CrowdStrike Breaks the Internet, Generative AI Comes to Focus

CrowdStrike Holdings ended the week with screams of shock from system administrators around the world after it released a flawed software update that cried out halts on Windows computers around the world and disrupted the internet.

Cybersecurity companies issued workarounds, but the incident, which affected banks, airlines and many other companies, highlighted how vulnerable information technology systems are. CrowdStrike shares plummeted 11% today. Why not? Dan Primack points out that it's because the company is now considered “essential to the entire internet.”

Consolidation in the cybersecurity space raises risks for CrowdStrike, as Alphabet could buy Wizz as other big tech companies such as Google and Cisco seek to enter the cybersecurity space rather than purely as cybersecurity companies.

Also, on the acquisition front, GitLab is reportedly being acquired by Datadog. DevSecOps and observability may be a good match, but it's unclear if a deal will go through, as GitLab, currently valued at $8.5 billion, would be a big drag on Datadog. With other exits such as an IPO still largely absent, OneStream's IPO plans are intriguing. Will this be a one-hit wonder, or will it pioneer a SaaS company offering?

Generative AI has received scorn from many quarters this week, but the money is flowing in. Chip and server makers are seeing increased profits, as evidenced by Gartner raising its server market forecast for generative AI businesses, while OpenAI is apparently in talks with Broadcom about designing AI chips. At the same time, however, further restrictions on chip technology exports to China sent semiconductor stocks plummeting this week.

And Elon Musk announced that he was moving X and SpaceX from California to Texas, clearly using an economic decision as a political attack. Speaking of Musk, it was widely reported that he and his cronies, Marc Andreessen, David Sachs, Peter Thiel, and several others, donated millions of dollars to Trump. I don't think this is the core of Silicon Valley in any way. And according to a poll by The Information, tech people support Biden 59% to 27%. So take the story about a wave of conservatives in Silicon Valley with a pinch of salt. These people have always leaned to Trump.

Next week marks the start of technology earnings season, with many major companies announcing results, including SAP, NXP Semiconductor, Alphabet, Tesla, IBM, Check Point Software and Juniper Networks.

This news and more will be discussed in detail on John Furrier and Dave Vellante's weekly podcast, theCUBE Pod, launching on YouTube this afternoon. Also be sure to tune in this weekend for Vellante's weekly in-depth analysis show, Breaking Analysis.

And the following week, we have our very own editorial event, “Supercloud 7: Preparing for the Next Generation Data Platform,” with a host of great guests, with more to come. Register now for the free live and on-demand event.

Here’s the week’s big news from SiliconANGLE and more.

AI and Data: Generation AI gets ridiculous looks, but the money keeps flowing

UK antitrust watchdog launches investigation into Microsoft's Inflexion AI partnership

Report: Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple, Salesforce use YouTube transcripts to train AI

Corey Quinn Don't think too much AWS's commitment to generative AI

Big Tech Companies Expect AI to Be Safe: OpenAI, Nvidia, Google and others launch AI cybersecurity consortium

SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research again this year covered the CDOIQ Symposium, taking a deep dive into the role of chief data officer and other data issues. From Data Governance to AI: TheCUBE Analysts Discuss Data Management Challenges and Solutions All interviews are theCUBE event pageand more interview summaries on SiliconANGLE.

Money issues

Gartner significantly raises server spending forecast as benefits of generative AI take hold

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li reportedly raises $100 million for new spatial intelligence startup

Pindrop Security Raises $100 Million to Fight Deepfakes with AI-Powered Voice Authentication Technology

Nvidia expands AI cloud capabilities with Brev.dev acquisition, its fourth acquisition this yearPer CRN)

Nvidia joins Israeli AI disease modeling company CytoReason in $80 million funding round

Hybrid cloud data management startup CTERA Networks raises $80M to focus on AI workloads

Open AI chiplet startup DreamBig Semiconductor raises $75M in funding

Vectara Raises $25M, Launches New RAG-Optimized Mockingbird Model

Legal AI startup Leya AB raises $25M to help lawyers improve productivity

Kindo Raises $20.6M to Secure Enterprise AI Management

Mira raises $9M in seed funding to develop accessible decentralized AI infrastructure

AiXplain secures $6.5M to simplify AI agent development

New Products and Services

OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Broadcom and others to develop new AI server chips

OpenAI and Mistral AI Announce New Cost-Effective Language Models

Former OpenAI and Tesla executive Andrei Karpathy enters education with AI Native School

OpenAI researchers pit two AI models against each other in a deception game to improve AI explainability

Google announces a slew of new features for AI developers

Microsoft's experimental SpreadsheetLLM helps AI better understand spreadsheets

Salesforce Introduces Autonomous AI Customer Service Agents Powered by Einstein

C3 Launches Generative AI Platform for Government Agencies

DeepL releases latest large-scale language model dedicated to translation for business users

Cerabyte unveils prototype ceramic-based data storage technology for low-cost, long-term data storage

Kore.AI’s new platform GALE helps advance LLM experimentation using no-code tools.

