What you need to know from this week’s news in enterprise and emerging tech

It was another busy week in enterprise and emerging technology, as well as in Elon crazyland, which is simply too riveting to ignore, except when we get sick of it.

Here’s all you need to know about what happened this week — OK, most of what you need to know — from stories in SiliconANGLE and beyond, with commentary:

X marks the splat

Musk set to replace iconic Twitter blue bird logo with X logo: Virtually no one thinks changing the Twitter brand to X is a good idea. Anyway, either Microsoft or Meta seem to own the site, or is it the trademark for social media, or both? Could Elon make all this work? Well, expectations are at rock bottom, so anything positive might be seen as a win. But it’s amazing how much he’s destroying Twitter’s credibility, surpassed only by how much he has destroyed his own. Twitter will likely live on, but honestly, why would you do so many things to make it less palatable to the people actually using it, let alone the advertisers supporting it? And why would people want to trust that all the things Elon wants to stuff into the app will be dependable or safe?

And here’s an interesting perspective from Esther Crawford, the former head of Twitter Blue famous for sleeping on the office floor after Elon took over. It’s clear if it wasn’t before that Twitter was messed up well before Musk arrived, but it seems equally clear he hasn’t helped things.

Still a cloudy outlook for cloud

Warmer: As CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) noted, Google Cloud was profitable again while maintaining a 28% revenue growth rate: Alphabet/Google: Strong cloud growth driven by AI workloads boosts Alphabet’s stock

Cooler: Microsoft: Microsoft’s stock falls as demand for cloud services cools Oh, and, oops, CEO Satya Nadella’s reference to Azure revenue wasn’t as clear as it appeared

And a mixed picture for enterprise and beyond

Good but not good enough:  ServiceNow: Despite beating earnings expectations and raising its full-year outlook, ServiceNow’s stock is down

Meh: Seagate: Seagate shares fall slightly on mixed bag of financial results

Is digital advertising starting to come back? More than the metaver$e, for sure:  Meta: Meta’s stock rallies on strong earnings beat and bullish guidance

Plus: some more goodish news for Meta: Study: Facebook might not be as politically polarizing as we think

Cyber uptick: Tenable, F5 and Check Point Software:

Tenable shares rise on strong earnings and revenue beats

F5 shares surge on earnings and revenue beats

Check Point shares rise slightly on earnings beat

A mixed bag of chips from Intel, NXP, Texas Instruments and Samsung:

NXP shares climb on stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings

Texas Instruments Warns of Slump in Chip Demand, Shares Slide

Samsung’s operating profit dropped by 95%, but officials are optimistic of a recovery later this year

Intel delivers surprise profit despite facing ‘persistent weakness,’ sending its stock higher: Profits are nice but not a lot else to get too excited about here despite the stock uptick.

Meanwhile, AMD keeps rolling internationally: AMD to establish $400M chip design center in India

Weak spending by cloud providers continues to ripple out into enterprise tech providers: Juniper: Weak forecast gives Juniper investors the jitters and its stock falls

Another small bright spot for Intel: Mobileye: Mobileye tops second-quarter expectations despite increased chip costs

Tough times for an automation pioneer: Pegasystems: Pegasystems’ stock tumbles on earnings and revenue miss

AWS makes up for lost time on AI

Amazon Web Services made a raft of announcements, clearly intended to counter the perception that Microsoft is running away with the AI game. These were all from AWS Summit NYC this week, where SiliconANGLE co-CEO and theCUBE host John Furrier made the rounds:

AWS expands Bedrock with new AI models and complex task automation

Stability AI launches text-to-image model Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 on Amazon Bedrock

AWS offers new generative AI training courses targeting beginners and experts

AWS debuts new AI-powered data management and analysis tools

AWS introduces generative AI service for creating clinical documentation

And a nice TL;DR from analyst Zeus Kerravala: Final thoughts from AWS Summit NYC: It was all about generative AI

Adam Selipsky: There will not be one generative AI model to rule them all The AWS CEO talked to the Financial Times and didn’t say much we haven’t heard before, but his positioning versus Microsoft is interesting to hear. He’s right that it’s way too early for Microsoft’s presumed lead to be all that meaningful — especially since, as he points out, it’s betting on someone else’s AI models. This ain’t the browser wars, it’s much broader than that, and there won’t be an overriding winner.

Elsewhere on the AI beat

As large language models get bigger and bigger, supercomputers are the next battleground on the hardware front: Nvidia’s DGX Cloud platform now available, offering instant access to generative AI infrastructure

And a couple of deeper dives from David Strom on key developments in generative AI:

It won’t be long before we are all chatbot prompt engineers

ChatGPT detectors still have trouble separating human and AI-generated texts

Big tech under fire

Senators propose creating new agency for regulating big tech I hate to be so skeptical, since big tech surely needs more oversight in addition to introspection (not holding my breath for the latter). But this sure looks like another attempt by people on both sides who have been unable to persuade the rest of us in the middle — let alone existing agencies that already look at these issues — that Google, Microsoft, Meta and other “big tech” companies are latter-day robber barons. There are many issues with big tech to address, but the approaches of both of these political wings seem more posturing than offering actual solutions.

Bundling redux, shades of the 1990s: EU launches antitrust investigation into Microsoft Teams after Slack complaint

On the cybersecurity beat

David Strom digs into the resurgence of a serious cyberthreat: The banking trojan malware Qakbot is surging again. Here’s what it means for defenders

PE cyber roll-ups roll on: Thales acquires cybersecurity provider Imperva for $3.6B

Enterprise moves

If they weren’t already, the folks doing Other Bets at Alphabet surely must be worried: Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat takes on new role overseeing its investments

Someone to watch: Anjney Midha, Andreessen Horowitz’s new AI investment partner

Coming next:

Look for theCUBE Podcast coming late Friday, covering this and other news of the week, from analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante.

Earnings next week from (among others) Amazon, Apple, Arista, AMD, Commvault, Uber, Qualcomm, Informatica, Cloudflare and Fortinet.

Photo: Google/livestream