47. Zuck and Hock, MWC Preview, the Battle for Enterprise AI
hello and welcome to the qod episode 47 I'm John fur with Dave Volante where we extract the signal from noise every week we break down what's happening in the Enterprise and Tech scene uh here I'm in Palo Alto California Dave's in Massachusetts Dave great to see you hey7 not of news getting it done Thursday this week a lot of lot of plans on Friday a lot of meetings um you know real big news going on we saw meta added two board members one of them Hawk tan from broadt Tom tons of commentary on that um as well as a lot of AI news you got open AI develop a tool to create realistic AI videos also Sam ultman started a little VC fund on his own a lot of stuff going on around open a just so much stuff to go he's just out of control it's all good but but on a on a silicon angle media note as co-founders I gotta tell you I'm pretty proud of this Dave we just announced um the continued growth of our rebranded research team led by you with Wiki bond which we rebranded to to the cube research um py to ANC the appointment of David lyam as our principal analyst a testament to our Relentless pursuit of excellence and growth high integrity individual really kind of cements his reputation of being such a great commentator and analyst and consultant at deoe he's seen many ways of innovation and again you know just from a personal standpoint with all the noise out in this analyst relations Market these days where people are questioning you know Integrity um reputation um it just really puts us to an exclamation point on on our trajectory and growth around the trust that we built in the Tech Community with the cube and silen angle and Wiki Bond now Cube research you know and red continuing to redefine and innovate arpr and and media so big news and there's more coming I wish I could more more news but there's more coming really excited there is more coming it really Best Is Yet To Come really excited about that John I was talking to David the other day and I got to know him a little bit um with the whole supercloud mean he had a term called metacloud which aligned very well with the supercloud in the abstraction layers so we were doing a little bit collaboration there I got to know him he came on at RSA last year he knows security and we were talking the other day and I was like so what would you say is are kind of your top areas of expertise and I love it because like us you know he's been around he he knows a lot of different Technologies Cloud AI observability security basically he said anything Enterprise Tech he's a five five times CTO you know coming out of deoe and so deep e deep and wide expertise and I'm really excited to be working with him yeah I mean I got a lot of commentary on LinkedIn well Perfect Fit um happy then Dave is certainly happy to be on the focus he's he really admires the work we've done um just some CMOS that worked with over the years best team ever can't wait to see what you guys do together just the consistent commentary of just a good fit and you know um with the era we're living in is going to be moving to influence is going to come from reputation not attention and gimmick so um you're going to see that and again our audience is up on Silicon angle the traffic's growing so I want to take this moment to thank everyone who's been on this journey with us if you're listening and are new to Silicon angle and the cube check out silicon angle.com the cube. net and the cube research.com um we've been on this for 13 years thank you all for being part of that so we really appreciate we love what we do love uh commentating and also talking about what's some most important stories and sharing our insights um so we'll get into it Dave so the big thing right now to me is you got Mobile World Congress coming up we're going to have a cube set there you got cubon happening in in Paris coming up that's another big event you got RSA around the corner so the first half is lining up and you're starting to see the trajectory and it's very clear to me that the AI from last year's hype is moving into a discussion of how this is going to impact architecture again this is not new to us we've been talking about this but you're starting to see real subsi of conversations around where AI is going to fit in and with all the hubub and all the the the hand waving from open AI which by the way they're doing really good they got traction there's now a shift to the infrastructure side where there's a lot of buildout going on you're starting to see now tell signs coming into the market where the real work being done is going to be on the infrastructure side so this is actually right in line with what I think is going to be the big aha moment for the industry and that is once the infrastructure is enabling this disruption the app tsunami is coming you're going to see general purpose apps out there you're going to see a lot of different things and so I found that very um rewarding because I was nervous I'm like where are the workloads you know reinvent we were squinting through reinvent saying at AWS what's going to happen and it's clear now that being said the Enterprise is a different animal than say the consumer but let's just get into it so I copied you on this tweet um with naven raal who's now at data bricks keep alumni multiple times multiple Ventures he says the Enterprise Gena of AI Wars are going to be flood on T primarily two fronts the Enterprise gen AI Wars two fronts number one office productivity which is like Google Docs office email coding in there co-pilot coding all that stuff productivity and two data platforms data brick snowflake big query Etc this will include opinionated platforms like Salesforce there will be vertical Solutions but that will be a bunch of splintered markets interesting commentary Dave again very interesting this is in line with what we've been researching on the six data platform is what we've been saying on the app tsunami coming again the interplay with navin's Insight is this is the the two Dimensions uh productivity and infrastructure where data he didn't even mention like anything like any scale or companies that are building infrastructure or the cloud players he said data platforms no cloud no Dell no HP no Nvidia no chips data um your reaction to that because I I found that tweet extremely perfect for me this morning perfect perfect uh red meat um so I agree with them on the office you know productivity side he's right personal productivity that's the amazing thing about this AI boom it's not just one or the other it's both Cloud was really you know it productivity right an innovation new apps and PCs we all about personal productivity this is both what I take away from his comments really um on on the ladder on the data platforms is what he's essentially saying in my view is that we're we're moving from a world that is application Centric to a world that is data Centric what I mean by that is for years we've really been a