Brian Gracely & Idit Levine | Solo.io
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Q&A: Solo.io brings open-source community to the enterprise

Open-source projects are no longer only a developer’s conversation; they are now also an executive-level discussion.Companies of all sizes and industries are now considering open-source projects as sometimes even better than proprietary software. Open source proponents say that its not only cost-efficient, but also more portable, flexible and secure. One downside, some executives say, is their support.Solo.io Inc. has found its niche here. The company is a cloud-native app platform built on projects like Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy and others

US Surgeon General thinks social media should come with tobacco-style warning labels

One of the United States’ most senior health officials, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, today said in an op-ed for the New York Times social media platforms should have warning labels regarding the potential mental health harms they could create in the young.“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency – and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” he said. This isn’t the first time Murphy has sounded the alarm where mental health and social media use are concerned. In 2023, he published a 19-page report, which cited research on the fact the youth of America probably spends too much time in social media enclosures where anxiety and depression could emerge

AI-powered e-commerce accounting startup Finaloop raises $35M

Finaloop Inc., the e-commerce-oriented accounting platform, said today it has closed on $35 million in early-stage funding.Today’s Series A round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and saw participation from new investors Vesey Ventures and Commerce Ventures, plus new backers Accel and Aleph. It brings the startup’s total amount raised to date to $55 million.Founded in 2020 with offices in New York City and Tel Aviv, Finaloop is aiming to disrupt the e-commerce business accounting industry and transform the way sellers and retailers organize their finances with its automated bookkeeping and inventory cost management tools

Ransom demands issued to Snowflake users amid alleged third-party contractor breach

The number of companies facing ransom payments for data stolen in a campaign targeting Snowflake Inc. users is believed to be as many 10 as a hacker claims to have gained access by compromising a third-party contractor.The hacking campaign targeting Snowflake users first came to light in late May when a claimed 560 million records stolen from Ticketmaster Entertainment appeared for sale on the Breach Forums hacking site. This was then followed by data being offered for sale from U.S. auto parts provider Advance Auto Parts Inc. on June 6.The commonality between the two was they were both Snowflake customers

Justice Department sues Adobe over its subscription cancellation policies

The U.S. Department of Justice today sued Adobe Inc. for allegedly making it unnecessarily difficult to unsubscribe from its software products.In addition to the company, the complaint names executives David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney as defendants. Wadhwani is the president of Adobe’s digital media business, which includes its creative applications. Sawhney is the president of digital go-to-market and sales.The Justice Department brought the lawsuit following a referral from the Federal Trade Commission. According to the complaint, the FTC found that Adobe had breached a 2010 piece of legislation called the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act

Tinybird reels in $30M for its real-time data platform

Tinybird Inc., a startup with a platform for powering real-time analytics projects, today announced that it has raised $30 million in funding.Balderton Capital led the Series B investment with participation from returning backers CRV, Singular and Crane. A source told TechCrunch that Tinybird is now worth $240 million.Many applications require the ability to process data immediately after it’s generated. Information about a potential network breach, for example, must be sent to a company’s cybersecurity tools as soon as possible to minimize the amount of time the hackers have to infect internal systems

Three insights you might have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Financial Services Symposium

Cloud spending in the financial services industry has been on a growth curve, and Amazon Web Services Inc. has gained momentum in this sector. For financial services companies, broader cloud adoption has led to a heightened focus on data and new ways to organize and manage vast amounts of information to create intelligent solutions using AI.How the financial world is leveraging data to transform operations and increase customer value was a central focus of theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Financial Services Symposium. TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, provided insights through interviews with company executives, customers and partners. (* Disclosure below

Runway debuts new Gen-3 Alpha model for generating videos

Startup Runway AI Inc. today debuted a new artificial intelligence model, Gen-3 Alpha, that can generate 10-second videos based on text prompts.New York-based Runway is backed by more than $190 million in funding from Google LLC, Nvidia Corp. and other investors. Gen-3 Alpha is the third addition to a series of video generation algorithms that the company originally debuted last February. According to TechCrunch, Runway plans to expand the product line down the road with several more capable versions of its new model.The company says Gen-3 Alpha can generate higher-fidelity videos than its previous-generation AI

NICE customers provide best practices for adopting AI in the contact center

Customer experience improvement remains a top initiative for business and information technology leaders.The stakes are high in CX. My research has found that 95% of companies now compete on CX and, last year, two-thirds of millennials admitted to switching brands because of a single bad experience. Contact centers and the customer experience professionals who staff them are the unsung heroes of many businesses. However, most organizations find it challenging to have well-trained professionals available to handle all customer inquiries.The amount of information CX teams must master (or be able to pull up instantly) to respond effectively to customer inquiries and complaints is staggering

On theCUBE Pod: The intensifying Snowflake vs. Databricks battle and thoughts on gen AI investment

The past few months have highlighted that the battle between Snowflake Inc. and Databricks Inc. is as hot as ever.Snowflake vs. Databricks and the two companies’ efforts to maintain their moats was one of the subjects of conversation for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) to discuss on the latest episode of the CUBE podcast.The two companies have different philosophies. But there’s no question that Databricks is growing substantially faster than Snowflake right now, according to Vellante.“We see that in the ETR data, and we’ve been reporting that for well over a year now,” he said

