Beyond The AI Arms Race
Big Tech's quest for a unique edge.
The Bloomberg Tech Summit this week was all AI, all the time. But the real stories weren’t just about bigger chips or faster models; they were about how companies plan to break away from the generic AI hype and find their own edge.
Alphabet is focusing on leveraging humans. Meta is pivoting to defence with Anduril. Microsoft is getting spooked by OpenAI. The message? Tech’s direction is not just about pouring billions into AI infrastructure but about staking out unique ground in a world where AI is the new baseline.
Humans Still Needed
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai argued that AI supercharges engineers rather than replaces them, boosting productivity and opening up new opportunities.
Alphabet’s workforce stands at 180,000, a number that has faced several rounds of layoffs since 2023 (including 12,000 job cuts that year alone). While layoffs continue to ripple through the tech sector in 2025, Pichai expects AI-driven growth to cushion the blow and unlock new frontiers for the company.
Evidence of that growth? Pichai pointed to Waymo’s progress in autonomous vehicles, quantum computing moonshots, and YouTube’s explosive reach in India, with 100 million channels, 15,000 of which top a million subs.
The tension between AI productivity gains and workforce fears isn’t unique to Alphabet. It’s a key theme for the entire sector as CEOs across Silicon Valley weigh up how best to ride the AI wave. Yet Pichai’s key soundbite takeaway is that humans will still be key going forward, stating, “I just view this as making engineers dramatically more productive, getting a lot of the mundane aspects out of what they do.”
Meta CTO Talks Defence
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says there’s a “silent majority” in Silicon Valley that’s finally ready to embrace defence work, calling it a “return to grace” for the tech sector. Bosworth argued that there’s a deep well of patriotism in the Valley that’s been overlooked.
Meta’s own pivot was on full display last week with a new partnership with Anduril to build next-gen defense hardware.
At the heart of this collaboration is the EagleEye helmet, an AI-powered device that integrates augmented and virtual reality to provide soldiers with enhanced situational awareness. Combining Meta's Reality Labs hardware and Llama AI models with Anduril's Lattice command-and-control software, EagleEye aims to deliver real-time intelligence, improved sensory perception, and intuitive control over autonomous platforms.
Ironically, this partnership also signifies a reconciliation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, who was previously dismissed from Facebook in 2017.
Bosworth, who leads Reality Labs and oversees Meta’s push into immersive tech, said “history has its eyes on us” as he eyes critical adoption tests for products like Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Quest VR headsets.
Interestingly, their renewed collaboration underscores a broader trend of tech companies aligning more closely with defence objectives, leveraging commercial innovations for military applications. The pivot back to defence marks a big shift for Big Tech in a politically sensitive area.
Microsoft Realises OpenAI Partnership is Shifting
This story isn’t directly from the tech summit, but is still relevant to the premise of the article.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has gone on the record saying his company’s crucial partnership with OpenAI is changing.