capabilities

GovDash secures $30M to expand AI-driven government contracting software

Converge Bio raises $25M to accelerate drug discovery using generative AI solutions

VoiceRun gets $5.5M in seed funding to give enterprises more control over voice AI agents

Nvidia’s NVentures backs Harmonic AI in funding round for mathematical superintelligence

Policy

After backlash, X restricts Grok from generating sexualized images of real people

Around the enterprise: Big bucks for AI chip startups

Policy

Late-breaking Friday: Google is appealing DOJ ruling on its search antitrust case

Money matters

Microsoft details plan to prevent its data centers from straining power, water resources

AI chip unicorns Etched.ai and Cerebras Systems get big funding boost to target Nvidia

OpenAI commits to buying $10B+ worth of AI compute capacity from Cerebras Systems

TSMC tops revenue expectations amid strong demand for advanced nodes

Alpaca raises $150M to grow its brokerage account management platform

Warehouse automation startup Mytra snags $120M in funding

Wasabi’s cloud storage service gets $70M funding boost

Cast AI raises funds from Pacific Alliance Ventures at $1B valuation to launch unified GPU marketplace

IO River raises $20M to decouple edge infrastructure from services

New products and services

Meta Platforms creates new organization to lead its AI infrastructure buildout

HPE Networking rolls out a bevy of retail products at NRF 2026

IBM launches cloud platform tuned for digital sovereignty requirements

Owkin unveils biology-focused AI agents for clinical research and drug discovery

Acronis launches Archival Storage to give MSPs long-term, compliant data retention

Presidio rolls out Adaptive Cloud Services on AWS for cloud operations and cost management

Cyber beat: CrowdStrike hoovers up another startup

Money matters

CrowdStrike acquires browser security startup Seraphic Security for $400M

Veeam acquires Object First in move to expand data resiliency (per CRN)

Torq raises $140M at $1.2B valuation to scale AI-driven security hyperautomation

Aikido Security raises $60M round at $1B valuation to unify application security

Novee launches with $51.5M to bring continuous AI offensive security to enterprises

Depthfirst secures $40M to expand agentic approach to software security

Attack & response

Trellix warns of advanced Facebook phishing using browser-in-the-browser attacks

Instagram denies data breach after password reset emails spark leak claims

New services

After raising $59M, WitnessAI debuts Agentic Security as enterprises deploy more autonomous AI agents

Nozomi Networks launches new Vantage IQ private AI assistant for OT and IoT security teams

Upstream partners with Škoda to strengthen connected vehicle cybersecurity

Elsewhere in tech: IPO for BitGo

Custodial wallet provider BitGo files for $201M public offering

Meta prepares new round of Reality Labs layoffs as AI takes priority

Meta to stop selling Quest headsets to businesses, discontinue multiple VR features

OpenAI invests in brain-computer interface developer Merge Labs

Defense Unicorns bags $136 million in funding to deliver secure military software updates

Irish startup Equal1 receives $60M to start deploying its scalable quantum computing tech

Project Eleven raises $20M to prepare cryptoasset blockchains for the quantum era

Konnex nabs $15M to decentralize autonomous robotic labor

Quantum software startup Haiqu raises $11M to launch hardware-aware operating system

Comings and goings: AI’s revolving door

Thinking Machines co-founders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz and founding team member Sam Schoenholz are leaving the fledgling AI lab, which was co-founded by CEO and former OpenAI exec Mira Murati, and rejoining OpenAI (per Wired). OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, shared the news in a memo to staff. A source close to Thinking Machines alleged that Zoph had shared confidential company information with competitors, though he has not responded to the allegation. According to Simo’s memo, Zoph told Murati Monday he was considering leaving and was fired two days later. Simo said OpenAI doesn’t share the same concerns about Zoph as Murati. In addition, The Information reported Thursday, Lia Guy and Ian O’Connell, members of technical staff at Thinking Machines Lab,  are leaving — Guy to OpenAI, O’Connell to parts unknown.

Scott Rosecrans, AWS’ now-former vice president of AI sales and strategic pursuits, joined OpenAI as (per CRN).

Onetime Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is moving from chief product officer at Anthropic to co-lead Labs, its internal incubator. Also at Anthropic, Andrea Vallone, one of OpenAI’s senior safety research leads, joined its alignment team.

Open-source data science platform provider Knime appointed a new CEO, former Piano CEO Trevor Kaufman, replacing founder Michael Berthold.

HR software firm Oyster also has a new CEO: former Coople CEO Hadi Moussa. He succeeds founder and CEO Tony Jamous, who will become executive chairman.

Meta hired former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chair.

Airbnb named Ahmad Al-Dahle, a former leader of AI at Meta, its new chief technology officer.

Cloud security firm Zscaler appointed Dr. Swamy Kocherlakota EVP of agentic AI security engineering.

Enterprise AI firm Writer named Mina Alaghband its first chief customer officer.

Security veteran RSA hired Ryan Toben as CCO.

Anti-ransomware platform Halcyon appointed Ryan Schultz CCO.

Former CISA Director Jen Easterly is new CEO of the RSAC Conference.

Presidio tapped Dell veteran Chad Dunn to lead new solutions engineering unit (per CRN).

Cyber insurance firm Cowbell appointed Simon Hughes chief commercial officer.

AI development platform OutSystems named a new chief financial officer: former AppFolio CFO and ServiceNow exec Fay Sien Goon.

What’s next

Events

Jan. 19-23: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

IPO watch:

Wednesday, Jan. 21: BitGo

Earnings:

Tuesday, Jan. 20: Progress Software

Thursday, Jan. 22: Intel, Mobileye

Photo: Robert Hof/ News