News/Cloud
Google Cloud surges 32% as Alphabet raises AI spending to $85B
Google's parent company Alphabet exceeded Wall Street expectations in its second quarter earnings, reporting $96.43 billion in total revenue against an expected $94 billion. The tech giant also raised its 2025 capital spending target to approximately $85 billion from $75 billion, driven by massive demand for cloud computing services and the ongoing AI arms race among Big Tech companies. What you should know: Alphabet's strong performance was powered by robust growth in Google Cloud and steady digital advertising revenue. Google Cloud revenue surged nearly 32%, well above the estimated 26.5% increase that analysts had projected. Google's advertising revenue, which represents...
read Jul 22, 2025AI data centers drive optical transport market to $19B by 2029
After a challenging 2024 that saw the optical transport market contract by 9%, the telecommunications infrastructure sector is poised for a significant rebound. The catalyst driving this recovery isn't traditional telecom growth, but rather the explosive expansion of artificial intelligence computing infrastructure. The optical transport market—which encompasses the fiber-optic cables, switches, and networking equipment that carry data across long distances—is projected to grow at a steady 5% annually through 2029, reaching $19 billion by the end of the forecast period. This turnaround represents a dramatic shift from the broader telecom industry slowdown that characterized much of 2024. AI data centers...
read Jul 22, 2025Alibaba’s Qwen3 model outperforms rivals while cutting hardware costs by 70%
Alibaba has released Qwen3-235B-A22B-2507-Instruct, an open-source large language model that outperforms rival Chinese AI startup Moonshot's Kimi-2 and Claude Opus 4's non-thinking version on key benchmarks. The model comes with an FP8 version that dramatically reduces compute requirements, allowing enterprises to run powerful AI capabilities on smaller, less expensive hardware while maintaining performance quality. What you should know: The new Qwen3 model delivers substantial improvements across reasoning, coding, and multilingual tasks compared to its predecessor. MMLU-Pro scores jumped from 75.2 to 83.0, showing stronger general knowledge performance. GPQA and SuperGPQA benchmarks improved by 15-20 percentage points for better factual accuracy....
read Jul 22, 2025NotebookLM transforms business documents into searchable AI workspaces
Google's NotebookLM has quietly emerged as one of the most practical AI productivity tools for business professionals, yet many remain unaware of its capabilities. Unlike general-purpose AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini that draw from vast internet datasets, NotebookLM functions as a personalized AI research assistant that works exclusively with documents and sources you provide. This focused approach addresses two critical concerns that prevent many professionals from fully embracing AI tools: unreliable information and data security risks. NotebookLM eliminates hallucinations—instances where AI generates false information—by restricting responses to your uploaded materials, while offering enterprise-grade security for sensitive business documents....
read Jul 18, 2025Georgia opens AI Innovation Lab for ethical government testing
Georgia's technology department officially opened its Innovation Lab this week, creating a dedicated space for ethical AI experimentation aimed at advancing public service. The facility provides state agencies, cities, counties, and school systems with a hands-on, low-risk environment to test AI use cases before deployment, addressing widespread apprehension about AI adoption through collaboration and transparency. What you should know: The Innovation Lab occupies the entire seventh floor of the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) headquarters and offers three sandbox environments powered by major cloud providers. The lab runs on Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud platforms, pre-loaded with sample data...
read Jul 18, 2025Docker adds AI agent support to compose files for streamlined development
Docker has positioned itself as the central orchestration platform for AI agent development, extending its compose specification to include a new "models" element that allows developers to define AI agents, large language models, and Model Context Protocol tools within standard YAML files. This integration eliminates the fragmented development experience that has plagued enterprise AI projects, enabling teams to deploy complete agentic stacks with a single "docker compose up" command and treating AI agents as first-class citizens alongside traditional containerized applications. The big picture: Docker's strategy centers on supporting multiple AI agent frameworks simultaneously rather than favoring a single solution, integrating...