applications have been about automating processes and now you said it years ago data is the new development kit it's it's it's really now about building digital representations of your business in real time so that's going to take a new type of data platform the other piece of that is the other the other subtext here is that data and metadata today are locked inside of applications and what he's saying is that's splintered and if we continue to go down that path it's just not going to deliver the results that we need what we have to have is a data platforms that span that transcend all those different applications and provide uni a unified data layer that all applications can get access to that are both accessible and coherent now here's the problem with what what what he's not what he's not saying is that means all data including transaction data and when you think about Snowflake and data bricks and other old app and analytic engines they're really all about analytics they take transactional data from the the system of record the transactional system of record then they move it into the the analytic system snowflake says bringing it to snowflake data brecks basically says hey we're all open but essentially where's the transaction data here and that is the really hard part doing that in real time and governing it is this Holy Grail now what datab bricks announced last year in June was they basically took their their biggest weakness which was their database and they turned it into a strength by saying hey we'll work with all data and it was actually a genius LeapFrog move and now you're seeing you know they made an AI acquisition snowflake made an AI acquisition and now everybody's sort of scrambling to be that next data platform and then we've talked about the six data platform which we think is bubbling up with a lot of different startups extensions of guys like datab brick snowflake AWS Google and Microsoft the whole geni piece so we think there's this new emergent capability that not only separates compute from Storage but separates compute from data meaning all compute can get access to all data across not one vendor's compute and data uh uh and storage sorry I said separating compute from data I meant separating compute from Storage was the fifth data platform separating compute from data all compute gets access to all data is the vision that we have for the Next Generation long winded but hopefully that made sense yeah it did make sense I mean this is what what we're we're chronicling on the cube is the data supercloud what we call supercloud layer is emerging and again the stack is evolving back to kind of almost its roots Dave got infastructure middleware and applications a kind of generic three layer stack um AWS kind of presented their AI stack essentially in that same format and if you look at the data part of it all the Innovation the chips okay look at um The Innovation the chips Nvidia CPUs tpus all are enabling data so the data layer will become the most important thing to work on from an architectural standpoint it's the one that's most impacted by AI it's also the one most important that feeds AI so data and AI are like go go hand in hand and if you get it right it's a great formula if you get it wrong you can blow up in your face it really is you don't want to mix those you know those ingredients together because it could be a Tinder Box if done wrong so but if you get it right it's explosive in a good way so that's really cool that also ties to the fact that if you look at the news I mentioned at the top which is meta announced that hwan was one of the new board members of Facebook or now meta that's interesting and I wrote a comment on on on hwan because we're um friends on linked um and I said hey you know there's a lot of new experiences with Facebooks meta's new AI the success with llama and and AI is going great with with Facebook um that's going to create new experiences that's going to need more chips and more software which is the business he's in so Zuckerberg then came out and said I really value I really value um hwan because for the reasons I said on the post um the hwan but he also pointed out that he wanted him on the board this because he was one of the leading advisors last year when he went through that year of efficiency which was basically we're going to cut people and be more profitable because if you think about meta how much they were spending they were just like drunken Sailors just like spending everywhere so essentially you know deep experience in Silicon uh and infrastructure and software hwan is a perfect fit I'm sure meta is gonna be a big customer Dave of of them so you good fit so I mean hwan knows how to run a tight ship he's gonna make VMware very profitable uh with the broadcom model I loved watching meta it's like they had so much opportunity to cut and at the same time they're by the way they're still spending like tens of billions on metaverse so that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out eventually but they were able to cut you know so much and then you seen what's happened to the stock it's just it's shot up and we were talk I think we were talking about this last week Google's the only one who hasn't taken that you know page out of that Playbook and so who knows maybe they're just tripling down on Innovation and it's going to pay off or maybe they're going to pull that that trigger but interesting Hawk tan somebody said to me today well Hawk Tan's really young and I'm like well he's not that young he's older than I am he's like 71 years old and uh they were like wow that's surprising he looks really good I'm like yeah well maybe he's like Charlie Munger he's gonna be he's gonna be running the company into his 90s so um you got Charlie quaz over there who's running his right-hand man running the chips division you got the software division me look at they've done extremely well and again we've said this many times on the cube broadcom is a rising star in the execution of this modern era they got the chips to the apps and with VMware they're GNA get that operating leverage on the software side they have semantic CA and now VMware and they're going to build Security in there no doubt in my mind with ethernet becoming the open standard for ecosystems the the importance of the network interface card and how architectures are changing with Hardware it's so clear and again no one's talking about this in the industry right now it is it kind of like a public secret and we're the only ones continuing to expose it because it's so important and you're already seeing it happen the hardware configurations of which was once confined to servers and PCs the chips the bus and all the components that's now the data center d right so now the data center is one big PC or server you got to look at these Nicks and these interface points the switch versus the Nick what's more important I mean you know we're seeing data that says the Nicks are more powerful than