The Week of July 13–17: What happened, what matters, what

The Week of July 13–17: What happened, what matters, what's next

In this week's roundup: IBM's shares take a nosedive, TSMC increases AI chip investment in the US, and the UK issues new regulations for cloud providers.

At InformationWeek, we're focused on helping technology leaders understand what happens after the headline — but the headlines still matter. They influence vendor roadmaps, investment priorities, regulatory discussions and the conversations happening inside IT organizations every day.

Each week, we'll highlight a handful of new developments that stood out across the industry, explain why they matter beyond the news cycle, and point you toward some of InformationWeek's latest reporting that adds context to the trends shaping enterprise technology.

While SaaS provider IBM had a rocky week on the stock market, AI chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) had a stellar Q2. The contrast in market performance underscores the rise of AI while SaaS providers struggle to keep pace with changing customer demands. Later this month, Alphabet, IBM, ServiceNow and Apple are among the major tech companies scheduled to release earnings reports. Meanwhile, the U.S. and U.K. governments have launched efforts to improve cybersecurity efforts in the AI era and increase regulations for cloud service providers, respectively.

Here are the developments worth watching this week.

News Highlights July 13-17

IBM's shares plummet by 25%

What happened: IBM's shares took the biggest drop in the company's history, resulting in a $69 billion loss of its market value in a single day. For Q2, IBM reported software revenue up by 5%, but infrastructure revenue was down 7% compared with the previous quarter. The company noted that customers are shifting spending "toward servers, storage, and memory purchases" amid the memory chip shortage that began earlier this year.

Why it matters: The drop doesn't bode well, as rumblings over the SaaS-pocalypse — the fear that AI will make SaaS obsolete — grow louder. The shift in spending by IBM's customers toward AI investments and securing memory storage are taking a toll on IBM's bottom line. Still, executives like Intuit's Chief AI Officer Ashok Srivastava see AI as an opportunity for SaaS providers to speed up operations and deliver new features to customers.

TSMC earmarks $100B toward US investment

What happened: Chip giant TSMC plans to invest a fresh $100 billion in the U.S., raising its total U.S. investment to $265 billion. The investment will support development of four additional semiconductor manufacturing facilities, for a total of 12 semiconductor and packaging facilities in Arizona . TSMC had a banner Q2, with revenue up over 30% year-over-year, to $40.2 billion USD.

Why it matters: As the largest manufacturer of AI chips, TSMC's investment in U,S. manufacturing underscores the ever-increasing demand for AI compute. However, Meta recently announced that the company is considering offering surplus AI computing capacity through its cloud business, pointing to a maturing AI market where access to compute isn't the only competitive advantage for enterprises operating in the AI era.

White House launches AI cybersecurity group

What happened: The White House is working with open source companies and critical infrastructure organizations to create an AI and cybersecurity coordination group to share information on potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities exposed by AI. In a statement, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said the Treasury Department is working closely with the "private sector to safeguard our financial institutions, close vulnerabilities, and protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system."

Why it matters: The creation of this cybersecurity group is the federal government's latest effort to regulate the use of AI. The speed with which vulnerabilities can now be identified and exploited, as a result of AI, makes vulnerability management much more challenging for CIOs and CISOs.

This cybersecurity challenge was underscored in April, when Anthropic launched Claude Mythos Preview to a select group of open source, technology and cybersecurity companies to test the AI model. Mythos is capable of identifying, generating and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. As a result, security teams have a significantly shorter timeline to address AI-based threats. Fortunately, AI isn't only being used by bad actors to generate threats — enterprise security teams can upskill to use AI as part of their security strategy.

UK government designates cloud providers' operations as critical to financial sector

What happened: The U.K. government announced that Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle are now designated as "Critical Third Parties (CTPs)," which means the Bank of England, Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority will oversee critical services the cloud providers provide to the financial sector. The CTPs will be under the government's regulatory oversight in an effort to improve protection of the U.K.'s financial system, and to ensure they have measures in place to "identify, manage and recover from operational disruption affecting critical services used across the financial sector," according to the U.K. government.

Why it matters: The U.K. government's move to further regulate cloud providers demonstrates the critical nature of cloud services to support the financial system. The U.K. government noted that "disruption at a major supplier could affect multiple firms at the same time, potentially impacting services customers depend on." This increased regulation underscores the importance of protecting private enterprise data from bad actors.

From InformationWeek: Worth the read

You'll find a wealth of insight and analysis on the InformationWeek site, but here are a few curated picks from the week that should be at the top of your reading list.

InformationWeek Podcast: Is quantum readiness worth a CIO's effort?

In this episode of the InformationWeek Podcast, Pal Narayanan, chief digital and information officer at Kenco, and Rishi Kaushal, CIO of Entrust, discuss where quantum computing resides on their radar and how they are preparing for its full arrival.

Apple's OpenAI lawsuit signals a new AI battleground: Talent

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and several former Apple employees regarding trade-secret theft. The lawsuit arrives at a time when the AI industry is wrestling with a broader question about where competitive advantage truly lies. As frontier AI becomes more widely available, the conversation is shifting from who can access the technology to who can apply it most effectively. And that increasingly comes down to employee skill sets and institutional knowledge.

Why traditional project management doesn't work for AI projects

AI projects don't fit neatly into traditional IT project management. AI development is continuous, data-centric and iterative, making it difficult to manage with traditional project methods. The question facing CIOs and project managers remains: What changes should be made to traditional project management methodology to accommodate the unique nature of AI?

Inside GlobalFoundries' plan to industrialize quantum hardware

GlobalFoundries' Quantum Technology Solutions business unit launched on May 21 as the U.S. Department of Commerce announced its intent to invest $375 million to support GlobalFoundries' quantum venture. The funding is part of the federal government's $2 billion initiative to support the domestic quantum computing industry and boost manufacturing capacity. A main goal of the effort is to scale quantum computing systems to the point where they can address high-value use cases in business and government.

Coming up: Dates to watch

July 21-23 — The Chief Data Officer and Information Quality (CDOIQ) Symposium is an in-person event taking place in Cambridge, Mass. The agenda covers data management and agentic AI, and includes speakers from