We discuss the Cursor pricing changes

SHOW: 941

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #941 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [DoIT] Visit doit.com (that’s d-o-i-t.com) to unlock intent-aware FinOps at scale with DoiT Cloud Intelligence.
• [FCTR] Try FCTR.io (that's F-C-T-R dot io) free for 60 days. Modern security demands modern solutions. Check out Fctr's Tako AI, the first AI agent for Okta, on their website

SHOW NOTES:

• Cursor Series-C Funding ($9.9B valuation)
• New Cursor Pricing Tiers
• Updated Cursor Pricing (June 2025)
• Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes (TechCrunch) 
• Promiscuity of Modern Developers (Redmonk)
• Aaron Levie speculates that coding-assistants are involved with 50% of AI usage today
• Anysphere, the startup behind coding app Cursor, hired two former Anthropic leaders
• Measuring the actual impact of AI coding (Changelog)
• Windsurf’s CEO goes to Google; OpenAI’s acquisition falls apart (TechCrunch)
• Windsurf 2-3x’d headcount, and then the founding team walked. Pretty wild (X.com)

Topic 1 - What happened (basics of the pricing change)?

Topic 2 - How was this communicated? 

Topic 3 - Where was the confusion?

Topic 4 - Wasn’t this inevitable because of huge costs and funding rounds? 

Topic 5 - How do we square the “developers don’t pay for anything” and “AI-native vs. AI-augmented” when developers are still in the loop?

Topic 6 - Does this inevitability mean AI coding-assistants can’t be a standalone business, but need to be in a bundle? 

Topic 7 - WTF Windsurf?

FEEDBACK?

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In the Enterprise, there is a spectrum forming of aggressive adopters and passive resistors to AI usage. While there are no best practices yet, C-suites are pushing. So what are you waiting for?

SHOW: 940

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #940 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [DoIT] Visit doit.com (that’s d-o-i-t.com) to unlock intent-aware FinOps at scale with DoiT Cloud Intelligence.
• [FCTR] Try FCTR.io (that's F-C-T-R dot io) free for 60 days. Modern security demands modern solutions. Check out Fctr's Tako AI, the first AI agent for Okta, on their website
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• AI Eats the World (Benedict Evans)
• East Meets West 2025 (keynote presentation) 
• The State of Consumer AI (2025 - Menlo Ventures)

WHEN SHOULD YOU START ENGAGING WITH AI?

• Nobody wants to be told what to do; and everyone wants guidance on what to do
• [Experience from watching adoptions in the Enterprise]
• No job has ever been safe in the long run
• AI is like every new technology, it has a steep and long learning curve. But the beginning seems pretty easy. 
• Nobody knows AI best practices at this point
• Nobody knows good AI KPIs at this point
• Nobody understands AI costs at this point
• The “older” generation can build on their existing domain experience
• The “younger” generation has always figured out new ways to work, be creative
• Even CEOs aren’t the ultimate boss - the market, boards, peer pressure, etc. - they will push trends, sometimes without all the data

FEEDBACK?

Julian LaNeve (@JulianLaneve, CTO @astronomerio) discusses data pipelines, Apache Airflow, Astronomer’s managed offering, and the benefits of data pipelines for both developers and operations.

SHOW: 939

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #939 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [FCTR] Try FCTR.io (that's F-C-T-R dot io) free for 60 days. Modern security demands modern solutions. Check out Fctr's Tako AI, the first AI agent for Okta, on their website

SHOW NOTES:

• Astonomer.io website
• Apache Airflow

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Julian. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - Our topic today is Data Pipelines with Apache Airflow.  For those unfamiliar, provide an introduction to Apache Airflow and how Airflow manages data pipelines.

Topic 3 - What are the advantages of Apache Airflow vs. others in the space? What are the downsides? How does Airflow fit in with other Apache projects?

Topic 4 - I would imagine this is where Astronomer potentially comes into play. What makes Astonomer different from Airflow? What problems are you trying to solve for both developers and operations folks?

Topic 5 - What does a typical implementation look like? What growing pains do developers typically face when they need to introduce pipelining tools and begin standardization? Is it a scale issue? A complexity of tools issue? Integrations with infrastructure?