the switches so all this hasang changing and again this is this is broadcom's in a good position um we're going to continue to C we going to see them at Mobile World Congress Charlie Kaza is going to come on the cube and we're GNA talk about this well let me let me just say too Cisco announced um last night you know not great I mean they they hit they kind of hit but then very weak guidance and they're cutting I think 5,000 jobs security grew 3% um collab grew 3% networking was down down in like low double digits I want to say 12% so we're definitely seeing a shift from like traditional Legacy switching to this especially with AI you've got all these different networks whether it's infin band or ethernet you just pointed out the rise of ethernet and Ultra ethernet but and this is what's what struck me was when you're talking about Charlie CS I first was introduced to him this online just searching around looking for videos and he was talking about gave a little Tech talk on the shift from a CPU Centric world to a connect Centric world I'm like huh what does that mean and he's this was like years ago yeah and exactly what he's saying is playing out it's all the interconnections between the CPU the GPU the npu the accelerators the storage Network all the backend and front end networks all that traffic moving within that network is really where the is and that's where broadcom has doubled down they don't they don't make CPUs they don't make gpus they make Nicks they make storage controllers all this other boring stuff that is very lucrative well boring stuff boring stuff that's actually in stuff that matters for instance sensor interfaces or in cars Dave so you got um Automotive grade interfaces those are controllers and nicks as well uh you got Hardware security modules for secure data movement you got access Market you got from set top boxes to broadband ethernet Broadband um Telecom and then you got obviously all kinds of connectivity at the edge 5G Wi-Fi wireless I mean as these become AI models in the future broadcom's going to have chipped to software integration layers that's going to hopefully be set up for for prime time that's why again this is why I get excited by the broadcom we have a huge appetite for this content because it's clearly it's in the weeds but it's going to set the agenda for 20 years and and and with that in mind I want to just share real quickly the Zuckerberg quote because I want you to get your reaction to this so mark on this is in common to hwan and this other guy um John Arnold from Arnold ventur the two new board members of meta let me read the quote from Mark Zuckerberg I'm excited to share that hwan and John Arnold will be joining meta board of directors period this is the next killer sentence as we focus on building AGI having directors with deep experience in Silicon and energy infrastructure will help us execute our long-term Vision ha CEO broadc which buil one of the leading semiconductor companies in the world I got to know him informally as he advised The Meta team on our year of efficiency John Arnold founder of Arnold Ventures brings expertise in finance energy which will be critical as we build out large scale infrastructure to train and deploy future AI models look forward to working both of them all right Dave one so AGI okay this is Zuckerberg's North Star so again back to the scale of Facebook if you look at Facebook with Facebook or I would keep on calling it Facebook I'm still not used to meta you look at meta they got Facebook Instagram WhatsApp variety of other tentacles out there large scale data centers they're very Google esque in their scale very Amazonian in their scale this is puts them in a position to essentially be a cloud provider for AI Andor not cloud provider but a huge provider of infrastructure scale for AI so to me I see Zuckerberg clearly going down down the road of saying I'm going to throw the metaverse of the bus for now all in on AI open source all the models get the developer is completely hooked on the heroin llama's kicking ass open source is now almost crossing over with the proprietary models in terms of uptake and functionality so the the growth of Open Source AI models is absolutely an important milestone in this market so you know incomes Facebook they could enable a whole generation of startups an ecosystem to build on top of it so to me if you're Hawk tan you want to get in close to the close to the action on that because semiconductors will be a big part of that so people I think forget sometimes how influential Facebook it has been and continues to be in the Enterprise and I'll go back to one of the earliest conferences we did John do you remember we did ocp um compute and our friend George sesman you remember we went out to visit George and his data center in Arizona I think it was in Chandler Arizona and he said Dave I want you to to do one of the Keynotes with me up on stage at ocp and I'm like ah cool and I didn't really wasn't tuned in to ocp at the time so I remember going to that event and I interviewed George we did a little keynote thing and then met a lot of customers and one of my I one of my um contacts was a guy of fidelity I started picking his brains about this I'm like so what does this all mean to you he goes we love this because it's going to just commoditize infrastructure it's going to create Open Standards and it's going to accelerate what we do we're going to get the best prices and that was really a lot of that was driven by Facebook and now you're seeing similar influence with generative AI with with llama yeah and then you talk about AGI and the semiconductor requirements and there's there's there's rumors right that Facebook's going to actually become the hyperscale Cloud for AI for open source Ai and compete with the other big cloud players The Big Three us Cloud players so Facebook is exceedingly influential in this and they have you know great engineering you know better than I um you know when we I go back to Jeff Hammer Barker right you know meeting him with when he was at cladera and all the Facebook Stories so you know they really have been a m open open compute was Microsoft and Facebook drove that y if you remember I do and and and so and Intel showed up the original CTO of intel was there he's no longer the CTO so it's just extremely influential Leading Edge it spawned a lot of startups and a lot of innovation you know much in the same way that you know Google the Google file system you know when when that got released how that changed the world and you know so so you know I I really love their open by by the way the cube was at the inaugural open compute met Andy beckenstein was there with a keynote with Justin what's his name from intel was the CTO J free was there um Facebook was there from from the person that uh that was presenting from Facebook is now running lace work so the CEO of lakes work so again the DNA of Facebook and and by the way Microsoft sa Nella was not CEO then and he made