An update on Runtime

Welcome to Runtime! Today: An update on our independent journalism mission and a pitch to our loyal readers, CoreWeave's strong third-quarter earnings masked a fourth-quarter supply problem, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.

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It's pledge week!

As Runtime approaches its third year in business, we wanted to give you an update on our progress toward building an independent, sustainable enterprise tech publication covering one of the most important engines of the modern economy. We know that our loyal audience relies on us to provide an unvarnished look at the current state of enterprise tech, and in that spirit, we’re also sharing an unvarnished take on the current state of enterprise tech media.

You don't need to be an expert in media trends to understand that advertising-based media companies of all sizes and disciplines are under enormous pressure thanks to the collapse of search and social traffic over the last year. Fortunately, Runtime has never been dependent on web advertising to pay the bills, but we are not immune to these larger trends.

We value everyone who has ever sponsored Runtime in order to get their message in front of a dedicated community of enterprise tech leaders and decision-makers, but the truth is those sponsorships have not been enough on their own to make this a sustainable business. So we're stealing a page from NPR's book and asking the members of our community to become a direct supporter of Runtime.

• We believe that our content should be accessible to anyone trying to make sense of this foundational layer of the tech world.
• There just aren't that many publications who are covering this space with the depth and breadth we believe it deserves.
• Rather than hide our content behind a paywall or clutter our pages with dozens of ads, we believe we can get enough support from this community to keep our independent journalism available to anyone who wants to read it.

For $10 a month, Runtime supporters will ensure that our mission can continue. We know we have a dedicated group of thousands of people who read every issue of Runtime, and over the next few weeks we'll begin to roll out new features for supporters, such as:

• An exclusive Discord channel for discussing Runtime stories/newsletters and enterprise tech trends as well as networking with fellow members.
• I'll also do AMAs there from time to time, host discussions with enterprise tech movers and shakers, and if there's interest, produce virtual events dedicated to a specific topic.
• For now, we're leaning toward Discord due to its audio broadcasting features, but we will survey the first group of supporters to see if folks would prefer another platform.
• There are no plans for Runtime-branded tote bags right now, but watch this space.

Runtime will continue to pursue sponsorship opportunities with companies that share our vision and that want to reach this highly-informed and engaged audience, but with enough member support we'll be able to bring in external contributors, attend more events, and further our mission to create reliable and independent enterprise tech journalism for people who give a shit about the future of this industry. If you're unable to commit to a recurring membership and would like to make a one-time donation to support the cause, you'll find a link for that here. 

Runtime is not a cheerleader for enterprise tech, but neither is it determined to burn the whole thing to the ground. We believe we can elevate the best of enterprise tech while piercing through the incessant hype and FUD that are an ever-present part of the discourse, and if you agree, please support us today.

CoreWeave sneezes

As talk of an AI bubble starts to dominate the conversation, CoreWeave submitted another point for that discussion after acknowledging that it would fall short of its previous revenue target for the year. Despite an otherwise strong earnings report, CoreWeave's stock fell 16% Tuesday after the company said delays at a third-party data center provider won't allow it to handle as many fourth-quarter workloads as it had anticipated.

In an interview with CNBC Tuesday, CEO Michael Intrator did not exactly beat back speculation from wild-eyed Jim Cramer that problems at Core Scientific were the cause of those delays. CoreWeave attempted to buy Core Scientific for $9 billion earlier this year, but Core Scientific shareholders rejected the deal.

No one should have expected that the frantic industry-wide race to bring AI computing power online would go off without a hitch, but investors are clearly jittery. Softbank's disclosure that it sold its entire stake in Nvidia Tuesday certainly didn't help, but no one should have expected that Masayoshi Son would follow a conventional path, either.

Enterprise funding

Majestic Labs launched with $100 million in Series A funding for its AI server design, which the company said will support "1000x" as much memory at the same level of computing power used by current server designs.

Wonderful raised $100 million in Series A funding as it builds out an AI agent development platform for companies operating across several different languages.

Reevo landed $80 million in Series A funding for its sales and marketing software, which uses AI to help companies build sales pipelines and manage what we're now calling the "go-to-market process."

Gamma raised $68 million in Series B funding for its would-be PowerPoint killer, which uses AI to help people build slide presentations.

Giga landed $61 million in Series A funding as it builds out AI agents for customer support teams, which is arguably the second-most promising use of generative AI technology behind coding, and a very crowded market.

Inception scored $50 million in seed funding to further its work on diffusion large-language models, which can produce answers much faster than "traditional" LLMs by working in parallel.

The Runtime roundup

Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison now manages the company's finance division, according to Bloomberg, which is not his traditional area of expertise at a time when Oracle is taking on substantial debt to fund its data center hopes and dreams.

Snowflake acquired Datometry, a startup working on software that helps companies move data between different types of databases, for an undisclosed amount.

AI neocloud Nebius added Meta to its customer list this week with a five-year deal with $3 billion, after signing a larger deal with Microsoft earlier this year.

Thanks for reading — see you Thursday!