Research Notes

Oracle APEX AI Application Generator: Enterprise Governance for AI Code

Steve McDowell August 12, 2026

Oracle released the APEX AI Application Generator as the centerpiece of Oracle APEX 26.1, a GA release of its low-code development platform for Oracle Database. The release pairs generative AI with APEXlang, a structured, human-readable specification for an APEX application.

Oracle Base Database Cloud@Customer Extends Cloud Economics to Mid-Sized and Distributed Workloads

Steve McDowell July 24, 2026

Oracle recently announced Oracle Base Database Cloud@Customer, a hybrid cloud database service that extends the company’s Cloud@Customer portfolio to include mid-sized and departmental workloads. The

IBM Acquires HRL Laboratories, Adds Silicon-Spin Qubits to Its Quantum Portfolio

Steve McDowell July 23, 2026

IBM announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire HRL Laboratories, a research and development institution jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors since

AMD Launches Helios Rack-Scale Platform, MI400 Series and Strong Partnerships

Steve McDowell July 23, 2026

AMD used its Advancing AI 2026 conference in San Francisco on July 22-23 to launch a full-stack of AI infrastructure products spanning silicon, rack-scale systems, and developer software. The centerpiece is AMD Helios, the company’s first fully integrated rack-scale AI system, which combines 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs, 18 sixth-generation EPYC “Venice” CPUs, Pensando networking, and ROCm software into a single liquid-cooled rack rated at up to 2.9 exaflops of FP4 inference performance.

WEKA NeuralMesh 6 & WEKApod 3: Density, KV Cache, and AI Economics

Steve McDowell July 21, 2026

WEKA has announced two related products: NeuralMesh 6, the sixth generation of its core software platform, and WEKApod 3, a third-generation family of storage appliances built on WEKA-designed hardware.

The two announcements arrive together and are intended to be evaluated as a single system. NeuralMesh 6 remains deployable on customer-selected hardware, while WEKApod 3 is WEKA’s turnkey platform, shipping with the software preinstalled.

Why NetApp Acquired DataPelago: Nucleus and Its Enterprise AI Strategy

Steve McDowell July 17, 2026

NetApp announced the acquisition of DataPelago, a Sunnyvale, California-based startup that builds a data processing engine called Nucleus (formerly marketed as the Universal Data Processing Engine). DataPelago will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of NetApp. NetApp did not disclose the financial terms.