FAA says probe closed into SpaceX Starship Flight 8
WASHINGTON :The Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday it closed an agency-required investigation into a SpaceX Starship Flight 8 mishap, citing the probable cause as a hardware failure in one of the engines.
SpaceX identified eight corrective actions to prevent a re-occurrence and the FAA said it verified SpaceX implemented those prior to the Starship Flight 9 mission in late May.
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Analysis:Unglamorous world of 'data infrastructure' driving hot tech M&A market in AI race
Weighed down by tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty, dealmaking has slowed to a crawl across most industries except one: the unglamorous world of data infrastructure. The companies that process the data used to build advanced AI models have become highly sought after targets for legacy tech companies like Meta, Salesforce, and ServiceNow in the scramble to stay competitive against the likes of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. 'AI without data is like life without oxygen, it doesn't exist,' said Brian Marshall, global co-head of software investment banking at Citi. 'Because of that, data is having a zeitgeist moment right now driven by AI,' Marshall said. Tech deals are one of the few bright spots in an otherwise gloomy M&A market, accounting for $421 billion of the $1.67 trillion in global deals announced in the first five months of the year, or about 25 per cent of total M&A, according to preliminary data compiled for Reuters by Dealogic. That's up from about 20 per cent last year and 17 per cent in 2023, the data shows. Of the tech deals, those involving AI software makers accounted for almost three quarters of the overall value, the data shows. SPEED MATTERS Goldman Sachs Managing Director Matthew Lucas, who focuses on M&A relating to all aspects of computing, said enterprise data, as it applies to use in AI, is the 'most dynamic area in software M&A right now.' 'There's a very strong perception that speed matters a lot, getting there first matters a lot, and that tends to lend itself to doing M&A,' Lucas said. The software firms that help companies manage their data on cloud-based systems are increasingly valuable commodities as the number of such potential targets is rapidly shrinking. Enterprise data infrastructure and analytics companies like Confluent, Collibra, Sigma Computing, Matillion, Dataiku, Fivetran, Boomi, and Qlik, could become targets for legacy tech providers in the near term, investment bankers say. The companies, they say, may help businesses integrate, analyze, and store information better. Executives for Boomi, Dataiku, Fivetran, and Qlik all said they weren't surprised by the attention. "Messy, siloed data has long undermined the attempts of enterprises to deliver on the transformative potential of analytics. Now, with the urgency to deploy effective AI, fixing it isn't just essential — it's existential," Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku, said in a statement. Requests for comment from Confluent, Collibra, Sigma Computing, and Matillion weren't immediately returned. LEGACY TECH BUYS IN Several multibillion-dollar deals for data infrastructure companies have been struck or closed just in the last few weeks. Meta announced Friday a $14.8 billion deal for a 49 per cent stake in data-labeling company Scale AI. Salesforce announced plans last month to buy data integration company Informatica for $8 billion. Artificial intelligence is driving a once-in-a-generation makeover in tech that's forcing several of the largest social media platforms and software makers to buy companies that help AI-backed systems run smoothly. Worldwide, generative AI spending is expected to total $644 billion in 2025, an increase of 76.4 per cent from 2024, according to a forecast by technology data provider Gartner. In early May, IT management provider ServiceNow said it was buying data catalogue platform which will allow ServiceNow to better understand the business context behind data, executives said when it was announced. The Salesforce acquisition of Informatica, announced late last month, will allow Salesforce to better analyze and assimilate scattered data from across its internal and external systems before feeding it into its in-house AI system, Einstein AI, executives said at the time. IBM closed on its acquisition of data management provider DataStax the very next day. IBM said the deal, announced in February, will allow it to manage and process unstructured data before feeding it to its AI platform. BAD AI ADVICE Those deals highlight the strategic importance for legacy software players to own all aspects of data management, and M&A is often the fastest way to achieve it. Instead of building complex data systems from scratch, they are acquiring specialists that can help organize, clean, and connect data from across their business. Would-be targets have sometimes become the hunters as was the case when Databricks, a leader in data processing and AI that was recently valued at $62 billion, announced plans last week to buy serverless database manager Neon for $1 billion. But dealmakers warned that companies can't just buy any kind of data and throw it into an AI system and expect good results. Air Canada <> was found liable in small claims court and forced to refund airfare last year after one of its AI chatbots gave a customer bad advice. Those types of errors can happen if the wrong kind of unfiltered data is imported into an AI engine, tech dealmakers say. 'A lot of companies have a huge amount of data, but I think they're learning that you can't just funnel every piece of data you have into an AI engine with no organization, and hope that it spits out the right answer,' said Brian Mangino, partner at Latham & Watkins.
