It’s been a wild week for OpenAI. On Friday, the board notified CEO Sam Altman that he was being removed. Then President and Chairman Greg Brockman quit. OpenAI then went through three interim CEOs in a weekend. Meanwhile, Altman and Brockman were hired by Microsoft but rumors swirled they would be reinstated at OpenAI, which eventually happened late Tuesday night. The condition for the reinstatement was the removal and reappointment of all but one board member. That’s one hell of a weekend! This and more on this week’s Rundown.
1:03 – Broadcom Gets Conditional Approval for VMware from China and Closes Deal
Broadcom appears to have cleared their last hurdle in the VMware acquisition saga. After an 11th hour speedbump from the Chinese regulatory agency threated to torpedo the enormous deal the news is that the Chinese have approved it with conditions. The conditions pertain to local market sales issues like ensuring VMware software is interoperable with non-Broadcom server hardware. The news comes on the heels of a state visit of the Chinese president to the US last week. This means that the VMware deal should still close on schedule on November 22. Hey, that’s today!
Read More: Broadcom $61 Billion VMWare Deal Wins Chinese Ok With Conditions
Broadcom and VMware Intend to Close Transaction on November 22, 2023
4:27 – Nvidia Announces Spectrum-X Partners
If you’ve been waiting for Nvidia’s Spectrum-X networking stack to make it’s way to servers wait no longer. The company announced this week that Dell, HPE, and Lenovo will be the first companies to deploy the AI-focused Ethernet technology to their server lineups. Spectrum-X is designed to serve as the communications link between GPUs, TPUs, and other AI elements using Ethernet technology including the Spectrum-4 switch and BlueField-3 SuperNIC. It is an alternative to InfiniBand as well as a competitor to solutions offered by Cisco and Broadcom under the Ultra Ethernet Consortium banner.
8:00 – IOTech Releases Edge Central
IOTech has introduced a commercialized version of EdgeX Foundry, a leading open source edge data platform. Edge Central promises robust data management, connecting the cloud to edge sensors in a modular and open way.
Read More: IOTech Announces Edge Central
10:40 – Ransomware Gang Rats Out Target to SEC
The ALPHV group has taken extortion to an entirely new level. This time it involves the Feds. Last week they filed a complaint with SEC against one of their victims. The target, MeridianLink, was hit with an attack and by SEC rule had four days to disclose the attack. The group stole data and asked MeridianLink for a ransom but did not receive a reply so they went to the SEC to notify them that the company had been hacked. MeridianLink did confirm that they had been breached and they were working to find out if any customer data had been stolen. One little hiccup in the plan is that the new SEC reporting rules don’t take effect until December 15, 2023.
Read More: Ransomware Gang Files SEC Complaint over Victim’s Undisclosed Breach
14:03 – OpenAI Chaos Reigns Supreme
It’s been a wild week for OpenAI. On Friday, the board notified CEO Sam Altman that he was being removed. Then President and Chairman Greg Brockman quit. OpenAI then went through three interim CEOs in a weekend. Meanwhile, Altman and Brockman were hired by Microsoft but rumors swirled they would be reinstated at OpenAI, which eventually happened late Tuesday night. The condition for the reinstatement was the removal and reappointment of all but one board member. That’s one hell of a weekend!
Read More: Microsoft Swallows OpenAI’s Core Team – GPU Capacity, Incentive Structure, Intellectual Property, OpenAI Rump State
Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
OpenAI’s Misalignment and Microsoft’s Gain
Sam Altman is Reinstated as OpenAI’s Chief Executive
32:28 – The Weeks Ahead
AWS re:invent – November 27-31, 2023
Cloud Field Day 19 – January 31–February 1, 2024
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