Larry Dignan

CFO confidence has bounced back to the high level even though fewer financial leaders are willing to take on more risk, according to Deloitte's latest CFO Signals report. Key figures:

• The CFO Confidence Score rose to 6.1 from 5.9 in the second quarter.
• Technology deployment was the top internal concern and cited by half of respondents. Cybersecurity was the largest external concern also cited by half of respondents.
• 53% of CFOs say it's a good time to take risks, down from 59% a quarter ago.

Also: CFOs taking on more AI oversight, says Deloitte | CFOs facing the big squeeze: Cut costs, ramp investment, says Deloitte

Snowflake said it will offer $3.5 billion in convertible notes due in 2029 and 2031 with 0.00% rate. The proceeds will be used to play capped call transactions, stock repurchase and general corporate purposes. Snowflake has surged since its most recent earnings and shares are up 53% year to date. Raise capital while you can not when you need it. For comparison, neocloud debt tends to be pushing 10%.

BlackBerry is delivering strong revenue growth but it's a completely different firm than that nostalgic throwback you remember. The company, which is more of a security play today is also powered by QNX. QNX software is used in the automotive and potentially the physical AI market going forward.

The company reported second quarter revenue of $163.3 million, up 26% from a year ago. QNX revenue was up 27% to $80.3 million. Net income was $33.9 million, or 5 cents a share.

BlackBerry is projecting fiscal 2027 revenue of $616 million to $636 million with QNX more than half of that sum.

Microsoft launched its Copilot super app that has been on deck for a bit. The new Copilot app brings together Chat and Cowork and access to Office. Autopilot is a proactive personal agent. Now this Microsoft effort is decidedly enterprise for now and Microsoft even included FinOps for AI to manage the spend.

Google launched Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS. The company said the models are its "most expressive audio generation models yet."

LittleHorse Enterprises released Saddle Command Center 1.3, an update that makes it easier to create, deploy and bring AI applications to the enterprise. New features include agent creation, task workers, a JavaScript SDK and serverless trial offering.

• LittleHorse’s McNealy on Business-as-Code, AI agents, orchestration

Amazon said it is opening its seller tools to third-party agents starting with Anthropic's Claude as well as Amazon Quick. In a statement, Amazon added persistent memory to its Seller Assistant to help with pricing and inventory recommendations.

Meta detailed Petal, a subsea cable delivering petabit capacity at transoceanic distances. The cable will connect France and the US and cover 4,300 miles. Petal, built with NEC and Sumitomo Electric, will switch on in 2029 and carry twice the capacity of the top transoceanic cables without an increase in power or infrastructure. The company detailed Petal in its engineering blog.

Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 in a move that is aimed at mobile experiences and on-device agentic AI. The two platforms are designed to boost performance, AI applications, gaming, camera and connectivity. The chips will land in upcoming flagship devices from a wide range of smartphone brands.

Nutanix said it will acquire Ryax Technologies, a company focused on AI compute orchestration and management software. Nutanix said Ryax, based in Lyon, France, will be integrated into future releases of Nutanix Kubernetes Platform and Nutanix Enterprise AI.

Meta's Muse AI agent has made a splash and people are thinking Meta has cured its AI monetization issues, created its next big product and made our lives so much better.

Cool your jets kids.

• First, folks that think Muse is going to drive inference are driving up AI chip stocks. Umm ok if you say so.
• Second, just because you download the Muse AI agent doesn't mean you're going to pay for it or even use it. Remember Threads?
• And third, well there's this little word called trust. I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg as far as I could throw him and nothing since the beginning of social media would give me a reason to. So now I'm supposed to believe he's the privacy king with Muse?

Ahead of Meta's Connect conference, traders are certainly buying the Muse story. It remains to see if this is a pop and drop or something more sustaining.

More on Muse's AI agent ambitions.

• Meta launches Muse, a personal AI agent
• Will enterprises learn to love Meta AI models again?
• Meta releases Spark 1.3, promises more
• Meta Settles Lawsuit to the Tune of $17 Billion: What it Could Mean for Advertisers
• Meta releases open weight Muse Glimmer model with open Muse Spark 1.2 on tap
  

A Deloitte report noted that audit committees are increasingly focusing on AI governance. The report, Audit Committee Practices Report, found that 54% of respondents are more focused on emerging risks over the past year. Not surprisingly, 75% of respondents see AI governance as a top 3 priority, up from 35% a year ago.

See Esteban Kolsky's insights for boards.