Verint named Dave Rhodes CEO effective immediately. Rhodes had been CEO of Calabrio. Verint was acquired by Thoma Bravo for $2 billion in 2025 and merged with Calabrio, another Thoma Bravo portfolio company. The combination of Verint and Calabrio is focused on CX automation.
SambaNova launched its SN50 AI inference chip that runs agentic AI 3x cheaper than GPUs and said SoftBank will be the first to deploy the chip in its AI data center in Japan. The company also said it raised $350 million in Series E funding.
In addition, SambaNova said it will collaborate with Intel to deliver cloud-scale AI inference.
SambaNova's S50 will ship to customers later this year.
Apple said it is expanding its Houston factory to manufacture its Mac mini in the US. Apple also said it will expand its AI server production in Houston. Apple has pledged to increase its US manufacturing efforts.
CrowdStrike in its 2026 Global Threat Report said the average e-crime breakout time fell to 29 minutes in 2025 with the fastest breakout occurring in 27 seconds. Adversaries are leveraging AI at a rapid clip and nation-state attacks have surged.
IQM said it will go public via a SPAC merger with Real Asset Acquisition Corp. The deal values IQM at $1.8 billion. IQM, which said it has delivered 15 systems and $35 million in 2025 revenue, will be the largest listed European Quantum Company.
What's a software company worth 5 years from now? JunkBond Investor penned a notable analysis on software bond spreads and the reality that bond investors can't value SaaS companies 5 years from now. Until that terminal value is found, it's likely to be a lot of turbulence and price discovery for SaaS companies.
UiPath said it has launched agentic AI tools for clinicians and healthcare admins. The AI agents are focused on medical records summarization, claim denial prevention and resolution and prior authorization. The launch highlights how agentic AI players are targeting process optimization.
Rimini Street reported a fourth quarter profit of $724,000, or a penny a share, on revenue of $109.8 million, down 3.9% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the fourth quarter were 6 cents a share.
The revenue decline was due to Rimini Street phasing out its PeopleSoft support offerings.
As for the outlook, Rimini Street projected first quarter revenue between $101.5 million and $103.5 million. The company reiterated revenue growth for 2026 in the 4% to 6% range.
See: Rimini Street’s second act will include heavy dose of agentic AI, UX
CEO Seth Ravin said on the earnings call that its agentic ERP offerings with ServiceNow are garnering strong interest. He said:
"We're positioning Rimini Street as the bridge between existing traditional ERP software infrastructure and the capability and benefits of modern AI innovation, and we expect growing subscriptions for both Rimini Support as our core service offering and our new AI for the real-world service offerings to fuel top and bottom line growth in 2026."
Cognizant expanded its partnership with Google Cloud and said it will deploy Google Workspace with Gemini Enterprise internally. Cognizant previously announced it would adopt Gemini Enterprise internally. The two companies are go-to-market partners for bringing AI agents to enterprises where Gemini Enterprise is integrated with Cognizant's Neuro AI and Agent Foundry.
The Financial Times is reporting that Amazon outages were due to AI coding and its Kiro AI too. Amazon said it was user error. Discussion ensued. Kiro was launched last year as an IDE powered by AI agents and was fleshed out at AWS re:Invent 2025.
Microsoft Research outlined Project Silica, which is an effort to use glass storage to store data for up to 10,000 years. Microsoft said: "Glass storage is still emerging (experts predict it will require 3-4 more developmental stages before it’s ready for commercial use), but its benefits are clear: it’s durable, sustainable, and cost-effective." The project was published in Nature.
I'll just leave this link here. In a nutshell, here's your new org chart with your LLM overlords. We hope this is a joke, but don't think it is.