Tribble AI Assistant for RFP Process Automation Launches Analytics Feature

Juniper Networks Announces Ops4AI Lab and Design to Accelerate Customer AI Adoption

From GitLab's perspective: Rethinking Productivity Measurement in the Age of AI

Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean: AI Requires “Algorithmic Breakthroughs” and Is Not the Main Cause of Rising Data Center Emissions (From Fortune)

More AI and Big Data news

Around the Business: CrowdStrike Blocks the Internet

theCUBE Research's analysis of Friday's massive internet outage: CrowdStrike Update Brings Down Global Systems Running Microsoft Windows and Reboots the World And the reaction of other observers to this incident raises new questions about the stability of our IT infrastructure. CrowdStrike update glitch causes one of the largest IT outages in history

Money issues

Report: GitHub rival GitLab may be acquired by Datadog

Report: Collaboration software company Smartsheet in discussions with private equity for potential acquisition

TSMC beats quarterly expectations with over 40% revenue growth

ASML orders surge as demand for AI chips boosts the company's purchases of key semiconductor tools.From CNBC)

Financial software provider OneStream files for $465.5 million IPO

Semiconductor stocks see biggest one-day drop amid threat of tougher Chinese export controls

Figma announces private funding round valuing it at $12.5 billion

Retirement startup Human Interest secures $1.33 billion valuation in new $267 million funding round

Dutch chip manufacturing quality control startup Nearfield Instruments raises €135m

Logistics software startup Alvys raises $20.5M to become the de facto operating system for supply chain management

In other news

IBM's $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp faces FTC antitrust review

HP Introduces AI-Optimized OmniBook Ultra Laptop and Two New All-in-One Desktops

Red Hat enhances OpenShift to better support diverse workloads

There's plenty more cloud, infrastructure and apps news to come

CyberBeat: Google targets Wiz

Headline News

Alphabet reportedly in talks to buy Israeli cloud security company Wizz for $23 billion

Neovera Acquires Emagined Security to Strengthen Cybersecurity Services

Exabeam and LogRhythm Complete Merger, Focus on Strengthening R&D and Services

Kandji raises $100 million at $850 million valuation to power Apple's endpoint management solutions

Kaspersky to close US operations following Commerce Department ban

Attack and reaction

AT&T reportedly paid hackers $370,000 to delete stolen customer data

Hacktivist group 'NullBulge' claims to have breached Disney's Slack, exposing over 1TB of data

15 million email addresses stolen from Atlassian's Trello shared on hacking forum

Google Domains transfer flaw allows multiple crypto domains to be hijacked from Squarespace

Protect AI warns of growing security risks from open source AI and ML tools

New Services

Okta Unveils New Tools to Strengthen Identity Security Management

Druva Introduces New Cybersecurity Capabilities to Its Data Protection Platform

BlackBerry Introduces CylanceMDR Pro to Advance AI-Powered Cybersecurity for the Enterprise

OpenText Introduces AI-powered Fortify Aviator to Advance Code Security and Vulnerability Remediation

BlueVoyant's new cyber defense platform aims to strengthen enterprise security posture.

Normalyze Releases New Snowflake-Native App to Enhance Data Access Security

Rezonate launches new identity security platform for human and non-human identities

For more cyber security news, click here

Other areas of technology

Andreessen Horowitz co-founder fully endorses Trump campaign So for the Silicon Valley oligarchs, it's all about the money, not about changing the world.

Elon Musk claims he's moving SpaceX to Texas because of California's new gender laws It shouldn't have anything to do with taxes.

Meta reportedly in talks to acquire minority stake in eyewear maker Essilor Luxottica

Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX suffers $235 million security breach

Enterprise blockchain data platform Allium raises $16.5M led by Theory Ventures

Magic Leap reportedly lays off sales and marketing teams as it pivots to technology licensing

Also check out our news on emerging technology, blockchain, cryptocurrency and policy

Entering and exiting

Veteran Intel executive Lisa Spellman Intention Becoming a CEO At Cornelis Networks, a spinoff of the chipmaker's networking division.

Cloud networking company Aviatrix Hired Former Google, VMware, and Cisco executive Anirban Sengupta As Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering.

Cyber ​​assurance firm Cork Protection appoints former AWS and Dell executive Dan Candy Becoming a CEO. Founder CEO Carlson Choi Chief Product and Technology Officer Per CRN.

Dell Technologies executive leaves Advanced Micro Devices more than 11 years ago Rahul Tikoo He returned to his role as head of AMD's PC processor business. Per CRN.

Kindrill name Kim Bashir CIO, Successor Michael Bradshawwill lead the company's applications, data and AI practice. Nicholas Sekkake He has also been appointed Practice Leader for Kyndryl's Cloud Practice.

Firefly Aerospace CEO Bill Weber He stepped down after nearly two years in the role, and is being replaced by director Robert Gates while the board searches for a new CEO. Peter Schumacher Becomes interim CEO.

What's next?

July 30: Supercloud 7: Preparing for the next generation data platform: At our latest Super Cloud editorial event, we will explore the foundations of the new AI era with many executives, practitioners, analysts and entrepreneurs from startups and established companies. Here are some of the topics we'll cover: And our Special Sections Prior to the event.

Revenue

July 22: Financial Statements and NXP Semiconductors

July 23: alphabet, Texas Instruments, Tesla and Seagate

July 24: IBM and Checkpoint Software

July 25: Juniper Networks and Pegasystems

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram