AI

  • As I reflected on the Stargate annoucements of a $500Bn investment in AI Infrastructure, lead by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, Charles Fitzgearlds Platformomics picece from December popped into my mind - Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties: FY25 Q2. TL;DR - Oracle does not invest a lot in DC’s. It will be interesting to see what their CapEx will be over the next twelve months.

  • OpenAI released introduced Operator, an experiemental capability that can use a browser for you. This is a direct competitor to Anthropics Computer Use. Enterprise security teams everywhere are now frantically trying to figure out how to block this capability. I’m trying to figure out how I can build a nice isolated VM to play around with it.

General Interest

Data

  • Recent reading included the Harness State of Software Delivery 2025 report. Bunch of interesting data points in it, but first off they do not disclose the demographics of the survey so take that into account.

    The overlying construct is that of developer burnout, and AI being part of the solution. Interestingly they called out Shadow AI as the new Shadow IT, with 52% of developers surveyed saying they are using AI tools outside of IT approval. In otherwords, as shown in Stack Overflows data earlier this year, people are using ChatGPT. Most likely on individual accounts. Which is a really crap state of affairs and shows how penny pinching on AI investments at a corporate level leads to people working around the system in, very understandable, ways that are detrimental to their companies. Another interesting stat in the survey is that 90% of developers surveyed are not afraid of AI. This resonates with me, AI is this generations spreadsheet.

  • Gartner recently published their Forecast: DRAM Market Statistics, Supply and Demand, Worldwide, 2021-2028, 4Q24 [$paywall] earlier this month. This an interesting read give the importance of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to AI, the opening quote hits home “The DRAM industry revenue is slowing down because of weaker demand from legacy chips in smartphones and servers. HBM production continues to undermine overall DRAM manufacturing capacity through 1H25. Higher HBM price premiums will compensate for weaker non-HBM pricing in 2025.”