The Cloud Pod

2025 Year in Review
Generated: December 20, 2025 at 11:38 AM

Story Sources

1308
Total Stories Linked
15
Unique Sources

Cloud Provider Coverage

AWS
39.0%
Azure
22.9%
GCP
38.1%

Sources by Category

AWS Official
371
GCP Official
362
Azure Official
218
Tech News
123
Other
112
Dev/Tech
56
AI Companies
46
Oracle Official
20

Top Domains

Domain Links % of Total
aws.amazon.com 366 28.0%
cloud.google.com 230 17.6%
azure.microsoft.com 127 9.7%
docs.google.com 79 6.0%
techcommunity.microsoft.com 46 3.5%
blog.google 46 3.5%
arstechnica.com 39 3.0%
openai.com 39 3.0%
theinformation.com 17 1.3%
oracle.com 15 1.1%
snowflake.com 13 1.0%
blogs.microsoft.com 12 0.9%
hashicorp.com 12 0.9%
cnbc.com 11 0.8%
digitalocean.com 10 0.8%

Cloud Provider Share Trend

Year AWS Azure GCP Total Links
2019 73.0% 16.0% 11.0% 1441
2020 60.8% 18.0% 21.3% 1694
2021 47.8% 18.2% 34.0% 1978
2022 46.0% 18.5% 35.5% 1774
2023 50.8% 24.5% 24.7% 1781
2024 38.8% 12.2% 49.0% 1361
2025 39.0% 22.9% 38.1% 1308

Host Participation

49
Total Episodes
42
Episodes Analyzed
6
Full Roster Episodes

Host Appearances

Justin
40
95.2%
Ryan
36
85.7%
Matt
33
78.6%
Jonathan
12
28.6%

Host Combinations

Guest Appearances

Elise: Episode(s) 329

Full Roster Episodes

Episodes with all 4 hosts: 286, 287, 290, 298, 331, 332

AI/ML Takeover

596
AI Mentions in 2025
12.2
Per Episode
+66.4%
YoY Growth

AI Mentions Trend

2018
0.0/ep
2019
0.6/ep
2020
1.1/ep
2021
0.6/ep
2022
0.9/ep
2023
4.5/ep
2024
7.3/ep
2025
12.2/ep

Top AI Keywords

Keyword Mentions
AI 345
OpenAI 76
Claude 31
Gemini 21
ML 20
Anthropic 16
ChatGPT 14
GPT 13
Copilot 11
LLM 8

Outages & Incidents

Outage-related mentions: 19 (0.4 per episode)

Fiber/Network Infrastructure

Infrastructure mentions: 12

Major Subsea Cable Announcements

Project Provider Route Capacity Status
Fastnet AWS Maryland (US) → County Cork (Ireland) 320+ Tbps Announced, operational 2028
Sol Google Florida (US) → Bermuda → Azores → Santander (Spain) 16 fiber pairs Announced
TalayLink Google Mandurah (Australia) → South Thailand Not disclosed Announced
Dhivaru Google Maldives → Christmas Island → Oman Not disclosed Announced
Project Waterworth Meta 5 continents, 50,000+ KM 24 fiber pairs (industry-leading) Announced, multi-year deployment

2025 Summary: Google announced 3 cables, AWS announced 1 cable, Meta announced 1 cable.

Prediction Shows

5
Prediction Shows
Justin
2025 Champion

AWS RE:Invent 2025 Winner: Justin

Predictions: Episode 332 | Results: Episode 334

Justin 2/3
  • New Nova Model & Sonic with Multi-modal Nova 2 Lite, Pro, Sonic, and Omni announced
  • Announce a partnership with OpenAI (likely on stage) Not announced as new but mentioned running on AWS
  • Advanced Agentic AI Capabilities for Security Hub NEW AWS Security Agent announced
Jonathan 2/3
  • Serverless GPU support (extension in Lambda or different service) Talked about in keynote with Desantis
  • AI Agent with goal/instructions that can run periodically (Agentic Platform) Bedrock AgentCore and Kiro Autonomous Agent
  • Werner will announce this is his last keynote and retire He retired from Re:invent Presentations but didn't announce it as his last keynote
Ryan 2/3
  • New Tranium 3 chips, Inferentia and Graviton chips Announced Tranium 3 Ultraservers
  • Expand the number of models in or via Bedrock Doubled models: Gemma, Minimax M2, Nvidia Nemotron, Mistral Large/3
  • Refresh to AWS Organizations
Matt 0/3
  • A model router to route LLM queries to different AI models
  • Well Architected Framework expansion
  • End user Authentication that doesn't suck (not Cognito)

Tie Breaker: How many times will they say AI or Artificial Intelligence

Matt: 200 Justin: 160 ★ Ryan: 99 Jonathan: 1 Actual: 183

Google Next 2025 Winner: Matt

Predictions: Episode 299 | Results: Episode 300

Matt 2/3
  • Green AI Crossed out
  • 3 not-AI specific keynotes (Cloud WAN, Hyperdisk Exapools, Next Gen Customer Engagement) Cloud WAN announced
  • AI security thing - Google Unified Security Google Unified Security announced
Justin 1/3
  • AI Agents specialized for DevOps, K8s capability Crossed out
  • Next Generation TPU/GPUs optimized for Multi-modal Ironwood TPU announced
  • Unification or Major Enhancement of Anthos & GKE Enterprise Crossed out
Ryan 0/3
  • Responsible AI in Console/Service/SDK Crossed out
  • Endpoint Security Tools (Crowdstrike, Patch Management) Crossed out
  • No new services, just AI/Gemini enhancements Crossed out

Tie Breaker: Number of times AI or ML said on stage

Matt: 52 Justin: 97 ★ Ryan: 1 Actual: 101

Microsoft Build 2025

Predictions: Episode 304 | Results: Episode 304

Ryan 1/3
  • GitHub Copilot agentic code development Agent Mode in GitHub Copilot announced
  • Quantum Computing - Double down on Majorana
  • Augmented/Virtual Reality for Teams
Matt 0/3
  • New version of ARM processor Cobalt
  • New generation of Surface hardware
  • Major update to App Services Platform
Justin 0/3
  • Microsoft will launch their own LLM
  • Microsoft Office Copilot upgrade with MCP Partially - M365 Copilot can search Salesforce
  • Agentspaces or Glean Type Competitor

Tie Breaker: Number of times Copilot will be mentioned in keynote

Justin: 55 Matt: 75 Ryan: 62 ★ Jonathan: 1 Actual: 69

Microsoft Ignite 2025 Winner: Justin

Predictions: Episode 331 | Results: Episode 331

Justin 1/3
  • New Cobalt and Mai Gen 2 or similar Check
  • Price Reduction on OpenAI & Significant Prompt Caching Crossed out
  • Microsoft Foundational LLM to compete with OpenAI Crossed out
Matt 0/3
  • ACM Competitor - True SSL competitive product Crossed out
  • AI announcement in Security AI Agent (Copilot for Sentinel) Sort of - half point
  • Azure DevOps Announcement Crossed out
Jonathan 0/3
  • GA of new, smaller Azure Local hardware form factors Crossed out
  • Declarative AI on Fabric Crossed out
  • Advanced Cost Management for agents Crossed out

Tie Breaker: How many times will they say Copilot

Jonathan: 45 ★ Justin: 35 Matt: 40 Actual: 58

Annual 2025 Predictions

Predictions: Episode 286

Justin 2/3
  • Over 10 companies announce RTO 5 days/week after Q2
  • OpenAI will not be seen as the leader they were in 2024 Gemini 3 'code red' situation
  • GPT 5, Claude 4, and Gemini 3.0 released All three released in 2025
Jonathan 1/3
  • A company will claim AGI has been achieved
  • AI Agent personal assistants working in real world Multiple announcements of AI agents
  • Models that can learn in real-time from interactions
Ryan 0/3
  • Quick LLM model provisioning for individuals
  • AI at the edge in a native way (Lambda-esque)
  • Cloud native security mesh for multi-cloud hybrid
Matt 0/3
  • FOCUS adopted by Snowflake or Databricks
  • More security/ethical focus in AI - SOC/ISO standard
  • Amazon deprecating at least 5 more services

2025 Leaderboard

Host Show Wins Prediction Points Tie-Breaker Wins
Justin 🏆 2 6.5 2
Matt 1 2.5 0
Jonathan 0 3.0 1
Ryan 0 3.0 1

All-Time Prediction Show Wins

Justin
6
Show Wins
Matt
2
Show Wins
Ryan
0
Show Wins
Jonathan
1
Show Wins

Wins by Year

Year Justin Matt Ryan Jonathan
2020 1 0 0 0
2021 1 0 0 0
2022 0 0 0 1
2023 1 0 0 0
2024 1 1 0 0
2025 2 1 0 0

Running Jokes & Callbacks

18
"Finally" Titles

The beloved 'AWS Finally...' title format

  • AWS Finally Admits You Have Too Many Log Buckets
  • AWS Finally Lets You Login Like a Normal Human
  • AWS Finally Answers 'Is It Available in My Region?' Before You Build It
  • AWS Finally Tells You When Your EC2 Instance Can't Keep Up With Your Storage Ambitions
  • AWS Finally Calculates What You'll Actually Pay

Oracle arriving late to the party

  • Oracle Discovers the Dark Side (Finally Has Cookies)
  • Oracle finally joins the dark mode club with OCI Console, following years behind AWS (2017), Azure (2019), and GCP (2020)

