Despite a rising drumbeat of worries about an AI bubble, AI clouds and factories keep growing like crazy. Anthropic and Google announced a multibillion-dollar cloud deal, “neocloud” Crusoe raised $1.3 billion and Uniphore raised $26o million. In addition, OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage announced a new $15 billion data center in Wisconsin.
Meta’s AI situation, though, remains an apparent mess, as it laid off 600 AI workers not so long after a hiring spree.
Still, get ready for just as much disruption from AI as we’ve been warned about — and soon. Gartner predicts job markets will get upended and commerce rewired by 2027, even as hundreds of AI experts and others warn we need to suspend artificial general intelligence development or face even worse consequences.
A shot across Google’s bow: OpenAI released its initial Atlas ChatGPT browser. For its part, Microsoft is aiming to make its rival Copilot more personal, thankfully with no erotica.
Amazon Web Services suffered a long outage Monday, once again showing how its flagship us-east-1 data center, which has had issues before, is perhaps rather too centralized for AWS’ key services.
Amazon revealed plans for more sophisticated robots for its fulfillment centers and delivery drivers, including smart glasses. The main messaging: All this will augment human work more than eliminate it — though it’s almost certainly both.
A couple of big deals extended a steady consolidation trend in cybersecurity: Veeam bought Securiti for $1.7 billion and Dataminr snapped up ThreatConnect for $290 million. Plus Chainguard raised a hefty $280 million.
Crypto remains a hot investment area in this decidedly more crypto-friendly administration, as Coinbase acquired Echo for $375 million and FalconX bought 21Shares.
It was a mixed bag for major tech company earnings, as Intel outperformed with its first profit in a long time, IBM software growth disappointed but only slightly, and SAP’s cloud growth was more or less OK.
Next week brings a huge spate of earnings from Big Tech and beyond, tops among them Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Apple.
Oh, and Trump called off plans, at least for now, for invading San Francisco as tech heads prevailed.
Here’s all this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news from News and beyond:
AI and data: AI attacks the browser market
Analysis and food for thought
Gartner predicts AI will upend job markets, trigger lawsuits and rewire global commerce by 2027
More advice from Gartner: How to streamline data delivery using five essential DataOps practices
Super assistant or apex predator? AI brings renewed scrutiny on jobs, data centers and future research
Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio sign statement urging suspension of AGI development These are hardly unqualified doomers, so perhaps it’s best to pay attention to what they’re saying
Is the flurry of circular AI deals a win-win — or sign of a bubble? (per the Wall Street Journal) Maybe both?
New models and services
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Atlas browser with embedded AI agent
Meet Mico: Microsoft extends Copilot with new automation, collaboration features
IBM partners with Nvidia rival Groq to accelerate AI deployment Further analysis from John Furrier: IBM and Groq join forces to accelerate agentic AI: Making real-time intelligence an enterprise reality
Red Hat aims new Developer Lightspeed AI features at application migration
Anthropic takes aim at biotech with Claude for Life Sciences
Google embraces vibe coding with latest version of AI Studio app development platform
MariaDB launches unified cloud database platform for agentic AI development
Vercel unveils suite of tools to support front-end agentic AI app development
Adobe’s AI Foundry service lets companies create branded versions of its Firefly models
Dell upgrades AI Data Platform with performance boosts
Dropbox debuts new search features, acquires AI startup Mobius Labs
Leena opens its ‘AI Colleague Studio’ for enterprise agent customization
Harness targets the last mile of DevOps with AI-driven database automation
Domino Data takes aim at AI costs with autoscaling tools and spot instances
Counterintuitive launches to replace GPUs with reasoning-native computing architecture
Exclusive: Provus launches AI platform for services quoting
Rubrik launches Agent Cloud to secure and manage enterprise AI agents
Amplitude introduces MCP and AI Agents to automate behavioral data analysis
WellSaid pushes AI speech forward with faster, more natural voice production
Money matters
OpenAI buys Apple Mac automation startup Software Applications
Sesame raises $250M to advance lifelike voice companions and wearable devices
Medical search engine startup OpenEvidence closes $200M investment led by GV
AI agent tooling provider LangChain raises $125M at $1.25B valuation
AI operating system startup UnifyApps raises $50M and gets a new co-CEO
Pegasystems’ agentic AI bets pay off with growing earnings and revenue
Serval raises $47M to bring AI-native automation to IT operations
ChipAgents scores $21M to transform semiconductor design with agentic AI
Estuary raises $14M to try to solve one of the hardest problems in data movement
Gimlet Labs launches with $12M to port AI agents across chips
Anchor secures $6M to build next-generation agentic browser automation
MythWorx raises $5M to build low-power AI models inspired by the human brain
Policy
Open AI to crack down on deepfakes after backlash in Hollywood
Reddit is suing Perplexity and AI data scraping firms for using its data without permission
There’s even more AI and big data news on News
Around the enterprise: AI factories everywhere
Disruptions
Hours-long AWS outage takes numerous services offline And the post-mortem: Amazon blames rare software bug and ‘faulty automation’ for massive glitch
Earnings
IBM’s software growth disappoints investors, sending stock lower
SAP reports strong results despite a narrow miss on cloud revenue
Intel delivers first profit in six quarters as turnaround gains momentum
Super Micro shares fall 6% on weak preliminary results
Tesla shares fall as earnings miss expectations despite record deliveries
Texas Instruments stock tumbles on guidance miss
Other money matters
Crusoe lands $1.3B to accelerate buildout of large-scale AI data centers
Business AI cloud operator Uniphore gets $260M from Nvidia, Snowflake, Databricks, AMD and others
Anthropic strikes multibillion-dollar deal with Google to access a million TPUs
OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage to build $15B+ data center campus in Wisconsin
Sumble launches with $38.5M to expand AI-powered go-to-market intelligence platform
Exclusive: Hyphen AI raises $5M to automate cloud configuration for developers
Policy
Google and Apple face extra UK scrutiny over ‘strategic’ role in mobile platforms
This rampant government investment in individual companies such as Intel — as opposed to selective support in emergencies (GM for example, maybe TARP) — will not end well, especially given the lack of ethical controls in this administration: Trump administration in talks to take equity stakes in quantum computing firms (per WSJ) Anyway, quantum computing companies need customers, not more investors.
