It was another whirlwind week of content for theCUBE, with tons of interesting content coming out of Google Cloud Next 2024.

Conversations on the show floor brought much to mind for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) on the latest episode of the CUBE podcast. Some might forget that June 6 will mark the 10th anniversary of when Kubernetes was launched. There was a time when its success was far from certain, according to Vellante.

“I would go so far as to say that if Google didn’t open-source Kubernetes and give that gift to the world, it would’ve been completely irrelevant in the cloud,” Vellante said. “We all know it’s a distant third … but the AI is changing the game — new game, new rules. Without Kubernetes, Google would’ve been just completely irrelevant.”

In fact, the entire cloud-native industry might not have been relevant, according to Furrier. That’s because of what Kubernetes made possible.

“It basically creates the enablement for things like more container usage, serverless,” Furrier said. “Kubernetes is a really important technology that has made cloud-native really work at cloud scale. You saw that really, really, really, prominent at Google Next. It was really interesting to see that.”

Andy Jassy shows leadership in new interview

This week, Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Andy Jassy published his latest annual letter to shareholders, spotlighting AI growth. He also joined CNBC for an interview, delivering insight on his view of the company’s failed iRobot deal.

“This is my takeaway: He basically said to the world, ‘Look, we tried to buy a company. We thought there were synergies, and it got rejected in the EU and the U.S. told us they would reject it too. They were worried about us having unfair business practices,’” Furrier said. “Meanwhile, in order to do the product that they make, you have to have data on everyone’s home. And so you don’t trust an American company, but yet you’ll trust these Chinese companies?”

The whole thing was absurd, according to Vellante. During the interview, Jassy also suggested that such a move overstepped bounds and probably did not follow the law.

“I hope they challenge that in court,” Vellante said. “The problem is the current sentiment in this administration is to just pretty much block everything, which is, to me, it’s just swung too far.”

On another note, Jassy has done exactly what he said he was going to do with Amazon, according to Vellante. That’s a big change from in 2022, when people were calling for his head, Vellante noted.

“Jassy did exactly what we said he was going to do; he was going to cut costs, naturally. He was going to make sure that the retail business started cranking again. He’s doing media deals,” Vellante said. “Thursday Night Football is a huge win for those guys. He’s got advertising revenue kicking in.”

All told, Amazon is back with enormous runway, which deserves kudos, according to Vellante.

“Great leadership, everything we thought he would do and more,” he said.

Is Nvidia a monopoly?

Some in the industry have mentioned that they don’t believe that Nvidia Corp. is a monopoly, according to Furrier. But where else is one going to get a GPU to the class of what Nvidia makes?

“You saw Intel trying to do Gaudi and doing some benchmarks against Nvidia’s previous generation — Blackwell’s not out yet,” Vellante said. They’ve got over probably 80% share of the high-end GPU market. Maybe closer even to 100%. They’ve got complete pricing power.”

The company has 77% gross margins and a one-year backlog. If one doesn’t write a check to the company for $10 million, they won’t even return phone calls, according to Vellante. “You’re never going to see a GPU. That’s a monopoly,” Vellante said. “The question is, are they going to keep their monopoly, and how are they going to keep their monopoly?”

The whole industry wants competition for Nvidia, according to Vellante. But when it comes to the packaging and the Mellanox move that they made years ago, it’s going to take a long time for people to unseat that.

“We sat through Charlie Kawwas’ presentation at Broadcom. We know what their strategy is with ultra ethernet and where they’re winning with connectivity,” Vellante said. “But it’s going to take a long time for the XPU folks to catch up, in my opinion, to Nvidia. I think they will have a monopoly for, at least in this market… five years. It could be longer.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Rob Hof, editor-in-chief at SiliconANGLE Media
Andy Jassy, president and CEO of Amazon
Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital
Stu Miniman, senior director of market insights for hybrid platforms at Red Hat
Craig McLuckie, co-founder and CEO of stacklok
Brendan Burns, CVP at Microsoft
David Floyer, analyst emeritus at theCUBE Research
Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector
Charles Fitzgerald, consultative strategist and investor
Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS
Andrew Ross Sorkin, American journalist and author
Lina Khan, chair of the FTC
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla
Joe Rogan, commentator and podcaster
Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms
Frank Slootman, chairman of the board of directors at Snowflake
Jason Calacanis, internet entrepreneur and co-host at All-In
Fidelma Russo, EVP/GM for hybrid cloud and CTO of HPE
Patrick Osborne, SVP and GM for cloud data infrastructure and HPE Storage at HPE
Jim Jackson, CMO of HPE
Matt Baker, SVP for activating AI strategy at Dell Technologies
Michael Dell, chairman and CEO at Dell Technologies
Vivek Mohindra, SVP for corporate strategy at Dell Technologies
Yvonne McGill, CFO of Dell Technologies
Charlie Kawwas, president at Broadcom
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel
Savannah Peterson, founder and chief unicorn at Savvy Millennial and host of theCUBE
Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Rebecca Knight, journalist and host of theCUBE
Dustin Kirkland, experienced engineer, product manager, executive and advisor

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Photo: SiliconANGLE