Research Notes

Qualcomm Acquires PickNik Robotics, Bolsters Its Physical AI Software Stack

Steve McDowell September 23, 2026

Qualcomm announced at ROSCon Toronto an agreement to acquire PickNik,the Boulder, Colorado-based company that stewards MoveIt, one of the most widely adopted open-source manipulation frameworks in the Robot Operating System (ROS) ecosystem.

VAST Data Brings Confidential Compute to AI with DataEnclave

Steve McDowell September 23, 2026

VAST Data announced its new VAST DataEnclave, a confidential compute capability for AI workloads within the VAST DataEngine, which runs AI models in hardware-isolated environments built on NVIDIA Confidential Computing. The new capability decrypts model weights and enterprise data only within protected CPU and GPU memory, and only after cryptographic attestation confirms that the environment meets policies set by each asset’s owner.

Nutanix Acquires Ryax, Brings GPU-Aware Scheduling to Its Agentic AI Stack

Steve McDowell September 22, 2026

Nutanix announced its acquisition of Ryax Technologies, a French developer of AI-driven compute orchestration and workload-scheduling software, for an undisclosed amount. Nutanix plans to integrate Ryax’s GPU utilization and smart scheduling technologies into future releases of the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) and Nutanix Enterprise AI (NAI).

WEKA and Backblaze Combine Performance and Capacity Storage for AI Data Pipelines

Steve McDowell September 21, 2026

WEKA and Backblaze recently announced a validated two-tier storage architecture for AI workloads. The solution pairs WEKA NeuralMesh, a high-performance parallel file system designed for GPU-fed workloads, with Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, an object storage service for large-scale data retention.

Splunk .conf26: Building the Trust Layer for Agentic AI

Steve McDowell September 21, 2026

Splunk .conf26 recap: Cisco debuts agentic SOC, AI observability, and a unified data fabric to govern autonomous AI agents at scale.

Qualcomm & AWS Ink Multi-Generation Deal for Custom AI Silicon & Optical Connectivity

Steve McDowell September 9, 2026

Qualcomm and Amazon Web Services announced a multi-generation agreement covering custom AI inference silicon and 1.6T optical connectivity for AWS data centers. The deal is structured around a warrant for up to 25 million Qualcomm shares at $161.26 per share, vesting as AWS meets purchase milestones, with a $60 billion ceiling on silicon and connectivity purchases through 2036.