New products and services
Exclusive: Panzura adds file-level geofencing and native S3 support to its global cloud
Platform Engineering Labs launches ‘formae’ to fix broken infrastructure-as-code
Analysis
Speed, Frankenstein, voice and other takeaways from NiCE CEO Scott Russell’s keynote at Analyst Summit
We have lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat: Bulking up
Money matters
Veeam to acquire Securiti for $1.7B+ to accelerate safe AI at scale
Dataminr to acquire ThreatConnect for $290M to deliver agentic AI-powered threat intelligence
Chainguard secures $280M to expand its trusted open-source software platform
AI agent security startup Keycard reels in $38M
Attack & response
CISA urges immediate patching of exploited Windows SMB client vulnerability
SquareX warns of ‘AI Sidebar Spoofing’ attacks targeting AI browsers
New products and services
Google launches AI-powered Agentic Threat Intelligence for faster, conversational threat analysis
Snyk unveils Evo, an agentic system to govern and protect AI-native development
Darktrace expands ActiveAI Security Platform with NEXT agent and major network security enhancements
Kandji rebrands as Iru and launches AI-powered unified IT and security platform
Immuta expands data provisioning platform with new guardrails and automated workflows
Cyware and Microsoft partner to integrate threat intelligence across Sentinel and Defender
Hypori launches Secure Messaging to strengthen government and enterprise mobile security
More cybersecurity news here
Elsewhere in tech: AI meets robots at Amazon
Amazon melds AI with robotics and smart glasses to streamline deliveries
Further thoughts from Amazon’s annual Delivering the Future event at its DUR3 delivery station in Milpitas in Silicon Valley:
–The relentless focus was on augmenting rather than replacing people. That messaging might be aimed partly at recent reports that it’s looking to use robotics to replace a half-million jobs — something that seems likely to spark more fears of robot- and AI-driven job losses. But that messaging isn’t just messaging. After all, some of these warehouse jobs are or were crap jobs, for which Amazon (justly) has been criticized. No doubt job losses from automation are a potentially huge issue, but it’s hard to blame Amazon from using and further developing available technologies to improve efficiency and (arguably) improve those jobs. It has some social reponsibility to help deal with the impacts of what it’s doing, but it’s also up to government, if it doesn’t get entirely broken by Trump, to help ameliorate job impacts with smart policy — though I’m not holding my breath.
–Much of what we saw was brand-new and in some cases not deployed widely yet. But Amazon has plans to deploy them as early as next year.
–I hope I’m not just drinking the Kool-Aid, but these technologies, if they pan out half as well as Amazon’s promises, do seem like they will improve how distribution center workers and drivers do their jobs — and make them safer at the same time.
–Not surprisingly, AI plays a huge role in all these technologies — not least by shortening the time it takes to develop them. The new Blue Jay system, for instance, took a year to develop using AI, a third of time to develop previous “bird” robotics systems.
–In short, all this was a very long way from Amazon’s early days, when I visited distribution centers in Nevada with Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s early logistics chief. At that time, in the very early 2000s, if I remember correctly, the only things remotely robotic were conveyer lines.
Google demonstrates verifiable quantum simulation that reveals molecular shapes
Pardons bought and sold, corruption on top of corruption: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
But tech leaders persuaded him not to invade San Francisco: Trump calls off National Guard operation in San Francisco after speaking with mayor and tech CEOs
Coinbase acquires crypto investment platform Echo for $375M
FalconX buys crypto fund provider 21Shares in latest crypto acquisition
Propy launches $100M acquisition plan as it unveils Agent Avery to automate real estate closings
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings
Meta lays off 600 AI workers to streamline its Superintelligence Labs unit
Applied Materials will lay off 4% of workforce to simplify operations.
Accenture Chief Technology Officer Karthik Narain jumped to Google Cloud to ‘accelerate’ AI and public sector (per CRN).
Customer engagement platform Iterable appointed former SurveyMonkey marketing chief Priya Gill chief marketing officer and former Salesforce Tableau Chief Technology Officer Nick Beil chief product officer.
Nabil Bukhari, Extreme Networks‘ CTO of five years, has added “president of AI platforms” to his title (per CRN).
What’s next
Events
Oct. 27-29: News Disrupt, San Francisco
Oct. 27-29: Nvidia GTC, Washington, D.C. News will have the news.
Earnings: Big week for Big Tech
Monday, Oct. 27: NXP, Confluent, F5, Cadence
Tuesday, Oct. 28: Check Point Software, Commvault, PayPal, Seagate, Extreme Networks, Flex
Wednesday, Oct. 29: Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, ServiceNow, Samsung, Tenable
Thursday, Oct. 30: Apple, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Atlassian, Twilio, Western Digital
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