Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down Gartner’s $2.59 trillion AI infrastructure spending figure and why rising compute and memory costs are shifting where the economics of the AI boom are landing. Highlights 00:11 — Let's talk about this new Gartner number that just came out. Gartner is claiming that it's $2.59 trillion in CapEx expenditures that we're starting to see companies investing...

In today’s Cloud Wars Agent and Copilot Minute, I break down Microsoft’s rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra in Foundry and why enterprise controls could be a major differentiator for agentic AI. Highlights 00:09 — So a quick recap before I get into this story: at the start of September, OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, which it described as the world's most intelligent and aligned model. Now, I'd urge yo...

In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the explosive growth in AI infrastructure spending and the growing pressure on hyperscalers as CapEx begins to exceed operating cash flow. Highlights 0:14 — The thing I'm going to talk about today is the fact that we are now seeing over $700 billion in AI buildout as far as the investment in CapEx that's starting to be spent. Well, this is really an in...

In this Cloud Wars Minute, I dive deeper into comments from Oracle's Q1 earnings call on its philosophy, position, and strategy where agents meet applications. Highlights 00:16 — I think Oracle has, by far, been speaking with the most clarity about what the interplay between apps and agents will be. This is incredibly important for customers. Just a couple of years ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella...

In today’s Cloud Wars AI Minute, I break down the rise of AI model fatigue and why the industry’s rapid release cycle may be moving faster than buyers can keep up. Highlights 00:16 — The thing we’re going to talk about today is going to be model fatigue. And this is a real thing that’s starting to happen in the industry as these models keep coming out, and they come out so quick that you’re starti...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at why OpenAI is developing automated shutdown capabilities for its AI systems. Highlights 00:04 — Weeks after disclosing that one of its AI tools had escaped a sandbox environment during testing, OpenAI has revealed yet more model safeguards. The company has understandably been under scrutiny in this area since the news broke about the rogue AI. 00:23 — OpenAI...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I review Oracle's Q1 cloud revenue and how its business model innovation could propel the growth rate to rise even higher. Highlights 00:54 — Oracle reported Q1 cloud revenue of $11.6 billion, which is up 62%. $7.4 billion came from cloud infrastructure, with OCI having a growth rate of 121%. Oracle's RPO (remaining performance obligation), or its backlog that hasn't...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at OpenAI’s decision on Cursor and what it reveals about the importance of mutual trust across the AI industry. Highlights 00:04 — OpenAI has announced that it's planning to wind down its contract with Cursor following the company's acquisition by SpaceX, meaning OpenAI models will no longer be available through Cursor after November 12 this year. 00:22 — So, j...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Oracle’s blowout Q1 and the numbers signaling its growing power in AI and cloud infrastructure. Highlights 00:03 — Yesterday, Oracle reported what I'm calling a blowout Q1, and let me talk about some of the key numbers here that formed that impression for me. Its overall cloud revenue was up 62% to over $11 billion. It breaks that out in two ways. Its cloud...

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Google Cloud is combining AI agents , enterprise data, specialized skills, and partners to transform industry-specific solutions. Highlights 00:04 — Over the last few years, Google Cloud has made different moves to address what I believe is an enormous opportunity in industry-specific solutions. It's gone about this a few different ways, always leaving t...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Microsoft is bringing Arabic-language AI models into its ecosystem through its strategic collaboration with HUMAIN. Highlights 00:09 — Microsoft has announced a long-term strategic collaboration with HUMAIN. They're a Saudi Arabian AI company owned by the Public Investment Fund. That's Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. So, what we're looking at here,...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze how Aneel Bhusri is reshaping Workday’s agentic AI strategy following his return as CEO. Highlights 00:03 — Interesting conversations on the Workday FY27 Q2 earnings call last week. One of the things that came up here was the difference in their approach to agentic AI that's come about over the last several months since the return of CEO Aneel Bhusri. 00:48...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine why Meta is buying massive amounts of AI capacity from Microsoft despite building its own AI infrastructure. Highlights 00:10 — Meta has become one of Microsoft's largest AI customers, spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually through Azure and consuming trillions of tokens per week. It's a massive figure. 00:24 — But to me, the real story here is ab...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I ask whether OpenAI has quietly abandoned its AI super app as customer confusion around AI continues to grow. Highlights 00:02 — I wonder if over at OpenAI it's got a detective case going on here — the case of the missing AI super app. This is a concept, an idea that OpenAI floated very visibly, very demonstratively five months ago at the end of March, when the compa...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine three signs that ServiceNow is positioning itself to become a cybersecurity powerhouse. Highlights 00:02 — We've recently seen ServiceNow position itself as a security powerhouse, and I wonder if that is ultimately the grand plan, the grand vision of CEO Bill McDermott. We've heard and seen ServiceNow sort of evolve its overall position. It's tinkered around...

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Highlights 00:02 — Workday last week reported its Q2 results. They came in pretty strong, and I think if we look at the tenor of some of the comments that co-founder and CEO Aneel Bhusri made on the Q2 earnings call last week, we'll see that he's generally pretty low-key. But he's quite bullish now about what's going on with the early momentum Workday is gaining from its AI products. 00:49 — First...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I break down Microsoft’s evolving AI consumption strategy and how it compares with Salesforce, UiPath, and other major industry players. Highlights 00:19 — Microsoft just announced the GitHub Copilot harness for Copilot Studio — a really cool new capability that enables an agentic reasoning loop. 00:33 — As part of this release, it said that on September 1, it's going...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Google Cloud is expanding the Gemini ecosystem into the automotive world through its partnership with Mahindra. Highlights 00:03 — Google Cloud is partnering with the Indian automobile manufacturer Mahindra to get Gemini Enterprise installed directly into its vehicles. That's another interesting example that we're seeing here of AI leaping out of the dig...

In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how AI monetization is moving beyond execution and into creation as agentic development becomes more costly and valuable. Highlights 00:15 — One of the things that I want to talk about today is the meter moving upstream. A lot of this has to do with the fact that what we're starting to see is that the cost that is associated with the actual build process is...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze Salesforce’s latest results and why Dreamforce could be critical for proving its AI opportunity is here now. Highlights 00:03 — Salesforce yesterday released its Q2 results, and I'd say that while there's some very good things in there, it's a little bit of a mixed bag relative to what some other companies in its category are doing. But let's take a look at...

In today's Cloud Wars AI Minute, I explore why falling token prices aren't necessarily making AI transactions cheaper. Highlights 00:01 — So, one of the things that I want to talk about today is going to be the token economy. And what we're actually seeing is that tokens are about 12 times cheaper than they've been before. 01:30 — But what we're seeing is the average cost of a transaction is actua...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I explain why Workday believes AI security is becoming an ecosystem problem that no single vendor can solve independently. Highlights 00:06 — Workday has become the latest organization to join the Open Secure AI Alliance. It's a well-supported initiative that aims to improve the security of AI systems through open-source tools, research, and knowledge sharing. Workday...

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine why the emerging Google Cloud and Oracle alliance could reshape how enterprises accelerate their AI transformations. Highlights 00:01 — Interesting to see some new and different combinations of partners moving forward here in the AI Revolution, because the pace at which customers have to move, their escalating business, competitive pressures, their new techn...

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...