Topic 6 - One aspect I typically see with automation is security, especially at scale. What recommendations do you have for developers regarding security, particularly in the context of multi-tenancy, for data pipelines?

FEEDBACK?

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As we get to the mid-point of 2025, let’s take a look at where the cloud is - what’s doing well, what’s going through some changes, and what might be in store for the rest of 2025. 

SHOW: 938

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #938 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [FCTR] Try FCTR.io (that's F-C-T-R dot io) free for 60 days. Modern security demands modern solutions. Check out Fctr's Tako AI, the first AI agent for Okta, on their website
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• Digital Sovereignty concerns, investments and new laws outside the US 
• Growth of regional clouds? 
• Uncertainty in Azure, AWS - employee layoffs, review cycles, focus on non-AI projects/features
• East Meets West 2025 (keynote presentation) - See slide 27 (GPU share vs Cloud revenue share)
• Revenues: AWS ($116B run rate); Azure ($107.2B), GCP ($49B), Oracle Cloud ($12B IaaS, $16.8B SaaS), CoreWeave ($1B, since 2022) – OpenAI ($12-13B in 2025)
• NVIDIA ($130B)
• Massive Data Center build outs - Stargate ($500B), Meta ($60-65B), Grok/X ($10B)
  • AWS ($100B), Azure ($80B), 
  • Saudi Arabia (up to $100B)

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter/X: @cloudcastpod
• BlueSky: @cloudcastpod.bsky.social
• Instagram: @cloudcastpod
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Brian Gracely (@bgracely) and Brandon Whichard (@bwhichard, @SoftwareDefTalk) discuss the top stories in Cloud and AI from June 2025.

SHOW: 937

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #937 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [FCTR] Try FCTR.io (that's F-C-T-R dot io) free for 60 days. Modern security demands modern solutions. Check out Fctr's Tako AI, the first AI agent for Okta, on their website

SHOW NOTES:

• Link to June 2025 News and Articles

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
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As AI evolves into the Enterprise, will we see greater uptake of AI-native applications or AI add-on applications? Briandon Whichard (@bwhichard) and Cote (@cote) from Software Defined Talk explore the pros and cons. 

SHOW: 936

SHOW VIDEO: Watch the YouTube Live Recording of SDT Episode 525

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

This week, we try a shorter format inspired by the Dithering podcast. The conversation digs into the difference between apps built with AI from the ground up and those with AI bolted on after the fact.

Watch the YouTube Live Recording of SDT Episode 525

RUNDOWN

• Format inspired by Dithering
• An Interview with Cursor Co-Founder and CEO Michael Truell

FEEDBACK?

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Tanmai Gopal (@tanmaigo, CEO/Founder @HasuraQL) discusses the importance of reliability and trustworthiness for both generative and agentic AI. We discuss the pitfalls in existing data pipelines and how to enhance the results.

SHOW: 935

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #935 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Hasura website
• Hasura GitHub

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Tanmai. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - Our topic today is Reliable and Trustworthy AI Agents. First off, what’s the problem we’re solving for here (define reliability and trustworthiness)? Are we solving for hallucinations? Reliability? Connecting private and Enterprise data to models with fine-tuning or RAG?

Topic 3 - How is reliability or trustworthiness measured? I would imagine this isn’t black and white, but maybe a bit more subjective?

Topic 4 - How do Agentic and GenAI differ, if at all, with this model? I would think that since Gen AI lends itself more to the creative side and Agent AI is very deterministic, the approaches to solving the problem might be different. Thoughts?

Topic 5 - Let’s talk about data pipelines. Today, many organizations take an off-the-shelf frontier or foundational model and then apply a RAG pipeline to it for customization. Sometimes fine-tuning is involved, but in my experience, this is the exception rather than the rule. What is wrong with that architecture today? How is this less reliable?

Topic 6 - Let’s talk about Hasura and PromptQL. As I understand it, you are decoupling query planning from execution, thereby creating a more deterministic AI workflow. Now… that’s a mouthful. Can you break down what this means and explain how the architecture differs?

FEEDBACK?

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Are the dynamics of the hyperscale cloud providers changing? Will the leaders of the last decade continue for the next 3-5 years, or the next decade? Let’s explore how the market is now rapidly changing.

