Artificial intelligence has now conquered the most hard-ass copyright defender of all — Disney — as the media giant did a $1 billion deal with OpenAI this week to allow use of a bunch of characters in its Sora video creation model.
Disney CEO Bob Iger may feel he had no choice but to join the AI train that’s already well down the tracks, rather than watch it roll over him. He and everyone else can see how much TikTok’s short-form content, include mashups of existing media, have caught the time and attention of younger people over going out to movies, and perhaps this is a way to participate with its own vault of IP.
But it’s still a stunning white flag. A billion dollars is couch change for OpenAI, so clearly the content is the thing — and that appears to benefit OpenAI much more than Disney unless there’s a hefty licensing fee for use of its characters — a fee whose particulars remain murky. The companies promised “guardrails” to avoid the use of character voices and faces, not to mention unsavory creations. But exactly how can that be enforced?
Even if the Steamboat Willie, the earliest Mickey Mouse, is now in the public domain and others may be heading there eventually, I think Georgia Tech professor Mark Reidl got it right: “Absolutely no way that Disney doesn’t come to regret AI user-generated content of their characters.” But the bottom line is that there’s no stopping AI.
As much as AI keeps shoving its way into our culture, it faces a widening trust gap, according to new research by theCUBE Research, News’s sister market research firm. No kidding, given that states are warning Google, OpenAI and others to fix their chatbots’ “delusional” outputs, which have real consequences. Not to mention dubious AI-aided ads. Gartner even recommends against using AI browsers because their security sucks.
Back on firmer enterprise ground, it may be that Amazon Web Services’ relatively unexciting re:Invent conference last week was actually a positive sign for its resurgent AI efforts, according to theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and George Gilbert. In their latest Breaking Analysis, they say AWS’ practical, no-nonsense “worker-bee AGI” may win out over OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s dream of a “messiah AGI.”
AI is helping drive a massive tech infrastructure boom in India, as Amazon pledged to invest $35 billion there by 2030 on AI and logistics and Microsoft promised to spend $17.5 billion on AI infrastructure in the country, following Google’s pledge earlier this year to spend $15 billion on an AI hub there.
News co-CEO John Furrier caught up with Nvidia’s star CEO Jensen Huang late last week at the Global Semiconductor Alliance’s annual awards celebration in Santa Clara, and talked about his vision of how AI is reinventing computing from the ground up.
Despite both catching the AI wave, Oracle and Broadcom failed to please investors as it remains uncertain how profitable their AI efforts will be.
Here’s all of this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news and analysis from News and beyond:
AI and data: Worker-bee AGI vs. messiah AGI
Analysis and food for thought
Breaking Analysis: Worker-bee AGI: Why AWS is betting on practical agents, not ‘messiah AGI’
AI agents face a widening trust gap, theCUBE Research finds
PitchBook: AI is becoming the defining infrastructure layer of the global economy
Five unexpected trends in generative AI value realization IT leaders can’t afford to ignore
Gartner: Block all AI browsers for the foreseeable future — too risky
Case study: AI agents help solar farm developer navigate shifting needs and regulations
From Llamas to Avocados: Meta’s shifting AI strategy is causing internal confusion (per CNBC)
Not ready? McDonald’s AI-generated ad taken down after public backlash
Money matters
OpenAI nabs $1B investment from Disney as part of character licensing deal
IBM will acquire Confluent to address growing needs for real-time data in AI models
Harness raises $240M to lead AI-powered DevOps beyond the code editor
Snowflake Ventures invests in data trust startup Ataccama to boost agentic reliability
Salesforce defines Informatica’s role in unified data strategy
Multimodal AI provider fal nabs $140M amid rapid growth
Medra, a developer of AI-powered lab robots and scientists to advance drug discovery, raises $52M
AI inference startup Runware raises $50M to make AI run faster
SuperCircle raises $24M+ to scale AI-driven textile waste platform
Pryzm raises $12.2M in seed funding to accelerate procurement for defense tech innovators
Channel3 raises $6M to make every product sold on the web discoverable by AI agents
Policy and governance
Trump pushes back against states regulating AI with executive order
Linux Foundation announces Agentic AI Foundation joined by Anthropic, OpenAI, Block
State attorneys general warn Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and other AI giants to fix ‘delusional’ outputs and He blames ChatGPT for the murder-suicide that shattered his family Is this fixable? Probably not, really, but likely there will be some talk and promises and changes until attention gets diverted elsewhere
EU will investigate Google over how it uses online content for AI training
New models and services
OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 with cutting-edge math capabilities
Agentic coding comes to Slack as Anthropic launches Claude Code integration
Anthropic launches broad AI collaboration with Accenture
Google upgrades Gemini Deep Research’s search and problem-solving capabilities
Mistral AI’s Devstral 2 is an open-weights vibe coding model built to rival the best proprietary systems
Google debuts managed MCP servers for Google Maps Platform, other cloud services
TransUnion improves device detection to counter rising fraud threats
Arista scooters its way to scalable wireless with VESPA and introduces new AI capabilities
ThoughtSpot agents aimed at automating the analytics lifecycle
Couchbase puts AI data and services into a single platform to simplify agent development
Amplitude launches Automated Insights to bring AI-driven analyst workflows to product teams
Cleric launches AI agent to uplevel site reliability with intelligent automation
Coder introduces governance stack for hybrid human/agent development teams
DuploCloud launches AI DevOps Engineers that execute real infrastructure work
AgentField aims to fix agentic AI’s coordination crisis with cryptographic IDs and Kubernetes-style orchestration
Lightrun brings real-world runtime visibility to AI code generation
Olares launches personal AI computer that turns local files into smart assistant
Vectara’s new Tool Validator promises to prevent AI agent planning errors
Around the enterprise: India’s AI boom
Money matters
Amazon to invest $35B in India by 2030 with focus on AI, logistics
Microsoft to spend $17.5B on AI infrastructure to support India’s AI ambitions
Jeff Bezos backs $475M seed round for chip startup Unconventional AI That’s a seed round. It’s a strange world.
