• Verizon is cutting 13,000 jobs
• Nvidia reports 62% sales hike in Q3
• European digital sovereignty is gathering momentum

In today’s industry news roundup: US telco Verizon is reducing its workforce by more than 13,000 posts and franchising retail stores to help cut costs; Nvidia’s numbers keep on rising; SAP teams with French AI firms to put their collective heft behind European digital sovereignty efforts; and much more!

Verizon is to cull more than 13,000 jobs, about 13% of its workforce, as part of a new cost-cutting programme, reports Reuters, which has seen an internal memo sent to staff by the telco’s new CEO Dan Schulman, who unexpectedly took over from Hans Vestberg in early October. The operator will also reduce the number of contractors it uses and convert 179 corporate-owned retail stores into franchised operations, as well as close one retail outlet, according to Reuters. The cuts were expected, as speculation had been swirling last week that a big headcount reduction was being planned. Schulman wrote: "Our current cost structure limits our ability to invest significantly in our customer value proposition. We must simplify our operations to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.” The operator has apparently stated that the cuts are not being made due to its increasing use of AI to introduce automated processes. 

Another quarter, another set of eye-watering numbers from Nvidia, the AI hardware and software company that is influencing a great deal of the world’s digital strategies and investments these days. The company has reported revenues of $57bn for the third quarter that ended 26 October, up by 62% year on year. Not one to shy away from the public stage or steer clear of headline-grabbing statements, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, stated: “Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out. Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference – each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast – with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once,” he concluded in a statement that actually wouldn’t hold up in court. (I can tell you now, AI did not grind my beans and make my quadruple espresso this morning!) What would be accepted as fact, though, is that Nvidia is making a lot of money. Its third-quarter operating profit topped $36bn, up 65%, while its net profit hit $31.2bn. The numbers are extraordinary and, right now, driven by the still ongoing investment levels in datacentre compute. Will that continue at its current pace? That’s really where the questions related to the ‘AI bubble’ lie. Meanwhile, Nvidia continues to sow its seeds and ensure it has other growth areas for the future, hence its recent investment in Nokia.   

Momentum behind Europe’s digital sovereignty efforts, which were boosted earlier this week by a regional collaboration spearheaded by Deutsche Telekom and Orange,  appears to be growing. Giant German software firm SAP, which is one of the region’s biggest cloud services players, has forged a “collaboration with France’s AI sector”, including partnerships with Capgemini, Bleu (a sovereign cloud venture formed in 2021 by Orange and Capgemini) and Mistral AI. SAP will combine its enterprise application expertise with “France’s vibrant AI ecosystem to create secure, scalable, AI-driven sovereign cloud solutions that protect data and intellectual property while advancing Europe’s digital transformation,” the German company stated in this announcement. Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE, stated: “Europe’s competitiveness depends on its ability to innovate without compromise by combining technological excellence with full digital sovereignty. By joining forces with France’s world-class AI ecosystem, SAP is helping to build a trusted digital foundation for Europe where innovation is open, data is protected and technology truly serves people and progress.” SAP further stated that the partnerships form a key part of its broader SAP sovereign cloud solutions “to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty and unlock the potential of AI.” It added: “SAP is accelerating its investment in European sovereignty, deploying the SAP Cloud Infrastructure service across local datacentres and allocating over €20bn to sovereign cloud and AI solutions. By combining trusted governance and rigorous compliance with the ability to maintain control over data and assets while deploying some of the best available technologies on European terms, SAP is creating a resilient digital foundation for governments, public institutions and enterprises under European control.” Strategy, know-how and capital! A good combo – now let’s see if Europe can get its collective act together and offer something meaningful to its companies and residents.

On a related note… Eviden, the Atos Group‘s advanced computing, cybersecurity, mission-critical systems and vision AI business, has been victorious following a call for projects from the European Cybersecurity Competence Center and Network (ECCC) to “improve the cyber protection and resilience of European critical infrastructures,” the company announced. The ECCC initiative “aims to develop a strong and coherent community around cybersecurity issues by strengthening collaboration, knowledge sharing and the deployment of innovative cybersecurity solutions on a European scale.” The CIPHER (Cybersecurity Intelligence, Protection and Holistic Enterprise Resilience) consortium, which is led by Eviden, will “directly contribute to the ECCC’s mission to strengthen Europe’s digital resilience by providing a standardised, collaborative facility for testing, validating and certifying the cybersecurity posture of essential service operators.” CIPHER brings together 13 partners from 7 European countries – including critical infrastructure operators, research organisations, and cybersecurity SMEs – “ensuring a strong, multi-sectoral approach to advancing Europe’s cyber resilience,” noted Eviden. 

Cybersecurity systems vendor Palo Alto Networks is to acquire Chronosphere, a “next-generation observability platform built to scale for the AI era”, for $3.35bn in cash and stock, the company announced. The move will further Palo Alto’s “mission to address the critical data demands of the AI era” and strengthen its “ability to help organisations navigate a world where modern applications and AI workloads demand a unified data and security foundation,” the company stated. Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO at Palo Alto Networks, commented: “The foundational requirement for every modern AI datacentre is constant uptime and resilience, which demands real-time, always-on observability delivered at the right cost. Chronosphere was built to scale for the data demands of the AI era from day one, which is why it is chosen by leading AI-native and born-in-the-cloud organisations. And once we leverage AgentiX with Chronosphere, we will take observability from simple dashboards to real-time, agentic remediation. We are excited to not just enter this space but to disrupt it.”

– The staff, TelecomTV