Investors are still looking askance at both software-as-a-service and traditional companies that might get disintermediated by AI as well as the AI companies and cloud providers that are spending all that money, wondering if they’ll get the return they’re hoping for.
But not to worry too much: Dave Vellante and John Furrier each dug into how investors are looking at the situation, and why they basically need to calm down.
Indeed, investor worries haven’t stopped some very big fundings. Anthropic Thursday raised a $30 billion Series G round at a stunning $380 billion valuation, which might possibly be the last before a potential initial public offering this year. Databricks closed a $7 billion round and also finally hinted at an IPO — likely another one of the biggest if it happens this year. And Google closed a $30 billion debt financing to pay for all those AI factories.
Here come the AI ads, at least from OpenAI. One of its now-former staff, however, isn’t too happy about how it’s going to happen. And that’s just one of several warnings about AI, mostly from AI insiders, that keep piling up.
With a series of new products this week, Cisco is clearly aiming to be seen as an AI company. Investor reaction to its earnings report, however, indicates it still has a way to go.
Using the hot agentic AI framework OpenClaw? Beware. Cyber holes everywhere.
Neurons as living computers? I’ll believe it when I see it, but it’s certainly an intriguing way of, well, maybe making all those data centers moot. One company with an admirably straightforward name, The Biological Computing Co., just got $25 million to start making it happen.
Whoa, Kyndryl sure hit the wall. Heads rolled at the IBM spinoff, but not CEO Martin Schroeter’s. Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach wasn’t so lucky, as co-founder Aneel Bhusri replaced him after disappointing earnings. If investors are right about AI slowing SaaS growth, more CEOs may be looking for work.
Earnings reports slow down for a week, as Palo Alto Networks is the only marquee name to pay attention to next week, though the week after that, get ready for Nvidia and a bunch of other big names.
Here’s all the news, analysis and commentary on enterprise and emerging tech this week from News, theCUBE Research and beyond:
AI and data: Move along, no SaaSpocalypse to see here
Analysis and food for thought
Cloud earnings bring capex clarity, concern and confusion
The SaaSpocalypse mispricing: Why markets are getting the AI-software shakeout wrong
Six shifts that will make or break enterprise AI
Anthropic vows to protect consumers from rising electricity costs
Something Big Is Happening, says entrepreneur and investor Matt Shumer. Well, yeah, sure. And most of this is good advice. But it still seems to me that change in many of these domains — like, say, journalism, which he mentions in passing, but a lot of others too — will take longer than either AI boosters or AI doomers think. People still want to know what other people think, not just what AI predicts they’ll think.
About that AI productivity: AI doesn’t reduce work — it intensifies it (per Harvard Business Review) One commenter on a Hacker News thread: “Since my team has jumped into an AI everything working style, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled and actual productivity has only gone up by maybe 10%.”
Claude could be misused for “heinous crimes,” Anthropic warns
OpenAI researcher quits over slippery slope of ChatGPT ads
Money matters
Anthropic closes $30B round after annualized revenue tops $14B
Databricks closes $7B+ financing round at $134B valuation
Report: AI model compression startup Multiverse seeking €500M funding round
ServiceNow buys Pyramid Analytics to streamline access to business intelligence
AI infrastructure giant Nebius buys agentic search startup Tavily
World model startup Runway closes $315M funding round
Phenom strengthens AI hiring platform with Be Applied acquisition
AI inference startup Modal Labs in talks to raise at $2.5B valuation, sources say (per News)
AI digital twin startup Simile raises $100M in funding
Digital twin startup Neara raises $63M to help power companies cope with AI’s energy demands
Entire launches with $60M to build an AI-focused code management platform
Physical AI startup Gather AI raises $40M to expand warehouse intelligence
Didero raises $30M early-stage round to expand agentic AI for enterprise procurement
Newo lands $25M to bring production-ready AI receptionists to small businesses
AI startup The Biological Computing Co. raises $21M to swap out silicon for lab-grown brains
Matia raises $21M to help enterprises consolidate their data management operations
Agentic financial modeling startup Meridian gets $17M in funding
Former Founders Fund VC Sam Blond launches AI sales startup Monaco to upend Salesforce (per News)
Dono raises $6.5M seed round to modernize property records with AI
Manufact raises $6.3M to help developers connect AI agents with Model Context Protocol
Mozart AI raises $6M to bring generative AI music creation to the masses
New models and services
OpenAI starts displaying ads to some ChatGPT users in the US
OpenAI’s rapid GPT-5.3-Codex model moves beyond simple coding tasks
Google’s Gemini 3 Deep Think gets an upgrade to advance science, research and engineering
