Newsletter: Signs of the Tech Revolution #1
Hello and welcome to the Signs of the Tech Revolution newsletter, where we bring you insights and developments in the world of business and tech. I’m going to leave you with some interesting intel without overwhelming you with dozens of information.
News #1: 4.8 million fewer U.S. employees are engaged in early 2024
Employee engagement in the U.S. has hit its lowest level since 2013, with only 30% highly engaged by the first quarter of 2024. Remote, hybrid, and younger workers are most affected.
Actively disengaged employees rose to 17%. Since 2020, engagement has dropped by six points, affecting 9.6 million workers. However, some organizations buck the trend with 70% engagement, attributing their success to strategic planning, hybrid work environments, clear expectations, supportive management, effective onboarding, and comprehensive well-being programs.
These findings are crucial as engagement correlates with productivity, retention, customer service, safety, quality, and profitability…
News #2: “We think that Snowflake is the most important enterprise AI company on the planet, because we are the data foundation,” Snowflake CEO
Snowflake introduces the Arctic large language model (LLM), which is optimized for enterprise tasks with its mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture. It promises top-tier enterprise intelligence, efficiency, and openness, catering to various use cases, including SQL and code generation.
Snowflake claims the Arctic is cost-efficient, activating only 17 out of 480 billion parameters, surpassing competitors with fewer resources. The model allows fine-tuning and customization, enhancing trust and transparency for users.
Snowflake empowers customers to create efficient custom models at scale.
News #3: Visa’s CIO shares insights on generative AI’s transformative potential in the payments industry
In an interview with VentureBeat, Visa's Chief Information Officer, Don Hobson, discussed the company's commitment to utilizing generative AI to revolutionize global payments. Hobson emphasized Visa's recent focus on generative AI's potential impact on commerce.
Visa aims to enhance fraud detection, personalize financial services, and promote financial inclusion through generative AI. This technology will play a significant role in biometric and neural payment interfaces, reducing friction and enhancing security. Visa's embrace of generative AI signals a big transformation in the payments industry.
Visa has launched GPT-4 for developers and invested $100 million in generative AI ventures.
News #4: IBM drops $6.4B for HashiCorp and its multicloud automation technology
IBM announced its acquisition of HashiCorp, a multicloud infrastructure automation company, for $6.4 billion, expected to close by the end of 2024. IBM plans to integrate HashiCorp's technology into its Red Hat, Watsonx, data security, IT automation, and consulting businesses. HashiCorp's products include Terraform for infrastructure provisioning, Vault for authentication, Nomad for workload orchestration, Boundary for secure remote access, and Consul for networking.
The company has partnerships with major cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
IBM views HashiCorp as strategically aligned with its focus on managing complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This acquisition will enhance IBM's hybrid cloud capabilities and automate infrastructure and security lifecycle management. Combining Red Hat's Ansible Automation Platform with Terraform will simplify application provisioning across hybrid cloud environments. If finalized, HashiCorp's CEO will report to IBM's senior vice president of software. This marks IBM's third acquisition in 2024 and its 13th since 2023, with the 2018 Red Hat acquisition being its largest.
Other resources
- The Evident AI Index assesses the various approaches businesses are taking towards AI readiness, starting with banks - JPMorgan Chase is 1st, Capital One 2nd, and Royal Bank of Canada 3rd. - See the whole list here
- 218 things Google announced at Google Cloud Next ’24 - Check everything here
- Amazon Takes No. 1 Spot on Top 100 Logistics List - Learn how they did it
- Costa Rica gets more than 99 percent of its electricity from renewables — it’s still not enough. - See how
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