SHOW: 934

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #934 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• Andy Jassy (Amazon CEO) - Thoughts on Generative AI 
• AWS quarterly revenue growth 
• OpenAI struggling to meet deadline for $20B investment (including Microsoft)
• Inside Microsoft’s complex relationship with OpenAI
• Google Cloud quarterly revenues
• BG2 Podcast
• East Meets West 2025 (keynote presentation)

TECHNOLOGY WAVES CHANGE MARKET DYNAMICS; INCUMBENTS DON’T ALWAYS LEAD

• Revenues: AWS ($62B, 2021), Azure ($60B, 2021), GCP ($19B, 2021) 
• Revenues (run rate): AWS ($130B, 2025), Azure ($108B, 2025), GCP ($50B, 2025) 
• AWS is on 3rd CEO since pandemic; market questioning their AI strategy
• Azure + OpenAI alignment strategy went from strategic to questioned
• Google start-stop AI strategy, but coming together; but company breakup looming
• Apple AI strategy seems completely unknown (Siri,Apple Intelligence, devices, models?)
• Oracle seems to be rebounding around Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• New hypercloud AI providers emerging? The Amazon/AWS 20%

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter/X: @cloudcastpod
• BlueSky: @cloudcastpod.bsky.social
• Instagram: @cloudcastpod
• TikTok: @cloudcastpod

Simon Yu (Co-Founder @SpeakeasyDev) discusses the rise of MCP servers, API integration into AI systems, including SDK generation, and the emergence of the Agentic web.

SHOW: 933

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #933 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Speakeasy website
• Speakeasy MCP Hub
• The NewStack article on MCP with Speakeasy

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Simon. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - API tooling and platforms for AI has become the hot topic this year. Of course, Agentic AI has made significant contributions to this. What trends do you see that we need to pay attention to? What problems are organizations trying to solve?

Topic 3 - Let’s dig into MCP Servers. The interest in MCP has taken off. At the highest level, why do they exist?

Topic 4 - MCP servers and all the recent announcements around an Agentic Web have me thinking… Do we need to prepare for an Internet where AI agents talk to each other? We had humans and GUIs (web frontends), then we saw the rise of APIs. Is this a third wave or an evolution of the API wave?

Topic 5 - How do SDKs and things like AI API tooling play into all of this? API tools to generate SDKs or AI documentation aren’t new. How does the abstraction of AI change this process?

Topic 6 - In our experience, API-level integrations are challenging to productize. Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as who is going to pay for it, and developers often have a voice and a seat at the table, but don’t have the budget. What has been your experience? 

Topic 7 - How does the business side of the house see an advantage to this? What metrics tend to matter and are measurable?

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
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As Father's Day rolls around, we explore some tales from people taking on their first professional jobs, and how those lessons can relate to managers of newer hires.

SHOW: 932

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #932 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

SOMETIMES WE FORGET HOW CHALLENGING THAT FIRST JOB WAS

• Sometimes your first job(s) are just cogs in a machine - you work, but you don’t really care
• A tale of two first job searches and surrounding activities
• [Tale 1] Are you qualified for a job? Do you know how to do all the required things?
• “I’m about to do this first task, and I’m very nervous”
• “They keep giving me more things to do, and asking if I want more things to do”
• “Just run with it, own it”
• We meet 1:1 every week. Sometimes they miss/cancel the meeting. 
• Understanding the entrepreneur’s mindset and challenges
• [Tale 2] The fork in the road, and the road less travelled. 
• The job that doesn’t pay as well, but provides the necessary experience. 

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
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Tobi Knaup (@superguenter, VP/GM of Cloud Native @Nutanix) talks about the evolution of the cloud-native ecosystem, the intersection of AI and Kubernetes, and expectations of the next few years.  

SHOW: 931

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #931 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Nutanix Cloud Native
• The Cloudcast #211 - Mesosphere DCOS

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show! Full disclosure for everyone out there, I worked for Tobi at Nutanix. Give everyone a brief introduction and a little about your background.

