Cloud artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave went public late Thursday at a lower price than expected, splashing some cold water on hopes for a rebound in initial public offerings — and even worse, today the stock fell about 5% in early trading despite the lower bar.
That has to be a disappointment to the company and to investors and venture capital firms holding out hope that 2025 might prove to mark a return to a critical piece of tech’s financial flywheel. Meanwhile, trading and investing platform eToro filed — crypto, you know — with higher hopes. But AI chipmaker Cerebras’ IPO got delayed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States given investment by United Arab Emirates-based G42. So let’s not count on that return to the record days of 2021 just yet.
One concern that may weigh on CoreWeave in particular, though, is whether the data center building boom will continue as smaller AI models that don’t need as much compute get more and more capable. Microsoft has abandoned some projects, and Alibaba’s chairman sounds worried about overbuilding for AI too — especially in China.
Still, assuming the amount of compute needed for innumerable AI projects will lessen anytime soon seems like a bad bet. One reason: Reasoning AI models, which take much more time, and compute, than chatbots, are gaining traction, at least on the vendor side, as Google and Microsoft weighed in this week.
There’s also still plenty of money for hot AI startups, as OpenAI reportedly gets close to a $40 billion round led by SoftBank and the Chinese AI agent startup behind Manus is talking to VCs around the Valley for funding at a $500 million valuation.
Meanwhile, in the ongoing Trump clown show, his defense leaders doubled down on lying after they exposed Yemen attack plans in a Signal chat to The Atlantic’s editor — who handled the situation with more care for actual defense than the government defense people.
Once a tech darling, genetic testing company 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That’s a lot of important data that soon could be for sale, since co-founder Anne Wojcicki’s hopes of buying it back look dim.
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is now a VC, joining Playground Global. But I wonder how long before he gets back in an operating role.
Next week theCUBE will be busy at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon in Barcelona and Robotics & AI Media Week in New York City.
Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news and analysis from this week in News and beyond:
AI and data: It’s the season for reasoning
New models and services
Google introduces Gemini 2.5 Pro with chain-of-thought reasoning built-in
Microsoft 365 Copilot gets AI reasoning skills for advanced research and analysis
Microsoft introduces AI agents for Security Copilot
Databricks partners with Anthropic and touts breakthrough in reinforcement learning
OpenAI upgrades ChatGPT’s image generation capabilities And its popularity stirred up controversy: OpenAI’s viral Studio Ghibli-inspired AI art comes under hailstorm of criticism
OpenAI adds support for Anthropic’s MCP LLM connectivity protocol
Alibaba releases new open-source AI model to power intelligent voice applications
Amazon introduces AI-powered Interests feature for its e-commerce marketplace
An interesting look at how LLMs work (I can’t bring myself to say they “think” personally because… they’re not): Anthropic researchers reveal new findings on how LLMs ‘think’
Imandra’s new AI coding assistant CodeLogician uses ‘reasoning’ to guarantee the accuracy of its code
DeepSeek releases improved V3 model under MIT license
AWS enhances QuickSight’s business intelligence with AI agents
Red Hat streamlines data access for AI application training and inference
Komprise brings more simplicity to petabyte-scale data migrations
Krisp feature adjusts accents during video meetings
Zeta to let marketers build and customize AI agents
Salesforce refines agentic platform with flexible database
Money matters
OpenAI may soon close its $40B round led by SoftBank (per Bloomberg)
Chinese AI agent startup behind Manus in talks with US VC firms and others to raise funding at $500M+ valuation (per The Information)
AI startup CADDi nabs $38M to help manufacturers optimize supply chains
Browser Use raises $17M to help steer AI agents through the internet
Taxo raises $5M to reduce paperwork for doctors so they can care for patients
Google’s Gradient Ventures leads $1.2M round for Silverstream AI to scale autonomous web agents
There’s even more AI and big data news on News
Around the enterprise: A disappointing IPO
Money matters
CoreWeave prices IPO lower than expected, and its stock still sags on its debut
One factor investors surely are considering in CoreWeave’s IPO: Alibaba’s Joe Tsai voices worries about AI data center construction bubble. Apparently Microsoft is concerned too.
Cerebras Systems faces delays in IPO as CFIUS review remains unresolved
Boosted by cryptocurrency trading growth, eToro files for initial public offering
Report: Nvidia close to acquiring AI cloud provider Lepton AI in nine-figure deal
Nexthop AI launches with $110M to build next-gen cloud AI infrastructure
Edge AI semiconductor maker MemryX raises $44M
ConfigHub raises $4M to bring order to chaotic mass of configuration files
Policy
US imposes export restrictions on more Chinese tech firms
New services
Broadcom introduces new chips for powering optical data center networks
AMD partners with Rapt AI to automate AI workload management on Instinct GPUs
Akamai distributes AI inference across the globe, promising lower latency and higher throughput
Instabug launches AI tools to enhance mobile app experience and retention
Nebius’ GTC session highlights best practices for building an AI cloud platform
We have plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat:
Attack & response
SecurityScorecard report reveals surge in third-party breaches across industries
Malicious AI tool mentions surge 200% across dark web channels in 2024
F5 report finds bots now drive majority of web content traffic
Report warns that browser-native ransomware is a growing threat to enterprise data
Money matters
Secure enterprise browser Island raises $250M at nearly $5B valuation
Straiker launches with $21 million in funding to secure enterprise AI applications
Strike raises $13.5M to expand its AI-driven continuous penetration testing platform
Hakimo secures $10.5M in new funding and launches autonomous AI security agent
Charm Security launches with $8M in funding to tackle AI-driven fraud
SplxAI gets $7M to block prompt injection attacks on AI agents with automated red teaming
New services
CrowdStrike expands Falcon Exposure Management with network vulnerability support
Chainguard introduces libraries for secure language dependency management
New Chainguard VMs aim to reduce engineering overhead in container host environments
NHL and Palo Alto Networks ink multiyear partnership
Polyguard launches with real-time defense platform to prevent deepfake and AI-driven fraud
Pulumi enhances cloud security with automated secrets rotation and new GitHub integration
Trulioo upgrades document verification with faster processing and improved accuracy
ARMO launches Behavioral Cloud Application Detection and Response to unify runtime security
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere around tech: A Signal of sloppy security
Security sloppiness at the White House: Yemen war plans shared with Atlantic editor over Signal
NSA warned about vulnerabilities in Signal prior to White House group chat fiasco
Once valued at $3.5B, 23andMe files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Boosted by cryptocurrency trading growth, eToro files for initial public offering
Apple to host WWDC 2025 June 9-13, with OS upgrades expected
Mercury raises $300M on $3.5B valuation to expand fintech offerings
New York judge allows New York Times copyright lawsuit against OpenAI to proceed
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings, and a passing
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger joined Playground Global venture capital firm
Now that it has a little cash… CoreWeave appointed new Chief Marketing Officer Jean English, who had been an executive at Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, NetApp and IBM.
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap takes on expanded role as CEO Sam Altman shifts focus to research
Block laid off 931 people, 8% of the staff (per News)
Samsung Electronics CEO Han Jong-hee died of heart attack
What’s next
April 2-4: KubeCon+CloudNativeCon EU, Barcelona: TheCUBE will be onsite for interviews and analysis and News will have the news.
March 31-April 4: Robotics & AI Media Week, virtual event from theCUBE and NYSE Wired, from theCUBE’s studio at the NYSE.
April 9-11: Google Cloud Next, Las Vegas: News and theCUBE will both be onsite for all the news, interviews and analysis.
Image: News/Microsoft Image Creator
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