the Bold move to essentially open source their entire infrastructure Playbook all their all their IP he infrastruct a lot of their IP in the data center side so that was sat H the beginning of his Run 10 years ago Dave yeah and so that again Facebook has a lot of sway because their engineering is so phenomenal and they're at they are a hyperscaler they just people don't people forget because they don't directly sell to the Enterprise but that may change yeah well a lot of good stuff happened I'm G to get into this quick sidebar here from some wait wait just one other thing yeah are you going to talk about Zuck and Quest or no can we can if you want oh I mean while we're on Zuckerberg I mean I I I just want to say this I loved how he punched back at all the like the Allin guys were saying oh the you know Apple Vision Pro is so great compared to Quest and zuck's like wait a minute we got a better product it's more comfortable it's it's more mainstream and it's funny you know I'm not really into the whole you know headset thing but the guys our guys our production guys we were talking to them before this program they're like yeah I'm definitely going Quest because it's like it's affordable you know and it's and it's good so I don't know I don't know if you've used any of those I I haven't used I I was first generation with Google Glass I'm GNA wait until the first rev I'll probably buy one but I I did hear that there's a lot of new apps on it and thece had a story there even porns already has on it Dave so the the adult Market when you see adult adoption G gaming and adult uh content is a true tail sign of of uptake we'll see how that how that lasts but so it's not really my kind of thing my wheelhouse but but it's you know lot of people talking about it and you know look if apps are developed you know this could be a whole new I mean they're spending what 10 1215 billion a year Facebook that is or meta on on on on metaverse so wow Zu zuckers main point was you know he didn't want to he had fomo obviously Apple got engineered their launch and that's in a very appes way got a lot of people you know clamoring oh look how great it is and everyone went to the store lined up all the Nerds went out and got their got their device cool but the price point is pretty high Dave the the what Zuckerberg's doing he's trying to get the price point under a grand you know consistently under a, couple hundred dollars request versus 3,000 $4,000 from Apple so I think this Market's going to need to bake a little bit more um I think it needs to stay in the oven a little bit before it goes totally mainstream but augmented reality will be a big thing um and this idea of actually seeing and and and and and Computing is cool I mean I could see myself driving my Tesla when I get one I don't have one yet but I had a self-driving car you know commute to San Francisco and put the the goggles on and get some work done watch a video you know and watch the traffic or check my my God you know I mean we got we have our faces in our in our cell phones and our mobile phones we got our we got our faces in social media now we're gonna have our we're have a ski goggles on people are gonna forget how to interact I swore each other I was so wrong on I'm right out a lot of things but I'll admit when I'm wrong I was so wrong on the ear pods I'm like no one will ever wear those toothbrushes hanging from your ears it's such a it's so terrible you know I was totally wrong on that so I could be wrong this I could be wrong on this but you know my guess is any new experience that's good and productive might work so I'm holding judgment on this whole scene you may you may have been wrong about the airpods but the airpods kind of suck you can't you can't have them in and talk to anybody every time you and I are on our airpods voice what Dave I can't hear you or John I can't hear you oh sorry I'm walking with my airpods in let me pull them out I actually love minine so they're awesome I would never go back yeah they're awesome when you're when you're like listening but when you're talking they're terrible yeah but versus the there the old you know stringed ones or any any earpieces are all smaller cheaper now but anyway you mean you mean the the hardwired ones yeah when when that came out I would had the old you know the white you know string you plug it into your iPhone um and when when I went to the ear pods I didn't think that was going to be a hit it was so you know I stand corrected but again yeah smaller faster cheaper T of billions anyway so I want to get your reaction to this because I just saw a stat on Facebook one in three men between the ages of 18 and 34 using chat GPT for dating advice so again back Jesus back to the AI piece um and the tweet from um what wait one in three men what ages 18 to 34 wow are using chat for dating advice I mean they're all online they're all in the apps right so I can imagine I mean that's actually why not for that must say dating advice but like maybe ideation I mean that's what chat GPT is great for ideation but yeah you got to make it your own and be authentic but I don't know I think I think it's gonna be like hey give me some gift ideas as search basically so it's going to be very interesting to see kind of how that plays out um and again just you know AI is having its moment you know and and I think this is going to be an interesting Year Dave to see how the how the AI impacts the election coming up um there's an article in the Wall Street Journal this week uh published today five hours ago the era of deep fakes and the impact elections um I have yet to see anything um yet okay that's going to be gamechanging on the Deep face but like Imagining the smear campaigns and the misinformation will be Amplified with deep fakes well we've seen a clear escalation 2012 and then you know 2016 from social media to like Mega social media and into to the whole fake news and you know all the accusations of Russian hacking and you know you know there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on from our adversar so where're 2024 is going to be more escalation I mean it's going to be a you know AI fakes um there's going to be misrepresentations people are going to believe what they see and you shouldn't believe anything like George Carlin used to say don't believe anything the government ever tells you don't believe anything anybody tells you these days you have to just go out and do your own research and validate it and even then you got to be careful I don't know I I think it's just going to be more more escalation and I'm merely not looking forward to it but all right you so you you tracked the um Cisco earnings they just had Cisco live in Europe um they came back on filed on Valentine's Day um some people are calling it terrible earnings I think I saw one post from futurum that said it was a horrible earnings um they said essentially um Cisco L drops on uncertainty layoffs to come futurum so um that's interesting to see