Today's AI Pulse
Salesforce to acquire AI‑agent platform Fin for $3.6B
Salesforce announced a $3.6 billion purchase of Fin, the AI‑agent platform formerly known as Intercom, to strengthen its Agentforce suite. The deal comes as Salesforce reported strong Q1 results and a $50 billion buyback program. Fin’s technology enables automated customer support across chat, email, WhatsApp, phone and Slack.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Waymo acquires Apple’s Arizona Proving Ground for $220M
Cirrascale Cloud Services Adds Tenstorrent Galaxy Blackhole to Its AI Innovation Cloud
Cirrascale Cloud Services announced that its AI Innovation Cloud now includes Tenstorrent’s Galaxy Blackhole servers, marking Tenstorrent’s first broad commercial deployment. The Galaxy platform is engineered to cut AI inference costs by roughly 50% compared with leading GPU solutions while delivering lower latency and scalable performance. Cirrascale will provide customers with bare‑metal, unvirtualized access to the hardware, simplifying integration and ensuring consistent performance. The partnership also highlights strong compatibility with open‑source models, with about 90% of HuggingFace models running natively on the system.
The Oscars Just Declared that AI Actors and AI-Written Scripts Can't Win Awards
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that only acting performed by consenting humans and screenplays authored by humans will be eligible for Oscar consideration. The new rule directly addresses recent AI experiments, such as the digital resurrection...
The Growing AI Backlash
The author argues that a broad backlash against generative AI is intensifying, citing movements like QuitGPT and media coverage such as Fortune’s recent piece. He lists a range of societal harms—erosion of education, disinformation, deep‑fake porn, bias, and energy‑intensive data...
AI Can Build Your Entire Funnel by Next Month
You can have AI help you write an offer, position it, build a website, map out your content, design your funnel, write your campaigns and reach customers globally by the start of next month. And you're still "figuring things out." The opportunity...
As Palantir Lands a Deal With Cleveland-Cliffs, Should You Buy, Sell, or Hold PLTR Stock?
Palantir Technologies announced a three‑year strategic partnership with steelmaker Cleveland‑Cliffs to embed AI into production planning, order entry, and operational workflows. The deal follows a string of high‑profile contracts, including a $300 million USDA agreement and an expanded five‑year partnership with...
Ebix Risk Launches Next Generation AI-Powered Certificate of Insurance Compliance Platform to Close the Loop on Vendor Risk
Ebix Risk unveiled Ebix COI, a next‑generation AI‑powered certificate of insurance platform that moves beyond simple data extraction to validate coverage against actual contract terms and drive deficiency resolution. The solution combines Policy & Contract Intelligence, an AI Assist Agent,...
TradeCentric Introduces UPOP to Help Enterprises Prepare for Secure Agentic Commerce
TradeCentric announced the Universal PunchOut Platform (UPOP), a governed integration layer designed for AI‑enabled B2B purchasing. The platform aims to let autonomous agents interact with complex enterprise procurement systems without sacrificing compliance, auditability, or existing buyer‑supplier contracts. TradeCentric is opening...
HRDA Frankly Speaking: The AI Outcomes of SPARK HR
McKesson’s senior talent leader Jenessa Disler addressed the growing presence of AI in human resources at the SPARK HR event, unveiling the CLEAR framework—Culture signals, Leader behavior, Engagement infrastructure, AI intentionality, and Readiness at scale. The model aims to give...
Planview Launches Agent Resource Management, Redefining Portfolio Resource Management for the AI Era
Planview unveiled an Agent Resource Management capability that merges human staff and task‑specific AI agents into a single planning and governance platform. The solution lets leaders view costs—including compute and token spend—assign work, and enforce policy controls across blended workforces....
Art Schools Grapple with AI
Canadian art and design schools are cautiously adopting artificial intelligence, crafting ethical guidelines while confronting the risk that AI could displace entry‑level creative jobs. OCAD University has instituted policies to protect student intellectual property and embeds AI literacy across curricula,...
