Wheelin’ and dealin’
- Genetic medicine company ElevateBio is collaborating with AWS to accelerate drug development using CRISPR gene editing therapeutics.
- A bunch of energy companies created the Open Power AI Consortium to develop AI tools that will improve grid reliability, with Microsoft and AWS as founding members. Part of what is driving this is concern over utility demands for powering AI. This is like when Brazil cut down eight miles of rainforest to build a highway to its climate summit.
- Cloud-based vegetation management sounds like what a stoner does all weekend but it’s actually a real thing from Hitachi, and it will now get a boost from AWS. Because guess what—we need more reliable energy infrastructure. The lights keep going out on our tomatoes because we all need to ask ChatGPT to give us a picture of a cat wearing cowboy boots and stuff.
- Both Microsoft and AWS have entered deals with Siemens, the global technology conglomerate. Siemens will develop its Industrial Foundation Model on Azure and has been working on a digital building platform with AWS.
- When I worked for a PR agency our top customer was Adobe, and I had to go to the Adobe Summit every year in Vegas, and one time the hotel messed up booking so I had to share a room with my boss and I thought she was asleep but she wasn’t, and in the dark she suddenly asked if I wanted to gamble and I said YES so we changed out of our PJs and went to play Blackjack. Except she just wanted ME to play, not her, so I did, and I was up like $200 and ready to walk away but she pressured me to keep going and I lost it all on the next hand and then we went back to bed. But anyway, this year at Adobe Summit the company announced it’s going to build new integrations with AWS generative AI services, Amazon Connect, and Amazon Ads.
- Adobe didn’t only announce integrations with AWS generative AI tools at Adobe Summit. It will also extend its integrations with Microsoft by activating Adobe Marketing Agent in Teams, PowerPoint, Word, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
World domination
- AWS signed an agreement with Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, which will involve developing new standards for cloud environments and helping European businesses meet requirements via AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
- Denmark’s Danske Bank is migrating all its applications, data, and infrastructure to AWS.
New stuff
- Amazon Q in QuickSight has new scenario analysis capabilities that support non-technical people in building data models and asking exploratory “what if” questions, like “What if we CRISPRed a bunch of lizards to build a fleet of dinosaurs for a luxury dinosaur taxi service, do you think business would finally designate dinosaur parking spaces, yes or no?”
- Working with AWS and Anthropic, Deloitte launched AI Advantage. It provides intelligent analytics and insights, along with an agent that automates finance tasks, using Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic’s LLMs.
- Microsoft showed the world what’s come out of its Azure AI Foundry thus far. It released agent framework, which simplifies the orchestration of multi-agent systems. And, there’s AI Red Teaming, an AI that systematically probes (ooooh, say more) other AI models to flag safety risks.
- Oh, did you think we were done with agents for today? No. Microsoft’s Researcher agent addresses multi-step research at work while its Analyst agent “thinks like a skilled data scientist” to get insights in minutes.
- Connected to work at the AI Foundry, NVIDIA has several things going with Microsoft, including the AgentIQ toolkit for real-time agent monitoring and optimization.
- On a different day, Microsoft announced multiple new capabilities for its Security Copilot agents—they can provide threat intelligence briefings, optimize conditional access, and more.
- AWS has made multi-agent collaboration in Amazon Bedrock generally available. This will make it easier for developers to churn out and manage AI agents that work together to carry out complex tasks…like training dinosaurs to drive.
- At Google Cloud Next, Google announced new features to its Agentspace that will lower the barrier to adoption. No-code agent creation pulls in users of all technical levels and the new Tensor Processing Unit and AI Hypercomputer both boost the cloud provider’s presence in AI hardware and software. Several other announcements, including agent-to-agent communication protocol, show that Google’s AI investments are paying off.
Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security
- Google is set to acquire cybersecurity company Wiz in a $32B deal that the tech giant will use to make its cloud platform more secure. The company also announced new security agents.
Professional pivots
- The VP of AI/ML services for AWS, who oversaw solutions like Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, has left after a year. Personally, I am less baffled by his one-year tenure than I am by the fact that he spells out hashtag in his LinkedIn profile before using an actual hashtag.
- The general manager of generative AI at AWS is leaving to launch his own company. PLEASE PLEASE let it be a dinosaur parking logistics company.
Gossip (for nerds)
- An ex-senior product manager is suing AWS for discrimination, claiming she was laid off because of her gender and age. When AWS laid off people in 2023, it reduced the percentage of women in leadership positions from 62.5% to 28.6%. In a 2024 re-org, 60% of those laid off were over 40.
- Microsoft is backing out of many of its data center commitments on a global level. Indonesia, the UK, and Australia locations have been halted, and in the U.S. plans for Illinois, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Ohio are paused. It’s unclear why, but this article suggests that Microsoft isn’t seeing enough demand to justify the new centers versus other reasons like rising construction costs. This article says, “Trump’s tariffs are likely to have a hugely negative impact on the US tech sector.” GREAT.
- While the big three U.S. cloud platforms dominate, they don’t own it all. Europe has its own cloud providers, and they say they have two advantages: a friendlier interface and onboarding process, and less dubious privacy rules than their American counterparts. I feel like there’s a third advantage, but I just can’t think of anything that might drive the world away from U.S. cloud providers, can you? I mean, there’s not really anything going on, you know?
- Voicing concern about anti-competitive tactics, two U.S. senators want to know more about Microsoft’s and Google’s partnerships with AI companies.
- At a 50th anniversary celebration during which Microsoft unveiled new Copilot features around memory, some employees stood up to protest the cloud giant’s contract with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), interrupting the company CEO in front of thousands of people. Microsoft supplies IDF with AI-powered software used in selecting bomb targets in Gaza. (IDF also uses AWS to store surveillance information). A protesting employee was fired shortly after the event and another resigned.
- The Microsoft CTO says AI will generate 95% of code in the next five years, but that doesn’t mean a total replacement of human developers. Meanwhile, other outlets report that big tech firms ARE using AI to replace employees. Earlier in the year, Satya Nadella said AI agents would eventually replace all software-as-a-service and that in the future, people will be hired based on the agents they’ve created. I don’t like this game.
Best Friends Forever
- New to AWS Marketplace: Credential security platform Dashlane; Pipe17, an ecommerce software platform; Afiniti’s eXperienceAI, which provides customer experience technology.
- New to Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Zenity, which secures AI agents; Happiest Minds’ generative AI investor solution; CTERA’s edge-to-cloud files services; CloudAtlas AI Guardian for ethical AI governance and security; SPIN Analytics’ RISKROBOT, which helps financial institutions model credit risk; ThetaRay’s Sonar, a SaaS transaction monitoring solution for fintechs and banks; accounts payable automation solution Dooap; and Apiboost’s Developer Portal.