Ai2 introduces AutoDiscovery, an automated scientific discovery AI system
Oracle adds more than 40 agents to Fusion Cloud suite
Kong debuts Context Mesh to enable automatic discovery of enterprise APIs and turn them into agent-consumable tooling
Startup aiOla strives to fix AI speech recognition woes with dynamic routing
VCs back Smart Bricks’ plan to automate real estate investing with AI agents
Aurasell launches AI-native Go-To-Market Operating System for Salesforce and HubSpot
Around the enterprise: Cisco’s AI ambitions
Earnings
AI hyperscalers help boost Cisco’s revenue, but its stock sinks on soft guidance
Monday.com drops 19% on weak guidance as AI disruption fears mount in software
Dynatrace earnings, revenue top estimates on cloud software boost
Datadog shares rise after Q4 earnings, revenue beat expectations
Cloudflare crushes analysts’ expectations on revenue and its stock soars in late trading
Teradata tops expectations on public cloud momentum and its stock surges
Lyft misses on profit outlook, posts surprise operating loss, stock plunges 17%
Robinhood gets a prediction-market lift despite cooling crypto business, but momentum doubts weigh on stock
Freshworks shares drop as earnings guidance disappoints investors
Rapid7 shares plunge on weak outlook despite fourth-quarter beat
Lattice Semiconductor beats earnings forecast and stock rises
Pega targets $2B revenue milestone as it bets on ‘predictable AI’ but shares fall on weaker profit
GlobalFoundries shares soar 16% on strong quarterly results, guidance
SMIC earnings top expectations on strong chip demand, but outlook cautious
Fastly surges 30%+ after crushing earnings estimates and lifting 2026 forecast
HubSpot shares tumble despite earnings beat and strong guidance
Applied Materials jumps on earnings strength and bullish forecast tied to AI chip boom
Arista Networks’ stock jumps after-hours on another strong earnings and revenue beat
Twilio loss widens despite revenue growth
JFrog beats earnings expectations, stock rises
Coinbase misses earnings estimates as crypto downturn weighs on trading
Rivian stock surges after better-than-expected earnings results
More money matters
Grafana Labs reportedly raising funding at $9B valuation
Kyndryl shares plunge amid accounting review and leadership shakeup
Private cloud infrastructure startup Oxide Computer reportedly raises $200M in fresh funding
New products and services
Cisco targets high-speed AI networking with 102.4Tbps chip, liquid-cooled switches
Cisco Live EMEA: Five announcements signal Cisco’s continued transformation to an AI company
Cadence announces ChipStack ‘Super Agent’ system for chip design and verification
ChEmpower debuts polishing technology to advance semiconductor manufacturing process
Cyber beat: Check Point’s hat trick
Attack & response
Tens of thousands of OpenClaw systems exposed by misconfigurations and known exploits
Google warns attackers are wiring AI directly into live cyberattacks
New services
Okta targets ‘shadow AI’ with new Identity Security Posture Management agent discovery features
EC-Council launches Enterprise AI Credential Suite to close workforce readiness gap
Money matters
Check Point announces three startup acquisitions after mixed quarter
Google’s $32B Wiz acquisition approved by EU
Palo Alto Networks completes acquisition of CyberArk
Vega lands $120M round to expand Security Analytics Mesh platform
AI agent identity startup Keycard acquires Anchor.dev
Cybersecurity and compliance firm Proofpoint has acquired Acuvity, an in AI enterprise security and governance firm.
GitGuardian raises $50M to expand nonhuman identity and AI agent security
Reco raises $30M to lock down AI apps and autonomous agents
Nucleus Security adds $20M in funding to support enterprise exposure management demand
Backslash Security lands $19M to tackle security risks emerging from vibe coding
Opaque raises $24M at $300M valuation for ‘confidential AI’ platform
Elsewhere in tech: Here come the robots
Apptronik raises $520M to produce humanoid Apollo robot commercial deployments
Fusion power startup Inertia raises $450M round backed by GV
Deep Space Energy raises $1.1M to generate electricity on the moon
Hungarian robotics startup Allonic raises $7.2M in pre-seed funding round
EU tells Meta rival chatbots must be available on WhatsApp
Google and Apple agree to app store changes after British regulators ‘duopoly’ claim
Ambi Robotics advances physical AI by licensing its hard-earned robot skills
Comings and goings
Workday stock drops 5%+ after CEO Carl Eschenbach steps down And founder Aneel Bhusri returns as CEO.
Half the founders at Elon Musk’s xAI have fled. Musk implied they were no longer a fit for a company of its size and announced a reorganization.
AMD hired former Salesforce and AWS marketing exec Ariel Kelman as chief marketing officer.
Justice Department antitrust chief Gail Slater is leaving in a move viewed as a victory for big business, including tech giants, over populist MAGA leaders (per Axios).
Former Zimperium Chief Revenue Officer Chris White joined Camunda in the same position.
What’s next
Earnings:
Tuesday, Feb. 17: Palo Alto Networks
Wednesday, Feb. 18: Amplitude
Thursday, Feb. 19: Appian, Akamai, Dropbox, Five9, RingCentral
Image: News/Gemini
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