All in a week’s events: The AI juggernaut hits cybersecurity, open source and IT infrastructure

As the spring conference season gets into full swing, we’re getting some broad glimpses into some key areas of enterprise technology.

This past week, it was cybersecurity (and artificial intelligence’s impact on it) from the RSA Conference in San Francisco, open source (and AI’s impact on it) from Red Hat Summit in Denver and information technology architecture and infrastructure (and… yeah, you guessed it) from Boomi World, also in Denver. We covered them all, lots of details below.

There’s clearly a lot of AI washing going on, but there’s also real innovation that’s advancing and disrupting these areas all at once. At some point, it will be nice to hear about what products can do again, rather than the fact that AI is helping them do it, won’t it?

Meantime, funding of all things AI isn’t slowing down, from Mistral reportedly raising $600 million on a $6 billion valuation to Microsoft and Amazon Web Services spending billions on data centers for AI in Wisconsin and Singapore. But Arm’s tepid earnings guidance raised fears among some investors that some AI stocks may be overpriced. You think?

There’s no CUBE Pod this week, but look for Dave Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, out this weekend.

Here’s the top news this week:

The latest on all things cyber from the RSA Conference

A few takeaways from the RSA Conference from my 20,000-foot perspective:

* This is an absolutely huge show for vendors, and of course buyers, with the entire Moscone South and North exhibit halls filled up and packed throughout with some 60,000 attendees — more vendors, at least, than any recent one I’ve attended here. That shows not only how important cybersecurity remains to enterprises but also how that dream harbored by enterprises and large cybersecurity platform providers such as Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike of consolidating into a smaller number of vendors remains just that: a dream.

* Why? Despite a steady drumbeat of acquisitions in security,  “vendor sprawl is not stopping,” said Enterprise Technology Research’s Erik Bradley, whose research finds that fewer than 10% of enterprises are reducing the number of security providers they use. And there’s a reason for that: As oone company told Dave Vellante, “Innovation is happening faster than the consolidation.”

* Meantime, the emerging philosophy byword is “integrations.” Even if M&A isn’t right for various parties, customers want all their security services to play together well, thus a fairly recent spate of announced integrations between companies — so many that I’m not sure which to call out.

* Despite all the headlines, including ours, about the escalating frequency and scope of cyberattacks, there’s some good news. Generative AI so far is helping the defenders more than the attackers, in part by allowing defenders to act more quickly to counter the skyrocketing number of novel vulnerabilities. “The defense is winning right now,” said Chris Krebs, chief intelligence and public policy officer at SentinelOne. “The offense is going to have a longer tail to gear up.” One reason the defenders currently are in a better place than might be expected, said Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant at Google Cloud: “We’re responding much faster to attacks.”

* But it’s no time for complacency, obviously, especially as we increasingly depend on black-box AI models trained on all manner of often unidentified data. “There is a ton of risk” with AI, Krebs noted. “We just don’t fully grok where the chinks in the armor are.” That’s because there aren’t yet the kinds of enterprise management tools for AI that have developed for cloud security.

* AI security is about to become a very big deal — specifically the security of the data that trains large language models. Adi Shamir, the Borman professor of computer science at Israel’s Weizmann Institute (and the S in RSA), says the fact that people interact with these models presents “a lot of danger” of manipulation of the data. “The new thing this year is securing the AI,” Vellante noted.

* No surprise that nations are using cyberattacks as a strategic weapon, but China’s work in particular is getting a lot of U.S. government attention. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said it’s likely to launch attacks on U.S. infrastructure if the situation regarding Taiwan worsens. “This is all about China’s clearly stated strategy of inciting societal panic,” she said.

* One solution being pursued to fight that as well as always-rising ransomware attacks is the notion of “secure by design.” On Thursday, 68 software manufacturers worldwide pledged to CISA that they’ll make software products and services designed with security protections. Though it’s voluntary, Easterly said that “the good news is we’re seeing real change. Yes, voluntary but we have a platform to advance radical transparency. It is the only way we can make ransomware and cyberattacks a radical anomaly.”

