Big Tech "GenAI" Quarterly Report

Who knew generative AI, and AI in general, would be a big part of the big tech earnings call discussion? Google said AI at least 76 times, Microsoft 55 times, Meta 85 times, and Amazon 47 times. Apple , however, has not uttered AI – not even by mistake. Hopefully, that will change in the coming quarterly announcements, slated for November 2, 2023 (Thursday).

Copilot Magic: So far, Microsoft has?emerged as a clear winner ?in both cloud AI play and generative AI initiatives, highlighting its partnership with?OpenAI ,?Oracle ,?Meta ?and?Hugging Face .

The result: Microsoft recorded $31.8 billion in quarterly cloud revenue, up 24%. Whereas, AWS recorded a 12% growth, reaching $21.3 billion, and Google saw 22% revenue growth in the cloud, totalling $8.41 billion.?

Currently, Microsoft has?18,000 organisations using Azure OpenAI?Service, including new-to-Azure customers. The company has over 1 million paid Copilot users and more than?37,000 organisations that subscribe to Copilot for business, up 40% QoQ, with significant traction outside of the US. Plus, the number of developers using GitHub has increased 4x since their acquisition five years ago.?

Microsoft’s ‘Copilot to Power Platform ’, which enables anyone to use natural language to create apps, build virtual agents, and analyse data, is being used by more than?126,000 organisations. Some of its customers include 3M, Equinor, Lumen Technologies, Nationwide, PG&E, and Toyota.

Gemini Dreams: Google is also heavily investing in generative AI, and expects elevated levels of investment to increase in the fourth quarter of 2023 and continue to grow in 2024.?

The company said that it is seeing strong growth in adoption as it continues to experiment with a lot of new offerings, including search, ads, etc., alongside integrating its generative AI conversational chatbot?Bard across Google apps and services , including Workspace, Maps, YouTube, Google Flights and Hotels.?

Citing the launch of?Assistant with Bard ?– a personal assistant powered by generative AI – Google chief Sundar Pichai said that users can now interact with it through text, voice or images. “In the coming months, you’ll be able to opt-in on Android and iOS mobile devices,” he added.?

He also spoke about?Project Gemini , briefly. “We are just really laying the foundation of what I think of as the next-generation series of models we’ll be launching all throughout 2024,” shared Pichai, hinting that it would be multimodal – highly efficient with the tool and API integrations – and is going to be available in various sizes and capabilities.

He said that Gemini would be used immediately across all their products internally as well as bringing it out for both developers and cloud customers via?Vertex AI . “From Q2 to Q3, the number of active generative?AI projects on Vertex AI grew by 7X,”?shared ?Pichai, in the FY23 Q3 earnings call.?

Bedrock Breakthrough:?Amazon ?is also investing aggressively in?generative AI. ?It seems to be focussing on three layers – the foundational compute layer, the service layer and the application layer.?

The foundational compute layer involves training LLMs using specialised chips, with AWS developing custom AI chips called Trainium and Inferentia for this purpose.?Anthropic has ?partnered with AWS, selecting them as their primary cloud provider and contributing to the further development of these chips.?

The service layer offers?Amazon Bedrock , a platform allowing access to various LLMs, including third-party models and Amazon's own. It supports customisation without compromising data security and even introduces features like creating AI agents.?

Amazon said that the customer reaction to Bedrock has been very positive and that a number of companies are building generative AI apps in AWS. Some of the popular names include Adidas, Booking.com , Bridgewater, Clariant, GoDaddy, LexisNexis, Merck, Royal Philips, United Airlines, and Perplexity.ai .?

At the application layer, AWS has rolled out tools like?Amazon CodeWhisperer, ?which supports coding through AI and has customisation capabilities familiar with specific proprietary code bases. Furthermore, generative AI is being integrated across different business areas, including product discovery in stores, advertising tools, and even enhancing?Alexa's conversational capabilities.

Open-Source King: Meta, surprisingly, seems to have?had a really “good” quarter . It is currently omnipresent in the generative AI race, with its focus on building foundational models like?Llama-2 , which is now one of the leading open-source models, having more than?30 million downloads last month.?

Besides this, Meta is looking at?ways to test new AI tools ?for advertisers in their AI Sandbox and said that the early feedback from advertisers was positive. In the earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg also highlighted the launch of Meta AI, an AI assistant, and AI Studio, offering interactive AI characters and more.?

Meta believes that the potential monetisation opportunities from these are significant, especially in the realm of business messaging. The company anticipates that generative AI will redefine how apps function, possibly resulting in more AI-generated or edited content.?

“Every week now, more than?60% of people on WhatsApp in India message a business app account. Revenue from Click-to-Message ads in India has doubled year-over-year,” shared Zuckerberg.?

TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK >>

Can LangChain Survive the Multi-Agent Invasion?

The past few weeks have been quite exciting in the LLM landscape with the significant rise of multi-agents like XAgent , AutoGen , MetaGPT , and BabyAGI among others. Many developers are aggressively experimenting with them to solve maths problems, dynamic group chat, multi-agent coding, retrieval-augmented chat (RAG), building AI chatbots in a simulated environment, and conversational chess, among others.?

All these developments bring us to question the relevance of LangChain in the new era of multi-agents. Read to find out.?

How AWS is Fueling India’s Space Ambitions

AWS recently partnered with ISRO and IN-SPACe to provide cloud capabilities with scaled computing due to the increasing application and demand in the Indian ecosystem, alongside boosting India’s space tech startups. In an exclusive interaction with AIM, Clint Crosier , director of aerospace and satellite solutions at AWS, unveiled the ambitious growth trajectory of India’s space sector.

Check out the complete interview here .

AIM VIDEOS >>

Highlights of Cypher 2024?

We thank you all once again for making Cypher 2023 a grand success.?

Here’s a glimpse of everything that happened at the event.?

AIM SHOTS >>

• OpenAI recently announced the launch of the AI Preparedness Challenge, offering $25,000 API Credits for users who identify less obvious areas of AI concerns related to catastrophic misuse.?
• At Snapdragon Summit 2023 , Qualcomm announced that it will be partnering with Airtel and Jio for 6G network deployment . It also shared its interest in collaborating with Tata Group and the Indian government to make chips in the country.?
• EXL Service recorded a robust performance with third-quarter revenue reaching $411.0 million, showcasing a remarkable year-on-year increase of 13.7%. EXL is also capitalising on generative AI, engaging with clients on over 200 use cases , allowing them to venture into new market areas.
• Reliance Jio recently unveiled India’s first satellite-based giga-fibre service, JioSpaceFiber, at the India Mobile Congress.?
• IBM has launched its Watsonx Code Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to assist enterprise developers and IT operators in coding more efficiently.
• Kochi-based Nimo Planet , a company specialising in spatial computers, recently introduced Nimo Spacial OS and Nimo Core .?