Rack Ryan - the life-sized AWS rack given to Ryan

At re:Invent 2024, Ryan received a life-sized AWS server rack replica, spawning references throughout 2025

  • They brought the Rack Ryan

Past predictions coming true

  • ECS Exec; Justin's prediction from 2018 finally comes true

Major cloud outages that broke the internet

2025 saw major outages from all major providers within weeks of each other

  • AWS US-EAST-1 DNS outage (October 20, 2025) - 75 minutes to identify root cause
  • Cloudflare's worst outage since 2019 (November 18, 2025) - 3 hours, bot management file doubled
  • Azure global outage (October 29, 2025) - 8 hours affecting all regions

Buzzword Bingo: 2025's Hottest Terms

MCP
298
Model Context Protocol - standard for AI tool integration
reasoning
150
AI models with explicit thinking/reasoning capabilities
agentic
109
AI agents that can take autonomous actions
multimodal
39
AI that processes text, images, video, and audio
A2A
27
Agent-to-Agent protocol for AI agent communication
grounding
16
Connecting AI outputs to factual sources (RAG, web search)
vibe coding
4
AI-assisted coding by describing intent rather than syntax

By The Numbers: Episode Stats

49
Episodes
58.9h
Total Runtime
72m
Avg Length

Longest Episodes

1:51:15 Episode 310: CI You Later, Manual Testing
1:46:18 Episode 308: SCC: Security Command Center or Super Cool Capabilities?
1:36:14 Episode 319: AWS Cost MCP: Your Billing Data Now Speaks Human

Shortest Episodes

0:31:08 Episode 332: 2025 Re:Invent Predictions Draft – May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor
0:41:23 Episode 292: VS Code Friend or Foe… Azure Data Studio Murdered
0:47:16 Episode 287: The Cloud Pod Rebrands to The Cloud AI So We Can Get A 1B Valuation

In Memoriam: Services We Lost in 2025

AWS CloudSearch
AWS
Replaced by OpenSearch Service
Amazon S3 Glacier (original)
AWS
Consolidated into S3 storage classes
AWS Migration Hub
AWS
Service consolidation
AWS Application Discovery Service
AWS
Service consolidation
Amazon S3 Object Lambda
AWS
Limited adoption, use Lambda@Edge
AWS HealthOmics Variant Store
AWS
Niche service pruning
Kubernetes NGINX Ingress Controller
Kubernetes
Security concerns, unmaintained
Azure Consumption API (legacy)
Azure
Replaced by Cost Details API and Exports API
Azure AWS Connector
Azure
Discontinued cross-cloud cost tracking
AOL Dial-Up Internet
AOL
End of an era
RC4 Encryption (Windows AD)
Microsoft
26 years of security vulnerabilities

Deals & Disasters

Acquisitions

Acquirer Target Details
Cloudflare Replicate AI model catalog with 50,000+ models
Atlassian DX Developer productivity analytics platform ($1 billion)
Cognition Windsurf (IP & talent) After Google poached CEO and senior staff
Meta Scale AI (stake + CEO hire) Hired Alexandr Wang as Chief AI Officer ($14.3 billion)

Bankruptcies & Failures

iRobot
Roomba maker acquired by Chinese supplier Picea Robotics
Lesson: EU antitrust blocked Amazon deal, company collapsed anyway
Builder.ai
$1.5B valuation to zero - 75% of sales were fake
Lesson: AI startup valuation bubble warning

Mergers

Microsoft CoreAI absorbed GitHub: GitHub loses independence, folded into Microsoft

Cloud Expansion: New Regions

Provider Region Status Features
Azure East US 3 (Atlanta) Announced for 2027 Advanced AI workloads, LEED Gold certification
Azure US Gov Arizona (3 AZs) Announced for early 2026 Defense Industrial Base support
Google Cloud Türkiye Announced $2B investment, partnership with Turkcell
Google Cloud Thailand Planned Connected via TalayLink subsea cable

That Aged Poorly

Prediction: EU blocking Amazon-iRobot deal would preserve competition
Reality: iRobot went bankrupt within 2 years
Sometimes the acquisition was the lifeline
Prediction: Builder.ai valued at $1.5 billion
Reality: 75% of reported revenue was fabricated
AI startup valuations need more scrutiny
Prediction: AWS CodeCommit deprecation
Reality: AWS hit Ctrl-Z and reversed the decision
Customer backlash works
Prediction: GitHub would maintain independence under Microsoft
Reality: Folded into CoreAI after CEO departure
7 years of independence was the exception, not the rule

Most Mentioned (Non-Hyperscaler) Companies

OpenAI
329
NVIDIA
136
Anthropic
94
Snowflake
81
Databricks
69
Cloudflare
42
Redis
34
HashiCorp
27
MongoDB
27
Elastic
25

Titles We Almost Went With

633
Rejected Titles

Best of 2025