Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack Microsoft’s Work Trend Index and what it reveals about the rise of agentic AI in the workplace.

Highlights

00:09 — Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index annual report is titled "Agents, Human Agency, and the Opportunity for Every Organization." Microsoft analyzed trillions of anonymized M365 productivity signals, surveyed upwards of 20,000 workers in 10 countries, and consulted with experts in AI, work, and organizational psychology. Here are some of the most revealing insights.

01:25 — An analysis of 100,000 Copilot chats found that 49% of conversations were focused on supporting cognitive tasks, ultimately enhancing the capabilities of these human participants. On top of that, 66% of surveyed AI users reported that AI has enabled them to dedicate more time to high-value work.

01:49 — Microsoft states that close to one in five workers are in what they call the frontier zone, which refers to what they describe as "the sweet spot where organizational capability and individual readiness reinforce each other."

02:14 — Microsoft says that the key to alignment is for companies to focus on AI absorption rather than simply AI adoption, and this involves redesigning how work is done and turning AI outputs into actionable insights.

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In this Cloud Wars special report, Bob Evans speaks with Chad Wahlquist, Architect at Palantir, about the company’s explosive Q1 performance and the deeper forces driving enterprise AI adoption. Wahlquist explains how Palantir’s model goes far beyond traditional software, combining forward deployed engineering, ontology, agentic AI, and enterprise infrastructure to accelerate customer outcomes.

AI Infrastructure Rising

The Big Themes:

AI Building AI: One of the most striking themes is the shift from companies building AI products to building AI products with AI. Wahlquist describes a major evolution in enterprise delivery models, where Palantir has moved from “boot camps” to “agent camps,” using AI agents to help rapidly construct customer solutions. This dramatically compresses timelines from projects expected to take months down to days. The deeper implication is that AI is no longer just the product layer; it is becoming the production mechanism itself.

SAP Migration Gets Reinvented: The SAP partnership emerges as one of the most strategically significant parts of the discussion. Wahlquist describes Palantir helping customers accelerate complex ERP migrations, including ECC-to-S/4 transformations, acquired-company integrations, and even mainframe modernization. Traditionally, these efforts consume years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Palantir’s approach uses ontology plus agentic frameworks to interpret structured and unstructured enterprise information, identify mismatches, and automate execution paths. He claims 50%+ time compression in migration work.

Efficiency As Corporate Proof Point: One fascinating element is Palantir’s operating model itself. Evans references Alex Karp’s claim that a company of Palantir’s scale would traditionally employ thousands of salespeople, while Palantir operates with a dramatically leaner commercial organization. Wahlquist argues that product effectiveness changes the equation: engineers demonstrating working systems on customer data become the real sales force. He also notes Palantir internally runs on its own software, using Foundry-based systems for CRM, ticketing, finance, and operations. This creates both operational efficiency and credibility.

The Big Quote: “What I’m seeing here is really the difference between, hey, I’m building AI products to I’m building AI products with AI.”

More from Chad Wahlquist:

Connect with Chad on LinkedIn, or learn about Palantir Foundry.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack why Palantir’s customer-first AI approach is outperforming much larger rivals.

Highlights

00:06 — One of the drivers in 2025 and 2026 of that surge in the greatest growth market here has been Palantir, relatively small. It'll probably do seven and a half, $8 billion in the coming year.

00:42 — So I had a great chat, you can see it all, a one-on-one video conversation with Palantir architect Chad Wahlquist. Palantir's titles are a little peculiar, right? It has its own way of doing things, as it does in a number of ways. Chad's not just a typical enterprise architect.

01:23 — One of the things that's unique about Palantir is how its customers will come, sign an original deal, and then in a very short period of time, three, four, six months, greatly increase that deal because it's showing the value of the AI to the customer.

02:18 — Palantir is the company, I think, in sort of the more modern era, that's really brought this to the forefront. Chad and I talked about the partnership and the significance of that for customers, bringing together the immense data and industry expertise that SAP has.

03:15 — It's not a big rip-and-replace thing. How can we build on what you have and get you some very quick returns on this? Palantir's number one on the growth chart at 70%. Google Cloud surged into the number two spot at 63%.

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In today's Cloud Wars Minute, I examine how AI demand is reshaping rivalries between Google Cloud, AWS, NVIDIA, and Anthropic.

Highlights

00:03 — According to reports, Anthropic has committed to a $200 billion five-year agreement for Google Cloud services and Google-designed chips, a deal that could account for more than 40% of Google Cloud's revenue backlog.

00:18 — This represents yet another escalation in the rapidly expanding partnership between Google Cloud's parent company, Alphabet, and Anthropic, following Alphabet's previously announced $40 billion investment into the company.

00:49 — The company also holds considerable infrastructure deals with providers, including AWS and NVIDIA, and what this deal underscores is the extraordinary scale of demand for AI services. The need for compute capacity has grown so large that even a $200 billion agreement may not be enough to meet future requirements.

01:33 — However, companies like Google Cloud, with the infrastructure required to support hyperscale AI development, are positioned at the very center of this massive transformation.

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In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I look at how Google Cloud is pairing technical innovation with go-to-market execution to fuel AI growth.

Highlights

00:00 — One of the fastest-growing companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 is Google Cloud, and it has just launched a program of Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), specializing in AI to help accelerate AI transformation at the point of the customer.

00:46 — I had a chance to speak about this new AI FDE program with Matt Renner, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Google Cloud, and he was talking about how this brings the innovation out at the point of the customer, the unique challenges customers are facing right now.

01:38 — It isn't Google Cloud's attempt to get into the services business so much as this is what the demand is from customers now: they need to get their AI capabilities up to speed as quickly as possible to become the AI-powered type of company they're going to need to be.

02:25 — Google Cloud, as I've mentioned before, has always been an on-the-front-edge technological innovator, but over the past couple of years, it's been bringing its go-to-market capabilities and go-to-market innovation up.

03:36 — These efforts are going to be ways to help ensure that customers have the support, the resources, the expertise from Google Cloud and the ecosystem to be able to evolve, innovate, and succeed more rapidly than ever before.

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