Topic 2 - This is a throwback for our long-time listeners. We had Ben Hindman on episode #211 almost 10 years ago, when D2IQ was Mesosphere, and we also spoke to Dave Lester, who was at Twitter back in 2014.  I’m not going to ask you to catch everyone up on 10 years of your company and the history… but I will encourage everyone to go back and listen to that podcast. It is an excellent snapshot of the early days of cloud native and containers. Today, we will talk a bit about the state of cloud native. The most recent KubeCon EU was a few months ago. What were your thoughts around the event and the current state of the industry? 

Topic 3 - What are the most prominent challenges organizations face today with Cloud Native adoption?  You hear about the complexity, you hear about Kubernetes is a platform to build platforms… still true?

Topic 4 - Where do you think Cloud Native goes in the next 2-3 years? What technologies or design patterns (besides AI, we’ll talk about that later) evolve, and where does the next round of adoption come from?

Topic 5 - Let’s talk about storage and data services quickly. Data services for K8s is messy, really messy at times. Give everyone an overview of the problem at scale and the challenges, especially in multi-cloud environments, which I’m finding more and more.

Topic 6 - I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention AI and its impact in the space. AI came along and sucked all the air out of the room for a time. How do you think about AI today, now that the dust has settled a bit? Is it just an “app” to run on top? How will AI impact cloud native longer term?

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
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As we try and predict the future, we explore the possibilities of technology augmenting or replacing the middle of the bell curve. What has history taught us, and where do we expect it to repeat itself or at least rhyme?

SHOW: 930

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #930 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• I Am Disappointed in the AI Discourse (Steve Klabnik)
• All My AI Skeptical Friends are Nuts (Thomas Ptacek)
• Pearl Jam - Porch (1991)

MOST OF US ARE THE MIDDLE TODAY….BUT WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW?

• I’d like to give you free intelligence. Later it might cost something, but it’ll be available
• If you choose not to engage with it, your job prospects might be limited in the future
• There ain’t gonna be any middle anymore - how does that relate to AI?
• “Hollowing out the middle”
• We can’t force people to use AI, but it’s going to be in the tools you use daily
• You probably have a choice now
• AI won’t have binary impacts on everyone (good/bad), but it’ll have impacts
• I understand that we don’t understand everyone else’s context, but we do have historical context

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
• Twitter/X: @cloudcastpod
• BlueSky: @cloudcastpod.bsky.social
• Instagram: @cloudcastpod
• TikTok: @cloudcastpod

Brian Gracely (@bgracely) and Brandon Whichard (@bwhichard, @SoftwareDefTalk) discuss the top stories in Cloud and AI from May 2025, including Google I/O, Microsoft Build, OpenAI, and Jony Ive. 

SHOW: 929

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #929 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Link to May 2025 News and Articles

FEEDBACK?

• Email: show at the cloudcast dot net
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• Twitter/X: @cloudcastpod
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Is it ever a good time for a company to announce vaporware? Let’s discuss the pros and cons of pre-announcements, vaporware, and the strategy of products that may or may not ever exist.  

SHOW: 928

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #928 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• The McGuffin “Challenge” - Software Defined Talk (May 30, 2025)
• McGuffin (Wikipedia)

IS IT EVER A GOOD TIME TO PRE-ANNOUNCE SOMETHING? OR VAPORWARE ON PURPOSE?

• Russ Hanneman (Silicon Valley) - “No Revenue”
• Set a big ambition for the company
• Distract the market from current company challenges
• Distract your competitors to chase something where they don’t have strengths
• Probe the market for ideas - sort of like a “leak”
• Get the market to pump your valuation, so you can take other actions
• Stall your customers from potentially buying a competitive offer

FEEDBACK?

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Anand Kannappan (@anandnk24, CEO @PatronusAI) talks about evaluating AI models for hallucinations, managing data quality, automating the process, and optimizing models. 

SHOW: 927

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #927 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Patronus AI website

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Anand. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - Our topic today is Preventing AI Model Hallucinations. Before we dig into that, I wanted to ask about your time as Lead Data Scientist at Meta. What was it like to be early into that organization, and what did you take away from your time there? 

Topic 3 - Ok, let’s dig into model evaluations and hallucinations. Let’s start at the beginning. How do model hallucinations come about?

