For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. Salesforce’s Open-Source Framework for LMM’s
2. Grafana Raises $270M to Enhance Observability
3. Opkey: $47 Million to Test All ERPs
4. Stephen Wolfram and the Philosophy of Gen AI
5. IT Spending Trends: Growth Ahoy!
6. Total Monetization And the Role of Pricing
7. The Societal Impact of Thirsty AI

Sources:

Salesforce’s Open-Source Framework for LMMs

xGen-MM \(BLIP-3\): A Family of Open Large Multimodal Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08872 

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/salesforce-releases-xgen-mm-open-source-multimodal-ai-models-to-advance-visual-language-understanding/ 

Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/22/1097224/we-finally-have-a-definition-for-open-source-ai/?mc_cid=03ff8ef90a&truid 

Grafana Raises $270M to Enhance Observability

Grafana Labs: https://grafana.com/about/press/2024/08/21/grafana-labs-soars-past-250m-arr-and-5000-customers-completes-270m-primary-and-secondary-transaction-and-named-a-leader-in-the-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-observability-platforms/ 

Opkey: $47 Million to Test All ERPs

Opkey: https://www.opkey.com/blog/opkeys-bold-leap-forward-47-million-in-series-b-funding 

Stephen Wolfram and the Philosophy of Gen AI

Stephen Wolfram for TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/25/stephen-wolfram-thinks-we-need-philosophers-working-on-big-questions-around-ai/ 

IT Spending Trends: Growth Ahoy!

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3487383/moderate-it-budget-increases-have-cios-shaping-2025-strategies-to-suit.html?huid=205a7546-7f41-491b-8fc6-da2d631e9e4b 

Total Monetization and the Role of Pricing

Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo for Diginomica: https://diginomica.com/second-act-subscription-economy-total-monetization-become-goal-says-zuora-ceo-tien-tzuo 

The Societal Impact of Thirsty AI

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/19/demand-for-ai-is-driving-data-center-water-consumption-sky-high/ 

Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/1d468bd2-6712-4cdd-ac71-21e0ace2d048 

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights