As AI ushers in a new era of extreme parallel computing, startup funding keeps booming – News

TikTok is about as far from enterprise computing as it gets, but who isn’t watching what its fate will be in coming days?

The Chinese-owned social app’s future in the U.S. still hangs in the balance. It appears neither Biden nor especially Trump wants it to shut down abruptly, but the Supreme Court today upheld the law banning it, so … ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking of Biden, he went out with guns blazing, signing orders on chip export controls and restrictions, opening federal lands for AI infrastructure and strengthening cybersecurity.

Get ready for the new era of extreme parallel computing, courtesy of Nvidia. But it’s not just about Nvidia — it’s about reinventing the entire tech stack over the next decade, says theCUBE Research Chief Analyst Dave Vellante.

Meanwhile, AI and big-data fundings keep on coming, as Databricks gets a large data financing and money rolls in for all manner of vertical AI applications from law and healthcare to defense and architecture.

Microsoft and Google both rolled out new plans for their productivity tools this week, adding AI capabilities, or forcing them upon users, depending on how you look at it.

Intel is dumping its long-running venture capital arm, the latest in a series of divestitures, though it’s not clear how this one will help the chip giant’s plight.

Ahead of a presumably pro-crypto administration, there’s more activity in crypto and blockchain, including eToro’s possible IPO and a few sizable acquisitions and fundings.

The rapid and expensive rise of ransomware has proved that reactive backup and recovery approaches don’t come close to protecting businesses. Our analysts explored what more is needed at theCUBE’s Cyber Resiliency Summit this week.

You can hear more about this news and more on John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, out this weekend.

Here’s all the news this week on News and beyond:

AI and data: Get ready for extreme parallel computing

Headline news and analysis:

Breaking Analysis: How Nvidia is creating a $1.4T data center market in a decade of AI

Biden signs executive order that will make federal lands available for AI infrastructure

Biden administration announces new AI chip export controls

Meanwhile … OpenAI advocates for more funding and ‘AI economic zones’ to drive innovation

Microsoft forms new AI engineering group led by Jay Parikh

UK PM Keir Starmer to announce new plans to transform the country into an ‘AI superpower’

Microsoft research highlights the need for human expertise in AI red teaming

Money matters

Databricks secures $5B in debt financing (per Bloomberg)

AI chip startup Blaize goes public via $1.2B SPAC merger

Big data company dbt Labs buys SDF Labs to improve SQL code comprehension

Legal AI startup Harvey in talks to raise $300M and double valuation to $3B (per Bloomberg)

Defense startup Shield AI raises $200M on $5B valuation (per Financial Times)

AI video platform Synthesia raises $180M, doubling valuation to $2.1B

Qventus raises $105M to alleviate burdens on healthcare staff with AI

Instabase raises $100M for its AI-powered unstructured data platform

Netradyne raises $90M to encourage safer driving with AI dashcams

Prophecy raises $47M to automate data pipeline development with generative AI

Legal AI startup Eve raises $47M to help law firms become AI-native

Bioptimus raises $41M to build ‘GPT for biology’

Labviva raises $25M to boost AI-powered life sciences procurement platform

Qbiq raises $16M to automate architectural design and visualization with AI

HR software startup Borderless AI raises $5M, launches HRGPT search engine

New models, services and companies

Microsoft and Google roll out new pricing for their AI productivity tools And Microsoft followed up the next day with a $3-a-month AI feature addition to 365 for Home and Personal users. If these AI tools were really must-haves for enterprises and consumers, it would seem Google and Microsoft wouldn’t have to make them defaults in these apps.

Snowflake claims breakthrough can cut AI inferencing times by more than 50%

Onehouse says its runtime accelerator can accelerate data lakehouse queries up to 30-fold

Nvidia releases microservices to safeguard AI agents

Nvidia partnerships aim to accelerate use of AI agents in healthcare research

ChatGPT’s autonomous capabilities expand with scheduled tasks and reminders

AWS highlights partnership advancements in bringing AI to automotive at CES

François Chollet reveals he’s leading a new startup that aims to make AGI a reality

Contextual AI launches RAG 2.0 platform to aid in the development of domain-specific AI agents