Adobe integrates more generative AI features into Acrobat

Adobe Inc. today introduced new artificial intelligence features for Acrobat, its PDF editing application, that will enable users to generate images and analyze large document collections.The update is rolling about two months after the company equipped Acrobat with an embedded AI assistant. The chatbot can answer user questions about a document and generate summaries. According to Adobe, the AI upgrade detailed today significantly expands upon those capabilities.Acrobat can now answer questions not only about PDF text but also Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and other files. Moreover, it’s capable of analyzing such files in bulk

Amazon to splurge $230M on free cloud credits for generative AI startups

Amazon Web Services Inc. said today it’s giving away $230 million in AWS cloud credits to generative artificial intelligence startups, as part of its bid to remain at the forefront of a cloud computing industry that’s now laser-focused on winning over AI companies.The company will give free credits to early-stage generative AI startups, enabling them to access its compute power, a range of AI models and specialist infrastructure and services, in order to encourage them to build their businesses on its cloud platform

Zeta Labs unveils JACE, an action-oriented generative AI assistant quite unlike any other

Artificial intelligence research startup Zeta AI Inc., better known as Zeta Labs, said today it has closed on $2.9 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate the development of its autonomous generative AI agent, called JACE.Today’s round was led by Daniel Gross, former head of AI at Y Combinator, and former GitHub Inc. Chief Executive Nat Friedman. Earlybird VC, Kaya VC and a number of angel investors also participated in the round.Zeta Labs announced the round alongside the debut of its “groundbreaking” digital assistant JACE, which some believe represents the next evolution of AI agents

Former NSA Director Paul Nakasone joins OpenAI board

Paul M. Nakasone, a retired general of the U.S. Army and a former director of the National Security Agency, NSA, has just been added to OpenAI’s board of directors, it was reported today.Nakasone stepped down as NSA director earlier this year after becoming head under the Trump administration. He also served as leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and was chief of the Central Security Service.“Mr. Nakasone’s insights will also contribute to OpenAI’s efforts to better understand how AI can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by quickly detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats,” OpenAI said in a blog post today

Impetus Technologies sees continued momentum for AI as it speeds legacy data migration to Databricks

As a partner with Databricks Inc., Impetus Technologies Inc. has been active over the past year in legacy data migration of large-scale environments to the Databricks platform.It is important work for many organizations seeking to rapidly transition from legacy systems and realize the value of data analytics and generative AI.Jeff Veis and Anand Raman of Impetus Technologies talk with theCUBE about legacy data migration.“We’ve built IP that’s helped Databricks consume much, much faster,” said Anand Raman (pictured, right), chief revenue officer of Impetus Technologies

Black Basta ransomware group suspected in Ascension data theft incident

U.S. healthcare provider Ascension has provided more details of its “cyber security event” last month, admitting that data was stolen, with some reports also suggesting that the Black Basta ransomware gang was behind the attack.One of the largest nonprofit and Catholic health systems in the U.S. and also the second-largest operator of hospitals in the U.S. as of 2019, Ascension first disclosed that it had suffered a security issue on May 5. At the time, Ascension said the attack had disrupted clinical operations and was advising business partners to suspend their connections to the Ascension environment temporarily

Adobe’s stock jumps on AI-powered earnings and revenue beats

Shares of the creative and marketing software company Adobe Inc. jumped in late trading today on the back of strong earnings and revenue beats and a somewhat mixed outlook.The company reported second-quarter earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $4.48 per share on revenue of $5.31 billion, up 10% from a year earlier. Both numbers came in ahead of Wall Street’s forecasts, with analysts looking for earnings of just $4.39 per share on lower sales of $5.29 billion.The results also beat the company’s own guidance range, as Adobe had previously called for earnings of just $4.35 to $4.40 on revenue of $5.25 billion to $5.3 billion

SailPoint launches AI-powered application onboarding for enhanced identity security

Identity security company SailPont Technologies Inc. today launched a new artificial intelligence-powered application onboard capability to enable customers to integrate critical business applications seamlessly.The new capability, offered as part of the SailPoint Identity Security Cloud, has been designed to simplify the process of integrating critical business applications. Through the automation of the onboarding process, SailPoint says, users gain faster time to value, critical security for business applications and can improve their user experience

Microsoft’s Brad Smith acknowledges past security failures, outlines new initiatives

Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said before a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing today that the company acknowledges its past security shortcomings and detailed new initiatives to bolster defenses.The testimony came as a former employee claimed that Microsoft ignored his warnings about vulnerabilities in Active Directory, which ultimately led to the hack of SolarWinds Worldwide LLC in 2020.During his testimony, Smith (pictured) addressed significant breaches, including the SolarWinds hack and the compromise of Microsoft Exchange by hackers in 2023. He said the incidents had resulted from multiple failures within Microsoft’s security protocols

Guardrails for AI: How ICE’s AI Center of Excellence ensures compliance and innovation

Given the growing interest in artificial intelligence for its ability to enhance human capabilities, establishing governance guardrails is crucial, as demonstrated by Intercontinental Exchange’s AI Center of Excellence.As a testing ground for new AI use cases, the AI Center of Excellence plays a key role in the incubation process, ensuring that established guidelines — such as data validation, AI model governance, data governance and distribution — are diligently followed, according to Anand Pradhan (pictured), senior director of technology at the AI Center of Excellence at ICE. Pradhan also runs the NYSE Launchpad Lab

Databricks leads the way in open-source and no-code technologies: key analysis

The data and artificial intelligence landscape is undergoing a transformative shift with the integration of no-code technologies to enhance efficiency and innovation.One of the companies leading this charge is Databricks Inc., whose recent developments promise to streamline data management and processing through open-source initiatives and advanced automation.DbInsight’s Tony Baer talks to theCUBE about no-code technologies.“We’ve seen the waves of innovation,” said John Furrier, executive analyst at the CUBE Research

