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Happy September 22nd, builders and boundary-pushers!
Fall might just be arriving, but the pace of innovation isn’t slowing down. Oracle is shuffling leadership as it doubles down on AI, Nvidia’s billion-dollar bets aren’t solving Intel’s headaches, and OpenAI is poaching Apple talent to design its own hardware. Meanwhile, Rivian is literally moving dirt in Georgia to scale EV production, proving that big bets in manufacturing are alive and well.
This week’s Byte-Sized Brilliance takes us back to the very first text message—two simple words that started a global habit.
Pour yourself a cup, because this week’s stories are as crisp as the morning air.
Oracle Splits CEO Role as Catz Shifts to Vice Chair, Doubles Down on AI & TikTok Play
Oracle has appointed Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as co-CEOs, replacing Safra Catz, who becomes executive vice chair of the board after nearly 11 years as CEO. Magouyrk, formerly president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, will lead the company’s foundational cloud and infrastructure efforts; Sicilia, coming from Oracle Industries, brings vertical-app and AI-embedded product leadership. The change comes as Oracle reports strong wins—multi-billion-dollar contracts—and forecasts surging cloud infrastructure revenue, riding tailwinds from AI demand. The move also positions Oracle more centrally in the proposed U.S. consortium to run TikTok, especially around data and regulatory oversight.
Nvidia’s $5B Investment Doesn’t Solve Intel’s Foundry Woes
Nvidia’s recent $5 billion stake in Intel has investors excited—shares shot up, and there’s buzz about deeper collaboration on AI infrastructure and PC chips. But the deal does not address Intel’s most pressing issue: its contract manufacturing (foundry) business—Intel Foundry Services—which continues to struggle with losses, lack of outside customer commitments, and competitive pressure from the likes of TSMC and AMD. Even with Nvidia’s backing, analysts warn that Intel’s foundry woes will persist until it lands major external clients and fixes yield and scale challenges.
👉 Read more
OpenAI Builds Out Hardware Ambitions by Poaching Apple Talent & Suppliers
OpenAI is aggressively recruiting former Apple engineers and designers while locking in manufacturing partners like Luxshare and Goertek to develop its first consumer AI-native device. The project is being led by Tang Tan, ex-Apple senior designer, and the team has already made hires across design, UI, camera, and audio hardware disciplines—some with stock grants over $1 million. The product roadmap includes a screen-less smart speaker-like device targeting a late 2026 or early 2027 release, along with exploratory work on wearables and AI accessories. This represents a shift from OpenAI’s software roots into full stack hardware design and manufacturing.
Sponsor Message
WinCC OA is way more than SCADA.
If that’s all you’re using it for, you’re leaving serious value on the table.
Manufacturers everywhere are trying to bolt AI onto legacy systems and failing—not because AI doesn't work, but because their platforms were never built for interoperability.
WinCC OA is different.
✅ It’s object-oriented
✅ It’s metadata-rich
âś… And with the new MCP server, it becomes a superpowered IIoT platform that can talk to anything and orchestrate everything.
In demos below, Siemens shows WinCC OA doing things most platforms can’t:
- Ask an LLM to mix a color → it checks ingredient availability → sets batch parameters → and starts the process — all through natural language.
- Discover an OPC UA server → identify relevant tags → auto-generate datapoints → link them into WinCC OA — with no manual setup.
That’s the power of MCP + structured data.
And WinCC OA has had the foundation for over 30 years.
Still thinking of WinCC OA as “just SCADA”?
Think again.
AI orchestration, dynamic agent workflows, and semantic interoperability aren’t buzzwords. They’re what WinCC OA does natively.
The WinCC OA MCP Server is now live and publicly accessible!
Explore the GitHub repo here: https://github.com/winccoa/winccoa-ae-js-mcpserver
Want to see it in action? Check out these demo videos:
• Video 1
• Video 2
Rivian Stakes Big Claim with $5B Georgia EV Plant
Rivian has officially broken ground on its delayed $5 billion EV manufacturing facility in Social Circle, Georgia, covering nearly 2,000 acres and expected to produce up to 400,000 vehicles annually by 2028. The plant will build the next-generation R2 SUV and R3 crossover models and directly employ 7,500 workers, with an additional ~8,000 indirect jobs via suppliers and local vendors. After pausing the project in 2024, Rivian re-secured momentum through a $6.6 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan and state incentives worth $1.5 billion. The factory opens the door for broader scale, lower-cost EVs—essential for Rivian’s push toward profitability.
Learning Lens
Workshop: Build MCP-Ready REST APIs
This month, we’re hosting a hands-on workshop that will teach you how to build REST APIs that are fully MCP-ready — so you can start integrating data sources and services into your Model Context Protocol environment with confidence.
In this live session, you’ll learn how to:
-
Design and build REST endpoints specifically for MCP
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Structure payloads and responses for MCP compatibility
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Test and validate your APIs for seamless integration
đź“… Date: September 29-30
đź’¸ Early Bird Discount: 30% off when you register by September 10th
👉 Register now and save your seat before early bird pricing ends!
Why it matters: MCP is rapidly becoming the backbone for building connected, interoperable systems. Knowing how to create MCP-ready APIs will give you a powerful skill set to bring new data sources online faster and build future-proof architectures.
Byte-Sized Brilliance
The First Text Message Was Just “Merry Christmas”
On December 3, 1992, a 22-year-old engineer named Neil Papworth sent the world’s first SMS from his computer to a colleague’s phone. The message was just two words: “Merry Christmas.” At the time, no one imagined it would spark a messaging revolution that now delivers trillions of texts every year—most of them a little less festive.
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