AI firm iGenius introduces Nvidia-powered LLM for highly regulated industries

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

Around the enterprise: Consolidation time

Money matters

Intel to shed its venture capital arm in latest restructuring move

Lenovo acquires data center storage provider Infinidat

Clearwater acquires Enfusion in $1.5B financial software deal

NetApp sells Spot and CloudCheckr to cloud cost control company Flexera

ControlMonkey gets $7M in funding to automate cloud infrastructure management with code

Insightsoftware enters EPM market with JustPerform acquisition

TSMC net profit hits record high as fourth-quarter results top expectations on robust AI chip demand

Aligned Data Centers gets $12B to expand its AI compute capacity

AWS launches infrastructure region and invest $5B+ in Mexico

In other news

US places new set of export restrictions on advanced chips

HPE Aruba Networking brings a dose of AI networking to IoT and edge for retail at NRF

Red Hat releases OpenShift for virtualization and tools for multicloud traffic management

We have more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: How to build cyber resiliency

Analysis from theCUBE’s Cyber Resiliency Summit this week:

Building cyber resilience: Strategies to combat AI-driven threats and ransomware

How AI and automation are transforming business security: The inside scoop from theCUBE analysts

Attack & response

President Biden signs executive order to strengthen national cybersecurity in last days in office

Microsoft sues cybercriminal operation that developed tools to bypass AI safety guardrails

Microsoft reveals macOS vulnerability that allowed System Integrity Protection bypass

Apple devices at risk after security researcher hacks ACE3 USB-C controller

FTC orders GoDaddy to strengthen security practices after years of data breaches

Good news: Black Duck report highlights increased focus on adversarial testing and AI security risks

Study finds nearly one in 10 generative AI prompts in business disclose potentially sensitive data

New services

Orchid Security rakes in $36M to simplify enterprise identity security with LLMs

New Cisco AI Defense solution safeguards AI applications and data And analysis from Zeus Kerravala: Unpacking Cisco AI Defense: its implications for customers and the company

Orca Security unveils Sensor for enhanced cloud runtime protection

New Contrast Security tools targets vulnerabilities in production environments

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: TikTok’s fate comes down to the wire

China reportedly evaluating plan for Elon Musk to acquire TikTok’s US operations but TikTok denies it and TikTok plans to shut down its app in the US ahead of ban and Supreme Court unanimously upholds law banning TikTok But the latest word seems to be that the issue will get punted to Trump when he takes office Monday, so it appears unlikely to shut down in the U.S. before that.

An epic and spot-on takedown by TechDirt’s Mike Masnick of why Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on Joe Rogan defending his jettisoning of fact checking is so off-base and deliberately misleading: Rogan Misses The Mark: How Zuck’s Misdirection On Gov’t Pressure Goes Unchallenged At least someone’s doing some fact-checking.

UK launches antitrust investigation into Google’s search business

UK court begins hearing $1.83 billion lawsuit against Apple over App Store fees

Blue Origin flies its New Glenn rocket to orbit with satellite deployment system aboard

Apple reportedly planning thin iPhone 17 Air model launch this year

Free Our Feeds wants to build a social media ecosystem ‘resistant to billionaire influence’ Hmm, more power to ‘em, but good luck with that.

With $20M in funding, Quantum Brilliance wants to build a diamond-encased mobile quantum computer

Couple of big crypto deals, a possible IPO and a big funding:

Social trading and investment marketplace eToro reportedly files paperwork for $5B IPO

Crypto analysis firm Chainalysis acquires AI-powered fraud detection startup Alterya for $150M

Moonpay acquires Helio to enhance cryptocurrency commerce and trading infrastructure

Phantom cryptocurrency wallet raises $150M at $3B valuation

Merit Systems raises $10M to create a new economic model called ‘open-source capitalism’

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

Comings and goings

The new CEO at network detection and response firm ExtraHop is Rob Greer, most recently GM of Broadcom’s Enterprise Security Group Division and an operating partner at Crosspoint Capital Partners.

Trellix promotes Gareth Maclachlan to chief product officer.

Commercetools names Shiri Mosenzon Erez chief product officer and Eric Speciel chief customer officer.

Former longtime Salesforce EVP Casey Coleman is now VP of global public sector at ServiceNow.

What’s next

Jan. 20-24: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, where the world’s elite will compete to find positive things to say about Trump 2.0 in the vain hope of currying favor with the incoming president.

Image: News/Microsoft Designer