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Adobe shares slide as investors skeptical of quicker AI-adoption returns
Adobe's shares dropped 7 per cent in early trading on Friday as investors' concern that the company's AI adoption into its software tools could take longer to fetch returns, overshadowed a raised annual revenue forecast. "(We see) increasing concerns surrounding competitive pressures and a longer time horizon to reach notable AI monetization," said Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research. The San Jose, California-based creative software veteran is relied on by creatives for its tools including Photoshop and Premiere Pro. The company said in April that it would add AI models from OpenAI and Google to Firefly, its generative AI tool. The tool allows users to create and edit images and videos for commercial purposes through basic text prompts without facing copyright challenges. "While guidance was raised and management remains positive around demand generation, it feels like it will take more time to prove out these (AI) initiatives and quiet concerns of competition around GenAI," RBC analysts said in a note. Adobe now expects full-year 2025 revenue between $23.50 billion and $23.60 billion, up from its prior estimates of $23.30 billion to $23.55 billion. At least five brokerages cut their price target on the Adobe stock following the second-quarter results. Including session's losses, the stock has fallen around 13 per cent so far this year.
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8 hours ago
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AMD turns to AI startups to inform chip, software design
SAN JOSE :Advanced Micro Devices has forged close ties to a batch of artificial intelligence startups as part of the company's effort to bolster its software and forge superior chip designs. As AI companies seek alternatives to Nvidia's chips, AMD has begun to expand its plans to build a viable competing line of hardware, acquiring companies such as server maker ZT Systems in its quest to achieve that goal. But to build a successful line of chips also requires a powerful set of software to efficiently run the programs built by AI developers. AMD has acquired several small software companies in recent weeks in a bid to boost its talent, and it has been working to beef up its set of software, broadly known as ROCm. "This will be a very thoughtful, deliberate, multi-generational journey for us," said Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AI at AMD. AMD has committed to improve its ROCm and other software, which is a boon to customers such as AI enterprise startup Cohere, as it results in speedy changes and the addition of new features. Cohere is focused on building AI models that are tailored for large businesses versus the foundational AI models that companies like OpenAI and others target. AMD has made important strides in improving its software, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez said in an interview with Reuters. Changing Cohere's software to run on AMD chips was a process that previously took weeks and now happens in only "days," Gomez said. Gomez declined to disclose exactly how much of Cohere's software relies on AMD chips but called it a "meaningful segment of our compute base" around the world. OPENAI INFLUENCE OpenAI has had significant influence on the design of the forthcoming MI450 series of AI chips, said Forrest Norrod, an executive vice president at AMD. AMD's MI400 series of chips will be the basis for a new server called "Helios" that the company plans to release next year. Nvidia too has engineered whole servers in part because AI computations require hundreds or thousands of chips strung together. OpenAI's Sam Altman appeared on stage at AMD's Thursday event in San Jose, and discussed the partnership between the two companies in broad terms. Norrod said that OpenAI's requests had a big influence on how AMD designed the MI450 series memory architecture and how the hardware can scale up to thousands of chips necessary to build and run AI applications. The ChatGPT creator also influenced what kinds of mathematical operations the chips are optimized for.
