Despite some recent gains by law enforcement, ransomware remains a pernicious problem for companies large and small. Here's how eight experts advise preparing for ransomware attacks.
Today: Figma's Abhi Mathur explains how the company created its collaboration tool and overhauled its databases for scale, Red Hat outlines an open-source AI platform strategy, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Figma's collaboration tools are a hit with designers thanks to its decision to take a page from the gaming software playbook and rebuild its databases for "infinite scale."
Today: Microsoft and Google Cloud turn in their quarterly report cards, Blackstone's plan to become a data-center giant, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Welcome to Runtime! Today: Microsoft and Google Cloud turn in their quarterly report cards, Blackstone's plan to become a data-center giant, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
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It's been a little more than a year after the generative AI boom kicked off with Microsoft's dramatic expansion of its partnership with OpenAI, which forced Google, the company that invented the technology at the heart of the OpenAI's large-language models, to overhaul its product road map in response. Those investments are paying off.
Both Microsoft and Google Cloud reported earnings Tuesday that beat Wall Street expectations in their respective categories. Microsoft said Azure revenue was up 30% thanks in large part to AI, and Google Cloud revenue jumped 26% while operating income swung from a $186 million loss to a $864 million profit.
Google Cloud also attributed its earnings upside to the AI boom.
Both companies seem to have moved past the "optimizations" that cloud customers across the board were looking to make in 2023 to cut their costs amid economic worries.
AWS reports earnings on Thursday.
Private equity has been one of the largest forces in enterprise software over the last several years, a bet that professional management (read: cost cutting) can turn around the fortunes of underperforming software companies. Blackstone now wants to have the same effect on the data-center market.
Bloomberg reported Sunday that Blackstone is in the middle of an audacious plan to build a huge number of data centers around the U.S. through its real-estate investment arm. After paying $10 billion for QTS in 2021, the investment firm is now pouring money into data-center construction and QTS has already "become North America’s largest provider of leased data center capacity based on megawatts under contract, after ranking No. 4 just three years ago, according to research firm datacenterHawk," the report said.
A number of factors have Blackstone feeling bullish on data-center construction, including the obvious one — the generative AI boom — and less-obvious ones, such as cloud providers needing to lease more capacity from third-party providers to keep up with demand. But the buildout is facing blowback across the country from residents concerned about power and water use, and if demand doesn't materialize as Blackstone envisions, it's going to be holding onto a lot of empty buildings.
Kore.ai raised $150 million in new funding to expand its no-code tools that allow enterprises to build chatbots and customer-service tools.
Rebellions scored $124 million in Series B funding to build a new AI chip with Samsung and boost production of its Atom data-center chip, in hopes of denting Nvidia's huge advantage in this market.
Codeium landed $65 million in Series B funding to increase adoption of its generative AI coding tool.
Anomalo nabbed $33 million in Series B funding and said its annual occuring revenue from its data observability tool had tripled.
Sema4.ai raised $30.5 million and emerged from stealth mode with former Cloudera CEO Rob Bearden at the helm of the startup, which will build tools that use generative AI to help companies automate business processes.
AMD expects to sell $1.5 billion more of its data-center GPUs in 2024 than it expected three months ago, but flat fourth-quarter data-center revenue overall and a weak outlook for PCs sank its stock after hours.
SAP offered customers lagging in their cloud transitions a 50%-off discount to adopt one of its cloud services programs by the end of the year.
A Microsoft engineer said the company asked him to delete a public post on LinkedIn calling out weaknesses in Microsoft's Designer AI tool in December, following earlier attempts to warn executives that the tool had security flaws allowing users to generate and post fake, explicit images, which turned into a whole thing over the past week after Taylor Swift was targeted.
AWS got final approvals to build a new data-center complex in Chile, its first in the country and second in South America.
A 19-year-old Florida Man was arrested earlier this month for his part in a series of 2022 SIM-swapping attacks that led to breaches at Twilio, LastPass, and DoorDash.
Thanks for reading — see you Thursday!
Today: how international law enforcement agencies took down one of the most notorious ransomware operators, how two communities are dealing with a surge in data-center building, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Today: Figma's Abhi Mathur explains how the company created its collaboration tool and overhauled its databases for scale, Red Hat outlines an open-source AI platform strategy, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.
Today: how Microsoft plans to rebuild trust in its security culture, Big Tech engineers are burning out on the AI hype cycle, and the quote of the week.
Today: A pair of security incidents show why corporate attention on magical AI solutions should wait, why CoreWeave's latest funding round shows that it probably won't, and the latest moves in enterprise tech.