read Jul 16, 2025Oracle invests $3B to expand AI cloud infrastructure across Europe
Oracle will invest $3 billion over five years to expand its cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure across Germany and the Netherlands, marking a significant expansion of the company's European operations. The investment responds to growing demand for sovereign AI services and data governance compliance in the region, with $2 billion allocated to Germany's Frankfurt region and $1 billion to the Netherlands' Amsterdam region. The big picture: Oracle's European expansion reflects the increasing demand for localized AI infrastructure that meets strict EU data governance requirements while supporting both public and private sector digital transformation initiatives. Key details: The investment will enhance...
read Jul 16, 2025AWS launches comprehensive platform for building enterprise AI agents at scale
Amazon Web Services has unveiled Bedrock AgentCore, a comprehensive platform for building and deploying enterprise AI agents at scale. The new offering, announced at AWS's New York Summit, represents a significant expansion beyond the company's existing Bedrock Agents framework by supporting any agent framework or foundation model—not just those hosted within Bedrock—positioning AWS to compete directly with OpenAI's Agents SDK and Google's Gemini-based platforms in the rapidly growing enterprise AI agent market. What you should know: AgentCore is a modular stack of services designed to move AI agents from prototype to production environments with enterprise-grade security and scalability. The platform...
read Jul 15, 2025SAP’s Business Data Cloud cuts 80% of data management work
SAP has launched Business Data Cloud (BDC) internationally, promising to eliminate 80% of traditional data management work through automated data alignment and synchronization. The platform uses a "zero copy" mechanism that keeps data within SAP environments while integrating with external sources like Databricks, a data analytics platform, positioning SAP to capitalize on the growing demand for data-driven AI innovation. What you should know: BDC represents SAP's strategy to create a "flywheel effect" connecting data generation, AI implementation, and business value creation. The SaaS-based platform launched in February and integrates both SAP and non-SAP data based on meaning rather than requiring...
read Jul 15, 2025CoreWeave invests $6B in Pennsylvania AI data center, strategically serving east coast markets
CoreWeave, an artificial intelligence cloud computing firm, has committed up to $6 billion to build a new data center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This massive investment represents one of the largest AI infrastructure projects announced to date, highlighting the growing demand for specialized computing resources to support AI workloads. Why this matters: The substantial investment underscores the explosive growth in AI computing demand and the critical need for specialized infrastructure to support increasingly complex AI models and applications. Key details: CoreWeave's announcement signals a major expansion of AI-focused data center capacity in the United States. The Lancaster facility will specifically serve...
read Jul 11, 2025$1B Solo.io’s Kagent Studio brings AI agents to Kubernetes workflows
Solo.io has won the "Most Likely to Succeed" award at VB Transform 2025's Innovation Showcase, where the billion-dollar cloud-native application networking company announced Kagent Studio, a framework for building and managing AI agents in Kubernetes environments. The recognition validates enterprise interest in Solo.io's platform engineering solutions, particularly as companies increasingly adopt AI-driven automation within their cloud infrastructure. What you should know: Kagent Studio is the first cloud-native framework specifically designed for DevOps and platform engineers to build, secure, run and manage AI agents in Kubernetes. The framework integrates natively with VSCode (a popular code editor) and provides real-time incident response...
read Jul 11, 2025Snowflake unveils 6 AI enhancements at summit drawing 20K professionals
Snowflake, the cloud-based data platform that helps organizations store and analyze massive amounts of information, unveiled a series of AI-focused enhancements at its annual Summit conference in San Francisco. The event drew more than 20,000 data and AI professionals—making it the largest gathering in the company's history—and featured keynotes from Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman exploring how artificial intelligence is shifting from experimental projects to operational business tools. While these updates represent incremental rather than revolutionary progress, they signal Snowflake's strategic push to position itself as a comprehensive platform for AI-powered business applications. The announcements span...
