A flurry of new artificial intelligence models this week illustrated what’s coming next in AI: smaller language models targeted at vertical industries and functions.
Both Nvidia and Microsoft debuted smaller large language models too. Also supporting the notion of more customized models — call them VLMs — OpenAI made its GPT-4o fine-tuning generally available. As much as LLMs have captured much of the attention, these smaller, more controlled models look appealing to enterprises concerned about data governance and privacy, not to mention efficiency.
Indeed, Chinese startups are heading in the same direction, partly to save energy and partly to avoid the need for the most advanced Nvidia graphics processing units to which they don’t have access under export controls. That said, it looks like many Chinese companies are getting access to that high-end computing power through cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services.
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su doubled down this week on her quest to slice off a chunk of Nvidia’s lucrative GPU market, as it acquired AI infrastructure provider ZT Systems.
Infrastructure observability firms are having a moment. Not too long after Cisco Systems closed its acquisition of Splunk, others continue to reap the rewards, including Datadog turning in an upside quarter earlier this month. This past week, Grafana Labs raised a boatload at a $6 billion valuation.
Snowflake shares dropped almost 15% Thursday after a disappointing revenue outlook as well as concerns about profitability. But everyone else had pretty positive earnings reports, including Palo Alto Networks, Workday, Synopsys, Zoom and Zuora.
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch sadly died at sea off Sicily with several others, celebrating just a couple months after winning his long-running HP court case. Oddly, co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was hit by a car and died earlier this week.
Next week SiliconANGLE, theCUBE and theCUBE Research analysts will be at VMware Explore Monday through Wednesday to suss out what’s happening with the virtualization and cloud pioneer under new owner Broadcom. Also next week: earnings reports from more bellwethers such as Nvidia, Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Dell, NetApp, Pure Storage, HP, MongoDB, HashiCorp and more.
SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante discuss this and other news in more detail on this week’s theCUBE Pod, out now on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, this weekend.
Here’s the big news of the week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
AI and data: Application-specific models multiply
Issues and policy
China finds a cloud workaround for high-end AI: Report: Chinese organizations use public cloud to access restricted AI chips
More attention on AI training data:
An AI holdout: Procreate says it won’t ever use generative AI in its creative products
OpenAI agrees content licensing deal with Condé Nast to feed SearchGPT and ChatGPT
Money matters
Opkey reels in $47M to automate ERP change testing with AI
A key for agentic AI: AI payment processing startup Skyfire launches $8.5M in funding
Agribusiness AI startup Ceres Imaging rebrands as Ceres AI after closing on late-stage funding
New models and services
Nvidia, Microsoft release new small language models
Juniper Networks rolls out AI networking blueprint to accelerate deployments
OpenAI makes fine-tuning for GPT-4o customization generally available
AI21 Labs’ updated hybrid SSM-Transformer model Jamba gets longest context window yet
Nvidia debuts StormCast generative AI model for forecasting mesoscale weather events
Waymo debuts sixth-generation Driver autonomous driving platform
Salesforce’s newest AI agents help to filter out sales prospects and train salespeople
Onehouse’s vector embeddings support aims to cut the cost of AI training
Google Cloud Run speeds up on-demand AI inference with Nvidia’s L4 GPUs
Nvidia to present AI and data center performance innovations at the Hot Chips conference
Redis debuts new data integration and AI features for its database
Hotshot debuts new AI model for generating video clips
Recogni’s new Pareto system optimizes AI compute with minimal accuracy loss
RingCentral debuts new AI capabilities for its RingCX contact center solution
Dropbox acquires AI-powered calendar app Reclaim.ai
There’s more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE
Around the enterprise: AMD puts more pressure on Nvidia
Money matters
AMD to acquire hyperscale solutions provider ZT Systems in data center AI expansion bid
IT infrastructure monitoring startup Grafana Labs raises $270M at $6B valuation
Eppo raises $28M in funding for its A/B testing platform
Cryptography chip startup Fabric secures $33M in funding
Depot raises $4.1M to expand build acceleration platform with new capabilities
Earnings
Snowflake beats expectations but stock falls on fears of decelerating revenue growth
Palo Alto Networks shares rise following Q4 earnings beat and strong 2025 outlook
Zoom impresses with second-quarter earnings beat and upbeat guidance
Chip design software firm Synopsys delivers record revenue as AI accelerates demand
Zuora exceeds second-quarter projections, raises fiscal 2025 revenue forecast
Workday’s stock flopped, then popped on confident long-term growth forecast
In other enterprise news
Environmentalists raise concerns over Virginia data centers as water consumption skyrockets
Rackspace expands OpenStack offerings with new enterprise-ready managed cloud solution
There’s plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps
Cyber beat: Iran targets political campaigns
Attack & response
US intelligence agencies confirm that Iran is targeting both Trump and Harris presidential campaigns
Disaster recovery in action: Kaseya responds to CrowdStrike crisis
Toyota alleges stolen customer data published on hacking site came from outside supplier
Mandiant uncovers critical privilege escalation vulnerability in Azure Kubernetes service
McDonald’s Instagram hacked to promote cryptocurrency scam featuring Grimace
Services at oil giant Halliburton disrupted by suspected ransomware attack
New services
Google Cloud unveils new convergence-focused security features
Fortanix expands data security platform with new file system encryption feature
Elsewhere in tech: The endless regulatory dance
Apple updates iOS and iPadOS to improve compliance with EU’s DMA law
UK antitrust watchdog closes Google, Apple probes to revise regulatory approach
Google inks controversial deal with California’s lawmakers to fund local news
US judge blocks FTC’s ban on noncompete clauses
Fintech startup Bolt reportedly raising $450M at $14B valuation Emphasis on “reportedly,” since one supposed investor apparently isn’t.
Story raises $80M for blockchain-based IP network to address creative ownership in the AI era
A man is playing video games again after Neuralink’s second successful brain implant surgery
HTC opens up the metaverse with Viverse Create, a no-code virtual world-building platform
Wiliot brings generative AI to real-time supply chain analytics
And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy
Comings and goings, and passings
Sad news: Divers recover body of Autonomy co-founder Mike Lynch from superyacht wreckage Coincidentally, co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain was hit by a car and died earlier this week.
Five9 plans 7% workforce layoff, affecting fewer than 200 people (per CRN)
Noam Shazeer, ex-CEO of Character.AI who joined Google this month, will be Gemini co-technical lead and work with Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals (per The Information)
Stability AI’s new chief technology officer is Hanno Basse, former CTO of Digital Domain.
Decentralized AI infrastructure startup Mira appointed former Uber exec Ninad Naik chief product officer.
What’s next
Events
Aug. 26-28: VMware Explore, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE, theCUBE and theCUBE Research will be onsite with all the news, plus interviews and analysis.
Earnings: Another busy week
Tuesday, Aug. 27: Box and SentinelOne
Wednesday, Aug. 28: Nvidia, HP, NetApp, Pure Storage, Salesforce, CrowdStrike and Okta
Thursday, Aug. 29: Dell, MongoDB, Marvell, Autodesk, Elastic and HashiCorp
Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram
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