Enterprise tech leaders profit from the picks-and-shovels era of AI — but investors want even more
Another spate of earnings this week proved once again that artificial intelligence is driving a lot of upside among enterprise technology providers.
Amazon, Qualcomm, Super Micro and others saw earnings improve as companies continue to invest at least in experimenting broadly with generative AI models. But others such as Advanced Micro Devices, and even AI server provider Super Micro, disappointed investors for not providing even higher guidance for coming quarters. Only in this time of AI frenzy is Super Micro’s 200% revenue gain not enough.
AI investment doesn’t seem to be slowing down, though. CoreWeave raised even more money at a breathtaking valuation, but what would you expect for a company that is kind of the pure-play AI cloud? And MongoDB doubled down this week with a spate of generative AI announcements.
Meantime, technology to reduce hallucinations and other generative AI model issues is now a venture and market opportunity and an industry priority as it becomes more of a target of regulators and media.
And in a bit of a head-scratcher, a National Labor Relations Board judge found Andy Jassy guilty of breaking labor law with what seemed like a pretty mild statement about unions.
Next week, an explosion of cybersecurity news is coming as the RSA Conference approaches, starting Monday. We’ve already started our special coverage section that will run through and after the event. And earnings reports are coming from GlobalFoundries, Uber and Lyft, Palantir, Datadog, JFrog, Dropbox and more.
This and other news will be discussed in much more depth on John Furrier’s and Dave Vellante’s weekly podcast theCUBE Pod, out this afternoon on YouTube. Also, don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, due out this weekend.
Here’s this week’s roundup of those and other important tech stories from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
Cyber beat: It’s RSA time
Looking ahead to the RSA Conference, where both theCUBE and SiliconANGLE will be covering all the news onsite in San Francisco (* Disclosure: RSA is sponsoring coverage by theCUBE on the show floor, and theCUBE Research analysts will be offering unsponsored analysis. SiliconANGLE coverage is not sponsored.):
Dave Vellante’s and Erik Bradley’s look at the state of cyber investment and what’s coming at RSA: Security budgets are growing, but so is vendor sprawl
Advice from Arctic Wolf Chief Product Officer Dan Schiappa: What to know about AI at this year’s RSA Conference
And a lot more cyber news ahead of the event:
Money matters
Wiz deal to acquire Lacework collapses (from Calcalist)
Secure browser Island raises $175M, doubling valuation to $3B
Network security startup Corelight reels in $150M
Citigroup’s VC arm invests in AppDynamics co-founder Jyoti Bansal’s API security startup Traceable
Oasis Security reels in $35M more to secure nonhuman identities
StrongDM raises $34M to enhance zero-trust privileged access management
Trust Center Platform startup SafeBase raises $33M for platform development
SIEM startup RunReveal reels in $2.5M to reduce cybersecurity false positives
A sampling of new services announced ahead of the RSA glut:
Microsoft details broad plan to enhance its cybersecurity practices
Google launches 1B passkey authentications and new security updates
Microsoft rolls out passkey support for all consumer accounts
CalypsoAI beefs up generative AI chatbot moderation with customizable security scanners
Palo Alto Networks launches Prisma SASE 3.0 for enhanced device security
Menlo Security inks cybersecurity partnership with Google Cloud
Check out the rest of our cybersecurity coverage this week on SiliconANGLE’s cybersecurity page. And Monday we’ll have a special RSA Conference coverage section with pre-event trends and analysis and news coverage throughout the week.
AI and data news
MongoDB hits NYC with new services
- Unveiling MongoDB.Local: Setting the stage for next-gen AI applications
- Navigating the evolving AI landscape: CEO Dev Ittycheria on how MongoDB is helping to transform businesses
- MongoDB launches ‘one-stop shop’ program for enterprises to build generative AI solutions
- MongoDB announces updates to power generative AI development
- Analyst insights: The ‘crucible moment’ of AI integration in database evolution
Content concerns, and solutions
Group of US newspapers sues Open AI and Microsoft over copyright infringement
OpenAI signs content licensing agreement with the Financial Times
NIST announces new initiative to create systems that can detect AI-generated content
Galileo debuts Protect hallucination firewall as AI model accuracy comes into sharper focus
Fundings
CoreWeave raises $1.1B at $19B valuation to grow its GPU cloud
AI chip startup Blaize nabs $106M in fresh funding
Brazilian data and AI consultancy Indicium raises $40M for US expansion
Lamini raises $25M for its AI development and inference platform
New models and AI services
Anthropic introduces Team subscription tier for Claude 3, iOS app
Oracle expands vector support in latest cloud database release
Amazon launches Q AI assistant alongside an AI app generator
DataRobot introduces observability with real-time intervention capability for generative AI
GitHub elevates the generative AI coding experience with Copilot Workspace
Salesforce rolls out Tableau platform data updates and AI infrastructure improvements
Rob Strechay’s and George Gilbert’s take on Informatica: AI-powered metadata: Informatica’s role in the future of data management
That’s just a sampling of the news, so check out more of this week’s AI and data news on our AI news page and our big data news page.
Around the enterprise
Another busy earnings week, led by Amazon and Apple:
Amazon’s stock inches up as cost-cutting measures and AI investment boost AWS profits
AMD’s stock falls after revised AI revenue outlook falls short of expectations
AI server maker Super Micro’s 200% revenue growth wasn’t enough for investors as stock falls
Apple’s stock rises on record $110B buyback plan as earnings beat expectations
Qualcomm’s stock rises as new generative AI capabilities boost premium smartphone sales
Samsung delivers almost tenfold increase in profit on back of AI chip demand
NXP shares climb on better-than-expected first-quarter earnings
Cloudflare’s stock falls hard on weak revenue outlook
Informatica CEO sees no slowdown in cloud growth
F5 shares fall over 9% on disappointing earnings outlook
Subscription growth boosts Commvault’s fourth-quarter revenue by 10%
Fastly shocks investors with weak guidance and its stock plummets after-hours
Freshworks names new CEO, sees stock plunge on revised revenue guidance
SolarWinds shares climb 4%+ on expectation-topping earnings
Tenable Q1 earnings beat expectations, but outlook comes up short
Fortinet stock rises on Q4 earnings, revenue and billings beat
Five9 reports record Q1 revenue, signs largest deal yet; stock rises 6% after hours
Block shares jump on better-than-expected first-quarter results — and it plans to invest 10% of its bitcoin-related earnings each month into… bitcoin. Let’s see how that works out.
Coinbase reports first-quarter revenue beat after bitcoin rally leads surge in profit
CyberArk shares drop despite Q1 earnings beat and raised guidance
Other key news
Google cuts at least 200 employees from its developer teams in its latest round of layoffs
Zeus Kerravala takes a close look at Extreme Networks: Five thoughts from Extreme Networks’ Connect user conference
Microsoft marches on in Asia with $2.2B AI and cloud investment in Malaysia
Under the radar, but that’s big bucks for quantum computing: PsiQuantum raises $617M from Australian government
Elsewhere in tech
Binance founder CZ given four months for failing to implement anti-money-laundering measures
EU opens probe into Meta over response to disinformation on Facebook and Instagram
Ford probed in US after fatal collisions in self-driving cars
Securitize raises $47M to tokenize real-world assets on the blockchain
Hmm… Can’t say I’m a fan of Amazon’s labor relations, but this seems a little over the top: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broke federal labor law with anti-union remarks
What’s next
A busy week of events coming from theCUBE and SiliconANGLE:
What to expect at Red Hat Summit: Join theCUBE May 6-8 And a deeper pre-event look at Red Hat’s strategy: A vision in red: How Red Hat is capitalizing on growth of AI, Kubernetes, OpenShift and key cloud partnerships
What to expect during the RSA Conference: Join theCUBE May 6-9
What to expect during Boomi World: Join theCUBE May 8-9
Earnings
Monday, May 6: Teradata and Palantir
Tuesday, May 7: Datadog, GlobalFoundries, Kyndryl, Arista, Confluent, Cirrus Logic, Twilio, Lyft, Rapid7, Qualys and RingCentral
Wednesday, May 8: Arm and Uber
Thursday, May 9: JFrog, Dropbox, Rackspace. NetScout and Amplitude
Image: SiliconANGLE/Google Gemini
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