Ahead of the annual Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, we warned that defensive tool sprawl is only likely to get worse.

Onsite, the talk was about, of course, the impact of AI. So far, so good, but defenders are bracing for more sophisticated artificial intelligence-driven attacks. Meantime, lots of cybersecurity providers are doing well, if earnings and new fundings are any indication.

This week Google lost its search monopoly case, which is a big deal — but the impacts won’t be immediate beyond full employment for Google lawyers who plan to appeal. Fact is, there are multiple options that may end up not hurting it that much — or so investors chose to believe.

Elsewhere on the antitrust front, the U.K. decided to launch a fuller probe of Amazon’s Anthropic partnership, though it seems like a weak case given that Google is also a big investor, and Amazon has no board seats. There’s no doubt that these non-acquisitions could strengthen Big Tech’s hand in AI.

Nevertheless, a few startups are continuing to get big funding. Case in point: Groq raised a boatload, because why should Nvidia make all the money in AI chips? Especially when Nvidia itself had to delay its latest chip. Meanwhile, Intel tried to show it’s still making progress on tech, even if it might be too late. (At least it dumped Bob Swan, yikes.)

Dell laid off thousands of workers… again. How many thousands, we won’t know at least until the company reports earnings at the end of the month.

Next week, look for earnings reports from two bellwethers: Cisco, which also may announce its own layoffs next week, and Applied Materials.

SiliconANGLE and theCUBE Research analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante will discuss this and other news in more detail on theCUBE Pod, out later today on YouTube. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep dive, Breaking Analysis, out this weekend.

Here’s the big news of the week from SiliconANGLE and beyond:

AI and data: Acquisitions and non-acquisitions

Headline news and analysis

Honestly this seems weak, if only because Google has also invested $2.3 billion into Anthropic: UK antitrust regulator launches probe into Amazon’s Anthropic partnership And it’s hardly alone.

AI chipmaker Groq raises $640M to meet rising demand for high-speed inference compute

Advice from Gartner’s Arun Chandrasekaran: How organizations can optimize generative AI costs

Former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia on how the next data platform will evolve: The role of metadata management tools in the evolution of open data formats

Money matters

Tencent joins $300M financing for China’s AI unicorn Moonshot (from Bloomberg)

Nutanix’s Dheeraj Pandey is back: AI platform startup DevRev raises $100M at $1.15B valuation

SoundHound acquires Amelia to expand its conversational voice AI solutions

Hugging Face acquires XetHub to enhance its AI storage infrastructure

Placer Labs raises $75M to enhance market research initiatives with location data and AI

OpenAI reportedly leads $60M round for webcam startup Opal

Automation platform startup Rewst raises $45M led by Sapphire Ventures

Open-source data science platform Knime raises $30M to seize opportunity in generative AI

Serverless database startup Neon nabs $25M in fresh funding

‘Confidential AI’ startup Anjuna raises $25M

AI business agent startup Bardeen pulls in $3M strategic investment from Dropbox and Hubspot (per TechCrunch)

Oof: How chip giant Intel spurned OpenAI and fell behind the times

New models and services

OpenAI announces key LLM safety feature in response to ‘popular demand’ from developers

OpenAI can detect text generated by ChatGPT, but it’s not ready for prime time

Visual AI startup Napkin.ai launches graphics generator for business storytelling

Salesforce extends generative AI smarts to its Nonprofit Cloud platform

Palantir to deploy AI products on Microsoft Azure for US government agencies (per Reuters)

Startup Scamnetic debuts AI-powered scam detection platform to detect fraudsters in real time

Nillion and Ritual team up to build trustless decentralized AI inference technology

Automattic rolls out AI-powered writing readability assistant for WordPress bloggers

Amplitude launches new services for better data synchronization, security and privacy compliance

There’s more AI and big data news on SiliconANGLE

Around the enterprise: Google search gets a slapdown. What’s next?

Headline news

Federal court rules against Google in landmark search monopoly case And a tidbit from Apple, ouch: ‘There’s no price’ Microsoft could pay Apple to use Bing

Dell lays off thousands of workers in sales reorganization

Cisco could reportedly let go 4,000+ workers in new round of job cuts

Report: Design flaw discovery set to delay launch of Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPUs

Intel finally delivers some good news, hitting key 18A process node milestone

Intel targets opportunity for AI-powered cars in China with its first discrete GPU

But not all the news is good, of course: Intel postpones key chip event amid cost-cutting effort

Earnings bonanza

Strong earnings report pushes GlobalFoundries’ stock higher in extended trading

Super Micro announces 10-for-1 stock split, shares plunge 18% on earnings miss

Cyber upside: Fortinet and Rapid7 impress investors with earnings beats

CyberArk tops earnings estimates, revises outlook as subscription revenue surges

DigitalOcean cruises to another easy earnings beat

Data center infrastructure firm Equinix raises annual forecasts, betting on AI growth

