This Month's Latest Tech News in Bakersfield, CA - Sunday August 31st 2025 Edition

Weekly commentary: Bakersfield's AI moment - cautious optimism and building bridges - California's new MOUs with Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM open a real opportunity for local students and teachers, but the win comes with caveats: the deals extend tools and training across the state's 116 community colleges that serve roughly 2.1 million students, yet experts warn that access alone won't build the strategic thinking employers need and that data, privacy, and classroom control remain open questions (see the LA Times coverage of California AI training deals: LA Times coverage of California AI training deals).

California campuses are already using AI to catch financial-aid fraud and to pilot faculty bootcamps, so Bakersfield leaders should push for curriculum that pairs tool fluency with critical judgment - and for workers ready to apply AI on day one, local upskilling options like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - register and learn more can help bridge the gap between promise and practice.

Bootcamp	Key details
AI Essentials for Work	15 Weeks; courses: AI at Work: Foundations, Writing AI Prompts, Job-Based Practical AI Skills; Early bird $3,582; Register for Nucamp AI Essentials for Work

“You're seeing in certain coding spaces significant declines in hiring for obvious reasons.” - Gov. Gavin Newsom

1) California launches statewide AI education initiative with Google, Adobe, IBM and Microsoft - Governor Newsom announced MOUs that bring Adobe's Firefly and classroom tools, Google's Prompting Essentials and educator courses, IBM's SkillsBuild pathways, and Microsoft's Copilot bootcamps to K–12, community colleges and California State Universities at no cost to the state, expanding access to more than two million students; the community college system alone serves roughly 2.1 million learners across 116 campuses, according to CalMatters reporting.

The deals promise software, teacher training, internship pipelines and even exclusive access to Google's Gemini and Notebook LLM for campus pilots - tools CalMatters notes are “collectively worth hundreds of millions” while also raising pragmatic concerns about faculty control, academic integrity, and the loss of some entry‑level jobs.

For Bakersfield, the moment is less about shiny tool access and more about curriculum design and guardrails: insist on pairing hands‑on AI fluency with ethics, assessment safeguards, and pathways that lead directly to local jobs so students walk out of classrooms ready to contribute on day one (see the California AI education initiative press release and the CalMatters analysis of the AI education deals for details).

“AI is the future - and we must stay ahead of the game by ensuring our students and workforce are prepared to lead the way. We are preparing tomorrow's innovators, today.” - Governor Gavin Newsom

2) CSUB hosts NextTech Kern AI Tech Expo - free community event - California State University, Bakersfield is opening its campus on October 2 for NextTech Kern 2025, a free, all-ages showcase of AI that stitches together education, business and security with hands-on demos, student exhibits, and panels led by local and national experts; Congressman Vince Fong will deliver the keynote and attendees can expect vendors from Apple, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI on the floor, so Bakersfield residents from grade‑schoolers to startup founders can literally walk from a classroom demo to a cybersecurity showcase in one afternoon (registration is open and admission is free).

The expo is designed to spark practical skills and employer-ready conversations - think rapid prototypes and classroom research sitting side by side - and local leaders should use the day to map internships, upskilling pathways, and real-world projects back to Bakersfield's job market (details and registration at the CSUB NextTech Kern event page CSUB NextTech Kern event page and the university news release CSUB news release for NextTech Kern 2025).

Date	Location	Keynote	Tracks	Admission
October 2, 2025	CSUB Main Campus	Congressman Vince Fong	AI in Academia; AI in Business; AI in Security	Free (register online)

3) Brookings report ranks Bakersfield region in

"others" cluster - Central Valley gap - A recent Brookings-style metro clustering, reported in the tech press, groups most AI-ready hubs into “superstars,” “star hubs” and other tiers, while noting that rural counties and smaller metros lag on talent, venture funding and high-performance computing; that national context helps explain why the Bakersfield‑Kern area still struggles to convert growth into high‑quality, tradable jobs

Local research from B3K Prosperity adds the missing local detail: fewer than one in three jobs in the region offer true self‑sufficiency and the region needs nearly 100,000 additional Quality Jobs to meaningfully reduce childhood economic hardship - a striking yardstick that turns abstract rankings into a community imperative (Brookings coverage: California metro AI readiness).

