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Hello!
The cloud computing wars are heating up.
Thomas Kurian, the new CEO of Google Cloud who came from rival Oracle, already seems to be having an impact, with Googlers and startup execs telling Rosalie Chan that he's making headway three months in to the job.
"Until now, they were losing the war," Solo.io CEO and founder Idit Levine told Chan. "The way Google is playing, they're saying, this is the community company. They're branding themselves better and going multi-cloud."
He's pushing hard to make Kubernetes, one of Google's most popular cloud technologies, even more important to developers. Aparna Sinha, group product manager of Kubernetes and Cloud Services Platform, told Chan that Kubernetes needs to become "ubiquitous."
And the company just made a big hire, bringing in a former SAP executive to try and win bigger customers.
Meanwhile, over at Amazon Web Services, the Aurora database product continues to grow at a rapid rate. Julie Bort talked to Debanjan Saha, the general manager who built and manages Aurora, who said it "feels great" to be taking on Oracle head-to-head in the database market.
Elsewhere, Microsoft just took an important step to take on Amazon for a crucial winner-take-all $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract with the Pentagon. Amazon was once considered a shoo-in to win the JEDI contract but after a lot of protests by the tech industry, Microsoft now has a real shot.
Meanwhile, IBM is preparing to close its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, but Wall Street has "real question marks" after its "mediocre" quarter.
Lastly, Business Insider just week published a list of the 100 people transforming business. You'll find interviews with many of those on the list - including NYSE president Stacey Cunningham, Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block, and Burger King CMO Fernando Machado - below.
What would you like this email to include? What have we missed? You can reach me at mturner@businessinsider.com.
-Matt
Quote of the week
"I think this is going to untap the market." - Jonathan Sherman, a partner at the law firm Cassels Brock who worked on Canopy Growth's $3.4 billion purchase of the US marijuana cultivator Acreage Holdings, on the potential for more deals in the marijuana space.
In conversation
- Dan DeFrancesco talked to Stacey Cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, about how the 226-year-old company is merging tech with humans.
- Dan also talked to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the cofounders of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, about the challenges that go with bringing regulation to an industry that at times doesn't want it.
- Matt Weinberger talked to John Collison, president of Stripe, about how payments tech could "change the trajectory of the internet economy."
- Matt also talked to Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block about how the $124 billion cloud company's "fourth" act is using AI to give its customers the "Holy Grail."
- Troy Wolverton talked to Howie Liu, cofounder at Airtable, about why he and his cofounders decided on a corporate culture before the company even had a product.
- Abby Jackson talked to Hulu CEO Randy Freer about why he wants to make it easier for customers to switch back and forth between service tiers.
- Lucia Moses talked to Jeff Raider, who helped found Warby Parker and Harry's, about how he decides which industry to disrupt next.
- Tanya Dua talked to Fernando Machado, the global chief marketing officer of Burger King, about why he doesn't think consulting firms have much creative prowess.
- Lydia Ramsey talked to Rushika Fernandopulle, the CEO of Iora Health, who's raised more than $250 million to create a new kind of clinic that charges a monthly fee.
- Jason Guerrasio talked to Alamo Drafthouse cofounder and CEO Tim League about his strategy for the Manhattan and Los Angeles movie theaters he's opening this year.
Finance and Investing
Start-up Blend has been working toward an ambitious goal: reducing the mortgage-application process to a single tap on a smartphone.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act touched off a rally in an often overlooked part of the market, and Wells Fargo says it's not slowing down.
Individual investors are so impressed by BlackRock's risk evaluation technology that they're moving their money to the financial advisors who use it.
Tech, Media, Telecoms
On a cold February morning in a quiet corner of HQ Trivia's New York headquarters, one of the company's young star managers was talking softly to one of the earliest employees.
When Zoom priced its IPO on Wednesday evening, the video conferencing platform garnered a valuation of $9.2 billion, and founding CEO Eric Yuan saw a huge windfall.
Amazon is trying to challenge Facebook's and Google's dominance in digital advertising, introducing ad formats like video and display.
Healthcare, Retail, Transportation
The world's leading drug companies are racing to capitalize on the $35 billion market for an emerging disease believed to affect 16 million Americans.
Adidas is closing the loop and creating new opportunities.
Since launching its ads platform in 2012, the Google-owned navigation app Waze has run ad campaigns for several local and big-name advertisers. Now, it's trying to become a bigger advertising platform.