Topic 4 - When evaluating models for hallucinations, how does a developer or a data scientist know fact from fiction? Due to its size, complexity, and number of parameters, it’s not feasible to simply fact-check and manually verify inputs to outputs. How is this process evaluated and automated with some level of confidence? Additionally, numerous benchmarks are available. What are your thoughts on the usefulness of the benchmarks?

Topic 5 - How does the concept of data quality play into this? How would we know when a model was given insufficient or improper data vs. a hallucination

Topic 6 - We often hear about how frontier models are running out of training data, and increasingly, synthetic data is being used. Does this impact hallucinations in any way?

Topic 7 - The last item I wanted to ask you about, Partonus AI, also pertains to model optimization. Can you explain that process?

FEEDBACK?

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The industry is debating whether AI should be viewed as augmenting or replacing human-centric tasks. But we don’t yet have a framework to discuss the technical and business impacts of that spectrum of decisions.  

SHOW: 926

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #926 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud
• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.

SHOW NOTES:

• The final 5% of AI success

HOW DO WE THINK ABOUT THE INVOLVEMENT OF HUMANS WITH AI SYSTEMS?

• What do we think AI systems should be capable of?
• What do we think human systems should be capable of?
• We know how to quantify error, but do we really know how to quantify error?
• Almost every question about AI comes down to augment vs. replace, and yet humans tend to skew towards the replace angle. 
• We like the thought of humans in the loop, but often don’t want to be bothered to interact with humans
• We haven’t yet created a framework to think about the human +/- AI involvement, because we haven’t really created it for general-purpose automation yet either. 

FEEDBACK?

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Joel Christner, (@joelchristner, Founder/CEO at @viewyourdata) discusses the complexities of data management in AI, structured and unstructured data, the importance of RAG pipelines and vector databases. 

SHOW SUMMARY:  Aaron and Joel discusses the complexities of data management in AI, focusing on the concept of universal data representation. They explore the challenges organizations face with structured and unstructured data, the importance of RAG pipelines and vector databases, and the implications of data privacy in regulated industries. The conversation also touches on managing model versions and the emerging patterns in AI tooling that can help enterprises effectively utilize AI technologies.

SHOW: 925

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #925 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK - http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• [VASION] Vasion Print eliminates the need for print servers by enabling secure, cloud-based printing from any device, anywhere. Get a custom demo to see the difference for yourself.
• [US CLOUD] Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• View.io website

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Joel. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - Our topic today is everything data and how to represent it and embed it into AI systems. First, what is the challenge with data, structured or unstructured, in organizations today and what is behind the concept of Universal Data Representation

Topic 3 - Industry or customer specific data today is big challenge for organziations, especially in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, etc. The most prevalent solution I am seeing is taking an existing foundational model and then adding a RAG pipeline vs. the cost and time to fine tuning. What are you seeing?

Topic 4 - Even when companies have good data, that doesn’t mean that data makes it into the AI pipeline correctly, this is where the embedding problem and your concept of Universal Data Representation comes into play, correct?

Topic 5 - But, once you get the first model out, then what? How should the data and models be handled over time? How do you create a platform and a continuous feedback loop to improve the results over time?

Topic 6 - What are the most successful use cases you are seeing today with your customers?

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Where does the next phase of AI-assistants for software development go next? Is it an evolution of developer productivity, or a complete rethinking of the barriers and limitations for broader software development? 

SHOW: 924

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #924 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

WHERE DO AI DEVELOPER-ASSISTANTS GO NEXT?

• A year ago it felt like co-pilots were one of the entry point use-cases for AI.
• Since then we’ve seen numbers say the uplift is 10-20% productivity.
• Microsoft claims that 20-30% of their code is now written by AIs.
• We’ve seen many senior developers speakout that it’s not replacement level technology and they don’t trust it.
• Companies like Cursor have a $9-10B valuation. Windsurf just got purchased for $3B by OpenAI.
• Microsoft has Co-Pilot (based on OpenAI models). Google and Amazon are rumored to be launching their own.
• Lots of companies are launching agents (IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, etc.), and lots of agent frameworks now exist. 
• So where does it go next? Is it just wide-spead adoption of developer productivity? 
  • Is it specialized functions within developer workflows? (e.g. CI/CD, documentation, security evaluations, bug fixes, long-term maintenance, etc.)
  • How far are we from teams being just a few architects, leads, Sr. Devs, and then teams of AI’s (agents, etc.)?
    • Is that a good thing for Sr. Dev personalities that didn’t want to focus on soft-skills?
    • Does that allow for greater experimentation against feature-requests or stories, since they can create more, test more, etc.?
    • Do we start to see companies create skunkworks teams/groups that try to adopt this approach? 
    • Are product managers ready to have zero-backlogs and the demand for new ideas to increase?