The takeaway for Bakersfield: close the gap by growing traded, higher‑value sectors (advanced manufacturing, aerospace, business services, energy) so local workers don't just fill jobs, but build careers that stick.

Further local analysis is available from B3K Prosperity (B3K Prosperity analysis of traded sectors and Opportunity Industries).

4) Google antitrust trial and DOJ remedy proposals reshape search and competition - Judge Amit Mehta's remedies decision stops short of a breakup but retools how Google can lock in users: the court bars exclusive distribution contracts that foreclose rivals, requires Google to share some search index and interaction data with “qualified” competitors (drawn from the company's trove of data built from trillions of queries), and limits certain distribution practices while allowing non‑exclusive preload payments to continue.

The ruling keeps Chrome and Android intact but aims to pry open general search and emerging GenAI channels, a balance that sent Alphabet shares sharply higher in after‑hours trading (investors cheered the lighter penalties).

The decision sets a near‑term schedule - parties must meet by Sept. 10 for final judgment - and signals that future competition in search and AI will hinge on data access and distribution rules.

For local tech ecosystems, the outcome matters: it could change who controls user access to answers and AI services and reshape the economics of getting new search or GenAI apps in front of users (see the detailed reporting from CNBC report on Google antitrust remedies and the New York Times analysis of the Google search antitrust decision).

“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility.” - Judge Amit P. Mehta

5) White House national AI action plan targets infrastructure, innovation, diplomacy - the administration's “Winning the Race” AI Action Plan centers on three blunt priorities (accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security) and pairs ambitious policy moves - more than 90 federal actions and three companion executive orders - with clear levers for local impact.

The July 23 infrastructure EO explicitly defines “Data Center Projects” as facilities needing greater than 100 megawatts of new load and calls for NEPA categorical exclusions, faster permitting, and use of federal lands to speed build‑out, signaling federal help for industrial‑scale data centers rather than laptop‑room pilots (read the executive order on federal permitting for data centers).

At the same time the Plan pushes faster access to compute, national datasets, export programs for an American AI “technology stack,” and workforce investments and sandboxes to broaden skills - moves that could translate in Bakersfield to grid planning, targeted training pipelines, and civic insistence on local hiring and environmental safeguards (analysis of the Plan and its legal/policy contours is available from industry analysis of the White House AI Action Plan).

“Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan”

6) Nvidia Q1 results and export controls heighten chip supply concerns - Nvidia posted a mammoth $44.1 billion quarter with Data Center sales at $39.1 billion (roughly 88% of revenue), but the picture is complicated: a U.S. licensing requirement for H20 products forced a $4.5 billion charge and left about $2.5 billion of H20 revenue unshipped, and management warned export limits will shave roughly $8 billion from next quarter's revenue outlook; in short, demand for Blackwell-class AI infrastructure is roaring even as geopolitics and export rules inject acute supply‑chain uncertainty for anyone planning large AI data‑center builds or buying inference capacity now (details in Nvidia's Q1 release and reporting from CNBC).

Metric	Q1 Result / Impact
Total revenue (Q1)	$44.1 billion
Data Center revenue	$39.1 billion
H20-related charge	$4.5 billion
H20 revenue unable to ship (Q1)	$2.5 billion
Estimated Q2 revenue hit from export controls	~$8.0 billion

“Our breakthrough Blackwell NVL72 AI supercomputer - a ‘thinking machine' designed for reasoning - is now in full-scale production across system makers and cloud service providers.” - Jensen Huang

7) Hardware spotlight: Alpha & Omega's AOTL66935 MOSFET for 48V hot-swap AI servers - Alpha & Omega Semiconductor's AOTL66935 is a 100 V, high‑SOA MOSFET engineered for the brutal current peaks and inrush events of modern 48V AI racks; with a very low RDS(ON) of 1.95 mΩ (at 10 V), continuous drain capability up to 360 A, a pulsed rating of 258 A and a 175 °C junction temp, the device trims power loss and can cut the number of parts needed in parallel while surviving harsh hot‑swap stress (full product details are in the company press release).

