Mechanical Turks of Doom

I noted last week that Rubrik has filed for IPO. Clients will get some insight into the S-1 in more detail later this week, but the highlights for me include: losses increasing from 46.3% of revenue to 56.4% of revenue, cloud ARR growth slowing from 229% to 119%, subscription ARR growth slowing from 96% to 47%, sales and marketing expense increased from 70% to 77% of revenue, and R&D increased from 29% to 33% of revenue, while gross margin moved from 70% to 77% as Rubrik transitions from selling a product to selling subscriptions. One assumes they hope to turn down the sales and marketing cost once they get enough customers, and profitability will depend greatly on what enough means.

There was a lot of news about Amazon removing its Just Walk Out feature from its grocery stores. It turns out the ‘AI’ was actually a bunch of foreign workers surveilling customers over in-store video. No word on whether they had to share a trenchcoat or not. Amazon has found it is cheaper to get customers to do the scanning work themselves than it is to underpay staff or contractors.

The US Cyber Safety Review Board put out a scathing report into the Microsoft Exchange Online email breach. “The Board finds that this intrusion was preventable and should never have occurred. The Board also concludes that Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul, particularly in light of the company’s centrality in the technology ecosystem and the level of trust customers place in the company to protect their data and operations.” The report even notes that Oracle Cloud has better security features than Exchange Online. Ouch.