* Although AI certainly ups the potential for misinformation that could sway elections, it’s unlikely to harm the safety of elections, Easterly said, since CISA has made a lot of progress to protect election infrastructure. “Elections are political,” she said. “ Election security is not.”

And here are deeper insights from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research:

TheCUBE Research talks cybersecurity in the digital age at RSAC

GPU glut and quantum shift: theCUBE talks tech insights from RSA Conference

Tackling the digital tsunami threat in cybersecurity: theCUBE’s RSAC day 1 insights

Navigating the AI and security landscape: theCUBE Day 2 analysis from RSAC

Innovations in tech security: theCUBE’s Day 3 analysis from RSAC

IT security spending keeps rising amid generative AI threats: analysis from theCUBE at RSAC

Google Cloud debuts threat intelligence service, AI security tools at RSA

Microsoft unveils new security features for SOC teams to combat insider threats

At RSAC, Cisco launches bolsters in Security Cloud, built on Hypershield and Splunk

Palo Alto Networks unveils new AI-powered security solutions to tackle advanced threats

AT&T joins WillJam Ventures to launch new cybersecurity business ‘LevelBlue’

Cranium launches exposure management solution to safeguard AI systems

More breaches, of course, but also a rare win:

Alleged LockBit admin and lead developer named and targeted by US, UK and Australian authorities

Dell discloses breach affecting customer purchase database

Healthcare provider Ascension warns that it has suffered from a ‘cyber security event’

Money matters:

Wiz closes mammoth $1B round at $12B valuation to grow its cloud security platform

Akamai to acquire Noname Security for $450M to enhance API security offerings

Synopsys sells Software Integrity Group to Clearlake and Francisco Partners for up to $2.1B

Check out the rest of our cybersecurity coverage this week on SiliconANGLE’s cybersecurity page, plus more RSA Conference news and analysis on our special editorial coverage section. There’s also sponsored coverage of many other interviews with cybersecurity executives and thought leaders on theCUBE’s RSA Conference event page.

Red Hat doubles down on AI

Our coverage and analysis from Red Hat Summit in Denver

Red Hat outlines a vision for evolving AI models with open-source communities

Red Hat integrates generative AI in OpenShift, RHEL and a host of developer tools

Red Hat taps into tech industry ecosystem to accelerate AI development

Open-source AI: theCUBE analyzes Red Hat’s revolutionary approach to innovation

CEO Matt Hicks reveals Red Hat’s vision for democratizing AI development

There’s also sponsored coverage of interviews with many other executives and thought leaders on theCUBE’s Red Hat Summit event page.

Other AI and data news

Updated: OpenAI to announce ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates Monday – but maybe not a search engine

Google DeepMind debuts AlphaFold 3 model for predicting the structure of biomolecules

Microsoft reportedly developing MAI-1 AI model with 500B parameters

OpenAI announces its new tool that can detect deepfake images

OpenAI’s evolving Model Spec aims to guide the behavior of AI models

TikTok announces new tools to flag AI-generated content automatically

Stack Overflow to provide coding knowledge for OpenAI models But is it losing the plot?

Alphabet’s Intrinsic robotics unit details internally developed AI models

Oracle introduces Code Assist to speed up enterprise software projects

ServiceNow enhances Now Assist generative AI agents with ‘bring your own model’ experience

Salesforce simplifies access to external data sources for AI model training

Meta debuts new AI advertising tools, expands Meta Verified availability

Fundings

Wayve raises $1.05B in funding to accelerate autonomous vehicles driven by embodied AI

Mistral AI reportedly seeking to raise $600M at $6B valuation

Atlan raises $105M at $750M valuation for data and AI governance and platform

DatologyAI raises $46M to streamline AI model training data diets

Check out more related news on SiliconANGLE’s AI news page and data news page.

