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The tech landscape continues to grapple with balancing widespread calls for increased AI adoption with how to ensure we have the infrastructure and resources to meet demand. The narrative that is starting to proliferate centers on the tangible impact of this push and pull. The Wall Street Journal reported that some Silicon Valley workers are clocking 80-100 hours to ensure a competitor in AI development doesn’t best them. Employees who rely heavily on AI were halted almost entirely by the recent AWS outage. 72% of the S&P 500 mention AI as a material risk on their 10-Ks this year. The harder we push on AI, the harder it seems to be pushing back on us, and a solution is a long way off.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR COMMS PROS
- Seed your cybersecurity POVs often. Media are covering solutions like CrowdStrike and NVIDIA’s open-source autonomous agent, which promises to help filter and prioritize alerts. These solutions address only a small part of a huge problem, underscoring the need for multiple perspectives in AI and cybersecurity conversations.
- Data drives coverage. Media are looking for hard numbers to indicate AI’s positive and negative impacts, and they’re relying on it for storytelling.
- Look at earnings to shape the narrative. AI leadership is starting to show up in earnings with NVIDIA’s record $5T valuation and Apple’s mixed Q3 earnings. Analysts are noting continued caution around the AI monetization, and media will likely follow suit as more earnings calls occur.
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Total October coverage rose nearly 10% over the month before. This jump is almost entirely attributable to the AWS outage heard round the world. The media aren’t focusing as much on why the outage occurred as on the company's piecemeal approach to a solution. AWS seems to have addressed the outage by putting out a series of smaller fires, rather than addressing how the cascading series of errors occurred in the first place. When a failure of this size takes down so many sites, it’s clear how interdependent—and fragile—our tech ecosystem is. Expect media across tech to probe for answers on how we can ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Coverage of insurtech jumped nearly 6% in October, which is a big deal considering the hold cloud coverage has had on share of voice this year. The main driver for the increase was the government shutdown and its impact on private insurance companies. The shutdown also drew attention in the cybersecurity sector, where an already short-staffed federal workforce was further stretched. Fewer federal workers mean even less oversight around the government’s usage of AI, which continues to raise security concerns. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, look for coverage of slowed tech regulation and policy progress to continue shaking up the overall landscape.
We monitor coverage across vertical trades in three main topics: policy and compliance, investment and funding, and innovation. While insurtech coverage did increase this past month, it still accounts for the smallest share of the media conversation.
Click on a topic below to drill down further into the conversation.
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Ben Thompson’s Stratechery argues OpenAI hopes to become the next Windows. “OpenAI’s Windows Play” suggests the company is competing in individual AI tool markets and aiming to become the foundational platform of the AI ecosystem, akin to how Microsoft Windows dominated the PC era. The shift in AI development from an “app store” ecosystem to an all-in-one OS model would affect access to audiences, data flows, and partner ecosystems. The platform controlling the “AI OS” will influence what apps, experiences, and distribution channels matter, so alignments and partnerships may need to pivot to whoever is deploying the dominant model.
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AI continued to dominate October as Anthropic expanded its partnership with Amazon and Meta unveiled new open-source AI models. Fintech chatter surged because of the crypto market rally and the opening of FinovateFall. Cloud and connectivity tags centered on AI infrastructure investments and satellite broadband expansion.
Fintech’s lead echoes a renewed crypto surge. After the 27 October “#Uptober” rally, institutional flows and regulatory clarity ignited digital chatter. Cloud and connectivity both benefited from major infrastructure moves: AI-powered data centers and next-generation cloud builds announced big deals, driving conversation on compute, power, and connectivity. Cybersecurity held high mention volumes as AI-inflicted attacks and compliance pressures kept organizations on alert.
B2B tech navigated two themes in October: explosive AI infrastructure investment and emerging threat vectors. The AI arms race moved into gear with compute and cloud expansions, while cybersecurity focused on AI-enabled attacks multiplying. Fintech, connectivity, and cloud each reflected this shift in different ways, showcasing a month of transformation and tension.
Instagram released PG-13-style teen filters by default, tightening content and age checks, while X said its feed will shift to a Grok-powered recommendation model. And Apple readied ads in Maps, signaling more commerce inside feeds to come.
November 2025
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