read Jul 10, 2025AWS upgrades SageMaker with observability tools to boost AI development
AWS has unveiled significant upgrades to SageMaker, its machine learning and AI model training platform, adding new observability capabilities, connected coding environments, and GPU cluster performance management. These enhancements aim to solidify AWS's position as the infrastructure backbone for enterprise AI development, even as competition intensifies from Google and Microsoft in the AI acceleration space. What you should know: The SageMaker updates directly address customer pain points in AI model development and deployment. SageMaker HyperPod observability enables engineers to examine various layers of the stack, including compute and networking layers, with real-time alerts and dashboard metrics when performance issues arise....
read Jul 10, 2025Google Cloud partners with Additive Catchments for AI-powered river monitoring across UK
Additive Catchments and Google Cloud have announced a strategic partnership to scale AI-powered infrastructure for monitoring and improving river health across the U.K. The collaboration, revealed at the Google Cloud Summit London, centers on Additive's Catchment Monitoring as a Service platform, which provides real-time environmental data and early warnings for regulators, utilities and investors. What you should know: The partnership combines Additive Catchments' environmental expertise with Google Cloud's technical infrastructure to create a comprehensive river monitoring system. The platform leverages Google Cloud technologies, including BigQuery (a data analysis tool), Vertex AI (machine learning software), Earth Engine (satellite data processing), and...
read Jul 10, 2025Amazon builds custom liquid cooling for Nvidia’s (literally) hottest AI chips
Amazon Web Services has developed its own in-house liquid cooling solution called In-Row Heat Exchangers (IHRX) to address the cooling requirements of Nvidia's next-generation AI chips, particularly the Blackwell series. The move allows Amazon to upgrade its existing data center infrastructure without the time and cost of building new facilities, positioning the company to deploy more advanced AI chips while maintaining its competitive edge in cloud computing. What you should know: Nvidia's latest AI chips generate significantly more heat than previous generations, requiring liquid cooling rather than traditional air cooling systems. The Blackwell chips and newer models run so hot...
read Jul 7, 2025Adaptive data masking enables AI training on sensitive enterprise data
As enterprises expand into multi-cloud ecosystems, the need for advanced data masking strategies is growing exponentially to balance AI-driven insights with security and regulatory compliance. Traditional security frameworks like encryption often hinder AI model training and real-time analytics due to computational overhead, making adaptive data masking essential for modern enterprise architectures. Why this matters: Data masking enables organizations to process sensitive datasets for AI and analytics while maintaining privacy compliance, addressing the paradox of maximizing data usability while minimizing exposure risks. Key technical breakthroughs: Modern data masking techniques preserve computational efficiency while maintaining high-security standards across enterprise environments. Real-time, in-memory...
read Jul 7, 2025OpenAI’s $30B Oracle deal fuels Project Stargate AI buildout
OpenAI has been revealed as the customer behind Oracle's massive $30 billion annual cloud computing contract, with the AI company leasing approximately 4.5 gigawatts of data center power to support its expanding artificial intelligence workloads. The deal represents one of the largest cloud computing contracts to date and directly supports OpenAI's ambitious "Project Stargate" initiative to scale AI infrastructure across the United States. What you should know: Oracle will develop multiple data centers across the U.S. as part of this unprecedented cloud computing agreement. Sites under consideration include Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Oracle will...
read Jul 2, 2025Oracle lands $30B annual cloud deal amid “insatiable” demand
Oracle has signed a massive cloud services contract worth $30 billion annually, set to begin generating revenue in fiscal year 2028. The deal represents the latest milestone in Oracle's explosive cloud growth trajectory, with the company experiencing unprecedented demand that executives describe as "insatiable" and unlike anything in the company's history. What you should know: Oracle's cloud business is experiencing triple-digit growth rates, with MultiCloud database revenue up 115% in the most recent quarter. The company's pipeline of committed projects has grown 41% during the quarter to $138 billion, with expectations for more than 100% growth in fiscal 2026. Oracle...