Informatica aims to reinvent data management pipeline for AI

As companies invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Informatica Inc. is sounding the call for modernized data management.The saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” has become an apt expression for AI, which is more likely to produce inaccurate results when being fed poor data.Informatica’s Peter Ku talks about the lack of data management expertise in the tech industry.“Everyone’s ready for AI, but your data’s not,” said Peter Ku (pictured), vice president and chief industry strategist of banking, capital markets and financial services at Informatica

Qlik Connect recap: Where there’s data, there’s opportunity

As I recap Qlik’s Qlik Connect event held this past week in Orlando, I can’t help but start with Qlik Chief Executive Mike Capone’s comments in his keynote: Where there’s data, there’s opportunity.Data is the foundation of everything today, in AI and pretty much everything in between. Today, we are experiencing a new dawn of data and a new era of opportunity. With the rise of artificial intelligence in general and generative AI in particular, we have reached an inflection point that is changing everything all over again — and at the core of that transformation is data

Supercharging financial services with real-time analytics and gen AI

The very fabric of enterprise data utilization is terraforming, as companies move from historic to real-time, operational data. With their split-second sensitivity, these binary bits serve as the heartbeat of innovation.MongoDB’s Shiv Pullepu discusses real-time data for financial services.Given the resources needed for such data and artificial intelligence operations, how are data wranglers such as MongoDB Inc

Overcoming adoption hurdles: The future of generative artificial intelligence in finance

The AWS Financial Services Symposium has made it clear that the world of financial services is undergoing a massive shift, driven by generative artificial intelligence. The future of AI in finance has led some to feel overwhelmed, while others are nothing but excited about the road ahead.Generative artificial intelligence has the ability to transform financial services in a way that hasn’t been seen for decades, according to Junta Nakai (pictured), vice president and global head of financial services, sustainability and cybersecurity go to market at Databricks Inc. That’s important, given studies that have shown that Millennials would rather go to the dentist than to the bank

Data observability’s crucial role in the AI era: Acceldata and Workday weigh in

Data quality is paramount for today’s digitized enterprises, but managing large, disparate information sources remains a significant challenge. Add to that the need for data observability and governance, as well as growing complexities from artificial intelligence, and a formidable operational minefield emerges.What expert signals are percolating on the modern imperative for clean, accurate and reliable enterprise data?Insights on data observability from the experts at Acceldata and Workday.“Data observability is a new concept,” said Rohit Choudhary (pictured, right), founder and chief executive officer of Acceldata Inc

Empowering enterprise evolution: Harnessing hybrid cloud solutions for digital transformations

Hybrid cloud solutions are emerging as the cornerstone for modern enterprises looking to optimize their infrastructure.These solutions seamlessly blend cloud-native approaches with on-premise environments, empowering organizations to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence and foster collaborative ecosystems. By accelerating innovation and driving business growth, hybrid cloud solutions are transforming the way companies operate. Leading this charge are IBM Corp. Consulting and Red Hat Inc., whose strategic partnership is making it easier for businesses to migrate their infrastructure and navigate their digital transformation journey

Five thoughts from Cisco Live 2024

Cisco Live was held last week in what has become my second home, Las Vegas. I had dubbed this the most important Cisco Live in the Chuck Robbins era, as the company is looking to put a stake in the artificial intelligence ground.Simultaneously, Cisco Systems Inc. is integrating its Splunk acquisitions and reshaping the security business in real time. For most companies, doing one of these things would be all-encompassing, but these are not typical times. Chief Executive Robbins has promised stakeholders, which includes investors, customers, partners and employees, that Cisco would move faster, and it appears Cisco is doing just that

Miniature computer maker Raspberry Pi raises £166M in London IPO

Shares of Raspberry Pi Holdings plc, a developer of miniature computers that power satellites and tomato bullhorns, jumped more than 37% in the company’s stock market debut today.The listing took place on the London Stock Exchange. Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi earlier raised £166 million, or $228 million, through an initial public offering. Investors bought 30.7% of the company’s ordinary shares in the IPO and have the option to purchase an additional 2.3% under an over-allotment provision.Raspberry Pi makes single-board computers, compact computers that are about the size of a credit card and are implemented on a single circuit board

The dawn of AI factories: Nvidia’s full-stack platform tackles AI demands in financial services

Generative artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize the financial services industry, marking a confluence of technology and business operations. While the sector has utilized AI for decades, factors such as the rise of AI factories, accelerated compute platforms and purpose-built infrastructures signal a technical expansion by orders of magnitude.Discussing gen AI for financial services with Nvidia’s Malcolm deMayo.“There is a tsunami-sized wave of innovation, disruptive innovation,” said Malcolm deMayo (pictured), global vice president of the financial services industry at Nvidia Corp

Revolutionizing the automobile industry: How AI and open-source software are driving innovation

Generative artificial intelligence and open-source software are used across various industries, and up until recently, one of the most often overlooked is the automobile industry, which has a large and innovative use case for the technologies. One of the biggest uses of AI and open-source technology in automobiles is the use of safety-critical systems in software-defined vehicles, an example of how these emerging innovations have applications across all market and are revolutionizing the automobile industry.Red Hat’s Francis Chow talks with theCUBE about revolutionizing the automobile industry

