OpenAI Drama Goes Big Over the Weekend, Microsoft Wins

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and you would think news would be a trickle in the cloud computing world, but that’s not the case. Let’s start with the OpenAI drama, since generative AI is driving a ton of activity in the channel sector.

If you missed Friday’s OpenAI drama, catch up with Buffy Naylor’s reporting here. So much happened over the weekend that we start this slideshow with the latest on the intrigue. For one thing, the CEO position has turned into a rendition of musical chairs after Sam Altman was pushed out. And Altman, along with at least one of his OpenAI colleagues, is set to lead a new AI era at Microsoft. The OpenAI drama continues.

But there’s more happening in cloud, even though much of it does revolve around AI. 

Remember the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s intent to explore whether cloud providers have too much market power? Well, the agency has released some findings and thoughts. We cover the latest coming out of the antitrust regulator.

After that, we have an update from China’s Alibaba about its intended cloud business spinoff. You’ll want to check this out.

Finally, we round out this early-in-the-holidays-week cloud computing news roundup with stats from Synergy Research Group and vendor SoftwareOne. The former calculated just how much the AI craze of 2023 contributed to cloud providers’ third-quarter earnings. And the latter just published a report pointing to the growing cloud skills gap. Find out which type of channel partner is poised to capitalize on the struggle.

Before we get into that, let’s launch with a look at the OpenAI drama.