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
Open-Weight AI Models Require Proportional Evaluation Approaches
Open‑weight AI models (OWMs) are emerging with publicly accessible parameters, creating risk profiles that traditional closed‑weight evaluation methods overlook. Researchers Paskov, Rodriguez, Dev, and Casper propose a proportional evaluation (PE) framework comprising four criteria to address these gaps. Their systematic review of 37 OWM families released between 2025 and April 2026 shows only one model meets all PE standards, while the majority satisfy none. The findings highlight a critical need for industry‑wide adoption of proportional assessment practices.
MAS Partners Banking Industry to Tap AI, Machine Learning to Combat Financial Crime
The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a proof‑of‑value project to use artificial intelligence and machine learning for pre‑emptive scam detection. The initiative brings together five local banks, the Government Technology Agency and the Singapore Police Force, creating a secure data‑sharing...
Silicon Valley Made AI Powerful. Tokyo Wants to Make It Work
Tokyo is positioning itself as the world’s most startup‑friendly city, leveraging its stable infrastructure, government backing, and a burgeoning AI ecosystem. Governor Yuriko Koike’s agenda targets a ten‑fold rise in startups and unicorns, and the city has already climbed to...
Enhans Renames CommerceOS to AgentOS, Expanding Its AI Agents Beyond Commerce to the Enterprise
Enhans announced that its CommerceOS platform will be renamed AgentOS effective May 1, signaling a shift from a commerce‑focused tool to a broader enterprise AI operating system. AgentOS promises to stitch together data, ontologies, agents, workflows and web interfaces into a...
Your AI CV Just Got You Rejected
A federal court in California authorized a collective‑action notice allowing anyone over 40 who applied through Workday’s AI hiring platform since September 2020 to join a class‑action lawsuit. The case, Mobley v. Workday, alleges that the AI system systematically down‑weights older,...
Zensai Introduces Human Success Agent for Microsoft Agent 365, Redefining AI-Driven Learning and Human Success in the Flow of Work
Zensai announced the general availability of its Human Success Agent, a partner AI agent built on Microsoft Agent 365. The solution embeds real‑time workforce performance, engagement and skill data directly into Microsoft 365 apps, leveraging Microsoft Entra for secure governance....
How TeamViewer ONE Transforms IT Operations From Firefighting to Autopilot
TeamViewer ONE leverages agentic AI to shift IT support from reactive ticket‑based firefighting to proactive, autonomous remediation. By continuously monitoring endpoints, the platform detects early signals of digital friction and resolves issues before users notice them. The solution combines AI,...
€4.8m EU-Funded AI Project to Tackle Child Diarrhoeal Disease in Africa
An EU‑funded CARE‑AFRICA project will develop an AI‑driven tablet tool to identify the pathogen behind diarrhoeal disease in children under five across sub‑Saharan Africa. The €4.8 million (about $5.2 million) grant brings together six partners from Europe and Africa to train models...
AmEx CEO Stephen Squeri - Why Agentic Commerce Is More Fraught with Risk than Traditional E-Commerce
American Express CEO Stephen Squeri said the firm’s AI rollout has already delivered a 30% productivity lift for its programmers, accelerating product development across its global network. He unveiled the ACE (Agentic Commerce Experiences) Developer Kit, enabling merchants to embed...
OpenAI To Extend Cyber Program to Government Agencies
OpenAI released a roadmap titled "Cybersecurity in the Intelligence Age" outlining plans to broaden its Trusted Access for Cyber (TAC) program to federal, state and local government agencies, as well as key industry players. The expansion coincides with the launch...
OpEd: Artificial Intelligence Redefines Workspace
Los Angeles executives are shifting AI from pilot projects to enterprise‑wide deployment, with 92% naming it a top investment priority for 2026. The surge in AI use is reshaping task assignment, review, and governance, prompting leaders to balance speed with...
Can Investors Trust AI Sales Figures? Asks Wall Street Journal Opinion Piece
A Wall Street Journal opinion piece warns that AI firms are inflating sales by paying partners to adopt their technology. It highlights OpenAI’s $1.5 billion joint venture with private‑equity firms, Anthropic’s $200 million contribution to a similar deal, and Google’s $750 million subsidy...
The EU AI Act Newsletter #101: Trilogue Breakdown
EU legislators failed to secure a deal to postpone key provisions of the EU AI Act until December 2027, leaving the August 2024 start date for high‑risk AI applications unchanged. The deadlock centers on whether machinery and medical‑device sectors should...
AI-Driven Risk Intelligence: How FIs Are Predicting Systemic Shocks
Financial institutions are adopting AI‑driven risk intelligence to monitor systemic signals in real time, replacing slow, periodic stress‑test cycles with continuous analytics. The European Systemic Risk Board’s 2025‑2026 report highlights AI’s dual nature: it can improve decision‑making and early‑warning capabilities,...
My AI Learning Journey – Part 10 – AI Assisted Coding – VSCodium and Continue
The author integrated the open‑source VSCodium editor with the Continue extension, OpenRouter, and the GPT‑5.3‑codex model to create a fully private AI‑assisted coding workflow. By prompting the LLM, a 600‑line Python utility for monitoring a Fritzbox router was generated in...
Walmart Could Be Prepping a Budget Smart Speaker with Gemini Baked In
Walmart is poised to launch a budget Onn smart speaker that embeds Google’s Gemini generative AI, marking the first third‑party device to run the technology. The CSA filing shows the speaker will support Google Cast for Audio, Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, a...
Vocus and Fortinet Fighting Shadow AI with Secure Shield Launch
Australian telecom Vocus and cybersecurity firm Fortinet have launched Vocus Secure Shield, a managed SASE platform designed to expose and control shadow AI usage within enterprises. The service leverages Fortinet’s AI‑driven security and deep application awareness to detect AI tools,...
Infios Launches New AI Capabilities Focused on Supply Chain Workflows
Infios unveiled a suite of AI agents that embed directly into supply‑chain workflows, spanning order management, warehousing and transportation. The agents automate tasks such as driver check‑calls, document parsing and inventory research, while dynamically rerouting shipments when disruptions occur. Customers...
Designing Chips In The Context Of Rapidly Evolving AI
Chip architects are grappling with the accelerating pace of AI model evolution, especially for edge‑centric, agentic workloads. Experts from Arm, Cadence, Rambus, Siemens EDA and others stress that memory hierarchy, data movement and reliable‑availability‑service (RAS) now dominate performance‑power‑area (PPA) trade‑offs....
The Draft National AI Policy Has Been Pulled — Here’s What the Next One Should Look Like
The draft National AI policy in South Africa was withdrawn after fake citations and a rushed, bureaucratic drafting process were exposed. Experts criticized its lack of flexibility, data‑sovereignty safeguards, and proactive vision. They argue a future framework must be holistic,...
Why Agentic Data Integration Needs to Start with Meaning Rather than Automation
The article argues that enterprise data integration must prioritize semantic meaning before deploying AI agents. Traditional pipelines rely on schema‑on‑write, but emerging tools like AWS Glue crawlers and Databricks Auto Loader enable schema‑on‑read, reducing brittleness. Building a shared semantic spine—an...
Orange to Set up AI-Driven Tourism Platform in Aragon
Orange Spain, operating as MasOrange, has been awarded a contract by the regional government of Aragon to develop an AI‑driven tourism platform. The solution will modernize the collection and management of tourism data, moving away from outdated manual processes. By...
Prudent Corporate Launches AI Platform ‘Edge+’ for Mutual Fund Distributors
Prudent Corporate Advisory Services Limited has introduced Edge+, an AI‑powered platform for mutual fund distributors. The solution consolidates goal‑based planning, business analytics, marketing automation and research tools into a single interface, allowing distributors to generate asset‑allocation strategies and execute transactions....
HCLTech to Power AI-Led Fan Experience for DP World Tour
HCLTech has signed a multi‑year agreement to become the official digital experience partner of the DP World Tour, the global professional golf circuit. The partnership tasks HCLTech with redesigning the Tour’s website and mobile apps, embedding AI and real‑time analytics...
Fed’s Bowman Calls for Adaptive Oversight on AI Adoption
Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman warned that AI’s rapid evolution is reshaping cybersecurity and risk management across banks, creating both operational gains and supervisory challenges. She highlighted tools like Anthropic’s Mythos model that can identify vulnerabilities but...
The Next Phase of AI: Digital Native Economy>
The article argues that AI is moving from answering questions to executing tasks, creating an "agent economy" where value shifts from consumer‑facing apps to the underlying execution layer. Platforms that own payments, logistics, merchant relationships and digital workflows will capture...
AI Infrastructure: Why Buildout Matters More Than Apps>
The AI boom is moving from a software‑centric story to an infrastructure‑driven cycle, mirroring the early internet and electrification eras. Scaling large models demands massive compute, power, cooling and high‑speed networking, turning chips, data centers, energy and automation into the...
May Sparks Surge of Next‑Gen AI Model Launches
May is going to be a good month for new models. I bet we will see a a few gemini models at Google I/O - Gemini 3.5 [Pro/Flash] Sonnet 4.7 ? gpt-5.6 The hockey stick goes up.
Gemini Reveals Deeper Thinking Traces than Usual
Looks like Gemini showed me a bit more of their thinking traces, than the usual: Tone/Style: Balance empathy with candor, validate emotions (if any - this is mostly factual), ground in fact, gently correct misconceptions. Mirror user's tone (straightforward, slightly informal,...
Your Firm Is Saving Time, the Question Is Who Is Benefiting From It
UK accounting firms are seeing AI cut roughly 25% of the time spent on data‑reconciliation and other compliance tasks. However, most practices simply re‑allocate the freed hours to the same workload, leaving profit margins unchanged. The article argues that traditional...
The AI Battlespace: Artificial Intelligence, Civil Stability, and the Weaponization of Trust
Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in military, cyber and civilian systems, offering speed and analytical power but also creating new vulnerabilities. The article explains how adversaries can weaponize AI by poisoning data, manipulating trusted outputs, and automating cyber attacks, citing...
A Decade After the ‘Godfather of AI’ Said Radiologists Were Obsolete, Their Salaries Are up to $571K and Demand Is...
Ten years after Geoffrey Hinton warned that AI would make radiologists obsolete, the specialty is thriving. The U.S. radiology workforce grew about 10%, while average compensation rose to $571,000 in 2025, a 9% increase year‑over‑year. Demand remains high, with over...
The Leadership Moves That Make AI Adoption Work
AI adoption in U.S. higher‑education campuses is gaining speed, but institutions that succeed are those that prioritize people over tools. Leaders who align senior administration, department chairs, and faculty through tiered training and open dialogue create the trust needed for...
The Algorithm Advantage
The article warns that automation bias—over‑reliance on AI outputs—has moved from cockpits to corporate boardrooms, creating costly blind spots. It cites Apple Card’s gender‑biased credit limits and Amazon’s flawed recruiting AI as high‑profile failures. The author proposes a Symmetry Framework...
The Rebuilding of Banking
WNS, part of Cap Gemini, released three thought‑leadership blogs arguing that AI alone cannot solve banking’s biggest challenges. The pieces stress that fragmented legacy data hampers compliance, operational efficiency, and mortgage processing, and that unifying data across the operating core...
Atlassian Launches ‘Unleash’ in Bengaluru
Atlassian is debuting Unleash, an invitation‑only tech summit, on June 13, 2026 in Bengaluru. Co‑hosted with YourStory, the full‑day event will explore how AI, cloud‑native platforms and modern workflows are reshaping teamwork. The agenda includes two engineering tracks and a...
Pipelock: Open-Source AI Agent Firewall
AI coding agents with shell access and unrestricted internet pose a single point of failure for credential leakage. Pipelock, an open‑source Go‑based firewall from the PipeLab project, inserts an enforcement layer between agents and the network, scanning all traffic through...
Advantech Adds Intel Core Series 3 to Edge AI Systems
Advantech announced it will embed Intel’s Core Series 3 processors into its industrial embedded boards and edge AI systems, beginning with a lineup launching in April 2026. The hybrid six‑core silicon combines performance and efficient cores, an Xe3 GPU and Intel NPU 5.0,...
The Manager Tax
Kevin Schulman’s recent AI experiment reveals a stark inefficiency he calls the “manager tax.” Fifteen tasks were run in three setups—a solo LLM, a manager model delegating to specialist agents, and a market system where models bid for each subtask....
Who Actually Owns AI Governance?
Advertisers are confronting a new layer of complexity as AI becomes integral to ad tech, forcing organizations to grapple with AI governance alongside existing privacy, security, and data responsibilities. A recent IAPP survey shows 48% of companies lack sufficient budget...
Understanding the Science Behind AI-Based Hiring Assessments
HireVue introduced Assessment Builder, an AI‑powered platform that lets recruiters quickly create scientifically validated hiring assessments for any role, from high‑volume positions to niche executive jobs. The tool parses job descriptions, generates role‑specific tests, and offers adjustable AI involvement, including...
Pub.Call: AI Automation Show + Tell with Matthew Rance (April 9, 2026)
In an April 9 Pub.Call session, Matthew Rance of Immediate Media demonstrated how to embed AI into publishing workflows with a fully automated daily newsletter. The system ingests raw content, transforms data, applies generative AI to summarize and rank relevance,...
The Complete Guide to What GPT-5.5 Can Actually Do
OpenAI’s GPT‑5.5 moves beyond speed, delivering a fundamentally new interaction model. It expands the effective context window, maintains session‑wide awareness, and can reason across multimodal inputs such as spreadsheets, documents, and images. The model introduces extended coherent reasoning, flagging uncertainties...
What Researchers Learned About Building an LLM Security Workflow
Researchers from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment demonstrated that large language models (LLMs) alone cannot reliably triage security alerts, missing every malicious case in a baseline test. When the same models were embedded in a...
Aussie Researchers Harness AI to Help Unlock “Cheap, Scalable, Non-Toxic” Solar Recycling
Australian researchers at the University of New England are using AI to speed up the discovery of solvents that can extract pure silicon from end‑of‑life solar panels. Predictive, generative and agentic models suggest candidates, which are then tested in a...
PE Fuels $1.5B Anth
Macro: PE demand backs Anthropic $1.5B JV with Blackstone & Goldman. Key: $300M anchors, $150M GS; Risks: execution, valuation, regulation. Trade: buy select AI names. — Viktor Kopylov, PhD, CFA More insights: t.me/si14Kopylov
AI Empowers Lean Firms to Outrun Chaotic Giants
It’s not a tech issue. Most businesses are chaotic black boxes that just don't know what they want... and you can't optimize what you don't understand. Lean, self-aware companies will use AI to CRUSH large, unwieldy ones. great read👇
Google’s Black Box AI Models: What Search Professionals Need To Understand via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Google’s SafeSearch team has become the proving ground for deploying machine‑learning models inside Search, allowing engineers to isolate AI experiments from the core ranking pipeline. Director Nikola Todorovic explained that many AI models act as "black boxes," making debugging and...
Scaffolding, Not Model Size, Is the Real AI Moat
everyone is talking about the `Agent Harness` right now. this is a great breakdown of why: → Frontier models are converging and getting way cheaper. → the real moat is the scaffolding around the LLM (context, tools, sandboxing etc.) 👇
AI Cuts Curriculum Development Time for Accreditation
AI-powered tools are revolutionizing curriculum development, enabling new universities to create accreditation-ready programs in a fraction of the time. Discover how this innovation can expedite program design. https://t.co/DJL7IgVtJn