I've had better success finding information using Google Gemini vs. ChatGPT. I.e. someone mentions to me the name of someone or some company, but doesn't give the full details (i.e. Joe @ XYZ Company doing this, or this company with 10,000 people, in ABC industry)...sometimes i don't remember the full name. Gemini has been more effective for me in filling in the gaps and doing fuzzy search. I even asked ChatGPT why this was the case, and it affirmed my experience, saying that Gemini is better for these queries because of Search integration, Knowledge Graph, etc. Especially useful for recent role changes, which haven't been propagated through other channels on a widespread basis.
DENVER, CO – October 22, 2025 – Crusoe, the industry’s first vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, today announced a groundbreaking partnership with Starcloud, the first company to build AI data centers in space, to become the first public cloud provider to run workloads in outer space. Under this agreement, Crusoe will deploy Crusoe Cloud on a Starcloud satellite scheduled to launch in late 2026. Crusoe plans to offer limited GPU capacity from space by early 2027, pioneering a new paradigm for AI factories.
Replit, the agentic software creation platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft that will empower organizations to bring software creation capabilities directly to business teams. The collaboration is a significant step in breaking down traditional barriers to application development by enabling employees across all departments - not just engineering - to build and deploy secure, enterprise-grade software using natural language.
As part of this collaboration, Replit is integrating with a wide range of Microsoft infrastructure services including Azure Container Apps, Azure Virtual Machines, and the Azure native integration of Neon Serverless Postgres, which will soon enable customers to:
Develop applications securely on Replit and deploy seamlessly to Microsoft Azure’s reliable infrastructure
Purchase Replit directly via the Azure Marketplace, streamlining procurement and accelerating adoption across the organization.
Among the first to evaluate Anthropic on Azure Databricks via the Mosaic AI gateway, Replit exemplifies how organizations can rapidly assess and operationalize cutting-edge AI models across Azure’s expansive ecosystem.
Oracle’s bet on the advertising industry was undermined when Meta, doing business as
Facebook at the time, shut down its data to third parties including Oracle in 2018,
following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That was a major loss to the kind of
insights Oracle Advertising could share.
Ad dollars shifting massively to GOOG / META / AMZN meant advertisers (and agencies) didn't need to have 3rd party data anymore to power campaigns ... they could use the platform's great data and match their 1st party customer data to it.
Oracle bought great data companies but didn't have any 1st party ad inventory to use the data with, and they got boxed out. If they had acquired TikTok back when Trump wanted them to, it might have saved their data biz.
Perhaps the value of TikTok is not just in monetary returns. Cut down a beautiful tree that gives fruit every year for lumber, all you are left is a pile of money.
On their conference call tonight, Larry Ellison indicated Oracle will be building a dedicated data center for OpenAI to use for training, with 1 GW of power, and its own power plant and DLC. Stocked with newest NVIDIA chips.
Running a data center comes with its own challenges. I imagine they don't want to be in the business of running data centers. Additionally running only 1 might have too much overhead.
According to an article in the Financial Times (gated), more than half the cuts would be coming in corporate functions (i.e. back office) and not client-facing roles (i.e. sales, delivery, dev, etc.).
https://www.ft.com/content/346357fd-4fb5-4794-9706-807eaf767...
Laying off people who are billing clients would be ridiculous because that’s where the money comes from. I suspect the bench (consultants in the firm looking for billable work) is very deep and costly right now so if there are any cuts to the people who actually make money it will be the bench.
For people like me who are not very familiar with some of these corporate terms, can someone explain exactly what "back office" means? Is it IT?
I understand sales, delivery, etc. Dev is software development teams? So I presume back office excludes software development teams? Any concrete examples of teams that belong to back office?
“Back office “ in this case means employees who are not billing clients and therefore do not bring any money to the firm. In consulting you have to be billable at a rate a certain percentage above your cost based on your level in the firm. High level people have to bill a lot more than they cost to maintain their target margin. If you’re not billing then you only cost money. There’s no other revenue source in consulting than billing time to a client.
I think back office is just a generic term for non customer facing positions, usually supporting internal operations in a corporate environment, not a specific department or function. So a software developer could be back office depending on context.
