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Tux Machines
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 12, 2023
> Startups and investors are learning, once again, that great technology doesn’t necessarily translate into great business. After months of hype surrounding the potential of generative AI, investors and startups are ratcheting back their enthusiasm and trying to take a more measured approach to the market.
> A number of startups built on a foundation of AI are confronting declining customer interest and the need for layoffs, reports The Wall Street Journal. Adding to the pressure: Investors aren’t convinced that new companies will survive as brand-names like Microsoft and Google push into the space.
> In addition, the flood of products unveiled since last year is bewildering many technology customers. On the one hand, they want time to understand how AI’s capabilities can fit their needs. On the other, they’re pressuring vendors to keep up with developments. “Some of our customers, all they want to hear is that we’re thinking about AI,” said Ellen Loeshelle, director of product management – intelligence platform at Qualtrics. “Like I could say that in one sentence and get off the phone and they’d be happy.”
> [...]
> How patient investors will be remains to be seen. OpenAI reportedly lost $540 million in 2022, despite ChatGPT’s popularity. While it’s unlikely investors will back away from generative AI bets entirely, numbers like that are sure to put a brake on things.
> According to LinkedIn’s headcount, a significant chunk of the 270+ employees at the renowned market intelligence company for the app economy Sensor Tower were let go last week—roughly 40 of them. The chief product officer, chief financial officer, and chief marketing officer are a few of the individuals who told TechCrunch about the layoffs. Both the finance department and almost all of the marketing are supposedly affected.
> The corporation held an all-hands conference to review the adjustments, which could still be in the works as part of a more extensive organizational restructure at Sensor Tower. Although Sensor Tower recognized the layoffs, it withheld further details, announcing that a more comprehensive announcement would be made the following week.
> According to Melissa Sheer, a Sensor Tower spokesperson, in an email statement made available to TechCrunch, “Earlier this week, Sensor Tower’s management team took necessary steps to reorganize and right-size our business under a talented and experienced senior leadership team.
> Blizzard’s parent company Activision Blizzard Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) of Santa Monica is awaiting a takeover by Microsoft to create a video game colossus.
> 2023 has been a great year for video games. Yeah, I know. Forget the headline for a second, alright? I'm going somewhere with this. Just three months after The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched to one of the highest Metacritic review scores of all time, Baldur's Gate 3 beat it by a point. We've had a remake of the best horror game ever made, Resident Evil 4, which somehow managed to improve on the original. We're in the midst of enjoying Starfield. We're still full from Street Fighter, Metroid Prime, Sea of Stars, Final Fantasy, Armored Core, and Dead Space. We have Spider-Man, Super Mario, Mortal Kombat, and Assassin's Creed still to come. We're so sick of good games we've decided Diablo 4 is terrible. It's been a good year for video games. A great year. A challenger to the likes of 2020, 2013, and 1998 as the best ever. But it has been a bad year for gaming.
> Only three people on duty during “power sag”.
> Microsoft has blamed insufficient staffing and automation issues for an outage at an Australian data centre which shook its Azure, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform services for over 24 hours.
> Between 30 August and 1 September, Australian businesses reliant on software giant Microsoft’s cloud services suffered significant downtime when a “power sag” caused an outage impacting multiple products.
> “This event was triggered by a utility power sag in the Australia East region which tripped a subset of the cooling units offline in one data centre, within one of the Availability Zones,” said Microsoft.
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