It may be a little soon to determine the ultimate winners and losers among enterprise suppliers after the midterm elections, but the early line is: Big Tech wins and data center suppliers operators such as chipmakers and neoclouds lose. Or will everybody lose?
The day after the elections, stocks of many tech companies shot up, a bit paradoxically because investors apparently believe potential limits on AI and data centers could tamp down spending on compute and thus improve tech company margins that have made investors nervous. But then on Thursday, tech stocks almost across the board plunged back down even more for a collective loss of $2.5 trillion in market cap — the Nasdaq fell more than 5.5% — on more generalized worries that, well, the AI boom could slow. Suffice to say, investors are still sorting things out.
Marvell Semiconductor this week made a surprisingly huge acquisition with Lumentum, a bet on the AI boom continuing. That is, if it comes off: The drop in Lumentum’s stock price has some speculating it could hunt around for another offer.
And the AI boom indeed continues apace, judging from strong tech earnings, though even pre-election, they reflected investor wariness. AMD, Supermicro and Arista all beat easily, as well as Palantir and Kyndryl, whose stock rocketed 30%. But chipmakers Qualcomm, Arm and Globalfoundries didn’t get the love despite good quarters — especially in Thursday’s bloodbath.
All of which raises the question that Dave Vellante posed in his Breaking Analysis last weekend: Can enterprise AI pay for the boom? Dave and analyst Crawford Del Prete discussed the prospects.
Next week’s earnings reports include Cisco, CoreWeave, Applied Materials, Cerebras and Nebius, any or all of which could move markets.
Here’s all of this week’s enterprise and emerging tech news, analysis and commentary from SiliconANGLE and beyond:
Analysis, opinion and food for thought
Amazon, Microsoft and other tech giants close higher after Democrats’ midterm sweepNo, data centers won’t get shut down, and AI will continue apace — just regulated as it needs to be, and we can hope it’s in the right way to protect people and communities and innovation all at the same time. We can walk and chew gum at the same time if we put our mind to it. Hard to imagine the Dems could do worse than Trump and the GOP have been doing for years now.
OpenAI makes new data center commitments, AI policy recommendationsThat was quick; we’ll see if it makes a difference.
The AI boom’s missing balance-sheet question: What has actually been verified?
ICYMI last weekend, even enterprises buying all this AI have been doubtful about all this spending:Breaking Analysis: Can enterprise AI pay for the boom?
AI and data: Anthropic’s pre-IPO slowdown
Money matters
Anthropic’s quarterly revenue jumps to $17B ahead of blockbuster IPO
OpenAI to acquire developer tooling startup Pierre Computer
Meta acquires AI coding startup Conductor, whose app runs several coding agents at once
Salesforce to buy customer service automation startup Cresta for reported $2.7B
Generative media inference startup fal raises $1.3B at a $16B valuation
Autonomous site reliability engineering startup Traversal bags $120M in funding at a $1B valuation
Ocient raises $100 million as agentic AI drives growth in large-scale analytics
42AI launches with $62.5M to predict how traders act when markets turn volatile
Trajectory raises $45M to make AI model training accessible to nontechnical experts
VCs bet $30M on Larridin’s ability to help enterprises demonstrate AI’s value for money
Marble Cognition raises $3.75M for its AI agent workers that watch and learn how people work
Startup Athena raises $2.5M in pre-seed funding to revamp the revenue model for legal AI
Policy
New models and services
OpenAI launches GPT-6 Cyber, an Astra model built to keep vulnerability research in scope
Google fine tunes its Agentic Data Cloud to support highly scalable autonomous AI workers
Snowflake expands agentic AI platform with business context and governance tools
Tencent releases Hy4, a powerful frontier AI model introducing visual understanding and computer use
Box taps Nvidia’s AI models to build a rich context layer for autonomous enterprise agents
Atomicwork launches certified AI coworker marketplace for enterprise IT and security
Groundcover turns its Wand acquisition into a Kubernetes rightsizing beta
With Agentic Studio, LinearB provides the critical context needed to accelerate software delivery
Oumi’s Frontier AI Engineer now builds AI agents and retrains the models behind them
PagerDuty debuts Paige AI agent with renamed PD Reliability Platform and PD Labs
How Xatoms is using AI to solve the global water crisis
New benchmark from SemiAnalysis:GDPx: Measuring frontier model capabilities across the most valuable domains
Around the enterprise: Marvell sees the light
Money matters
Marvell to acquire optical component maker Lumentum in massive $115B deal
Dropbox acquires Tigris Data for $350M, releases new AI productivity features
Five9 buys contact center intelligence startup Level AI after posting narrow earnings beat
AI cloud startup Applied Compute raises $350M after reaching key revenue milestone
Phaze raises $8.75M to give AI agents remote access to powerful workstations
Key earnings:
Apple’s stock drops as new CEO John Ternus delivers his first earnings call
AMD beats expectations as agentic AI sparks its data center revenue growth engines
Supermicro and Arista Networks crush expectations as AI infrastructure wins againAnd Zeus Kerravala’s Arista analysis:Arista’s record quarter shows the network has become central to AI
Palantir beats Q3 forecasts as US commercial revenue overtakes government for first time
Kyndryl shares surge 30% on hyperscaler-related revenue growth
Atlassian shares fall 17% as slower subscription growth forecast overshadows earnings beat
Cloudflare shares surge as revenue growth accelerates to 39% and outlook rises
Check Point Software shares fall as revenue misses expectations despite in-line earnings
Dynatrace beat Q2 forecasts, then spooked investors with guidance
DigitalOcean tops Q3 2026 estimates, lifts outlook
Block shares rise after third-quarter beat and a third straight guidance raise
Astera Labs tops Q3 estimates, issues strong guidance, shares slide
Uber beats on revenue, CEO says it’s ‘investing significantly’ to add drivers
Lyft’s bookings rise on strength in partnerships, new products
USDC stablecoin backer Circle Internet Group cut about 5% of its workforce despite higher revenue and earnings beat
Figma sinks after earnings beat as company prioritizes long-term growth with AI changes
New products and services
VMware gets simpler AI deployment and low-cost version for basic private clouds
Smartsheet AI-powered platform bridges gap between planning and results
Cyber beat: CrowdStrike strikes again
Money matters
CrowdStrike to acquire cybersecurity startups Fiddler AI, Dreadnode for reported $495M
Palo Alto Networks in talks to buy AI agent security startup Clutch for $500M (per TechCrunch)
Sentra raises $150M to control what AI agents can reach in corporate data
New services
Exclusive: BlueFlag Security expands AI agent governance to cover unapproved coding agents
Exclusive: Cogent Security’s VR-1.1 model outscores Claude Code and Codex on vulnerability repair
Exclusive: Guardz brings Palo Alto Networks browser protection to MSPs serving small businesses
Exclusive: StrongestLayer launches tools to verify payment requests and block hidden AI instructions
Novee’s External Surface Testing checks which exposed assets attackers can actually exploit
MazeBolt launches native RADAR deployment for Akamai DDoS protection customers
Descope launches Envoy to let consumer apps accept personal AI agents as users
Attack & response
French blood banks hacked amid ‘deeply concerning’ wave of fridge and freezer cyberattacks in Europe
Google finds ‘LLMjacking’ attackers running up $100K a day in fraudulent cloud charges
Elsewhere in tech: Team quantum
IBM, AMD and Oak Ridge join forces to launch quantum computing error-correction platform
Humanoid robot maker Agility Robotics debuts on the Nasdaq after SPAC merger
Autonomous combat drone maker Shield AI buys radar startup Echodyne for $5.3B
Robotics startup Tutor Intelligence nabs $75M investment
Aina’s smart AI ring promises a new way to interact with AI agents that anticipate user’s needs
LiveX brings engaging, AI-powered intelligent human-sized avatar kiosks to retail and airport sites
Comings and goings
HPtapped former GSK executive Emma Walmsley as its next CEO.
OpenAInamed former U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll senior counselor for national security modernization.
Cat Wu joined OpenAI from Anthropic in huge product-lead coup (per Business Insider)
Uber’s Jill Hazelbaker will joinOpenAI as chief corporate affairs officer.
Bahadir Onalanreturned to Microsoft as a VP in CoreAI and Responsible AI after almost 10 years at Amazon.
Fleet management firm Netradyneappointed former Encora exec Melissa Ribeiro chief people officer and Brion O’Connor, most recently at EvenUp, chief marketing officer.
Canva is laying off 1,271 people, or 22% of its staff, as it merges its product, growth and platform teams.
SUSE to cut one in 10 employees because of… AI (per The Register).
What’s next
Events
Nov. 9-12: KubeCon North America, Salt Lake City: TheCUBE and theCUBE Research will be onsite for interviews and analysis and SiliconANGLE will have the news.
Nov. 9-12: Web Summit, Barcelona.
Earnings
Monday, Nov. 9: Monday.com, Qualys, Rackspace
Tuesday, Nov. 10: CoreWeave, D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti
Thursday, Nov. 12: Cisco, Applied Materials, Cerebras, Nebius, Gemini Space Station
Image: SiliconANGLE/ChatGPT