Packaged in a compact TO‑Leadless (TOLL) footprint roughly 30% smaller than a TO‑263 (D2PAK), the AOTL66935 saves precious board real estate in dense server PSUs and is immediately available in production quantities (lead time ~14–16 weeks, $4.20 each in 1,000‑piece quantities).

See Alpha & Omega's announcement and a technical brief at Power & Beyond for specs and application notes.

Spec	Value
VDS	100 V
VGS	±20 V
TJ	175 °C
Continuous Drain Current	360 A
Pulsed Drain Current	258 A
RDS(ON) Max	1.95 mΩ (at 10 V)
Package	TOLL (30% smaller than TO‑263)
Availability	Production quantities; lead time 14–16 weeks; $4.20 (1k qty)

“48V hot swap in AI servers requires a MOSFET that excels in high current capability while providing exceptional SOA robustness with high reliability. We designed the AOTL66935 to meet these demands, and the low on-resistance reduces the power losses and can enable less devices in parallel.” - Peter H. Wilson, Sr. Director of MOSFET product line at AOS

8) Hunted Labs releases Entercept to counter software supply-chain attacks - Launched May 12, 2025, Entercept is an AI‑powered source‑code security platform that gives security teams instant visibility into suspicious behavior from both the people and the code in their software supply chain, surfacing who wrote a module, whether a dependency is exploitable, and where risky contributors originate (see the Hunted Labs launch announcement on BusinessWire).

The platform combines a Software Contributor Attribution Engine, real‑time SBOM and dependency mapping, exploitability and impact analysis, and agentless scanning so defenders can find poisoned packages or compromised CI components faster - Hunted Labs says that capability can shave “hundreds of hours” off incident response.

Partnerships with BrainGu and Parabol and early funding (a $3M pre‑seed and a $1.79M SBIR contract) target both commercial and government use cases, while specific threat examples such as flagged concerns around the easyjson Go package highlight why provenance mapping matters for enterprises and public‑sector buyers alike (read more on the Hunted Labs product page and coverage on Help Net Security).

Item	Detail
Launch date	May 12, 2025
Funding & contracts	$3M pre‑seed; $1.79M SBIR Direct‑to‑Phase II
Partners	BrainGu, Parabol
Key capabilities	Contributor attribution, SBOM & dependency mapping, exploitability analysis, agentless scanning, provenance mapping

“As software becomes the new battlefield, Entercept will be the weapon of choice for those defending digital infrastructure. We're not just building another AppSec tool - we're reshaping the category by making the invisible visible.” - Amanda Aguayo, Co‑Founder of Hunted Labs

9) Meta resumes EU content use for AI training - data governance implications - Meta has announced it will again train its generative models on public posts, comments and in‑app interactions from adult users in the EU, rolling out notifications and an opt‑out form that the company says complies with regulator guidance and will help its models “better understand and reflect” European languages and culture (read Meta's announcement Meta announcement on resuming EU data use for AI training).

Critics warn the opt‑out approach and reliance on a “legitimate interests” legal basis invite legal fights and trust erosion: a survey tied to NOYB found just 7% of German users want their social posts used this way, and watchdogs are already signaling challenges over GDPR rights like erasure and correction (coverage in The Register coverage of Meta's AI training on social media).

For Bakersfield schools, employers and civic buyers, the episode is a timely reminder to insist on clear vendor contracts, auditability, and user‑centric consent mechanisms when procuring AI tools - because model quality matters only as long as users trust where the training data came from.