read Jul 1, 2025Microsoft signs 5-year Premier League deal to showcase AI to millions
Microsoft has signed a five-year cloud computing deal with the Premier League, positioning the tech giant to showcase its AI capabilities to millions of soccer fans worldwide. The strategic partnership will migrate the world's most-watched soccer league's core technology infrastructure to Microsoft's Azure platform while integrating AI-powered chatbots across the Premier League's digital properties. What you should know: The comprehensive partnership transforms how the Premier League delivers digital experiences to its global fanbase. The Premier League will migrate its "core technology infrastructure" to Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service over the five-year term. Microsoft's AI services will power chatbots integrated into the...
read Jun 30, 2025Catio raises $7M to transform tech diagrams with 31 AI agents
Catio, a Palo Alto-based AI architecture platform, won the "Coolest Technology" award at VentureBeat Transform 2025 on Wednesday. The startup, which has raised $7 million since its 2023 founding, offers an AI copilot that transforms static tech architecture diagrams into living, continuously updated systems managed by 31 specialized AI agents. What you should know: Catio replaces traditional whiteboard planning and spreadsheet-based architecture management with a dynamic, AI-driven platform that creates digital twins of entire tech stacks. The platform integrates with existing infrastructure services like AWS (Amazon's cloud computing service), Kubernetes (container management software), and Prometheus (monitoring tools) to build comprehensive,...
read Jun 27, 2025KDDI and HPE launch $1.5B Nvidia-powered AI data center in Japan
KDDI Corporation, a Japanese telecommunications operator, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have announced a strategic partnership to launch a next-generation AI data center in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, with operations scheduled to begin in early 2026. The facility will leverage Nvidia's Blackwell architecture and advanced liquid cooling technology to serve Japan's growing AI market, positioning both companies to capture demand from startups, enterprises, and research institutions developing AI applications and large language models. What you should know: The Osaka Sakai data center will be powered by HPE's rack-scale system featuring the Nvidia GB200 NVL72 platform, specifically designed for high-performance AI...
read Jun 27, 2025Google opens Veo 3 AI video generator with synchronized audio to Cloud users
Google has made Veo 3, its AI video generator capable of producing synchronized video and audio content, available to all Google Cloud customers in public preview. Previously limited to Gemini Ultra subscribers and Google's Flow filmmaking platform, the tool represents a significant technical breakthrough in addressing one of AI's most challenging problems: creating realistic video with matching sound. What you should know: Veo 3 can generate videos with synchronized audio through natural language prompts, including ambient background noise and human voices. Users can create content by describing scenes in text, with the ability to fine-tune creative details "from the shade...
read Jun 27, 2025Thailand launches first locally-operated hyperscale cloud platform
Thailand has launched its first hyperscale cloud platform operated entirely by a Thai company, marking a significant milestone in the nation's push for digital sovereignty and technological independence. AIS Business, the enterprise division of Thailand's largest telecommunications company AIS, unveiled AIS Cloud powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, designed to keep sensitive data within Thai borders while providing enterprise-grade computing power. This development addresses growing concerns among Thai businesses and government agencies about data security, regulatory compliance, and dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure. Unlike traditional cloud services where data might be processed or stored overseas, hyperscale cloud platforms—massive, highly automated data...
read Jun 26, 2025Reading Rainbows: Pearson partners with Google Cloud to build AI learning tools for students
Pearson, a British education company, has entered a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to develop AI-powered learning tools for primary and secondary school students. The collaboration aims to create personalized educational experiences that adapt to individual student needs while helping teachers track performance and customize lessons more effectively. What you should know: The partnership focuses on leveraging Google's advanced AI models to transform traditional classroom education from uniform teaching methods to individualized learning paths. Students will receive AI-driven tools that adjust to their specific pace and learning requirements. Teachers will gain enhanced capabilities to monitor student progress and tailor instructional...
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