IT STRATEGY

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IT professionals in the restaurant industry are aiming to clean up their kitchens tech stacks to support AI agents.

Yum! Brands, the holding company for fast food brands like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, wanted to solidify its data foundation to build complex systems like agentic AI on top of the existing frameworks. It enlisted enterprise software company Informatica to help with that effort.

Kartik Pillai, director of data strategy, master data management, and data governance at Yum! Brands, told IT Brew the decision to focus on transforming that foundation was born out of the need to implement AI more effectively.

You want AI with that?—CN

      

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CLOUD

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Third-party, cloud-based AI vendors are becoming cost-prohibitive, so companies are turning to developing their own AI tooling on internal tech stacks, backed by local hardware.

Running your enterprise’s AI solutions on-prem was long reserved for the big dogs of Silicon Valley, who could afford infrastructure and developers. But a growing number of free tools allow smaller companies to deploy locally, changing the game.

A February study from Lenovo found that on-prem AI infrastructure is more cost-effective, especially given the rising cost of tokens: “For enterprises committed to AI as a core competitive advantage, the transition from renting intelligence to owning the factory is not just a technical evolution, it is a financial imperative.”

Show us the money.—EH

      

IT STRATEGY

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Tech unemployment dropped again in June, a potential sign of the industry recovering after months of uncertainty.

That’s of little surprise to tech hiring platform Dice, which recently published research that found hiring in the sector has shifted across industries and roles, primarily in the financial services sector, which saw a 47% rise in job postings year over year, and AI and machine learning, which increased 173% in the same period.

Art Zeile, CEO of Dice parent company DHI Group, told IT Brew that he sees the current job market as a reflection of an AI boom that the New York Times noted has fueled “a $3.2 trillion deal-making frenzy” in 2026. Enterprises that want to enable AI for their businesses need help.

“People are really embracing AI right now, and they know that they need technology professionals to do so,” Zeile said.

Hire me.—EH

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: $5 billion. That’s how much AMD has agreed to invest in Anthropic as part of a deal for AI servers. (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: “We consider this to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities, and are responding accordingly.”—OpenAI on its AI models being used to hack the libraries of Hugging Face (the New York Times)

Read: The device that could lead to your car being hacked—and how to patch it. (Wired)

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Jobs

CollabWORK connects you to the hidden job market through IT Brew and other trusted channels. Browse roles curated specifically for this community by clicking through to the job board.

• Software Development Project Manager at MANTECH
• IT Product Owner - Revenue Growth Management at BIC World
• Senior Network Systems Engineer at NetApp
• Quality Systems Engineer at Oatey
• Information Technology Specialist at Applied Research Solutions