that what's your take yeah I mean it wasn't a good quarter I mean look at they were they've been working through their backlog they said I'm sorry I meant futurium futurium not futurum futurium which is oh that's our friend Scott rovic Scott rovic wrote he's right he's right pretty critical analysis post here but but I mean look I mean they Chuck said two quarters ago look we're working through our backlog they didn't have a great quarter they gave they get okay quarter but they gave you know poor guidance this time they basically hit their revised guidance and they gave worse guidance so their guidance was below consensus guidance so that's bad and then he basically look at Chuck Robbins is honest you know he says look we got to get through this it's painful we're going to cut 5,000 jobs we're going to you we're going to we'll get through it and we're going to figure it out and and they will but I would say this the Legacy networking business you know this better than I do is under attack now you got you know get Arista with AI Mojo you got Juniper with mist and teaming up now with HP and supposedly that uh acquisition Is On Track by the way we have Antonio coming on at uh Mobile World Congress and we have a CEO of juniper coming on oh so that's going to be good separately uh but anyway they're attacking now you got Juniper HP and of course Aruba all going after Cisco um you got all the sort of networking you just talking about about the Nick vendors all that Innovation so it's like the the you you need switches you're always going to need switches and routers but that Legacy business is transforming and it's sort of indicated by Cisco's you know down 12% year onye uh they're still like I say we're working through some of their backlog um and then you got extreme networks which has a good endtoend story um you got some of these you got some of these startups like aviatrix doing kind of you know sort of like uh an NSX it's actually we didn't talk about vmware's consolidation of all their their their platforms but that could be actually good news for aviatrix because that makes them maybe a more attractive partner um anyway uh it's like Cisco has had the dominant share of networking you know 60 plus percent share forever with giant gross margins the thing I like still about Cisco is they this is not a big surprise they know this is coming and and they're transitioning their business their SAS business and their AR business is doing really well and so Chuck's done a good job of through whatever organic Innovation changing the business model bringing in Acquisitions you know G2 with the WebEx business even though it's not growing super fast it's low single digits but driving software revenue and that's how they're going to preserve their margins and so you know they got some work to do no question it was not a good quarter and and the guidance was not encouraging well let's talk about um the market conditions as we go into Mobile World Congress this month okay we're prepare preparing our cube four days on the floor when be on the show floor um and so you know the state of AI in in Telecom clearly I've been pumping this out on social and and my in my on all my channels that this is not a telecom show anymore this is a cloud data show um and Telecom will just be just another industry vertical and that's why they called it mwc because Mobile World Congress it's not just mobile it's all things connectivity and data is critical so you mentioned some of those power dynamics with networking with Cisco that flows right into Mobile World Congress or mwc I should say can't even get that right so AI Investments are remaining low suggest is still early stage so that's clear from from our data from the cube research um the cube researchs also reporting that the customer experien are attracting um the highest level of AI Investments ever seen before so we're seeing for the first time movement within the Telos and their ecosystem Partners suppliers that they're really looking at the user experience customer experience with AI because they have data so that's the number one investment and that's High um Pilots are going on Tire kicking still lagging a little bit Dave we're seeing in the research but clearly the focus on what the architecture will be and what that AI production environment will look like is critically the number one thing going on when with the alpha Geeks out there they're like hey you know what okay we got customer experience check check check throw some money at AI yeah customer experience is blah blah blah check the box but the hardcore action in Ai and Telecom at mwc will be how do we run these pilots and what does it mean for my critical infrastructure aka the architecture where's my data do I own it and how do I use it and how do I use that data for a net new Revenue stream and that's going to be the key that will unlock to me the stagnation of the Telecom industry it's been so slow it's been like moving glaciers you know watching paint dry for a decade it's been slow as hell so I think this is the year Telecom opens up wakes up comes out of the Deep Freeze and says let's roll so so I am really bullish um mwc and we'll see how the big guys weigh in what's the implementation plans look like how they going to Ru this out what's the ecosystem reconfiguration who gets in front of who it's going to be a a Changing of the Guard and changing of positions in leadership in the incumbit and and again I expect new brands to emerge in all inflection points so in 2021 you and I did the covid Mobile World Congress there was like one tenth of the normal crowd and you know during covid we saw the even the more rapid acceleration of cloud migration and it it was really started to begin in in coming into focus at that year 2021 when we were in Cloud City with with Telco Dr and Danielle Royston and they were like the the entire mwc all seven Halls were empty except for the former Ericson space which she bought out like 60,000 square feet and cloud city was Rock and you could you started to see like evidence that the BSS and the OSS systems were going to go to the cloud and then last year and then we skipped that they had two right in 2021 no they had 2021 and then which was I think July John right yeah it was July of 2021 and then and they they did 2022 in February which we didn't go to we did 2023 last year the big themes last year were the disaggregation of the the Telco stack obviously open rank was a big theme uh private 5G was another big theme uh and and of course the the Telos all chirping we can't let this happen again meaning we can't with 5G we have to figure out the monetization we can't just let the Ott guys crush us again and then the flip side of that is when you talk to guys like Chris Lewis uh who's been you know following Telco since he was three years old he'll tell you you know what Dave the Telos are actually really good at connectivity and they make a lot of money at connectivity and worst case scenario