![[EBook] The Simplest Path to Achieve Value with AI](https://hixhlmpcokxhartfkpyi.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/images/thumbnails/335288eedb21c62abdd383d76ec4d443.webp)
[EBook] The Simplest Path to Achieve Value with AI
Infor, the enterprise software provider, is promoting a new eBook titled "The Simplest Path to Achieve Value with AI." The guide addresses the fact that 62% of organizations were still stuck in experimental AI phases in 2025, offering a roadmap...
IntellectAI Powers Excess Casualty Launch in 15 Weeks
A national property‑and‑casualty carrier partnered with IntellectAI to launch a fully functional underwriting platform for non‑admitted excess casualty in just 15 weeks. The solution had to support five lines of business, integrate VIN verification and OFAC screening, and automatically enrich...
Tesla FSD Reverses to Create Space for Driver
This was unexpected. Tesla's FSD waits to see what my father in-law was going to do. Then when it realizes there isn't enough space for him to back out, the system goes into reverse to give him room before driving...
Measuring AI-Enabled Success: 3 KPIs CIOs Should Track
CIOs must move beyond traditional gatekeeping and create secure, pre‑approved AI pathways that embed security controls directly into workflows. To gauge success, three KPIs are essential: time from idea to production, employee adoption of approved AI tools, and the rate...
How This Travel Company's AI Rollout Drove a 73% Satisfaction Boost: A 5-Step Playbook for Your Business
Booking.com transformed its partner‑to‑guest communication with an agentic AI system called Smart Messenger, cutting response times from minutes to seconds. By building a Snowflake‑based data platform that incorporates ThoughtSpot, Airflow, Immuta, Arize and open‑source LangGraph, the company staged a two‑phase...
Will AI Make You Stupid?
In this episode, the hosts explore how constant reliance on AI for tasks like copy‑pasting, answering, and outsourcing can boost productivity while potentially dulling our own thinking skills. They discuss the paradox that AI can make us more efficient yet...
Building an Agentic AI Strategy that Pays Off - without Risking Business Failure
Agentic AI promises up to $3 trillion in annual productivity gains, yet Gartner predicts over 40% of projects will be canceled by 2027 because of cost overruns and unclear value. Only about 13% of vendors truly deliver autonomous agents, and token‑based...
AI Delivers $30K Research Insights for $500/Hour
Market research firms charge $30,000 for insights I get from Claude in 30 minutes. Here are the 7 prompts that turn AI into your $500/hour research analyst:
Weekly Briefing: 92,000 Tech Workers Are Funding the AI Buildout, the 4-Day Work Week Is a Lie, One Agent Wiped...
In 2026, more than 92,000 tech workers were laid off as firms like Meta, Microsoft and Oracle divert payroll to fund an estimated $670 billion AI infrastructure push. The hype around a four‑day work week is challenged by data showing only...
OpenAI Raises over $4 Billion for New Enterprise Deployment Venture
OpenAI has secured more than $4 billion to launch a new joint venture, The Deployment Company, with 19 investors such as TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Advent and Bain Capital. The startup will receive an initial $500 million from OpenAI, with an option...
Deals and Cashback Move Into ChatGPT Conversations
Minty has introduced an AI‑powered shopping companion that plugs into ChatGPT, surfacing deals and cashback offers directly within the conversation. The company says 70% of U.S. shoppers already turn to AI for discounts and has signed more than 10,000 brands...
The CIO Remit: Treat GenAI as a Mission-Critical Enterprise App
Generative AI has moved from pilot projects to a mission‑critical status, with 96% of enterprise IT leaders ranking it alongside ERP and CRM systems. A Foundry survey of 300 CIOs shows two‑thirds already embedding GenAI into SaaS applications and core...
13 Free AI Trading Bots for Beginners in 2026: Features and Use Cases
In 2026, free AI crypto trading bots are gaining traction as beginners seek automated solutions to mitigate late entries, panic selling, and overtrading. The article ranks 13 platforms, highlighting MoneyFlare’s fully managed AI service, exchange‑embedded bots from Binance, Pionex, OKX,...
