No holiday for AI, chipmakers or cyber criminals

Not surprisingly, it was a pretty slow week for enterprise technology given the holidays, but there was still some significant news in artificial intelligence, chips and cybersecurity — and of course it’s that time of year for predictions, which we started rolling out this week, with more in coming weeks.

Here’s a sampling of the most significant news in this last week of the year. And don’t miss Vellante’s weekly deep-dive Breaking Analysis this weekend, when he will assess how his 2023 predictions fared.

Meanwhile, we wish you all a Happy New Year for enterprise tech!

Prediction season

A brief look at 2023, and ahead to 2024, before Dave Vellante presents his detailed predictions in January: On theCUBE Pod: Wrapping up 2023 with a look back and predictions on the year to come

And Dave did a more detailed analysis of his 2023 predictions, earning a B+ overall: Grading our 2023 enterprise technology predictions

David Strom weighs in on what’s coming on the cybersecurity front: Here are the major security threats and trends for 2024 – and how to deal with them

Scott Likens at PwC offers a look at what’s coming next and what enterprises should focus on first: Innovation for tomorrow: The essential eight technologies set to propel business success in 2024

And a look back at who said what, from Mark Albertson: They said it in 2023: From one reporter’s notebook, memorable quotes from SiliconANGLE’s coverage

No holiday for AI

Anthropic clearly aims to become the chief independent foil to OpenAI, or at least that’s what its backers are counting on: Generative AI startup Anthropic reportedly on track to deliver $850M in annual revenue

And the big bucks for AI keep coming: Defense startup Shield AI raises $300M at $2.8B valuation

It’s hard to believe AI companies didn’t think this was coming, except that Silicon Valley always shoots first and asks questions later, but this could prove to be expensive: New York Times sues Microsoft, OpenAI over AI training copyright infringement On the other hand, the case isn’t necessarily that strong, and Mike Masnick at Techdirt makes a good case that it’s silly. Still, it seems likely to create a mess that AI companies would prefer to pay to avoid.

We shouldn’t forget China is making big progress in AI: Baidu discloses its ChatGPT rival now has 100M+ users Even if it’s not getting the latest Nvidia GPUs: Nvidia launches scaled-down version of its latest gaming GPU in China

And from the WSJ, a worrisome of China’s intentions with AI: China Is Stealing AI Secrets to Turbocharge Spying, U.S. Says

Is this the friendly face of AI in 2024? Meet LG’s new ‘AI agent’

Microsoft releases free Copilot app for Android

GitHub Copilot Chat launches into general availability

Report: Microsoft developing AI-optimized Surface Pro and Surface Laptop

Apple quietly launched an open-source multimodal LLM called Ferret

Danish researchers create an LLM that will predict when someone might die with 78% accuracy

Around the enterprise and cloud

Chip investment continues to intensify, but not necessarily because of the U.S. Chips Act, which has been slow to dispense the big bucks:

Intel receives $3.2B grant from Israel’s government to build $25B chip fab

Report: Samsung to delay production at new U.S. chip fab until 2025

South Korea’s chipmaking industry sparks back into life, as shipments and production increase

Toshiba to expand power management chip production with $175M investment

A close look at an enterprise cloud migration by Paul Gillin: Business services giant realizes outsized cost savings by moving to the cloud

Samsung partners with Red Hat to verify key data center scalability tech

Iris Software receives private equity investment at £3.15B valuation

Microsoft to implement new feature to reinstall Windows without deleting any files or apps

SoftBank’s shares jump as it gains $7.6 billion stock payout from T-Mobile

Antitrust and policy

Apple banned from selling Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 in the US

Google to settle privacy lawsuit over Chrome’s incognito mode

Emerging tech roundup

MicroStrategy’s stock gains more than 350% in 2023 as it increases its exposure to bitcoin

Judge rules that Terraform Labs Luna and Mir tokens are securities

Apple reportedly expects to ship 500,000 Vision Pro headsets in 2024

Cyber criminals never sleep

Operation Triangulation: Previously unknown feature in iPhones exploited for spyware

GTA V source code allegedly leaked in a tribute to jailed Lapsus$ hacker

New Chameleon Android malware variant emerges with fingerprint lock bypass capability

Microsoft disables vulnerable Windows component following malware campaigns

Image: Bing Image Creator