they have to just stick to their connectivity knitting they'll do just fine and um but but I don't think that's going to satisfy them I think they want more and then the last thing I'll say is there's also in addition to the disaggregation of the Telco stack there's the data stack that is got to transform and so you're seeing AWS uh all the the cloud guys you're seeing snow L has a has a bigger presence there IBM obviously with with Watson X is going to have a huge Presence at mwc mwc is an awesome show I mean it's just everybody's there I mean I mean I think I mean I think the the networking data I mean Telos have all the data that in their purview okay and I think they've always used their data it's not like I mean look at the the uh the data play that AT&T really pioneered around Mak data a business model with with smartphones Okay Legendary making a value proposition out of the the exhaust data laying around can be can transformed into a foundation model very quickly from these Telos and and turned into an input into a better application that's net new okay this is an opportunity and for companies that want to own their own Foundation model data which is a big Power dynamic in AI today they're going to want us go to a Telco and say hey if I'm going to run on 5G on your network I'll bring my data to the table Telco Telecom carrier and I I want you to make sure I'm secure just like what Amazon's doing with bedrock they're making that customer relationship one that's going to create data value for both parties so that's an opportunity for the Telos to use their data as as a way to make a sticky relationship and a value proposition with the Enterprises so I think absolutely this is a net new thing it's so obvious to me it's as clear as day that this is a definitely a business model opportunity for Telos and it's going to change the ecosystem Partnerships that they have so the Telos would rely on certain relationships I think you're G to see them recast um who they work with for things like iot Edge you know we're seeing a lot of startups out there that are growing that have this great Ai and automation capability that plug right into the new model beautifully and I think that's going to be something that's going to point to the data layer and enable the application market to to be really robust Telecom where in the past it was just a heavy lift all the telecom companies tried to build out the stuff themselves and you can't take classic Network operators and make them platform Engineers that's a failed strategy and I think I think the realization that that's happened is going to be this year where everyone goes you know what we gave it to College try it ain't working so dump that plan by the way the stuff that we built is irrelevant now because it's the market shifted so again back to the market transitions this is an opportunity and we'll see which one of the telecoms players who moves and it's going to be pretty obvious by the moves they make in in at the show so we'll be watching them with we'll squint through the data squint all the noise and be watching the moves that they make and we're going to tell who's going to be making the Right Moves uh and to me it's back to distributed computing and the data value and that and it's G again clear and if they don't do it we'll see and and then the winners will have more money they'll have more apps on their they'll have more customers and the customer experience then kicks in after the fact so that's why I think um The Cisco thing is really interesting to me um what they do with their networking data do they own it and we we've discovered some of our research that you know Cisco has a position in this market but they might not be well positioned if they don't have the data this is a question I want to ask them I wish I was on that earnings call I would have put hit would have hit the question on that um we'll see you know we'll see we'll see what happens and again you know Michael Del be coming on the cube in Marble World Congress we got Antonio Neri from HP coming on we're going to have Chuck Robins little ver verbal there hopefully he'll come on um we got action there we got the extreme networks coming on we got all the CEOs coming on got the broadcom President coming on um love this Market from chips to Applications Dave the full stack is is getting back to full stack uh applications in a whole new cast in a whole new AI way so so couple other things couple other things I'm tracking this week if I may so you saw lifts bloop they they did when they printed their earnings release they added a zero to their profit number the stock shot up like freaking 70% for just seconds so somebody either got killed or made some money on that um the inflation data came out and it shocked everybody I mean I'm I'm so surprised that people are so surprised that inflation is is sticky it's like everybody's like oh yeah there going to be a rate cut in the first quarter or may or it's like it's so uncertain right now and so you know inflation continues to to rise is you know okay so even if it's even if it's 3% it's so it's up so prices are up so high from where they were preco that you know it's that's something that I think is going to weigh on this Market but by the way I also think interest rates are probably okay where they are even though the FED wants to get them down lower we've lived in this kind of interest rate environment for years and decades you know prior to to Zer uh there was another article that came out in the Wall Street Journal yep that's right John um about co-pilots and co-pilot testers this was really interesting did you see this yeah I did that so copilot testers basically saying you know it's good but yeah we're really not seeing a ton of productivity that said there were a couple of use cases where companies were saying yeah we're going to roll this out you know across you know half our employee base I will say this we talked last week about you know the year of a AI Roi I made a prediction that 20124 is going to be a year of a AI Roi Focus but it's going to be really hard to to get and if they don't get it C customers don't get it spending Tech spending is not going to Boom it's not going to you know be there's not going to be a gain share I don't think you're going to see that until 2025 and if you don't see it in 2025 then you're going to start to see cuts on I do think you're going to see it but people are like these co-pilots $30 per user per month it's a little Rich we'd like to lower the denominator a little bit so you're getting mixed reports on the co-pilots what's your take on that I think people are going to realize that it's just not worth the squeeze and and it's going to be same sub with subscriptions for these newsletters you know in the journalism busy starting to see people unwind their newsletters because like they're not getting the success they thought but it sounds good oh yeah I'm going to support that person the producer but you can you