Opaque Buys Post-Quantum Cryptographic AI Tech From Abu Dhabi’s TII
Opaque Systems Inc. announced the acquisition of advanced cryptographic AI technologies from Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute. The deal adds multiparty computation, fully homomorphic encryption, and post‑quantum cryptographic safeguards to Opaque’s confidential AI platform, covering training, fine‑tuning, inference and agent...
How AI Will Reshape Computer Systems by 2035: A Jeffersonian Dinner in San Francisco About Our 10,000x Future
The Computing Research Association’s Industry Salon gathered 20 AI and systems leaders in San Francisco on April 16, 2026 to envision computer systems in 2035. Participants, including Jeff Dean, Dave Patterson and academic pioneers, projected a 10,000‑fold increase in global...
IBM Introduces Bob Premium Package for Z to Modernize Mainframe Applications
IBM announced the IBM Bob Premium Package for Z, an AI‑enhanced extension of its watsonx Code Assistant tailored for mainframe development, now available in a no‑cost private technical preview. The package embeds deep Z‑specific language and middleware knowledge into an integrated IDE,...
Supporting Startups that Are Shaping the Future of Energy
Global electricity demand is expected to grow 50% in the next five years, prompting a need for smarter, AI‑enabled grids. Google announced the second‑year Google for Startups Accelerator, an equity‑free program running September through November that offers cloud infrastructure, AI...
IBM and Google Cloud Partner to Accelerate Enterprise AI and Hybrid Cloud Modernization
IBM is deepening its partnership with Google Cloud to fuse AI and hybrid‑cloud capabilities. New services such as IBM watsonx.data, HashiCorp Terraform, Confluent Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift, and the Lightspeed Agent are now available through the Google Cloud Marketplace, simplifying...
EDB Offers New Paradigm to Slash Data Center Emissions
EnterpriseDB unveiled EDB PG AI, a suite of performance efficiencies that target the data layer of AI workloads. The platform reduces data‑center power use by shrinking infrastructure footprints and optimizing vector indexing, search, and retrieval operations. By measuring "intelligence per watt," EDB...
BMC Amplifies AI-Powered Mainframe Solutions
BMC Software unveiled a suite of AI‑embedded mainframe tools, including the zAdviser Enterprise Application Analysis platform and the AMI Assistant knowledge chatbot. The new solutions combine source‑code analysis, telemetry and productivity data into AI‑generated reports that surface risk, complexity and...
Exclusive: Metalenz Has Figured Out a Way to Make Face ID Invisible
Metalenz, a Boston optics startup, unveiled Polar ID, an under‑display facial‑authentication system that leverages nanostructured metasurface lenses to capture polarization data. The technology can tell a real human face apart from high‑quality 3D masks, offering security comparable to Apple’s TrueDepth system...
Agentic AI Tackles RTL Verification’s Productivity Gap
Agentic AI is emerging as a solution to the productivity gap in RTL verification, shifting focus from raw simulation speed to coordinated workflow intelligence. By embedding AI agents directly into verification engines, the technology can observe state, plan bounded actions,...
Why Your Agentic AI Pentester Is Probably Just a Fancy Scanner
Ridge Security benchmarked three agentic AI pentesting platforms—RidgeGen, Shannon and Strix—against the OWASP Juice Shop. Using the same Gemini 3 Flash model, RidgeGen produced 55 fully verified findings with zero hallucinations, while Shannon generated 27 findings of which 63% were...
AI Deepfakes Are Moving Into Commercial Real Estate Operations
Artificial intelligence‑generated deepfakes are amplifying business email compromise schemes, now targeting commercial real‑estate operations. The FBI attributes over $2.9 billion in losses to BEC, and AI voice cloning is making vendor invoices, escrow wires and vacancy transitions vulnerable. Fraudsters start with...
New AI Tools Move Toward Easier 3D Design
Anthropic unveiled a suite of Claude "connectors" that link its large‑language model to leading 3D design platforms such as Autodesk Fusion, Blender and SketchUp. The integration lets users issue natural‑language prompts that generate or modify geometry, effectively creating a text‑to‑3D...
Navigator: Looping LLMs Into Convergent Senior‑Dev Performance
Loop is the whole game with LLMs. Navigator is a Claude Code plugin that loops research and execution until it actually converges, instead of bailing after one pass. I’ve been running it daily since 2025 – feels like a focused senior dev...
