Investors are still betting big on artificial intelligence, as this past week alone they put $450 million in Runway AI, $200 million into Magic AI and $100 million in Harvey, among others.

AI also helped Samsung rock its preliminary earnings reported this week. Meantime, SK Hynix is investing a stunning $75B in its AI chipmaking business.

But AI is the only real bright spot in a still-moribund venture capital picture. And even AI isn’t yet providing enough oomph to prevent continued cost-cutting, including layoffs at Microsoft and OpenText. AI is also supposed to provide a boost for robotics, but that didn’t prevent both Alphabet and Amazon from shutting down their business-oriented robotics units.

Indeed, AI seems likely to have some challenges before long, not least of which is that it’s putting a serious crimp into efforts by Google and others to move quickly on reducing emissions. Moreover, AI model creators may face increasing headwinds from data availability, as Cloudflare debuted a service to prevent them from scraping websites to train their models.

The Supreme Court wasn’t aiming at the tech industry with the “regulation bomb,” as Axios put it, that it dropped last Friday, and nobody really knows what all the implications will be. But no doubt dissenting Justice Elena Kagen is right in saying that it’s “likely to produce large-scale disruption” in every major industry. One obvious place in tech is in cybersecurity, but it surely won’t end there.

You heard a lot about Iceberg in recent weeks as data platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks coalesced around the management layer for data files in cloud storage. That seems to be sounding the death knell for the open-source Hudi format despite some advantages, an echo of many past tech format wars. Paul Gillin dove into what’s behind Hudi’s fading status.

Here’s all the news this week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:

AI and data: Generating funding

Crashing into an Iceberg: Betamax blues: Hudi edging toward ‘also ran’ status in the data platform race

Oops, not a good look: Figma disables new AI tool that repeatedly cloned Apple’s Weather app

Kinda wish they wouldn’t do this: Hollywood stars’ estates agree to the use of their voices with AI, per CNN But gen AI video generation has a ways to go 😳

Report: China leads the world in generative AI patents

Money matters

Automotive lifecycle data startup Solera files for IPO, seeking to raise $1.5B

Runway eyes $450M in new funding amid ongoing interest in AI startups

Generative AI coding assistant startup Magic AI looking to raise $200M at $1.5B valuation

Legal AI startup Harvey reportedly seeking $100M in funding at $1.5B valuation

Open-source AI platform Sentient raises $85M co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund

Managed PostgreSQL service provider Tembo raises $14M

Australian AI development startup Redactive raises $7.5M for expansion

Policy and regulation

France poised to slap Nvidia with antitrust charges stemming from its AI dominance

Google’s emissions grew 13% in 2023 amid increasing AI energy demand

New services and models

Meta open-sources new ‘multi-token prediction’ language models

Cloudflare rolls out feature for blocking AI companies’ web scrapers

Qdrant launches pure vector-based hybrid search for more accurate AI data retrieval

Anthropic launches new program to fund the creation of more reliable AI benchmarks

Check out more news on AI and data.

Around the enterprise: AI chips FTW

Samsung expects 15X profit increase, fueled by massive demand for AI chips

AWS to build $1.3B top-secret cloud for Australia’s government

Fresh Microsoft layoffs reportedly hit product and project management roles

OpenText announces job cuts and reinvestment strategy under new plan

SK Hynix announces $75B investment to boost AI chipmaking business

Vaire raises $4M to develop ‘reversible computing’ chips

Read lots more news on cloud, infrastructure and related enterprise news

Cyber beat

Rapid7 acquires rival Noetic Cyber to help enterprises fix vulnerabilities faster

Attack and response

Decade-long CocoaPods vulnerabilities exposed Apple users to potential security risks

Twilio warns Authy users to update app following unauthenticated endpoint breach

Law enforcement task force disrupts infrastructure used for Cobalt Strike cyberattacks

New ransomware group ‘Volcano Demon’ uses direct phone calls to pressure victims

Patelco Credit Union targeted in ransomware attack, disrupting customer access

Qualys warns of OpenSSH vulnerability researchers are calling ‘extremely dangerous’

SentinelLabs uncovers new CapraRAT spyware targeting Android users

New services

Proton debuts privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Word that rejects AI assistance

Typeform introduces enhanced capabilities for go-to-market teams in latest update

LogRhythm boosts security with data intelligence, AWS integration and compliance updates

Plenty more SiliconANGLE news on cybersecurity here

Elsewhere in tech

Policy

EU asks Amazon for information about its DSA compliance

Reversing course, Apple approves Epic Games’ iOS game store

Supreme Court returns Texas and Florida social media laws to lower courts

EU probe tentatively finds that Meta breached DMA with ad-free subscription

Biden administration awards $504M to 12 regional technology hubs I’ve always thought that spreading tech expertise and opportunity throughout the country is a win-win-win–for companies looking for talent, for that talent that can’t or doesn’t want to move to the coasts, and for relieving pressure on housing and other costs in said coasts.

PitchBook: Global venture capital deals struggle amid economic uncertainties AI dominates, with $27.1 billion invested in AI startups just from April to June, accounting for half of all startup funding.

Alphabet shuts down agricultural AI robot startup Mineral, licenses part to Driscoll’s

Amazon ends its Astro for Business security robot program

Chinese researchers create ‘human-on-chip’ system using brain matter to create ‘organoid’ robot

South Korea launches cryptocurrency monitoring system to fight market manipulation

Blockchain oracle RedStone raises $15M to bring outside data into networks

Blockchain security startup Mamori raises $5M to use machine learning to detect exploits

Check out all our news on blockchain, policy and emerging tech

Comings and goings

Google Cloud hired two VPs from rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to lead its AI cloud business, per Computerworld. Eleven-year Microsoft vet and top Copilot executive Saurabh Tiwary will be GM and VP of Google’s cloud AI business. Reporting to Tiwary will be another new exec, former longtime AWS VP Raj Pai, who joined as VP of product.

Phil Schiller, head of Apple’s App Store, reportedly will be appointed an observer on OpenAI’s board.

Enterprise augmented and mixed reality solutions provider Arvizio appointed Taimoor Nawab CEO. Previously he was SVP and head of Syntronic R&D Canada.

AI-driven extended detection and response firm Vectra AI hired Sailesh Munagala as chief financial officer from Relativity.

What’s next

July 10: AWS Summit New York: TheCUBE Research will be there for editorial coverage, including an interview with keynoter and AWS VP of AI Products Matt Woods.

July 16-17: International Chief Data Officer and Information Quality (CDOIQ) Symposium: TheCUBE Research will be there.

July 30: Supercloud 7: Get Ready for the Next Data Platform: Our latest Supercloud editorial event will look at the foundation for the new AI era.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Google Gemini