"Meta probably knows that no one wants to provide the data from their social media accounts just so that Meta gets a competitive advantage over other AI companies that do not have access to such data." - Max Schrems

10) Appsmith launches Appsmith Agents - enterprise context-aware AI agents - Appsmith's new agentic platform embeds AI into the apps teams already use, delivering “continuous context” via a Chrome extension so agents can pull internal documents, query Salesforce or Zendesk, run RAG searches, and even call functions to update records or post to Slack without forcing users into a separate tool; the result is practical, action‑oriented AI for sales, support and customer‑success teams that reduces context‑switching and the hallucination risk (read the Appsmith Agents announcement on the Appsmith blog for a deep dive Appsmith Agents announcement on the Appsmith blog and see the official Appsmith Agents press release on BusinessWire for the product summary and executive quotes Appsmith Agents official BusinessWire press release).

Feature	Notes
Embedding	Chrome extension integrates with Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, Notion, Gmail
Context	Continuous context + RAG to reduce hallucinations
Actions	Function calling: search DBs, update records, create files, trigger workflows
Who benefits	Sales, Support, Customer Success - available now (sign up at Appsmith Agents signup page)

“Today's AI tools don't have any context about internal business data, which makes it difficult for employees to use them for work. Appsmith Agents integrates your company's data with your preferred large language model (LLM) and delivers it through a Chrome extension, so you can ask it relevant, work-specific questions ‘What's the status of that bug reported yesterday?' or ‘Can you find the latest product one-sheet for my sales call?'” - Abhishek Nayak

Local briefs: other notable developments - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced a flagship supercomputer called Doudna, named for Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna and built by Dell with NVIDIA's next‑generation Vera Rubin platform to blur the lines between simulation, data and AI; the system is designed to serve more than 11,000 researchers, stream telescope and genome sequencer data over ESnet for near‑real‑time workflows, and accelerate work from fusion and materials science to AI‑driven protein design (see Berkeleyside's coverage of the Doudna announcement and NVIDIA's technical post on the system).

Deployment is slated for 2026 with user access following in 2027, and developers say Doudna could deliver roughly 10× the scientific output of its predecessor while improving performance per watt - an infrastructure story with big implications for regional research partnerships and workforce demand.

“Doudna is ‘a time machine for science.'” - Jensen Huang

Conclusion: action items for Bakersfield - education, infrastructure, and local collaboration - Bakersfield's next move is practical and fast: lock classroom pilots to real hiring pathways, scale faculty development so instructors can teach when and how to use AI (not just hand out tools), and shepherd system grants into locally measurable outcomes.

Support for projects like CSUB's ELEVATE personalized‑tutor effort (see the CA Learning Lab ELEVATE listing CA Learning Lab AI Fast Challenge - ELEVATE) should be paired with CSU‑level faculty grants that train teachers to embed ethics and assessment (three CSUMB instructors won CSU AI grants to do exactly that - CSUMB CSU AI grants for faculty development).

Meanwhile, local employers and workforce programs can contract short, job‑focused upskilling (for example, Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp) so students translate classroom AI literacy into employer‑ready skills and portfolio work (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - registration and syllabus).

The practical test: turn curricular innovation into measurable hires, internships, or paid projects that keep Bakersfield residents on a clear career rung rather than in entry‑level churn.

Action	Why / Next step
Scale ELEVATE (CSUB)	Build personalized AI tutors to improve teaching and digital equity; pilot and evaluate on campus
Invest in faculty development (CSU grants)	Embed ethics, assessment, and AI‑literate assignments across courses so graduates are job‑ready
Align short bootcamps with employers	Offer job‑focused upskilling (e.g., Nucamp AI Essentials for Work) to convert classroom skills into hires

“CSU faculty and staff aren't just adopting AI - they are reimagining what it means to teach, learn, and prepare students for an AI‑infused world.” - Nathan Evans