AI Advice Sways Choices, but Offers No Lasting Well‑being
Most participants who had a 20-minute discussion with AI chatbots about health, careers or relationships followed its advice. However, 2-3 weeks later, participants receiving advice from AI showed no sustained well-being. These findings reveal that LLMs exert substantial influence over...
Our Vision for Building an Open Ecosystem for the Agent Era
HubSpot announced an open, agent‑ready platform that exposes both its data layer—contacts, deals, tickets, and activity—and a new intelligence layer that delivers pre‑computed risk scores and benchmarks drawn from over 280,000 customers. The move lets third‑party AI agents run on...
DeepSeek Advances HC with mHC, Muon Optimizer on TileLang
-ByteDance Seed proposed HC. DeepSeek took it further with mHC. Kimi developed Attention Residuals from a related direction. -Both Kimi and DeepSeek are pushing the Muon optimizer. -DeepSeek is now running deep on TileLang, an open-source kernel language started by...
AI Boom Fuels Global Memory Shortage and Cost Surge
As AI demand soars, global memory shortages are driving costs up and reshaping the tech landscape. https://t.co/iYeZDehsDf
AI Will Write 90% of Clinical Work Soon
At leading AI companies, software agents are using AI to write 90% of their code. The same thing will happen in medicine, where doctors will use AI to complete 90% of clinical work. In some cases, the AI-Native doctor is...
Retracted Study Undermines AI Education Claims, RCTs Prevail
My surprise here seems warranted, this paper was retracted (There are other peer-reviewed meta-analyses of the impact of AI on education finding positive effects, like: https://t.co/bLHHelTLCs though the best evidence of AI helping is from RCTs of interventions with AI tutors)...
Autonomous Corporations Already Trade, Manage, and Invest without Humans
We're watching the birth of autonomous corporations in real time AI agents are already: • Trading tokens • Managing treasuries • Deploying capital • Optimizing yield • Executing strategies All without human intervention The zero human company isn't a thought experiment anymore It's a working prototype
Cross‑design Robots Can Now Share Learned Skills Instantly
Robots With Different Designs Can Now Share Skills 🤖 ↔ 🤖 💬 Abilities taught to one robot don't usually work on another. With a new approach, it's one and done. https://t.co/sUQs1Qw4ZR https://t.co/oGEOmJtScF
AI Becomes First Stop Before Doctors in Healthcare
People are starting to turn to AI before they turn to doctors. For many, tools like ChatGPT have become the first stop for symptoms, questions and reassurance. The shift is behavioral. Access is replacing authority as the starting point in healthcare. https://t.co/0cbKUaeE2z...
AI Advisers Surge in Demand Amid Stock Concentration
🆕 Adviser links: customer demand for AI advisers, supporting early career advisers, and the concentrated stock calculus. https://t.co/LNrRGAX3Em chart: https://t.co/JTu8SCqvgj https://t.co/fMQeMllv0t
Fragmentation Threatens AI's Impact in HR
The Real Risk to #AI in #HR Is Fragmentation https://t.co/s8CvaGlaI8 by @laraalbert > some good statistics here and not just for AI, but for #payroll and other business processes. #EnSw #HRTech #HCM #SAP #SuccessFactors
Essential Skills for Successful AI Programming
What skills do people need to successfully program with #AI? by Christoph Elhardt @TechXplore_com Learn more: https://t.co/za37iN60wn #ArtificialIntelligence #ML #MachineLearning https://t.co/xm3tOZtPa9
Bajaj Finance AI Handles 30% Calls, Cuts Costs by Third
During its earnings call, Bajaj Finance said that 30% of its outbound calls are now handled by AI agents. Plus, AI is saving 1/3 of the cost of call centers https://t.co/sILm3EM9W3
Beyond Hype: Real Progress Lies in Data Infrastructure
Sam Altman and OpenAI dominate this week's signals. But here's what's building quietly underneath: Machine Learning. Data Management. Data Analysis. The headlines fight. The infrastructure strengthens. That's where the actual work is getting done.