going to pay $30 a month or $5 a month or whatever it is for whatever service it's fatigue and as you get so many services you put your credit card done after a while like how the hell did I what hell I have signed up for so I think there's going to be an element of I'm signing up for too many AI things number one number two sometimes the value is not there and then you okay I don't really like this I can just get that for free on chat GPT like I mentioned you know from dating advice chat TBT has been phenomenal see how perplexity he does with that in our qbi so I think you know that's why I'm to see how these Services work will there be a long taale and how that's going to work out so I think the um integration of the data also is the other Factor the experiences aren't that great yeah the productivities are hit or miss so I think we're in Just In The evolutionary phase of embryonic grow stages of the industry it's early some shit's going to work great some of it's not and it's and solution come in and day is going to be in there I think it's going to be it's going to be up and down it's going to be a seesaw and I and I don't want people to think that we're sort of down on AI I think we still think it's we're like from AI Kool-Aid drunk on AI every day here in the cube but right but the point I want to make about that is again you know you listen to the guys from Allin they're like oh yeah this is like great you're gonna be able to do startups and get the billion dollars with three people and to make it sound so easy it takes work we know from our own you know Cube AI which by the way the cube ai.com now we've been uh have we launched this yet no it's still in staging no we have launched it there you see some of the version out we've now yeah it's sort of a halfway house right now we've ingested all of the Silicon angle news data which is a great very tight Corpus of data there's a little toggle we're kind of blend the two together but check that out but my point is it takes work it takes engineering to actually get this stuff to work and and I think what I'm really excited about so like I think Microsoft's overplayed its hand a little bit with oh you can just make make it make Excel sing and you can say hey I want a double y AIS and I want to do this that and the other thing you try that with co-pilots it's like that's not really what I want and you end up going in and doing it manually so I think they've overplayed their handle I I don't know I agree with that D I think they haven't over I think they're making some good bank on us as open AI I think it's it's maturity of where users expectations are chat GPT has set the bar so high on expectations that other products just may or may not be worth it I mean like I don't even notice co-pilot and the Google stuff because I've already got the auto completion going on have all the basic up in there I don't see value I don't haven't seen the the benefit of it so I think it's just Evolution but so I think that the drop off of subscription rates and satisfaction is just is a different in my opinion different set like I think I think it's more like for instance just take take PowerPoint and Excel two really important personal productivity apps and to your earlier point about um the gentleman from datab bricks was it was who was that was it Ravine Ravine yeah yes yeah so so naen naven naven sorry two big personal productivity platforms PowerPoint and Excel and if you if you if you try to apply co-pilots to really make you more productive it's still still not quite there it's it's it's probably a little bit better for Excel not great at all for PowerPoint and so there's upside there I just when I say overplayed their hand when you watch the demos they're really impressive actually try to use them it's like not quite there yet so I think there's going to be some push back on that that pricing that co-pilot pricing and and I I do agree with them but I think they it's it's they're they're groping for where the market is but clearly the category of productivity software clearly is where the Innovation is going to be not full transformation of that market what what I'm saying is so I think you're gonna I think you're going to have a very clear combination of where using AI as co-pilots or embedded into applications and it's not an or it's an and we're going to do a lot of our own AI development in house for our specific purposes I think it's going to be a big and uh is I guess my point there um the other thing to switch topics is Buffett trimmed Burkshire trimmed its Apple holding somewhat I think the reasoning was it was just getting such a big portion of their portfolio but the thing that was always strange to me is he sold this Tech uh TSM is Taiwan semiconductor uh manufacturing sold the TSM because of the China risk well I would think apple is facing that same China risk because their vast majority of their chips are coming out of tsmc if not all of the the the Leading Edge chip so that was kind of interesting news and the other big news is Bitcoin hit almost 53,000 today which is only about 20% below its high of a couple years ago so that's that's bad back the hype is back into uh Bitcoin and crypto which of course I love yeah great stuff that you're following there I've been following all that too and love the commentary for me I I'm gon to go off the board a little bit because obviously we were highly influenced this week by the Super Bowl and uh the Super Bowl viewership Rose to 123 million uh new record high um kept a huge rating pull obviously many reasons why San Francisco and KC you know big duing you know Brands and also say Taylor Swift Factor good game great game disappointing from a a Niners perspective obviously I'm a Patriots fan first even though people see me with all the Niners stuff on social because been living in here 23 years kind of adopted the ners as my second team and Davis AFC it's not an AFC team so Patriots still there too but we're all bummed it was a bummer they could have won Miss qes couple Mis qes but they could have won the game but great game super exciting disappointing for the Niners fans uh and um Brady esque for uh the KC fans and I think Mahomes but put on a Brady clinic and I think you know it was he stepped up for sure you can't deny that he ran for that first down when the game was on the line can I ask you a question yeah sorry to interrupt but as a Patriots fan like I know I I like snapping out every Super Bowl because they're all close how are you because you're you're a Patriots fan first but you like live in the Bay Area so a huge San Francisco fan as well um were you snapping out at that game or you more like no I was really into it it was super exciting I mean it was like a game that was really on pins and needles literally standing up and watching it at the end was really that exciting on TV so I thought that from a football standpoint it was super awesome right but were you like nervous as a fan no it was exciting like