Enterprise Weekly #434: Cloud Earnings Point to AI, NYC Events, and More
This week, Alphabet and Microsoft kicked off earnings reporting for the cloud giants (stay tuned for Amazon’s earnings next week).
TL;DR: While both companies beat earnings expectations, their YoY growth (for both parent companies and their cloud divisions) slowed as a continuation of today’s cost cutting measures. That said, it’s clear AI has become a central piece to their overall corporate strategies.
Alphabet reported $75B in revenue (up 7% YoY) with Google Cloud reporting $8B in revenue (up 28% YoY).
Microsoft reported $56B in revenue (up 8% YoY) with Azure reporting 26% growth. More importantly, Microsoft reported record profits “shaking off recession fears” thanks to early impacts of its investments in generative AI - between its $13B investment in OpenAI and its new partnership with Meta on its open-source LLM, Llama 2.
It's looking like the bet on generative AI and LLMs is paying off so far as the cloud giants compete to keep customers' data in their platforms. As we've said in the past, the space is moving quickly and while it may lean in favor of hyper-scalers now, the near-constant flux of AI may push customers in other directions:
🍻 Join more events:
August 2: Work-Bench’s Next Gen API Experience Meetup Featuring Merge & Speakeasy
August 15: Dialpad’s AI@WORK CITY TOUR
All Summer Long: Work-Bench Infrasummer
📚 Read more news:
Forbes: Sequoia Cuts One-Third Of Talent Team Amid Firm Restructuring
Sifted: The 'Untold Hack' For Attracting VCs: Building in Stealth
Bloomberg: SEC Sets 4-Day Deadline for Public Companies to Report Hacks
📚 Read more (th)reads:
@DanielChesley on the rapid evolution of application automation
Kiran Narsu on how to drive urgency for prospective customers
Company: Cockroach Labs
Role: Site Reliability Engineer
Technology: Cloud-Native SQL Database
Funding: $633M from Greenoaks, Altimeter Capital, GV, Tiger Global, Index Ventures, Benchmark, FirstMark, Redpoint, Work-Bench, and others
🌟Company of the Week🌟
Frigade raises $3M led by Craft Ventures and La Famiglia
Productivity & Collaboration • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Founders: Eric Brownrout (CEO), Christian Mathiesen (CTO)
Effectiv raises $4.5M led by Better Tomorrow Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • San Francisco, CA
HumanFirst raises $5M led by Panache Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Montreal, Canada
Quench.ai raises $5M led by firstminute capital, Notion Capital and Others
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Pre-Seed • London, UK
Adaptive Shield raises $10M led by Blackstone
Risk / Security • Venture • Tel Aviv, Israel
Giraffe raises $10.5M led by Group 11
HR Tech • Seed • New York, NY
Akooda raises $11M led by Village Global
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Cambridge, MA
Finicast raises $12.8M led by Celesta Capital
Productivity / Collaboration • Seed • San Mateo, CA
Nexla raises $18M led by Shield Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • San Mateo, CA
Protect AI raises $35M led by Evolution Equity Partners
Risk / Security • Series A • Seattle, WA
OneTrust raises $150M by Generation Investment Management
Risk / Security • Venture • Atlanta, CA
Teradata acquires Stemma for an Undisclosed Amount
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Acquisition • San Francisco, CA
Thales acquires Imperva for $3.6B
Risk / Security • Acquisition • New York, NY