Cybersecurity experts flag potential risks affecting new top-level domains

Some cybersecurity experts have expressed concerns about two new top-level domains that became generally available earlier this month.The two top-level domains were released by Google LLC on May 3 along with six others. In a statement issued today, the search giant argued that any potential cybersecurity risks which may emerge are manageable and can be addressed with existing breach prevention mechanisms. Google operates a domain registry through which it offers top-level domains, or TLDs, the dot-delimited suffixes at the end of URLs. On May 3, the search giant made eight new TLDs available for use by website operators. Two of those TLDs, .zip and

Pepperdata and AWS join forces to tackle big data cost challenges

Founded in 2012, Pepperdata Inc. is a big data infrastructure management company that has grown by moving its cost-savings solutions from on-premises to the cloud.In doing so, Pepperdata has formed a partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc., which leveraged the startup’s technology so that customers can realize savings while using its vast array of cloud services.“They are taking us into customers where the customers have a cost problem,” said Ash Munshi (pictured), chief executive officer of Pepperdata. “It’s unusual for a company to basically say, ‘Hey, guess what? I’m going to take you into a customer to help them save money on my platform

Ripple acquires Metaco for $250M to diversify services into crypto custody

Blockchain technology company Ripple Labs Inc. has bought the Switzerland-based digital asset custody and tokenization firm Metaco SA for $250 million, the company said in an announcement today.Metaco provides a platform for cryptocurrency and digital asset custody infrastructure for institutions to safely store tokens. Its primary service is Harmonize, which is an enterprise-grade offering designed for banks, businesses and other institutions to create and hold their own tokens.Ripple developed its own XRP cryptocurrency, which has a market cap of about $22.8 billion, making it the sixth-largest token

Juniper debuts new AI network management features and Wi-Fi 6E access point

Juniper Networks Inc. today debuted a new version of its Marvis chatbot that uses OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT model to ease network troubleshooting tasks.The ChatGPT integration is rolling out alongside several other software updates, as well as a new Wi-Fi endpoint. According to Juniper, the latter device includes a dedicated sensor for detecting network interference. All the new additions to the company’s product portfolio make use of artificial intelligence models to some extent.Marvis receives new integrationsFirst introduced in 2018, Juniper’s Marvis chatbot helps administrators fix technical issues affecting their company’s corporate network

nOps leverages AI to optimize cloud costs in pay-for-savings-only model

In a traditional business model, a vendor provides a service for a fee whether success is realized or not. At the cloud management platform provider nOps Inc., no one gets paid until a customer saves money.This unusual approach is based on optimizing cloud commitments for customers, where savings are compared to on-demand usage and if resources are paused, nOps receives a percentage of the amount saved.“Customers only pay if we save them money, so we just take a percentage of the savings,” said JT Giri (pictured), chief executive officer of nOps Inc. “It’s a powerful model

Stability AI releases StableStudio to become an open-source platform for AI

Stability AI Ltd. announced today that it’s going all-in on open source with the release of StableStudio, an open-source release of DreamStudio, the company’s premier interface for its art-generating artificial intelligence Stable Diffusion model.After its release, DreamStudio quickly became a one-stop-shop for accessing all of Stability AI’s text-to-image generating capabilities without the need for users to write any code. Users could quickly generate artwork by typing in prompts to test out new features as they were released. In April it was upgraded with the Stable Diffusion XL beta model, which is capable of producing even more vivid and photorealistic imagery than ever before

Archera.ai takes aim at controlling cloud costs through optimized commitment plans

A simple error can lead to costly, wasted cloud resources.One example can be found in the customer whose keystroke mistake led to the spin-up of a cloud instance much larger than was required. No one noticed, the job ran all weekend, and the result was $300,000 in unnecessary charges.Tales such as these are motivating businesses of all sizes to take a closer look at cloud costs and find new ways to manage them. One startup company that has based its business on helping customers manage cloud costs more efficiently is Archera.ai Inc., a Seattle-based firm that offers a way for cloud users to save money and time

Kyndryl beats earnings estimates but shares fall on weak guidance

Shares of Kyndryl Holdings Inc., the former services business unit of IBM Corp., fell more than 10% in early trading today as the company’s full-year revenue forecast issued Tuesday fell below analysts’ expectations.However, the company said it’s beating its goals on booking new business in the lucrative hyperscale market and is successfully shedding low-margin business inherited from its IBM days.Fourth-quarter revenues inched up 1%, to $4.3 billion, on a constant currency basis and beat analysts’ estimates of $4.18 billion. The adjusted pretax loss of $61 million beat estimates of a $100 million loss

Redefining the cloudscape: The rise of women leaders in cloud computing

Along with all of its other significant challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic put up new barriers when it comes to closing the global gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum. The pandemic increased the gap by a generation, from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.The gaps are more likely to be found in sectors that require disruptive technical skills, with women making up 32% of the workforce in data and artificial intelligence, 20% in engineering and 14% in cloud computing

NeuroBlade makes SQL processing unit available to Dell Power Edge users

Data analytics acceleration startup NeuroBlade Ltd. today announced that its NeuroBlade SQL Processing Unit will be made available to Dell Power Edge users.The collaboration, announced at the Dell Technologies World 2023 conference in Las Vegas today, is claimed to pioneer a new standard for data analytics acceleration that speeds time to insight and improves query performance on petabyte-sized datasets. The solution is being pitched as providing customers with the processor architecture proven to accelerate high-throughput data analytics workloads

