Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

00:03 — According to recent reports, Microsoft is set to reveal its Maia 300 AI accelerator as early as September this year. For context, Microsoft launched Maia 200 back in January with the direct aim of reducing the cost of AI inference. 00:27 — The Maia 300 is expected to support both AI training and inference, but the key story here is the scale of ambition behind it. Now, Microsoft is once ag...

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Bob Evans speaks with Chad Wahlquist, an Architect at Palantir , about what is driving the company’s extraordinary growth and, more importantly, what customers are getting from its technology. Wahlquist argues that Palantir’s momentum comes from helping enterprises solve difficult operational problems rather than simply deploying AI or chasing model benchmarks. Their conversation explores AI sover...

00:03 — We've had a lot of big numbers come out for Q2 reports. Google Cloud is at 82 percent. AWS growth jumped up to 37 percent. But I have to take a little more time here to dig into what I'm calling the Palantir phenomenon. Here's a company that, over the last three quarters, has seen its growth rate go from 71 percent to 85 percent to 93 percent. 01:12 — What are customers asking Palantir rig...

  00:03 — In a big coup for Salesforce, the Pentagon has approved the use of its Missionforce national security platform to launch AI agents on the most sensitive unclassified missions, and that's because it's been granted Impact Level Five, or IL5 , authorization. 00:21 — The first major user will be Army Human Resources Command, which will use the technology to help with soldier and family suppo...

In this special episode of Cloud Wars, Bob Evans speaks with Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO of Handshake , about one of the biggest challenges facing enterprises today: turning the extraordinary promise of AI into measurable business outcomes. Lord explains why AI agents have delivered dramatic productivity gains in software engineering but have yet to achieve comparable results across many othe...

In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the rise of agentic reasoning loops and why their impact on AI token consumption and costs could be significant. Highlights 00:12 — Today's topic is going to be agentic reasoning loops. Everyone's moving to this concept where we can have a planning, act, observe, and reflect type of process, which allows us to be able to get much deeper analysis and mu...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why Palantir's approach to AI sovereignty, sales, and customer value deserves the software industry's attention. Highlights 00:02 — I wanted to talk a little bit more today about Palantir, and I know I've been mentioning the company, digging into what they did in Q2 and their discussions about customer developments, the huge advances some customers are makin...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why Oracle is rejecting a single-model AI strategy and embracing a flexible, multi-model future. Highlights 00:03 — Oracle has announced that it's extending its partnership with Google Cloud and will be making Google's Gemini models available across its enterprise AI portfolio. This includes Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, NetSuite, Oracle AI Agent Studio,...

In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the rapid rise of forward deployment engineering and why getting AI into production is becoming the next competitive advantage. Highlights 00:10 — Today, the topic is going to be why we're seeing AI move to forward deployment engineering type of scenarios, and this industry trend has actually increased in just year-over-year growth of forward deploymen...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why ServiceNow’s fast-growing security business is becoming central to Bill McDermott’s AI strategy. Highlights 00:01 — I wanted to chat a little bit about ServiceNow's Q2 performance, but mostly what CEO Bill McDermott disclosed on the Q2 earnings call. Very strong performance across the board. They beat on all their numbers, doing very nicely. And what McD...

In this special episode of Cloud Wars Live, Bob Evans speaks with Manish Sood, founder and CEO of Reltio, about the rapidly changing relationship among enterprise data, AI, and business strategy following SAP’s acquisition of Reltio. Sood explains why trusted, interoperable data is becoming increasingly important as enterprises embrace agentic AI and autonomous business processes. He also discusse...