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Siqi Chen (@blader, CEO/CFO @Runwayco), talks about his journey from JPL developer to Founder of a financial planning and analysis (FP&A) startup. We focus on how to build products that customers crave and how a customer-centric view differs from traditional product management.

SHOW: 923

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #923 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Runway website
• Behind What Seems Like an Overnight Success (video)

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Siqi. First, your combination of technical and business/financial background is fascinating. How did you go from coding at NASA to Head of Product at Zynga to CEO/CFO for a finance platform startup? Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - One thing I’ve noticed as a trend in your background is the core concept of building. What has been your philosophy in building products? How do you build products that customers demand?

Topic 3 -  Let’s talk about AI and AGI for a moment. We hear all the time how disruptive this will be. What are your thoughts here, and how do we develop both adaptability and resiliency to new technologies?

Topic 4 - Let’s talk FP&A (financial planning & analysis). Our core listeners out there tend to skew more towards the tech and infrastructure side, but a core theme of this show is always to be learning as much of the business as possible to apply those concepts. As someone with a background in both worlds, plus now running an FP&A startup, what do you wish folks on the technical side of the house knew more about to make their jobs easier?

Topic 5 - We posted a link in the show notes for a video you did on the “overnight success” of Runway. It was a good representation and origin story of how something can go viral with the right mindset and product-market fit. Tell everyone about that as Runway approaches 5 years now. 

Topic 6 - What is your biggest challenge in the FP&A space today? Is it AI? We’ve seen a lot of AI disruption in coding, legal, and other areas requiring deep data pool insights. Is this any different?

FEEDBACK?

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Tech CEOs are making bold proclamations, from WhyQ to It is what it is. How will companies navigate this spectrum as they seek innovation, accountability and profitability throughout 2025? 

SHOW: 922

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #922 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Amazon 2024 CEO Letter to Shareholders - A Why Culture
• Uber CEO says “it is what it is” about changing benefits

WHEN DOES WHY BECOME IT IS WHAT IT IS? 

• Communicating is difficult, especially as the company grows in size (or is remote)
• Communicating change is difficult, even when communication channels are strong
• Outside of finance, tech tends to pay at the high end of salaries and perks
• We’re in an interesting time of challenging economics and pressure from AI 
• Perks are difficult to pull back, because business success isn’t evenly rewarded
• Why is positioned as open culture, or strategy, but it’s also about day-to-day behavior
• It is what it is a decision, but it’s also accountability and continued viability
• Most leaders are going to have to manage between Why and It is what it is in 2025
• Most workers are going to have to work between Why and It is what it is in 2025

FEEDBACK?

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Aaron Delp, Brian Gracely, and Brandon Whichard discuss the top stories in Cloud and AI from April 2025, including OpenAI, MCP, VibeCoding and Hyperscaler earnings. 

SHOW: 921

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #921 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Link to April 2025 News and Articles

FEEDBACK?

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As more companies begin to adopt AI into their workforce and day-to-day processes, it will be interesting to watch how their learning curve  is spread across knowledge workers. 

SHOW: 920

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #920 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• AI Horseless Carriages (AI user-experiences)

HOW WILL WE VIEW AN AI AGENT IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMANS OR “USERS”

• The low-hanging fruit, simple on-ramp is the key to early AI adoption 
• Google and Microsoft are already showing revenue increases, likely through the productivity apps bundling
• Expect prices to increase slowly, but frequently as adoption happens and companies get used to the knowledge worker productivity increases (or expectations)
• Curious how knowledge workers are adopting, sharing, increasing their learning curve
• Sharing still seems to be lacking within the AI tools. Not just sharing of an individual task, but sharing of learning curves, best practices, datasets
• Is there a dataset collection opportunity? This feels like Big Data or Data Lake 5.0. 

