Are we finally reaching peak AI?
Always hard to say, but investors are worried: U.S. tech stocks slid after Altman warned of a bubble, an MIT study raised doubts about how much AI is actually producing returns, and Meta was reportedly looking at cutting some AI spending, or at least freezing hiring for now. (Though it apparently has signed a $10 billion cloud deal with Google.)
Nonetheless, investments in AI startups and products doesn’t seem to be slowing down. In fact, they’re doubling down on delivering them more broadly. Workato (and many others), for instance, are looking to bring AI agents to the masses.
Speaking of big investments in AI and data, Databricks just refuses to go public, instead raising an undisclosed amount this week in a Series J round — didn’t know they went that high –that values it at a cool $100 billion. What is it really waiting for? Then there’s Anthropic, reportedly raising $10 billion.
SoftBank ponied up $2 billion to invest in Intel, and the U.S. looks to be taking a 10% stake in the venerable vulnerable chipmaker as payoff for the CHIPS Act funds it was already supposed to have gotten. Nobody except Trump and his people think it’s a good idea for the government to own pieces of private companies, even if we’d all be better off with a more stable Intel. Dave Vellante has a much better plan.
More crypto companies look to cash in on Trump’s more crypto-friendly policies, as Figure Technology and Gemini file to go public following Bullish’s very bullish IPO.
VMware Explore comes up next week in Las Vegas, kicking off the traditional end of the summer lull in tech events. Also up next week: marquee tech earnings reports from Nvidia — which will be very closely watched — Snowflake, Dell, CrowdStrike, MongoDB and more.
Here’s all the enterprise and emerging tech news and views this week from News and beyond:
AI and data: Databricks hits $100B valuation
Food for thought
US tech stocks slide after Altman warns of ‘bubble’ in AI and MIT study doubts the hype
Microsoft AI chief tells us we should step back before creating AI that seems too human
Fastly report finds AI bots are reshaping the balance of web traffic
AI’s power drain: Google details Gemini apps’ environmental footprint in new paper
Money matters
Databricks’ valuation hits $100B with latest funding round
Anthropic reportedly in talks to raise $10B in new funding as AI boom continues apace
Robotics software startup FieldAI raises $405M in funding
Property management startup EliseAI nabs $250M at $2.2B valuation
KnowledgeLake raises $65M to bring AI-native synthetic labor to midsized enterprises and government agencies
IVIX raises $60M in funding for its financial crime detection platform
TinyFish raises $47M to expand deployment of enterprise web agents
Upstage bags $45M to expand its AI-native document intelligence suite to the US
Medallion raises $43M to streamline back-office paperwork for healthcare
Functionize nabs $41M to speed up software testing with AI
Casca gets $29M to bring AI-native loan origination tech to local banks
Bluefish raises $20M to help enterprise marketing take control in the era of AI chatbots
Firecrawl raises $14.5M to grow AI-ready web data infrastructure
Definite bags $10M in funding to replace clunky big data warehouses, connectors and BI tools
TensorZero raises $7.3M seed round to build open-source stack for industrial-grade LLM applications
DevOps automation startup SRE.ai launches with $7.2M in funding
Zipline AI raises $7M to ease AI data pipeline development
New models and services
Workato unveils a squad of agentic AI Genies for every major business function
Workato’s developer sandbox lets any company experience the power of agentic AI automation
Vast Data’s SyncEngine helps AI agents to tap unstructured data from every source
Google opens AI Mode globally with more personalized agentic capabilities
Magic Research says its private AI platform cuts inference costs by 90%
Salesforce unleashes AI agents in City Hall
Atlas teams up with Google Cloud to launch its AI-native video game development platform
Confluent Cloud bring real-time data to AI agents
LambdaTest releases Agent-to-Agent testing platform to validate complex AI apps
Klaviyo launches enhanced MCP server to connect AI tools with customer data
IBM’s and NASA’s Surya AI model is designed to predict the next ‘Carrington-class’ solar storm
Lightning AI launches multicloud GPU marketplace to connect developers to compute infrastructure
Alation debuts Chat with Your Data to simplify enterprise access to structured insights
Groundcover debuts a dedicated observability tool for AI agents and LLMs
Grammarly leans into writing assistance agents for students and professionals
SUPERWISE launches ‘/collect’ AI tool for frontline data capture
Policy
AI chatbot scrutiny intensifies: Texas AG launches probe of Meta and Character.AI over misleading mental health claims
Around the enterprise: The Intel hot potato
Money matters
US government reportedly could take 10% stake in Intel
But SoftBank actually offers the cash: SoftBank to take $2B stake in beleaguered chipmaker Intel
Meta signs $10B+ cloud deal with Google (per The Information)
Thoma Bravo to take HR software provider Dayforce private for $12.3B
Design software company Canva valued at $42B ahead of possible IPO
Workday’s stock falls on disappointing guidance and persistent concerns about AI threat
Zoom stock gains on stronger-than-expected earnings and revenue
Nuclear energy startup Aalo raises $100M in funding
Keychain reels in $30M to make CPG manufacturers more efficient
New products and services
Google unveils Pixel 10 lineup and new AI assistance for its smartphones
Nvidia expands AI capabilities with giga-scale networking and faster inference serving
Nvidia reportedly developing new, more powerful AI chip for sale in China
AuthZed introduces AuthZed Cloud to simplify enterprise authorization
Cosmo by CodeSignal brings bite-sized AI and business training to mobile
Cyber beat: Google’s guardrails for AI agents
Attack & response
Prosecutors charge Rapper Bot administrator after targeting X and thousands more
Apple issues emergency update to fix unpatched flaw in ImageIO framework
Menlo Security research finds use of shadow AI is booming
February ransomware attacks hit record high as ThreatDown reports 25% annual surge
Darktrace reports attackers are hijacking SaaS accounts through rented virtual private server nodes
New services
Google Cloud adds new protections for AI agents and cloud workloads at Security Summit 2025
Ping Identity expands platform with integrated privileged access management
BrowserStack introduces Testing Toolkit Chrome extension to unify QA workflows
Money matters
F5 acquires MantisNet to expand cloud-native observability capabilities
Seemplicity raises $50M to expand AI driven exposure management platform
Elsewhere in tech: Crypto parties on
Crypto lending firm Figure Technology files for Nasdaq IPO Following crypto exchange Gemini’s plan revealed late Friday to go public and the debut of Bullish last week.
Nvidia, Uber join $97M investment in autonomous driving startup Nuro
Quantinuum announces new quantum programming language and emulation platform … and weighs raising more money at a $10 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported
US spy chief says UK has dropped backdoor order for Apple
Comings and goings
Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk retires following strong fourth quarter
Arm hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sinno to aid in-house effort (per Reuters)
Oracle Chief Security Officer Mary Ann Davidson, who joined in 1988 and became the company’s first CSO, is leaving as part of a recent reorganization (per Bloomberg)
Christopher Kirchhoff has joined Scale AI as head of applied AI strategy and global security.
What’s next
Events
Aug. 25-27: VMware Explore, Las Vegas. TheCUBE will be onsite for interviews and analysis, and News will have all the news.
Earnings
Tuesday, Aug. 26: Box, MongoDB, Okta
Wednesday, Aug. 27: Nvidia, Nutanix, NetApp, Pure Storage, Snowflake, HP, CrowdStrike
Thursday, Aug. 28: Dell, Marvell, Elastic, SentinelOne, Autodesk
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