Around the cloud and enterprise

Earnings ups and downs

• Arm’s annual guidance fails to impress, stoking fears that some AI stocks may be overpriced
• Arista tops forecasts, highlighting role of high-speed networking for AI applications
• Kyndryl says return to profitability is ahead of schedule as it delivers strong earnings results
• Investors show confidence in Confluent, as its stock gains on solid earnings beat and bullish guidance
• Palantir reports solid earnings but outlook falls short of expectations
• Datadog stock falls 11% as it beats on earnings but revenue outlook falls short and president will depart by year-end
• Chipmaker GlobalFoundries tops earnings estimate and guidance and stock rises 7%
• Twilio forecasts quarterly revenue below estimates on weak enterprise spending, stock falls 7%
• Rapid7 matches sales estimate but short full-year guidance knocks stock down 5%
• Qualys tops estimates on earnings, meets on revenue, but stock declines on short 2024 guidance
• RingCentral up 10% after ringing up earnings and revenue beats
• Ups and downs in ride-hailing: Lyft rises 6% on after beating revenue estimate and Uber logs a loss despite rising revenue, stock falls 9%
• Teradata shares edge higher on earnings beat
• Chinese chipmaker SMIC revenue rises 20% as clients restock
• NetScout shares up slightly following mixed fiscal earnings results
• Customer growth delivers Amplitude solid quarterly earnings and revenue
• JFrog’s revenue leaps again, but large customer acquisition slows, hurting its stock
• Dropbox shares trend higher on solid earnings and revenue beat
• Rackspace reports strong progress following business realignment, pleasing investors

In other news

US moves to curb sale of Intel and Qualcomm chips to Huawei

DEEPX raises $80.5M in fresh funding to mass-produce its AI chips

Report: Apple deploying servers with custom chips to power upcoming iOS update

Alphabet’s HubSpot acquisition talks reportedly progressing, with terms being discussed

Dispatches from Boomi World: Boomi upgrades its integration platform as a service with new AI agents, acquisitions plus analysis: TheCUBE analyzes Boomi’s strategic path to transforming enterprise operations and an interview with the top dog: CEO Steve Lucas on Boomi’s vision to simplify IT infrastructure with advanced AI and APIs And Mark Albertson sums up the event: Agents and APIs position Boomi for carrying the AI banner in next-gen enterprise architecture

SpiNNcloud Systems launches SpiNNaker2, the first commercial neuromorphic supercomputer

Lagrange raises $13M to build blockchain-based cryptographic ‘big data’-scale computation

Digital twins projects receive $285 million in US government funding for semiconductor industry

Docusign buys Lexion, creator of an AI-powered contract management platform, for $165M

AWS to invest $9B more in Singapore cloud infrastructure and services

Microsoft’s bet on an AI-focused future continues with data center plan in Wisconsin

RunPod nabs $20M to help developers launch AI apps in the cloud

Oops: Google Cloud misconfiguration takes down Australian fund for a week (from The Register)

Espresso AI raises $11M to rein in rising cloud costs

And there’s more enterprise tech news on SiliconANGLE’s cloud news page and infrastructure news page

Elsewhere in tech

Apple unveils M4 chip to power next-gen iPad Pro and announces new iPad Air 

But, um, what? This is the worst Apple ad ever. Steve Jobs is rolling over in his grave. Fortunately, someone fixed it. Apple even issued a rare apology.

Victims FTX crypto fraud victims look like they’ll get their money back after all, plus interest

Justice Department reportedly investigating Tesla for securities and wire fraud

Xtend raises $40M to allow human commanders to guide autonomous AI drone missions

Comings and goings

Former Timex head Gary Cohen takes over as iRobot CEO

Former Box CMO Chris Koehler has joined Twilio in the same job.

Jitesh Ghai, former chief product officer at Informatica, will join Hyland as president and CEO on May 20. Current CEO Bill Priemer will retire after 27 years with the company.

What’s next

Google I/O May 14-15: We’ll have the news and I’ll be reporting from Shoreline Amphitheatre

Alteryx Inspire May 15: TheCUBE will be there for the sponsored event

Earnings next week: Just one: Cisco on Wednesday, May 15

Photo: RSA Conference