Boom Supersonic raises $300M to build natural gas turbines for Crusoe data centers Jet engines running data centers — it’s an even stranger world.
Qualcomm acquires RISC-V chip designer Ventana to boost CPU efforts
Azul acquires Payara to enhance enterprise Java solutions
Port nets $100M to turn its developer portal into an agentic AI hub
BrainChip lands $25M to bring neuromorphic AI to the edge
Spare Tire raises $3M to save healthcare organizations from document downtime
Earnings
Shares of Oracle slide 10% on revenue miss and rising capital expenditures
Broadcom’s stock falls despite another crushing earnings and revenue beat
Adobe beats earnings expectations as AI tools drive double-digit revenue growth
Synopsys records record-breaking full-year revenue as it beats expectations again
Insights
Inside the semiconductor revolution: 16 insights shaping the AI era from the GSA Awards
Zoom zooms ahead to focus on end users
Policy
Trump agrees to let Nvidia sell more powerful H200 GPUs to Chinese companies
Environmental groups call for halt to new data center construction Hm, good luck with that.
New products and services
Adobe makes Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe Express accessible in ChatGPT
Google previews upcoming Android XR smart glasses equipped with Gemini
Name.com expands API integrations across Netlify, Replit, Vercel and Bolt
Cyber beat: Saviynt’s $700M Series B — for big
Attack & response
Model Context Protocol security risks grow as unsecured servers appear across the internet
Research claims legacy .NET proxy behavior creates fresh path to remote system compromise
New DroidLock threat gives attackers near-total control of Android phones
‘PyStoreRAT’ malware uses fake developer tools on GitHub to infect Windows systems
Money matters
Identity management startup Saviynt closes $700M investment
Checkmarx acquires Tromzo to launch new era of agentic application security
Prime Security raises $20M early-stage funding to scale its agentic product security platform
Resemble AI hauls in $13M for its different approach to deepfake detection
New services
Veza introduces AI Agent Security to tackle emerging agentic AI risks
Coalition expands cyber insurance to cover deepfake-driven reputation attacks
Microsoft broadens bug bounty scope to include any vulnerability affecting its services
Commvault and Delinea partner to boost protection against credential-based attacks
NinjaOne brings native remote access to its unified endpoint management platform
Black Duck debuts Signal to secure software at the speed of AI development
Sonatype debuts guide to secure AI-assisted software development
Cofense expands phishing defense with Smart Reinforcement training and Triage 1.30
Elsewhere in tech: Ellisons try to head off Netflix’s WBD deal
Paramount makes $108B hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros Discovery
Antioch lands $4.25M in preseed funding to accelerate autonomous robot testing with digital twins
Comings and goings
Data center operator STACK Infrastructure named Matt VanderZanden CEO of STACK Americas.
OpenAI hired Slack CEO Denise Dresser as new chief revenue officer (per Wired).
Google named Amin Vahdat new chief of AI infrastructure buildout (per Semafor).
Klaviyo‘s interim Chief Operating Officer Chano Fernández joined co-founder Andrew Bialecki as co-CEO of the marketing automation platform.
Perhaps the growing funding needs of AI companies and those scrambling to keep up with AI is making chief financial officers a hot job:
Crusoe appointed former MongoDB executive Michael Gordon chief operating officer and CFO.
Lambda has a new CFO too: Heather Planishek, most recently chief operating and financial officer at Tines.
Dropbox CFO Timothy Regan resigned and was replaced by Ross Tennenbaum, who has served as president, CFO and EVP at Avalara. Eric Webster also joined from Silversmith Capital Partners as chief business officer.
What’s next
Earnings
Wednesday, Dec. 17: Micron
Thursday, Dec. 18: Blackberry
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