FEEDBACK?

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Mark Freydl (CEO/Founder @codiacio) talks about the challenges of blending IaaC, DevOps and Platform Engineering to drive efficient software development lifecycles.

SHOW: 919

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #919 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK:  http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

• Codiac website
• Codiac at Tech Field Day

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Mark. Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - Before we dig into the tech, let’s start with the problem. What problem were you seeing in software development that wasn’t being solved with IaaC, Platform Engineering, DevOps, etc.? Where does SDLC fit into this? 

Topic 3 - Have microservices helped or hurt? We hear all the time about the loose coupling of microservices and benefits towards production, but doesn’t that also make it harder to develop? How do you recreate an environment where you are dependent on a bunch of microservices in a development pipeline?

Topic 4 - I get the feeling this is all about removing friction. But where and how? I see Kubernetes as a blessing and curse many times. It’s an awesome application platform, as long as you aren’t the one that has to do the care and feeding on it. Thoughts?

Topic 5 - The goal here I believe is a closed loop system that is beneficial for developers and SRE’s, but how do you balance closed loops vs. extensibility and abstraction of different platforms to the systems that are truly write once.

Topic 6 - How does the culture and relationships in the org have to change to meet the changes in the tech?

FEEDBACK?

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There is a lot of excitement around AI Agents.  Here are five questions we're asking ourselves about how AI Agents will be used and managed. 

SHOW: 918

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #918 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Anthropic warns that fully AI employees are a year away
• AuthZ Agents Chaos
• Why we need to get AuthZ right
• AI Agent Gateway and AI Agent Mesh
• Auth in the age of AI Agent (Cloudcast Eps. 885)
• Trust will make or break AI Agents 
• Introducing the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A - Google)
• Introducing the Model Context Protocol (MCP - Anthroopic)
• Top 9 AI Agent Frameworks

HOW WILL WE VIEW AN AI AGENT IN THE CONTEXT OF HUMANS OR “USERS”

• [Who] How is an AI agent represented in the context of a person, a group, an organization? 
• [What] How will we audit Agent created data or content? Will we need a way to label Agent-created information?
• [Where] Will we have agents that are focused on non-human-interactions (e.g. optimizations) vs. human-interactions (e.g. empathy)?
• [When] Are today’s auth systems able to manage AI agents, or will they need to be re-engineered to deal with different scale, granularity of actions?
• [Why] Why will we choose an Agent (as the implementation) over another form or working on a problem?
• [How] Are today’s auth systems able to manage AI agents, or will they need to be re-engineered to deal with different scale, granularity of actions?

FEEDBACK?

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Taylor Pechacek (Head of Product, API Collaboration Core @getpostman) talks about APIs, AI, and MCP (Model Context Protocol). We cover what is top of mind for developers and what has shifted in the industry recently.

SHOW: 917

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #917 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET 

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST:  "CLOUDCAST BASICS" 

SPONSORS:

• Try Postman AI Agent Builder Today
• Cut Enterprise IT Support Costs by 30-50% with US Cloud

SHOW NOTES:

• Postman - The World’s Leading API Platform
• OpenAPI Specification
• MCP - Model Context Protocol (Anthropic)

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a bit about your background, and what you focus on these days at Postman? Tell us a little bit about Postman, for our audience that might not be familiar. 

Topic 2 - Let’s begin with some broader concepts - in today’s world, where does a developer interact with software vs. an API - what are the most important things they have to think about?

Topic 3 - What are the standards that are most important for developers these days? Where does OpenAPI Spec fit into that space?

Topic 4 - APIs are now so pervasive. What are the best practices for API usage patterns and governance? What are some of the things that Postman is doing to improve this for developers and companies?

Topic 5 - Let’s talk a little bit about how you’re seeing AI change how developers work, and if/how AI is impacting APIs.

Topic 6 - Help us understand how you expect to see APIs interacting with AI Agents. What will the bigger picture look like for these interactions, and how will they be different than current API interactions?

Topic 7 - Can we finish by talking about MCP (Model Context Protocol) a little bit? This is a new standard that is being adopted by many companies. 

FEEDBACK?

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