C3 AI’s Tom Siebel sees power and peril in AI’s march to the mainstream

Any list of computer industry figures who could legitimately be classified as a living legend would have to include Tom Siebel.He and co-founder Pat House started Siebel Systems Inc. in 1993 and grew it to a $2 billion-a-year giant that practically defined the customer relationship management market for large enterprises. Oracle Corp. bought Siebel Systems for nearly $6 billion in 2005, making Siebel a billionaire.It didn’t take Siebel long to get back in the game. In 2009 he launched C3 IOT Inc. to focus on analytics for industrial companies. The company has since renamed itself C3 AI Inc. and built a portfolio of artificial intelligence applications for use by large companies

Elon Musk reportedly seeking to launch AI startup that will compete with OpenAI

Elon Musk is reportedly seeking to raise funding for a new artificial intelligence startup that would compete with OpenAI LP.The Financial Times reported the development today, citing people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal also reported the Musk formed a company headquartered in Nevada called X.AI Corp. Musk reportedly is the only listed director of the company. Jared Birchall, director of Mr. Musk’s family office, is its secretary, according to the filing last month.The Journal also said X.AI has authorized the sale of 100 million shares for the company, which is privately held

VMware looks to disrupt the key load balancer market with a ‘better together’ story

Load balancers have been a core part of application infrastructure since the mid-1990s. The load balancer, located between the application layer and network infrastructure, ensures high application performance and scalability, along with advanced capabilities that include security, visibility, automation and much more.There is no denying that we live in an application-driven economy. Application experience is synonymous with business growth and superior customer satisfaction. In fact, my research shows that customer experience is now the top brand differentiator

Zoom acquires employee engagement startup Workvivo

Zoom Video Communications Inc. has acquired Workvivo Ltd., a venture-backed startup with an employee engagement platform of the same name.Zoom announced the deal today without disclosing financial terms. The company expects to close the acquisition by the end of the month. Cork, Ireland-based Workvivo provides an employee engagement platform that enables executives to share business updates with workers. Users can share posts, videos, podcasts and news articles. An embedded comment system enables workers to interact with the content published by their company’s leadership.Workvivo displays updates in an activity feed that organizations can customize with their brand assets

European parliament looks to build strong regulations on use of AI

The European Parliament is working through key legislation to regulate the use of artificial intelligence to regulate its use based on its ability to do harm to society and business, including measures that would force chatbots to declare they’re not human.Members of the European Parliament are meeting currently in Brussels over a set of proposals to form part of what will become Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which is a set of regulations regarding the use of AI, the Financial Times reported today.Among the proposals that will likely enter the regulation are the requirement for chatbots to inform users that they’re not real people

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says startup currently not training GPT-5 AI model

OpenAI LP Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has divulged that the startup is currently not training a new version of GPT-4, its most advanced artificial intelligence model.Altman made the disclosure on Thursday during an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.GPT-4 is a large language model that OpenAI debuted last month. It can generate text, explain mathematical concepts and perform other tasks. It has also proven highly adept at test taking: during an internal OpenAI evaluation, GPT-4 successfully completed a simulated version of the bar exam

Hackers who hit Western Digital are now demanding ransom for data

The cybercriminals who hit storage maker Western Digital Corp. in a network breach earlier this month have returned to demand ransom for stolen data, which includes customer informationThe hackers have claimed the theft of more than 10 terabytes of data and are seeking “a minimum 8 figures” not to leak sensitive information.Western Digital disclosed that it fell victim to a “network security incident” on April 3 in which threat actors gained entry to its internal network. At the time, the company did not reveal what systems were affected or what data might have been struck except to say, “the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems

IBM acquires Ahana, joins the Presto Foundation

IBM Corp. has acquired Ahana Cloud Inc., a startup that offers managed and commercial versions of the Presto open-source distributed query engine, for an undisclosed price.In doing so, IBM becomes a member of the Presto Foundation, which curates the project that in 2013 was spun out of Facebook Inc., now Meta Platforms Inc. The companies made the joint announcement quietly Wednesday.Ahana positions Presto as a core element of a “lakehouse,” which is a repository for data analytics that includes both structured and unstructured data types

Space communications startup Kepler raises $92M to build satellite relay network

Canadian satellite startup Kepler Communications Inc. said today it has closed on a $92 million round of funding that will help it build out its on-orbit data network for space-based infrastructure.Today’s Series C round was led by IA Ventures, an existing investor that has backed the company since its initial seed funding round seven years ago. Costanoa Ventures, Canaan Partners, Tribe Capital and BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund also participated in the round, which brings Kepler’s total funding raised to more than $200 million

Meta Platforms open sources AI-powered animation tool for doodles

Meta Platforms Inc. said today it’s open-sourcing an artificial intelligence-based animation tool that anyone can use to bring their drawings or photos to life.By making Animated Drawings open source, Meta hopes that other developers will be able to build on it and create richer experiences. The service debuted as a free, web-based tool in 2021.Created by Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team, it asks users to upload a photo or drawing of a human-like character, or else choose from a demo figure. Those who upload their own image will then be required to agree that Meta can use the drawing to train its AI models

Cloud-native application security firm Apiiro raises $100M round

Israeli application security startup Apiiro LLC today announced an impressive Series B round of $100 million, led by General Catalyst with participation by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins.The company, which was founded by former employees of Microsoft Corp. and has offices in New York and Tel Aviv, raised $35 million in funding in 2020 from Kleiner Perkins and Greylock. Today’s round shows significant trust at a time when investors are increasingly keeping a tight hold on their purse strings.Apiiro offers software to address security issues before developers release code to the cloud. That should ensure that vulnerable code is discovered before hackers have a chance to exploit it

Investors hammer Atlassian on earnings miss and weak outlook

Investors hammered Atlassian Corp. stock in after-hours trading after the Australian software company missed earnings forecasts and gave a lower outlook than had been expected by analysts.For its fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, Atlassian reported net income of $92.5 million, or 36 cents per diluted share, down from $94.4 million, or 37 cents in the same quarter of last year. Revenue rose 31%, to $807.4 million. Analysts had been expecting earnings per share of 38 cents on revenue of $806.4 million.Atlassian added 6,550 new customers in the quarter, its 10th quarter of customer growth, bringing its total number of customers to 249,173

Datadog beats Wall Street’s expectations as its revenue grows by more than 60%

Application monitoring software firm Datadog Inc. delivered strong third-quarter financial results today, beating expectations on earnings and revenue, and offered solid guidance for the coming quarter too, but its stock barely moved.The company reported a net loss of $26 million for the quarter, with earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation coming to 23 cents per share. Revenue for the period rose by an impressive 61% from a year earlier to $436.5 million. The numbers came in comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s forecasts. Analysts were modeling earnings of just 15 cents per share on revenue of $412.2 million

Despite smashing earnings forecasts, Cloudflare sees shares plunge on growth concerns

Shares in content delivery network company Cloudflare Inc. plunged in late trading even though it beat all expected metrics in its latest earnings report as investors were reportedly spooked by figures suggesting moderating growth.For its third quarter that ended Sept. 30, Cloudflare reported a profit before costs such as stock compensation of $19.1 million, or six cents per share, up from $1.4 million or breakeven in the same quarter of 2021. Revenue in the quarter jumped 47%, to $253.9 million. Analysts had expected breakeven earnings per share on revenue of $250.63 million.Adjusted gross profit was $198.4 million or 78.1% gross margin, up from $136.6 million or 79

Twilio’s stock crumbles on poor revenue guidance

Shares of the cloud communications firm Twilio Inc. nosedived in extended trading today after it issued a soft earnings and revenue outlook for the coming quarter.The company did OK in the quarter just gone, reporting a third-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 27 cents per share, ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of a 36-cent loss. Revenue for the period came to $983 million, beating the consensus estimate of $972.2 million. Overall, Twilio reported a net loss of $482.2 million, much bigger than the $224.1 million loss it delivered in the same period last year

Block shares surge on strong earnings beat

Shares in Block Inc. surged in late trading after the payments company delivered a strong earnings beat in its latest quarterly report.For its fiscal third quarter, Block reported net income before costs such as stock compensation of 42 cents a share, up from 25 cents a share in the same quarter of last year. Revenue rose 18% from a year ago, to $4.52 billion. Analysts had been expecting earnings per share of 23 cents on revenue of $4.49 billion.Gross profit in the quarter rose 38%, to $157 billion, marking the fifth straight quarter of increasing profit

Dropbox delivers on earnings and revenue targets with slow and steady growth

Dropbox Inc. delivered strong third-quarter financial results today, beating Wall Street’s forecasts on earnings and revenue and offering guidance above expectations.The file-sharing company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 43 cents per share, with revenue coming to $591 million in the period, up 7.4% from a year earlier. Altogether, the company netted a profit of $83.2 million.The results were good, since Wall Street analysts were modeling lower earnings of just 37 cents per share on sales of $585.5 million. Dropbox’s share price stayed flat in after-hours trading

Higher-than-expected user numbers elevate Coinbase shares

Shares in Coinbase Global Inc. rose slightly in late trading after the cryptocurrency exchange reported better-than-expected user numbers amid misses on its latest quarterly earnings and revenue.For its fiscal third quarter that ended Sept. 30, Coinbase reported a loss before costs such as stock compensation of $2.43 a share on revenue of $590 million. Analysts had expected an adjusted loss of $2.40 a share on revenue of $654 million.Monthly transacting users in the quarter came in at 8.5 million, down from 9 million in the previous quarter but up from 7.3 million in the third quarter of last year. Analysts had been expecting 7.84 million

Growing tech landscape shines spotlight on need for enhanced data culture

The data revolution is not just about technology innovation, but also cultural and community transformation.Since a data citizen is anyone who uses data to do their job, enterprises have to cultivate a conducive data culture so that employees can hone their skills and competencies in this space, according to Stijn “Stan” Christiaens (pictured), co-founder and chief data citizen at Collibra NV, who believes that in today’s organizations, most employees will be data citizens

Cisco Partner Summit 2022 kicks off the Age of the Partner

Cisco Systems Inc. held its annual Partner Summit this week in Las Vegas, bringing together thousands of global partners to exchange ideas and learn about the networking giant’s most recent innovations. Cisco has one of the largest and most diverse partner ecosystems in the information technology industry, with about 90% of the company’s revenue flowing through its partners from more than 150 countries.The event returned to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, which is crucial for this event. Some events are fine done virtually but partner relationships for all vendors, including Cisco, requires a high level of engagement and that can’t be simulated virtually

Confluent’s stock rises on solid earnings beat and impressive cloud revenue growth

Big-data company Confluent Inc.’s stock made sharp gains in extended trading today after it posted third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations. It also offered strong guidance for the next quarter.The company reported a loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 13 cents per share on revenue of $151.7 million in the quarter, up by an impressive 48% from the same period one year earlier. The results easily beat Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts had forecast the company to report a bigger, 17-cent-per-share loss on revenue of just $144.4 million.Overall, Confluent posted a net loss of $116 million in the quarter, rising from a loss of $96

