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The agentic era is forcing a reset in enterprise architecture. Agents taking action go far beyond just analyzing data living in lakehouses. Agents acting on behalf of humans, continuously, at machine scale bring new architectural requirements to the enterprise. The so-called “modern data stack” as most organizations know it, has become a sort of “new legacy.” No longer can organizations rely on stitched-together systems, fragmented governance, batch pipelines, and historical security boundaries. As we move from human-scale dashboards to agent-scale execution, fragmentation becomes an operational and compliance risk. This is where we believe Google has an underappreciated advantage. Our research indicates the winning architectures in the agentic era will be the ones that operate as a coherent, end-to-end system — where the model, the cognitive engine, and the infrastructure are tightly integrated and share a single trusted boundary, consistent security controls, and an efficient cost structure that can generate tokens in volume but doesn’t collapse under thousands of agent interactions per minute. This is the premise behind our Google thesis. We believe Google is in a strong position to build on decades of infrastructure and data excellence and push toward an AI powered cloud that goes beyond a reactive system of intelligence to one that takes action at scale. Essentially we see Google as one of the companies best positioned to execute on our vision of delivering a real-time digital representation of an enterprise. One that blends the power of generative AI with trusted and consistent determinism to deliver real time actions that leverage both structured and unstructured and can execute transactions as scale. 

Geopolitical dislocations are ripping through the stock market and are filtering down to IT budgets in the form of increased uncertainty. It seems that every quarter of budget optimism is followed with some external event that causes organizations to tighten their belts. Specifically, we’ve seen the increased momentum in January CIO sentiment on spending, pull back as war, oil prices, the threat of inflation and even the prospect of Fed tightening now loom larger. While big tech players continue to spend massively on CAPEX, and the genuine enthusiasm from this month’s Nvidia GTC and RSAC events is still being felt, mainstream enterprises are once again expressing caution in their spending intentions. In addition to economic and world affairs, AI success still eludes most mainstream organizations. Our observation is the tech industry is in the third inning of the AI wave, which started in earnest mid last decade with Deep Mind and other significant research milestones that led to the ChatGPT and subsequent moments like Claude Code and OpenClaw. Yet organizations are still in the first inning. The data suggests that while virtually all firms are leaning into AI, those realizing ROI at scale remain the minority. While leading thinkers like Jensen Huang advise not focusing on ROI and letting innovation flourish irrespective of hard dollar returns, the reality is in the land of enterprise customers, tangible returns and risk management remain key governors of spending. 

We know that RSAC 2026 will be an AI-heavy show. While we are going to hear the “AI will change everything” narrative, our premise is that security leaders are being asked to operationalize AI in an environment where complexity is rising faster than control. Organizations are still struggling to consolidate the sprawl of tools in their security stacks, and at the same time apply zero trust principles. To avoid AI becoming yet another layer, organizations must tie AI to clear outcomes and integrate intelligence into operating processes.

Dave Vellante is joined by John Furrier from theCUBE's set at MWC 26 Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain for this weeks Breaking Analysis

Hello and welcome to this Breaking Analysis where top analysts of theCUBE Research team including myself, Paul Nashawaty, Bob Laliberte, Sam Weston, Scott Hebner and Christophe Bertrand share our predictions for 2026 and beyond. 

In this Breaking Analysis we squint through the statements made by company managements on this week's earnings calls, including what we see as some assumptions that conflict with our scenario for how the AI buildout will evolve. In particular, while operators are understandably focused on Nvidia’s gross margins, we believe observers are underestimating the cost advantages that Nvidia will have relative to GPU alternatives, including those from AMD, Intel and hyperscalers. 

In this Breaking Analysis we unpack nuggets from Microsoft’s Q2 2026 earnings print and explain why in our view, the street’s negative reaction misses the bigger picture.

The predictions in this episode are the result of a collaboration between theCUBE Research and Enterprise Technology Research (ETR). We base our predictions on market insights from theCUBE Research and the proprietary market intelligence from ETR’s Technology Spending Intentions Survey (TSIS) and its macro drilldown data, derived from surveys of more than 1,700 business technology leaders each quarter. 

Welcome to the third inning of the modern AI era and welcome to this week's theCUBE Research Insights, powered by ETR. In this special Breaking Analysis we assess the shift from the shock of “what is this Gen AI thing?” to “how do we make it work for us?” And how can we get agents to reliably take action to deliver the productivity gains the tech industry has promised.  To do so, we're pleased to host our fifth annual data predictions power panel with collaborators from the Cube Collective, members of the Data Gang and some of the industry’s leading data analysts. With us today are five industry experts focused on data and related topics. Sanjeev Mohan of Sanjmo, Tony Bear of DB Insight, Dave Menninger of ISG Research, Kevin Petrie of BARC, and Andrew Brust of Blue Badge Insights.

At CES 2026, Jensen Huang once again reset the economics of AI factories. In particular, despite recent industry narratives that Nvidia’s moat is eroding, our assessment is the company has further solidified its position as the hardware and software standard for the next generation of computing. In the same way Intel and Microsoft dominated the Moore’s Law era, we believe Nvidia will be the mainspring of tech innovation for the foreseeable future. Importantly, the previous era saw a doubling of performance every two years. Today Nvidia is driving annual performance improvements of 5X, throughput of 10X…driving token demand of 15X via Jevons Paradox.

In this Breaking Analysis, David Floyer and I set forth our thinking around what we believe is a misplaced narrative in the market. We’ll explain what we think the market is missing and why NVIDIA’s forthcoming product lineup will reset the narrative. We’ll also look at the economics of search, LLMs and chatbots and share why OpenAI, while facing many challenges, is in a stronger position than many believe; and why Google, while clearly a leader in AI, remains challenged to preserve what many believe is the greatest business in the history of the technology business.

Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante

Much attention has been focused in the news on the useful life of GPUs. While the pervasive narrative suggests GPUs have a short lifespan, and operators are “cooking the books,” our research suggests that GPUs, like CPUs before, have a significantly longer useful life than many claim.