I was nervous in the sense of hey stop him on fourth down of course momes just runs for the first down to get that key first down and then you know they had that holding penalty um in the overtime that put him from first down to Second and 20 that killed that made them forced them to kick the field goal and OB they missed an extra point so a lot of these little things kind of add up but In the Heat of the battle Christian mcaffry never fumbles he put the ball on the ground the first possession so and and by the way that the the the Chiefs weren't moving the ball at all so it wasn't like it was a blowout it was just a seesaw just a great football I mean classic great football so as a football lover I love I thought it was good okay and and as a fan just why I'm like the Niners um in 1985 I went to Super Bowl 19 where the Niners beat the Dolphins it was a family trip my father won a church raffle put you know the $5 dollar in wins the big prize lucky luck lucky kind of thing and so you know I've never I'll never forget the Joe Montana experience at Stanford stadium in 1985 and then so I've always had that little Stanford I mean San Francisco Vibe and then moving out here obviously they're in the area and that's just a great team and cool so you know I saw no conflict with the Patriots love obviously watching them win I mean Bly I moved out of the New England area before they won any Super Bowl so it was fun to watch him as a fan win it but I wasn't there so you know it was like different yeah so I'm excited I'm excited for the Niners and sense that they made it there Hometown team but people were bummed I mean people were definitely I can see it I mean we were all I mean I think I said last week everybody in New England not everybody but vast majority of people in New England are rooting were rooting for San Francisco myself in Ed because we don't want momes and Kansas City to break the you know the Brady Dynasty and so we just you know we're very prial in that regard but I did do this I did make a fairly not a sizable bet like you know but decent I don't bet a lot in football but I did an in-game bet when Kansas City was down 10 zip because I said Mahomes just can't bet against the guy so you know how you can do in-game betting so and I got a I got Plus L 350 on Kansas City and that was my consolation prize because I still even though I had a a beted on it I wanted San let me ask you a question um Brendan just sent me a text our producer said Mahomes is on Pace to finish with a better career than Brady let me ask you a question oh please don't don't don't go there my question theall of Fame already my question to you is as a New England fan are you rooting actively rooting against Mahomes to preserve you know I used to but no I'm actually I'm a momes fan I think he's just amazing to watch um I I I like San Francisco you're being truthful than that you're being intellectually honest here no I am I I most New England fans like screw him I can't be he's so awesome though I mean I was definitely rooting for San Francisco I mean I love mcaffrey and and I don't ever root for NFC I'm an AFC guy but I was rooting for San Francisco even though I even though I had a bet on him I would have been happy to to lose the the little money that I bet um by the way on the on the betting front the estimation was the wages were estimated to surpass 23 billion so how could we not get this thing legal tell me the NFL doesn't have aren't weding their beak in this deal so you know they they collected about 125 billion from selling broadcast rights over the next decade NFL NFL is a machine I'm sorry square but like they're like out of control plus the in-game betting is amazing so the the just for I don't I never knew much about this my son was into it he started telling me about it I never even knew this is so embarrassing I never knew what the money line was like when we used to bet with bookies you get okay you get plus two and a half or you get minus two and a half that was it and you'd make the bet well the money line you can bet the team to to win outright no points and you get whatever Plus 110 or plus 150 so the before the game Kansas City was 2 and a half Point underdogs and the money line was plus 110 but during the game when they were down 10 zip it's the went the money line went up to plus 350 meaning you bet 100 you win 350 and so the there were way better odds you know same game right and so it's so much fun to bet in to your point about the NFL taking a lick off the cone the people stay and watch I mean even if there's a blowout they're going to stay and watch because they're making in-game bets so they're making tons of dough off of betting yeah so making it more explosive you know look what the game was this year was in Vegas hello so we interviewed the um CIO for the Oakland Raiders I remember we interviewed that person and remember they said to us we were the last place in monetization at the bottom of the barrel Oakland Raiders team was the worst in the league in in making money okay old stadium decrepit Market they were you know was Oakland wasn't San Francisco city by the bay weren't really faithful to the Bay as it turns out go to Vegas before the Super Bowl day before this year guess what number they were fourth wow so I and again new stadium all the amenities f1's coming to Vegas Vegas is a sports Town it will be a Media Town in the future um it's just got all the hotels I mean Vegas will continue to thunder away as the destination for Marquee events and so you know um you're going to see more of that again again you own the stadium all the money they're making and the betting all the gambling all the side activities activations it's just a corporate promotional dream so there it is last to First all in venue and then so the economics going to drive a lot of the sports it's going to be you know you seeing that with the with NCAA you know the whole realignment the pack 10 going away it's like it's a money game now Dave money game oh so money's off the charts man but and I have to say it makes it makes it fun I used to honestly it's terrible to say very Pro here in New England used to never pay attention to to other teams other than you know during the playoffs and just the the the betting makes it fun and I don't bet a lot um but you know 10 bucks here $15 here but it's fun it makes it exciting you know and so and and also the thing I love is where's the value right like so I don't know well D we're running over time it's late there uh Thursday night here we getting this recorded early normally on a Friday as we have our travel schedules coming up you'll see us produced the podcast earlier go to silen angle.com uh episode
47 in the books um we'll see you uh around Dave we're going next time I'll see you in person Mobile World Congress and certainly next week Thursday in the Pod but get ready for Mobile World Congress Dave we're gonna all right John we'll see you there thanks everybody close it out
2024-02-21 07:57