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Oracle’s major $7 billion Pentagon contract and what it means for the company’s government and enterprise ambitions. Highlights 00:03 —The Pentagon has awarded Oracle a major 10-year contract worth up to $7 billion, sending the company's shares around 3% higher in extended trading. On the news, investors are clearly happy to see another major government win...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze the extraordinary RPO growth at Microsoft, Oracle, Google Cloud, and AWS and what it signals about AI demand. Highlights 00:03 — We've got another example here where, in the greatest growth market the world has ever known, we are working with some big numbers that put the law of big numbers to the test here. So, if you look at the four hyperscalers, and I go...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I compare Google Cloud, Microsoft, and AWS to reveal which hyperscaler is winning the most new business. Highlights 00:15 — While all of them had terrific quarters, I'd have to rate it this way: Google Cloud was far and away the best. AWS had a terrific quarter, especially for the way it had been performing before that. Microsoft, at its phenomenal size, had a very go...

In today's Cloud Wars AI Minute, I explain how Microsoft's AI agent momentum could transform business applications at scale. Highlights 00:00 — So we're now hearing, according to Microsoft, that it has 40 million agents deployed now in the Microsoft ecosystem. Now compare that to the 30 million seats that it actually has sold for the M365 Copilot, and that really starts to show us that AI agent cr...

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Microsoft’s push to protect open-weight AI models and why the debate over openness could shape the future of the AI ecosystem. Highlights 00:09 — Microsoft is among more than 20 tech companies, including NVIDIA, Meta, and Palantir, that have issued an open letter urging U.S. lawmakers to slow down in placing restrictions on open-weight AI models. These ar...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why Palantir's AI strategy is resonating with customers and disrupting the software industry's established order. Highlights 00:03 — Well, we had a fascinating earnings report and earnings call with Palantir recently. A couple of things happened. Its growth rate soared. It almost doubled its growth in Q2, up 93% to over $1.8 billion. 00:19 — But intriguingly...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down OpenAI's decision to make GPT-5.6 the preferred model for Microsoft 365 Copilot and why AI efficiency is becoming an increasingly important competitive advantage. Highlights 00:09 — It's fair to say that OpenAI has had a changeable relationship with Microsoft over the past few years. However, ties between the two companies have always remained strong. To...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down the reshuffled hyperscaler rankings and what AWS's comeback means for the AI economy. Highlights 00:03 — The third hyperscaler reported its numbers late last week. That was Amazon's AWS unit. Fantastic quarter for AWS. Best in four or five years. It had what I called an awesome Q2, and in doing so, we've seen a complete reshuffling of the growth standings...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine why SAP's biggest competitive challenge may soon come from OpenAI and Anthropic rather than traditional enterprise software rivals. Highlights 00:00 — SAP released its Q2 numbers last week, and a couple of interesting things happened there. First of all, strong Q2 cloud revenue growth, 24%. But even higher than that was its backlog growth, which went up 26%....

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore OpenAI’s bold move into AI-powered consumer hardware and what it reveals about the future of trust in artificial intelligence.   Highlights 00:03 — OpenAI is adding yet another string to its bow as it becomes increasingly recognized as more than just its flagship ChatGPT product. Now, the company is reportedly developing its first consumer hardware device: a...

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I compare Microsoft’s latest cloud results with Google Cloud’s accelerating momentum.   Highlights 00:09 — Microsoft Cloud revenue was almost $60 billion for the quarter, up 27%. The RPO, as I said, was up 84%. It’s now the biggest RPO total, slightly ahead of Oracle. Microsoft Cloud: $678 billion for that. It said that Azure revenue was up 43% and that its revenue fo...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at Microsoft's strategy for balancing AI innovation with local governance, culture, and national control. Highlights 00:04 — I want to start today with a quote from Natasha Crampton, Microsoft's Chief Responsible AI Officer. " AI sovereignty doesn't mean doing it alone." This quote stands out from an interview she recently gave on the sidelines of the UN AI for...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine why Google Cloud's explosive growth is redefining the competitive landscape ahead of Microsoft and AWS earnings. Highlights 00:03 —We have earnings results coming up later this week from both Microsoft and AWS. Microsoft on July 29, and AWS on July 30. So, that'll give us some nice comparisons to the stunning Q2 that Google Cloud reported last week. Google C...