Big Data
Data center market faces all-time low vacancies despite record-breaking construction
According to CBRE's North America Data Center Trends report released Thursday, despite new construction area growing nearly 25% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, the data center vacancy rate fell to a historic low of 1.4% due to power supply bottlenecks. Leasing demand remained strong, with net absorption up 12% and rents continuing to rise. Atlanta surpassed Northern Virginia for the first time to become the largest construction market.
CIO Dive Trendline on Data in Action
Agentic AI is reshaping customer behavior much like e-commerce did years ago, but it also risks brands losing control over the customer journey. This article explores the resulting issues of data, trust, and ownership, as well as how enterprises can address these challenges by becoming merchants of record, establishing dedicated agents, and more.
Allstate preps Allie platform to drive agentic AI strategy
Allstate is developing an agentic AI platform named Allie, aimed at strengthening its technology-driven strategy. CEO Tom Wilson stated during Thursday's Q2 2026 earnings call that the platform's architecture includes eight integrated components enabling inter-agent processing, building on the company's existing 250 analytical models and annual capacity of 100 million quotes. The company has not disclosed a specific launch timeline.
Amazon ups AI investments as cloud sector chases windfall
AWS announced raising capital expenditure to $220 billion to support AI infrastructure expansion. Enterprise cloud infrastructure spending reached $143 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 43% year-over-year, an eight-year high. AWS maintains its lead with a 28% market share, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Microsoft holds the line on infrastructure spending
In its fourth-quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call, Microsoft announced that its cloud platform revenue grew 27% year-over-year to $59.3 billion, driven primarily by Azure demand and first-party AI applications. The company added 31 new data centers, bringing the annual total to 88, and revealed that paid seats for Microsoft 365 Copilot have exceeded 30 million. Despite industry-wide increases in capital expenditures, Microsoft remains committed to its infrastructure investment strategy and emphasizes returns through optimizing existing assets.
Albertsons brings AI expertise to board
Albertsons announced on Friday the expansion of its board of directors, appointing Brian Rice, who has over 30 years of technology leadership experience, as a new director. Rice currently serves as Executive Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer at McDonald's, and his addition underscores Albertsons' commitment to advancing AI initiatives at scale.
CIOs lean into multiagent systems with customers in mind
The latest Databricks report shows that enterprises are adopting multi-agent systems at a significantly faster pace, with customer-facing tasks such as customer support and personalized marketing accounting for a quarter of AI use cases. Enterprises with strong governance are 12 times more efficient at advancing AI projects from pilot to production.
UMG taps NYT’s Hannah Poferl to lead its data strategy
Universal Music Group (UMG) announced on Tuesday the appointment of Hannah Poferl, the first chief data officer of The New York Times, as its chief data officer, effective immediately. Poferl will oversee the company's global data and analytics strategy and lead audience development and engagement, including the application of AI technology. She will report directly to Chief Operating Officer Boyd Muir. This move comes amid a growing trend of companies elevating data and AI to the executive level.
![[Podcast] Unifying Intelligence](https://ciodive.thoughtet.com/uploads/crawler/cio-dive/2026/08/fb0595df6b1e57f1b1f2b11c126cf4d3ae67ed7d0d93ec9d24bae31524369b73.webp)
[Podcast] Unifying Intelligence
Enterprises are racing to modernize their data foundations to support AI-driven decisions, but issues such as inconsistent business definitions, vendor lock-in from embedded logic, and a lack of visibility into data usage remain prominent. This three-episode podcast series, based on a survey of 100 senior IT leaders, analyzes why data consistency remains the most challenging problem in enterprise analytics and invites product executives from Strategy Inc to share approaches to AI observability, AI readiness, and semantic fragmentation.
Red Hat acquires Chatterbox Labs to boost AI governance
Red Hat announced on Tuesday the acquisition of AI company Chatterbox Labs, which specializes in model testing and generative AI safeguards. The acquisition will add automated risk assessment, safety testing, and governance features to Red Hat's AI product portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.