Lower operating expenses give Robinhood a surprise earnings beat

Robinhood Markets Inc. bucked market trends and its own recent history today as its share price rose in late trading today on a surprising earnings beat in its fiscal third quarter.For its third quarter that ended Sept. 30, Robinhood reported a net loss of $175 million, or 20 cents per share, down from $295 million, or 34 cents per share, in the second quarter. Revenue rose 14% sequentially, to $361 million. Analysts had expected a loss of 29 cents a share on revenue of $355.6 million.Although the headline figures are a definite positive for Robinhood, its cryptocurrency trading business, which drove much of the company’s success and led it to go public in July 2021, continues to slump

DevOps company JFrog grows at a healthy clip but investors aren’t impressed

DevOps company JFrog Ltd.’s stock was unable to make up for its losses earlier today as the overall market swooned, despite posting third-quarter financial results and guidance for the fourth quarter that was in line with Wall Street’s expectations.JFrog’s stock fell more than 7% in the hours running up to the report, and stayed flat in after-hours trading.The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of two cents per share on revenue of $72 million, up 34% from a year ago. Wall Street had been expecting the company to break even on slightly lower revenue of $71.1 million. Altogether, JFrog reported a net loss of $23.5 million for the quarter, up from the $20

Cyber slide: Dynatrace, Fortinet and Rapid7 shares drop amid broader market slump

Cybersecurity is no longer a safe haven for investors.Shares in Dyantrace Inc., Fortinet Inc. and Rapid7 Inc. fell despite solid quarterly earnings reports amid a broader market slump that saw the Dow plunge 500 points and the Nasdaq fall 3% amid ongoing inflation concerns and rising interest rates.Dynatrace was the first of the three companies to report, with a profit before costs such as stock compensation of 22 cents a share for the quarter that ended Sept. 30, up from 18 cents a share in the same quarter last year. Revenue rose 23%, to $279.32 million. Analysts had expected earnings per share of 18 cents on revenue of $272.5 million

Qualcomm warns first-quarter revenues will come up light, sending its stock down

Smartphone chip manufacturer Qualcomm Inc.’s stock declined in after-hours trading today after it issued a poor outlook and warned that it must clear around two months of inventory within its core business.The forecast came after the company posted its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results, which met expectations. The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of $3.13 per share on revenue of $11.4 billion, up 22% from the same period one year earlier.That resulted in a net income of $2.87 billion for the period, up slightly from the $2.8 billion profit it recorded a year ago. Wall Street had been looking for earnings of $3

Kyndryl’s loss widens but company says strategy is on track

Kyndryl Holdings Inc., the services business that spun out of IBM Corp. a year ago, reported flat revenues and a larger loss in its 2023 fiscal second-quarter earnings released today.Revenue fell 9% from a year ago, to $4.2 billion but grew 2% in constant currency on a pro forma basis. The company reported a quarterly net loss of $281 million, or $1.24 per diluted share, compared with a net loss of $690 million in the prior-year period. That missed the consensus 84-cents-per-share loss of the two analysts who follow the company.The pretax loss of $102 million compared with income of $63 million a year ago

Grafana Labs releases new open-source application monitoring tools

Grafana Labs Inc. is releasing two open-source tools designed to help developers make their applications more efficient and resolve software errors faster.Both tools made their debut at the startup’s annual ObservabilityCON 2022 event today.New York-based Grafana Labs is backed by more than $535 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Coatue and other investors. It develops Grafana, one of the most popular open-source platforms for detecting technical issues in information technology infrastructure. The startup also offers several other open-source tools likewise focused on helping IT teams find and fix malfunctions faster

Penetration tester Horizon3.ai identifies Fortinet exploit source, assists those checking for potential attacks

In early October, cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc. made headlines after a severe vulnerability was exposed in several of its productions.The zero-day flaw allowed potential remote attackers to access on-premises management controls on  Fortinet’s core products FortiOS, FortiSwitchManager and FortiProxy, causing potentially catastrophic damages to affected users.Penetration tester company Horizon3.ai Inc. was one of the key players in assisting potential victims, using its expertise to identify the source of the vulnerability by replicating it

Google rolls out enhanced flood and wildfire tracking features

Google LLC today rolled out enhancements to its flood and wildfire tracking tools, which enable users to access information about natural disasters via the company’s services. In 2018, Google launched an artificial intelligence system that alerts users when there is a risk of flooding in their area. Alerts are available via Google Maps, as well as on Android devices and handsets that run the Google Search app. The company sent 115 million flood notifications to 23 million people in 2021.As part of today’s update, Google has made the feature available in 18 additional countries

Data quality, observability and the hidden factors at play

Gone are the days when data quality used to be a back-office function. Today, data is the lifeblood of enterprises.Since the variety and volume of data has gone through the roof based on increased usage, enterprises now rely on the freshness of data. Collibra NV equips individuals loading and consuming a company’s data with observability tools for tasks such as root cause analysis, which is needed to capture the bigger picture and ensure enhanced quality, according to Kirk Haslbeck (pictured), vice president of data quality at Collibra.“We’ve always covered data quality, and we believe that people want to know more

