⬅️ Summary Solstice 🧭 Project Liberty & DSNP ➡️
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
This week is a weekly digest of Hot Fudge Daily.
Housekeeping
🗓️ Last week, I was honored to attend Triangle Tech Night: 🦸♀️ Women Who Innovate at Raleigh Founded. I’ve published a few LinkedIn posts from the evening.
If you’d like to learn more about these amazing speakers and innovative leaders, links to their LinkedIn profiles are below.
- Phaedra Boinodiris: Global Leader for Trustworthy AI at IBM Consulting
- Bernice Russell-Bond: VP & Chief Information Security Officer at RTI International
- Jenn Summe: Startup Investor, Advisor, and Ecosystem Builder at Primordial Ventures
- Meghan Corroon: Founder & CEO at Clerdata
- Susan Wall: COO at Corevist
- Stephanie Modica: Head of Data Experience & Design at Gemini Sports Analytics
If you have suggestions for a future conference I should attend and write about, let me know. 🤓
Now, back to our regularly scheduled Fudge Sunday newsletter! 🤓
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
As promised, a seven ( 7 ) day roundup of Hot Fudge Daily will be included in Fudge Sunday going forward until feedback arrives asking for it to be removed. I’ll try to keep this compact. 🤓
🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday
Fudge Sunday readers have asked me about my writing process. So, I’m sharing my writing process each Sunday.
📈 Markets Monday
Generally, I will experiment on Monday with what I think might matter in the market. For example, on Monday we heard from Apple WWDC, and while not an explicitly investor-oriented event, it was fascinating to hear what was said and what was not said.
🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday
Big funding and M&A moves in tech - from cutting-edge language models to cybersecurity startups.
- Cognizant acquires Belcan for $1.8B - 💼 If you like your GSI to come with a strong ER&D to get jiggy wit IIoT then you are in luck.
- AlphaSense acquired Tegus for $930M - 🤖 If you are doing manual research methods the old fashioned way, hold on to your hat because it is going to be blowing full gale A.I. sooner than you might think.
- Harvey and vLex combination potential - ⚖️ What if legal advice meets the blowing full gale A.I. too?
- Fortinet acquires Lacework - 🔮 Seeing a combination of SASE, AIOps, and CNAPP is a pattern that will repeat.
- Mistral raises $644M - 🤖 Because those NVIDIA processors aren’t on sale and when I asked Mistral AI what it was it said: Mistral AI is a cutting-edge language model developer.
- Cognigy raises $100M - 🤖 Because in the future, when you are on hold and say “I wish to speak to a customer service” you will need to specify “I wish to speak to a human in customer service” if that’s what you meant.
- Cyberhaven raises $88M - 🤖 Because “Jimmy” isn’t typing in his credentials the way Jimmy usually types in his password today and that means Jimmy might not be the best Jimmy that Jimmy is supposed to be.
- Seven AI raises $36M - 🤖 Because Cybereasons (literally)
- Tenderd AI raises $30M - 🤖 Because as we burn more fossil fuels to energize A.I. processing capacity we can probably use… A.I. to wrangle emissions data.
- Nexus Labs raises $25M - 🔐 Zero Knowledge is getting more interesting outside of niche communities now that the zkVM (zero-knowledge virtual machine) written in Rust stories are getting wider coverage.
🤪 Wacky Wednesday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8woa_wSrmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-t21QcXM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SgGfMlbCoM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHspDQZKvwg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQW22EN-F-8
🔙 Throwback Thursday
If you were to look back at IPOs from 20 years ago, you’d probably recognize several companies. Considering just technology, a handful are quite notable.
- Google - While it might be hard to imagine a time before Google, the company that once took attention away from the TV and drove us all to use browsers has expanded to… well, go back after the TV under different terms.
- CBRE Group - If you’ve been to a major city with what appears to be empty buildings, it is worth noting that return to office (RTO) will likely become an equilibrium as the democratization of technology and thinking remotely and data centers are growing more than ever in the REIT category.
✅ Final Thoughts Friday
It was a busy week. The final round table content from Qlik Connect in Orlando was posted to YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GYNh1clfEQ
🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday
By Friday, everything seems to be reaching the peak of getting news turned in before a deadline or dread-line.
It sometimes seems like we reach a fever pitch in news coverage throughout the week. Then there is a trope, cliché, or bromide about slow news days and the quietly mentioned news updates sent on a Friday — to try and sneak it past wider coverage. Or, in a nutshell, peak patronizing publishing.
In that spirit, here are the stories that you might have missed on the slow news of a Friday.
- Insert Let’s See Who This Really Is Meme
- Insert Ceiling Cat Meme
- Insert We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This Meme
- Insert That Wasn’t Me, That Was Patricia Meme
- Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme
That’s all for this week. As a reminder, Hot Fudge Daily is available as a $9.99 yearly subscription. 🤓
Disclosure
I am linking to my disclosure.
p.s. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to appreciate getting snail mail. If you have time to drop me a postcard, I’m going to be scanning the picture side of the postcards I’ve received and link to a Fudge Sunday Reader Postcards gallery (with suitable redactions and filtering for greater anonymity) as a newsletter trailer of sorts. Stay tuned! ✉️
