Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-06-11
# Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-06-11Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.
A few things that caught my attention today.
Big funding and M&A moves in tech - from cutting-edge language models to cybersecurity startups.
Funds, Funding, and M&A
- 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.