IDC: Personal computer shipments declined 15% in the third quarter

Worldwide sales of personal computers declined 15% year-over-year in the third quarter, research firm International Data Corp. has found.IDC detailed its findings in the latest edition of its Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, a quarterly market research report. Preliminary results from the report were published today.PC makers shipped 74.25 million computers in the third quarter, down 15% from 87.31 million computers a year ago, according to IDC. The sales drop follows a similar 15.3% year-over-year decline in the previous quarter. IDC today attributed the weakening sales primarily to a combination of “cooling demand and uneven supply” in the PC market

Endor Labs launches with $25M to secure open-source code dependencies

Endor Labs, a software management platform that helps developers deal with software code dependencies, launched out of stealth mode today with $25 million in seed funding to help enterprise developers secure open-source software supply chains.Code is fundamental to security. Often when a headline comes out about an exploit or a vulnerability, it’s a problem that arose from code that was taken advantage of by a hacker or a bot that allowed them access to an internal system.Not all vulnerabilities are caused by a developer adding a bug in a new piece of code

Good intentions gone awry: iPhones are calling 911 when users are on rollercoasters

So much for good intentions: A new feature in Apple Inc.’s iPhone 14 calls 911 when users are on rollercoaster rides.Apple debuted a feature called Crash Detection in iPhone 14 models in September, a feature that uses a dual-core accelerometer and a high dynamic-range gyroscope to detect a severe car crash and automatically call emergency services when a user is knocked unconscious. The service also uses components such as the barometer, which can detect if an airbag had deployed, and the microphone, which can determine if loud noises also accompanied the sudden change in speed such as in a crash.The last “feature” is where Apple’s good intentions fail

What to expect at the ‘Why Ransomware Isn’t Your Only Problem’ event: Join theCUBE Oct. 13

There is real pressure to secure data across a business’ distributed cloud infrastructures.With a new norm for remote workforces, organizations must cope with the sudden vaporization of the traditional security perimeter and rising ransomware costs. Fifty percent of those affected by ransomware also lost data, according to a recent study by the International Data Corp., based on a survey of over 500 companies. This fast-evolving threat landscape is spawning targeted solutions with aims to modernize data protection.“Druva is solving some really hard problems with a modern data protection stack,” said Dave Vellante, co-founder of theCUBE and chief research officer at Wikibon

Wiz helps orgs detect big threats, empowers them to ‘go and fix things’

Founded during the pandemic, Wiz Inc. offers enterprises full-stack coverage and integrated cloud security services.The company leverages the Amazon Web Services Inc. Marketplace so that businesses can easily install their solution into their infrastructure.“Our ecosystem is built around the Marketplace motion,” explained Trish Cagilostro (pictured), head of worldwide alliances at Wiz and former AWS head of business development. “Coming from AWS and now being on the other side, I see a lot of the companies that I was working with; cloud was very much this thing that’s kind of in a silo and its own box, and it competes internally

US places new restrictions on chip technology sales to China

The U.S. today introduced new rules that will restrict the sale of chips and chip production equipment to China.Some of the rules will go into effect today, Protocol reported. Others will be rolled out over the coming weeks.The first set of rules announced today focuses on limiting chip exports to China. A new foreign direct product rule will block companies from supplying customers in China with chips that are used for “advanced computing and artificial intelligence applications,” Protocol reported. The rule can reportedly apply not only to products from U.S. companies but also to chips that foreign firms produce using U.S. technology

Q&A: Databricks reveals key insights on evolving AWS Marketplace partnership

The AWS Partner Network is a global community of partners, including independent software vendors, aiming to help organizations accelerate their cloud journeys.In January 2022, AWS rolled out its new Partner Paths program to enhance the entire process for ISVs, bringing a plethora of benefits that were previously unavailable on the original APN Partnership tiers, according to Jack Andersen (pictured, left), global vice president at DataBricks Inc. “Amazon’s mental model here is that they want the world’s best ISVs to operate on AWS so that we can collaborate and co-architect on behalf of customers … to work with Amazon on these really unique use cases,” Andersen said

Latest CIO survey shows steady deceleration in tech spending

Is the glass half full or half empty? Well, it depends on how you want to look at it.Chief information officers are tapping the brakes on spending, that’s clear. The latest macro survey from Enterprise Technology Research quantifies what we already know to be true, that information technology spend is decelerating. CIOs and IT buyers forecast that their tech spend will grow by 5.5% this year, a meaningful deceleration from their year-end 2021 expectations. But these levels are still well above historical norms – so while the feel good factor may be in some jeopardy, overall things are pretty good – at least for now

API gateway leader Kong enables microservices transformation

With application programming interfaces, two separate applications can securely and efficiently communicate with each other, requiring developers to implement API gateways that enable them to maintain, build and monitor APIs regardless of scale.Five years ago, Kong Inc. developed an open-source and cloud-native API gateway that quickly became the most adopted API gateway available, able to be easily procured on the Amazon Web Services Marketplace, according to Kristian Gyorkos (pictured), vice president of alliances at Kong.“We have one of the most popular open-source projects in the API gateway area,” Gyorkos said. “Even more important is just the scale at which the product’s been used

Biden signs executive order to implement EU-US data privacy agreement

President Joe Biden today signed an executive order that directs the U.S. government to implement a data privacy agreement signed with the European Union earlier this year.Many tech companies store the information of EU users in U.S.-based data centers. Until a few years ago, the practice of moving EU users’ information to stateside data centers was governed by an agreement known as the Privacy Shield. In 2020, the EU’s top court struck down Privacy Shield over concerns about U.S. surveillance.The U.S. and the EU in March announced a new agreement, the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, that is designed to replace Privacy Shield