Intel gets a new CEO, investors start to doubt AI will pay off – but agents are on fire – News

Intel finally got a new CEO this week: Lip-Bu Tan, a former board member and longtime CEO of chipmaking software veteran Cadence Design Systems.

By all accounts, he’s a capable leader, but former CEO Pat Gelsinger looked capable too. Turning around Intel is a huge undertaking, especially if, as Tan said this week, he aims to keep both Intel design and foundry units. Even if TSMC might be interested in a joint foundry venture — a big if — it would take a miracle to keep Intel whole.

Interest in artificial intelligence agents is exploding, judging from a number of new services this week — even if the reality is still limited. ServiceNow even provided agentic AI’s first exit, buying Moveworks.

Lightweight large language models are proliferating, this week from Google and Cohere. Given the cost of compute, that’s only likely to continue. So are more industry- or task-specific models besides code generation, such as Google’s Gemini models for robots and Moonvalley’s “copyright-clean” video model.

Still, investors are getting impatient with what they see as the slow pace of AI contributing to enterprise value, as UiPath and Adobe found out this week. Other enterprise names reported disappointing earnings or outlooks too, such as Oracle and Asana, though others such as Rubrik, PagerDuty and Docusign outperformed. Next week there’s a single tech earnings report: Micron.

But an even more nascent technology, quantum computing, is getting more investor interest even further ahead of the likely opportunity. It doesn’t hurt that one company, D-Wave, demonstrated what it says is the long-awaited quantum supremacy, though not everyone agrees.

Next week we’ll be covering one of the biggest events of the year, Nvidia GTC, in San Jose, where we’re likely to hear about new graphics processing units — hello, Vera Rubin — as well as networking and other technologies, even quantum, which is surprising given CEO Jensen Huang recently threw cold water on its near-term prospects.

Here’s all the news and analysis from this week, and what’s coming next:

AI and data: An agentic AI exit already

Top of mind

Coverage from the HumanX conference:

Building an ecosystem: Model providers join the tech mainstream as interest in AI agents explodes

Assessing the human element: Panelists weigh AI’s role in cybersecurity during HumanX

OpenAI calls on Trump to eliminate restrictions on the AI industry And Google chimes in: Google submits AI policy suggestions to the White House A useful perspective from Alex Wilhelm at Cautious Optimism: Can I borrow your life’s work? It’s a matter of national security!

The ladder to agentic AI: Navigating the next frontier in enterprise AI

New models and services

OpenAI’s newest developer API brings search capabilities to AI agents

Sam Altman says OpenAI has trained a fiction writing AI model that’s actually decent

Databricks kicks off an initiative to make AI agents easier to build and manage

Google introduces the Gemma 3 family of accessible lightweight models

Google debuts two new AI models for powering robots

China’s new AI agent Manus gets global attention for its autonomous smarts

Cohere releases a low-cost AI model that requires only two GPUs

Vast Data adds vector search and serverless functions to its scalable data platform

SambaNova debuts framework for lower-cost, open-source deep research agents

AI21 debuts Maestro AI planning and orchestration system

Moonvalley introduces a ‘clean’ generative video AI model for cinema and advertising

Foxconn builds FoxBrain, its own AI model (per Wall Street Journal)

Cinelytic acquires Jumpcut Media to expand AI-powered entertainment analytics platform

Money matters

ServiceNow to acquire agentic AI platform Moveworks in $2.9B deal

Qualcomm acquires edge AI development startup Edge Impulse

Arize AI acquires Velvet to expand support for AI observability, LLM evaluation

Documents reveal Google has a 14% stake in Anthropic and may invest $750M more

Lila Sciences raises $200M to accelerate autonomous scientific research

Supabase developer platform raises $100M+ at $2B valuation (per Bloomberg)

AI-powered industrial robotics startup Dexterity raises $95M

Ditto raises $82M in funding for its edge database

Nirvana raises $80M for AI-powered insurance for truck drivers and fleet operators

Business intelligence startup Omni closes $69M funding round

Voice AI startup Cartesia raises $64M Series A round

AI agent-powered compliance automation startup Norm Ai raises $48M

Bria raises $40M to develop generative AI models trained on licensed data

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

Around the enterprise: Can Intel’s new CEO save it?

Top of mind

Intel finally gets a new CEO: industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan

At long last, OpenStack (now known as OpenInfra Foundation) joins Linux Foundation

New services and products

Cerebras announces six new AI accelerator data centers across North America and France

Meta partners with TSMC to test its first homegrown AI training chips

With FlashBlade//EXA, Pure Storage helps enterprises keep data-hungry GPUs fed to accelerate AI workloads

Arista Networks expands AI performance with new capabilities

Flipboard debuts new Surf beta release with upgraded Bluesky integration

Money matters

Report: TSMC could launch joint venture with partners to run Intel’s fabs

Financial technology provider Klarna files for IPO at reported $15B+ valuation

Celestial AI raises $250M for its optical interconnect technology

Exclusive: CoreWeave strikes $12 billion contract with OpenAI ahead of IPO, sources say (per Reuters)

Mitel restructures under Chapter 11 bankruptcy to pursue hybrid opportunity

Earnings: Investors seem increasingly worried that AI won’t make money for its creators for awhile:

Oracle misses expectations and guidance was also weak, sending its stock lower

Asana shares drop over 25% on weak outlook and CEO Dustin Moskovitz’s retirement

UiPath’s growth slows to a crawl as it chases agentic AI dream with Peak acquisition, and its stock falls sharply

Adobe stock drops as AI monetization concerns weigh on investors

SentinelOne shares drop after weaker-than-expected revenue guidance

PagerDuty delivers strong earnings and revenue beat, boosting its stock

Rubrik shares jump on earnings beat and strong fiscal year outlook

Docusign shares jump on earnings and revenue beat

We have plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: Humans in the AI loop

Attack & response

X hit by large-scale DDoS attack disrupting services for hours

Fortinet identifies thousands of malicious software packages exploiting open-source repositories

February sets record for highest number of ransomware attacks ever reported

Money matters

Security funding: Cybereason raises $120M as Chainguard reportedly eyes $350M round

Blackwall reels in €45M for its AI-powered reverse proxy

Sola Security launches with $30M to simplify cybersecurity with AI and no-code tools

Cyber Guru expands cybersecurity training portfolio with acquisition of Mantra

New services

Druva and Microsoft team up to enhance cyber resiliency for enterprises

Sysdig report finds cloud security advancing with faster threat detection

New Brivo Security Suite streamlines enterprise security and compliance management

Sonar expands SonarQube with advanced security for third-party open-source code

New Splashtop solution enhances remote support with automated patch management and security controls

Detectify launches Alfred to automate CVE security testing with AI

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Quantum leaps

‘Pokemon Go’ owner Niantic Labs selling video game division to Saudi developer Scopely

Report: Binance has held talks with Trump family about selling Binance US stake As one well-connected founder and investor put it: “Corruption in broad daylight. no shame / blame whatsoever.”

Surveillance tech startup Flock Safety scores $275M in new funding at $7.5B valuation

Google reportedly negotiating $115M deal for eye-tracking startup AdHawk Microsystems

After confusion, FTC says it will go ahead with Amazon deceptive practices case

Meta says it’s almost ready to start testing Community Notes

Quantum computing seems to be getting more traction or at least more interest, and more will be coming next week at Nvidia’s GTC event, where there’s a “quantum day” despite CEO Jensen Huang’s recent insistence that quantum is many years away from practical use:

D-Wave claims to have achieved ‘quantum supremacy’ at last, but others disagree Meantime, it posted a larger-than-expected loss, but its revenue outlook topped forecasts.

Alice & Bob improve cat qubit error rates with ‘squeezing’ technique

QuamCore raises $9M to solve the biggest scalability challenge in quantum computing

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

Comings and goings

Space launch firm Relativity named Eric Schmidt CEO as it updates Terran R development.

Former Splunk CEO, Cisco President Gary Steele to be CEO of defense upstart Shield AI (per CRN)

After nearly 19 years at Google, Umesh Shankar has joined Microsoft AI as a corporate vice president of engineering after 19 years at Google, most recently as chief technologist and distinguished engineer for Google Cloud Security (per GeekWire).

Tammy Nam joined AI-powered ad startup Creatopy as CEO (per News).

What’s next

March 18-21: Nvidia GTC, San Jose: We’ll be covering all the news and interviewing key players.

Earnings:

Thursday, March 20: Micron

Photo: Robert Hof/ News