Uber shares up over 10% as higher bookings deliver earnings and revenue beats

Lyft’s first profitable quarter overshadowed by missed booking targets

AI growth helps Palantir beat second-quarter earnings, drives higher forecast

Disappointing guidance and mixed earnings crater JFrog’s stock

Rivian shares slide as electric car maker reports cost blowouts in second quarter

Billion-dollar revenue run rate, AI and an acquisition highlight Five9’s latest quarter despite weak forecast

Datadog reports strong second quarter with earnings and revenue beats

Extreme Networks revenue falls as it clears old inventory but beats forecast

Surging cryptocurrency trading helps Robinhood beat earnings

Duolingo stock rise 5% after-hours on strong quarter

Expensify matches earnings estimates, lowering losses despite revenue decline, stock rises 8%

Amplitude beats earnings expectations with steady revenue growth and customer gains

Shares of Dropbox inch up as Q2 financial results top expectations

Rackspace demonstrates impressive efficiency gains, sending its stock way higher

In other enterprise money matters

Private equity firm Apax buys Thoughtworks in $1.75B takeover deal

Box acquires AI-powered document processor Alphamoon

Travel software startup Flyr raises $295 million in equity and debt at $900M valuation (per Bloomberg)

Quantum error correction startup Riverlane closes $75M investment

Mechanical Orchard nabs $50M in Series B round led by GV to help move large organizations off risky legacy software

Industrial analytics startup Seeq raises $50M Series D round led by Sixth Street Growth

HPE’s $14B buy of Juniper clears UK watchdog and EU hurdles

There’s plenty more news on cloud, infrastructure and apps

Cyber beat: At Black Hat, tool sprawl and AI worries

Cybersecurity Special Report: Live from Black Hat: Check out our latest special report, complete with a deep dive into cyber tool sprawl and news, interviews and analysis from the annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas:

First, some analysis

Cybersecurity tool sprawl is out of control – and it’s only going to get worse

Defense leads in race to secure AI, but threats to models and data could soon change that

Balancing the complexities of modern cybersecurity: theCUBE insights from Black Hat USA

Transforming cybersecurity: The crucial role of AI and data management

And all the news and interviews

AI’s role in defending against global threats: insights from Microsoft

Microsoft uncovers Iranian cyber activity meant to influence US elections

Zscaler on the role of leadership in cybersecurity innovation

Cybersecurity diversity: Harnessing AI and inclusive talent for proactive defense

Large-scale data management amid product sprawl: ICE’s Ryan Hebert weighs in

Abnormal Security raises $250M on $5.1B valuation to enhance AI-driven cyber protection

EQT to acquire majority stake in cybersecurity firm Acronis at $3.5B+ valuation

Fortinet acquires Next DLP to extend its data security capabilities

Cloudbees acquires AI-based software testing startup Launchable

AWS details internal Mithra threat intelligence system

Flashpoint unveils enhanced threat intelligence capabilities to help companies stay ahead of threats

Fortinet enhances OT security platform with new networking and operational capabilities

Apiiro introduces AI-driven ‘Risk Detection at Design Phase’ for enhanced app security

Swimlane enhances Hero AI with advance case summarization and AI-augmented reporting

Elastic introduces new Automatic Import for faster SIEM onboarding with AI

Contrast Security launches new ADR service to bolster application security

Black Hat bonanza: 1Password, ArmorCode, Legit Security and NetRise unveil new security solutions

Trend Micro reportedly exploring sale after being approached by potential buyers

More cybersecurity news here

Elsewhere in tech: Everybody hates Elon

Sorry, Texas: X is leaving San Francisco but will stay in Silicon Valley

How dumb do you have to be to sue your own (lost) customers? X goes to war with advertisers over boycott Related: Advertising coalition disbands after lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X

Elon sure isn’t making many friends these days: UK government clashes with X’s Elon Musk over hate speech and misinformation and Elon Musk files new lawsuit against OpenAI over for-profit shift and X accused of using EU user data to train Grok without consent (per Engadget)

Andrena raises $18M to launch decentralized internet service

And check out more news on emerging tech, blockchain and crypto and policy

Comings and goings

OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic, the latest in a string of co-founder departures from the AI phenom.

GPU cloud computing provider CoreWeave has hired away two former Google execs: Sachin Jain (most recently in a short stint as an SVP at Oracle) as chief operating officer and Chen Goldberg as SVP of engineering.

Former Shopify Chief Financial Officer Amy Shapero is now Vast Data’s first CFO.

AI security firm CalypsoAI named Chief Operating Officer Donnchadh Casey its new CEO, succeeding founder Neil Serebryany, who will remain a member of the board.

AI chipmaker Cerebras appointed Bob Komin CFO. It also announced two new board members, former IBM, Intel and Spansion exec Glenda Dorchak, and former VMware and Proofpoint CGO Paul Auvil.

Andrew Casey, Lacework’s CFO before its recent acquisition by Fortinet, has joined digital analytics firm Amplitude as CFO.

What’s next

Earnings

Aug. 14: Cisco

Aug. 15: Applied Materials

Events

Aug. 27-29: VMware Explore, Las Vegas: SiliconANGLE and theCUBE will be onsite with all the news, plus interviews and analysis

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram