Today's AI Pulse
Odyssey lands $310M Series B, valued at $1.45B
Odyssey announced a $310 million Series B round that values the AI lab at $1.45 billion. The round was led by Natural Capital and included backers such as Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT and IQT. In parallel, Odyssey struck a preferred‑cloud deal with AWS to use Trainium silicon for large‑scale model training.
Also developing:
DesignCon 2026: Keysight to Showcase Advanced AI Data Center and High-Speed Interconnect Validation
Keysight Technologies will present end‑to‑end AI data‑center and high‑speed interconnect validation solutions at DesignCon 2026 in Santa Clara. The showcase includes a 3D chiplet design workflow, signal‑integrity testing up to 3.2 Tbps, DDR5 and GDDR7 memory validation, and PCIe 7.0 PAM4 performance verification. A highlight is the 1.6 Tbps interconnect benchmarking platform that validates AI fabrics, BER, and FEC across emerging networking standards. Keysight will also deliver multiple technical sessions and tutorials, reinforcing its role in accelerating AI hardware deployment.
Gartner: Why Neoclouds Are the Future of GPU-as-a-Service
Gartner predicts neoclouds—purpose‑built providers for GPU‑intensive AI—will capture about 20% of the $267 bn AI cloud market by 2030. These specialists deliver bare‑metal GPU performance, rapid provisioning and consumption‑based pricing that can cut costs 60‑70% versus hyperscaler instances. Rather than replacing...
Research: 69% of Restaurants Are Adopting AI While 81% Increase Digital Marketing Investment
Research by Popmenu of 328 restaurant leaders shows 44% already use AI and another 25% plan adoption, while 78% are optimizing sites for AI‑driven search. Consumer spending dropped to $90 weekly, a $25 decline, prompting operators to lean on digital...
Ezeiza Opts for Synaptic Ramp Solution
Argentina’s Ezeiza International Airport will roll out Synaptic Aviation’s AI‑powered ramp visibility platform across all passenger gates after a successful 90‑day proof‑of‑concept. The deployment installs more than 60 on‑premises cameras that continuously monitor aircraft push‑back, baggage loading and ground‑crew movements....
Bridging AI and Sports Science: How Model Context Protocols (MCPs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG ) Systems Can Personalize Training
Model Context Protocols (MCPs) provide a standardized bridge that lets large language models pull live athlete data from platforms like AthleteSR, Strava, or Garmin. Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) layers sport‑science knowledge from textbooks and research into the model’s output, reducing hallucinations....
Salesforce Acquires Momentum: What It Means
The episode breaks down Salesforce’s acquisition of Momentum, a revenue‑orchestration startup that transforms unstructured voice and video conversations into structured CRM data and automated workflows via Agentforce 360 and Slackbot. It explains how this move lets Salesforce own the "ground truth"...
Hyperscaler Expansion Redefines Europe’s Data Centre Supply Dynamics
CBRE projects a 24% compound annual growth rate for Europe’s hyperscaler self‑build data centre segment, reflecting surging AI workloads and expanding cloud services. The forecast signals a rapid acceleration of capacity construction by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google...
Microsoft Deletes Blog Telling Users to Train AI on Pirated Harry Potter Books
Microsoft removed a November‑2024 blog that urged developers to train generative AI using a Kaggle dataset of all seven Harry Potter books, which was mistakenly labeled public domain. The post, written by senior product manager Pooja Kamath, showcased Azure SQL DB,...
Stravito Introduces Deep Research Agent in AI Assistant to Accelerate Insight-Based Decisions
Stravito has upgraded its Insights Intelligence Platform with a Deep Research Agent embedded in its AI Assistant. The new agent autonomously designs multi‑step research workflows, parses full reports—including charts and tables—and cross‑checks sources to deliver citation‑backed answers. It operates solely...
Why DoorDash Isn't Afraid of AI Shopping Agents
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says AI ordering agents won’t replace delivery apps because DoorDash controls the end‑to‑end experience, from driver dispatch to issue resolution. AI agents may handle search, ordering and payment, but fulfillment and logistics remain platform‑specific. DoorDash posted 32%...
Preparing for the Agent-Driven Future of B2B Marketing
Gartner’s 2026 strategic outlook warns that AI will move beyond acceleration to reshape B2B buying, with agents mediating up to 90% of purchase decisions by 2028. Marketing teams must treat AI fluency as a core competency, embedding prompting skills and...
AI Becomes Mandatory Backbone of Enterprise Customer Service
Customer service is where artificial intelligence has officially moved past the hype. @NICEComms recently reported their full-year 2025 financial results, and the numbers point to a clear structural shift in enterprise adoption. Their AI annual recurring revenue grew 66% year over...
Claude Now Available Directly in PowerPoint for Pro Users
Anthropic has rolled out its Claude AI add‑in for PowerPoint to Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise subscribers, currently in a beta Research Preview. The integration lets users generate, edit and fully populate presentations from plain‑text prompts, automatically matching the slide...
Interview: Ankur Anand, Group CIO, Nash Squared
Ankur Anand, group CIO of Nash Squared, is reshaping the recruiter’s technology agenda to turn data and AI into competitive advantages. He merged day‑to‑day IT operations with a growth‑focused digital strategy, integrating disparate systems to create a single candidate view. Anand...
AI Writes Code Faster than We Can Review
▶ Reading unfamiliar code is exhausting. Now imagine that code is coming from an LLM that writes faster than you can think and doesn't take lunch breaks ◀ This 👆 perfectly captures the AI productivity paradox: code is written faster than...
How AI Contextual Governance Enables Business Adaptation
Artificial intelligence has moved from experimental labs into the operational core of enterprises, demanding a shift from static to dynamic oversight. Traditional governance models, built for predictable software, cannot keep pace with AI systems that learn and evolve. Contextual governance...
How AI Found Better Battery Materials Among 14 Million Possibilities
A collaboration between McGill University, Mila‑Quebec, and Université de Montréal built a closed‑loop system that couples high‑throughput robotic synthesis with multi‑objective Bayesian optimization to explore roughly 14.2 million triple‑doped LiCoPO₄ cathode compositions. Using a set‑transformer surrogate and a multi‑task Gaussian process,...
Ericsson Set for MWC26; Meta Mega-Deal; Vodafone Dutch Sale
Meta Platforms signed a multiyear, multibillion‑dollar agreement with Nvidia to install millions of AI processors for both training and inference, including confidential‑computing GPUs for WhatsApp. Vodafone Group sold its 50% stake in Dutch joint venture VodafoneZiggo to Liberty Global for...
Optimization of AI, Automation, and Digital Twins for the AEC Industry | GeoBuiz Summit 2026
At GeoBuiz Summit 2026, Bentley Systems’ Chief Platform Officer Patrick Cozzi outlined how AI, automation and digital twins are reshaping infrastructure engineering. He highlighted AI‑assisted design, reality capture and full‑lifecycle twins as tools to combat aging assets, talent gaps and...
Delhi Discom Showcases Its 'Digital Twin of Power Distribution Network' At AI Summit
Delhi’s BSES Rajdhani Power Limited unveiled a Digital Twin of its power distribution network at the AI Impact Summit 2026. The AI‑driven platform creates a real‑time, map‑like view of the Janakpuri grid by fusing SCADA, GIS, IoT sensors, SAP and...
Minions – Stripe's Coding Agents Part 2
Stripe’s minions are unattended LLM‑driven coding agents that now generate over 1,300 pull requests each week, all created without human‑written code. The system runs on Stripe’s pre‑warmed devboxes—standardized EC2 instances that spin up in about ten seconds—providing isolated, parallel environments...
Why Top VC Quit for Government Tech Revolution
Sat down with @skupor, Director of OPM and former a16z managing partner, about why he left a comfy VC job to work in Gov and what he's building with @USTechForce. (00:00) His wife's reaction to leaving a16z (04:00) How this Trump admin...
Apple: Anchoring Austin’s AI Ecosystem
Apple is cementing its role as an anchor of Austin’s burgeoning AI ecosystem by extending its full‑stack, privacy‑first AI capabilities across silicon, operating systems, and developer tools. The company’s vertical leverage encourages local startups to design on‑device, edge‑native solutions that...
How Moody's Can Be an AI-Enabler, but Remain Resilient to AI Disruption Itself. CEO Robert Fauber Lays Out the Data
Moody’s CEO Robert Fauber argues that a massive, proprietary data estate is the cornerstone of AI adoption for regulated financial institutions. The firm is unifying its data, models, ratings and research into a trusted context layer that makes raw information...
Attractions.io Helps Operators Analyse & Act on Guest Feedback with AI Tool GX Pulse
Attractions.io’s AI‑driven GX Pulse platform captured second place in blooloop’s Guest Journey Innovation Awards. The tool consolidates scattered guest reviews into a journey map, applies language models to extract themes, sentiment and a proprietary GX Score. By turning thousands of...
Nobody Gets Sued but the Doctor: The Legal Vacuum at the Center of the AI Physician Revolution
The episode examines the legal vacuum surrounding AI‑assisted clinical decision‑making, highlighting that while the FDA has cleared over 1,300 AI medical devices, adoption remains low and physicians bear virtually all malpractice liability. Data shows a rapid rise in AI use...
Tech Mahindra, NVIDIA Expand Project Indus with Education-Focused LLM
Tech Mahindra and NVIDIA have upgraded Project Indus with an education‑focused large language model, expanding it from 1.2 billion to 8 billion parameters. The model is tailored for Indian classrooms, delivering physics and core‑subject tutoring in Hindi and other regional languages. Built on...
Healthee Introduces AI-Powered Claims Analytics: Real-Time Claims Insights that Drive Savings
Healthee announced the upcoming launch of an AI‑powered Claims Analytics solution that turns static claims reporting into continuous, conversational intelligence. The platform, accessed via Zoe, its agentic AI assistant, lets HR and benefits managers ask plain‑language questions to uncover cost...
Kontakt.io Unveils Next-Generation AI Solutions to Re-ViVE Care Operations and Transform Healthcare Delivery
Kontakt.io announced a suite of AI‑driven agents at ViVE 2026, combining real‑time location services (RTLS) with electronic health record data to create a digital twin of hospital operations. The portfolio—Patient Journey Analytics, Access Agent, Patient Flow Agent, and Supply Chain...
Pontiro Secures £357,500 to Expand Healthcare AI Infrastructure
Pontiro, a health‑tech firm that streamlines medical‑image data for AI, secured £357,500 in a round led by SFC Capital with participation from Plug and Play Ventures and the British Business Bank. The company’s platform has already processed more than two...
Netzilo AI Edge Delivers Enterprise-Grade Visibility, Sandboxing, and Governance for OpenClaw Agents
Netzilo announced the launch of AI Edge, a platform that gives enterprises full visibility, sandboxing, and governance over OpenClaw autonomous agents. The solution captures LLM communications, tool‑call chains, file system activity, and local agent actions, feeding them into a behavioral...
CONTACT Software Joins IPAI Platform in Heilbronn
CONTACT Software has become a member of the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) platform in Heilbronn, Germany. The move gives the company access to IPAI’s training programs, ethical AI standards development, and a network of business, academic, and public‑sector partners....
Entanglement Boosts Machine Learning of Quantum Systems
Researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona introduced an entanglement‑assisted learning strategy for quantum generative adversarial networks (QGANs). By coupling a randomly initialized auxiliary qubit during training, the method overcomes plateaus and local minima that limit QGAN scalability. In a 72‑qubit...
QBO Cloud and MinIO Collaborate to Deliver Enterprise-Grade Object Storage for Modern AI and Analytics Workloads.
QBO Cloud announced a partnership with MinIO to bundle MinIO’s AIStor object storage with its bare‑metal cloud platform. The joint solution delivers S3‑compatible, high‑performance storage optimized for AI and analytics workloads. Customers can deploy the unified data platform on‑prem, edge...
Appian's 'AI Needs Process' Thesis Goes Mainstream - Now It Has to Prove the Math Works
Appian’s CEO Matt Calkins says AI must be paired with deterministic process governance, a thesis now echoed across the industry. The company reported Q4 cloud subscription revenue of $117 million, up 18% YoY, and total revenue of $202.9 million, a 22% increase,...
Nauticus Robotics, Inc. Announces Major Leadership Enhancements, Aquanaut Manufacturing Expansion, and Accelerated Growth Strategy
Nauticus Robotics announced a suite of senior appointments, including Dr. Kjerstin Easton as Vice President of Software, Chuck Claunch as Chief Software Architect, and Jason Close as Vice President of Growth & Go‑to‑Market. The leadership overhaul coincides with Master Investment...
OtterlyAI Unveils Groundbreaking Data: AI Search Engines Depend 95% on Third-Party Sources
OtterlyAI released a study of over 1 million AI‑generated citations from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, finding that roughly 95% of AI answers draw on third‑party sites rather than brand‑owned domains. The report, titled “The AI Citation Economy,” maps citation...
Funnel Processes the World’s First Rent Payment Inside ChatGPT
Funnel, the AI‑driven CRM for multifamily operators, completed the world’s first rent payment inside ChatGPT in partnership with BH Management, which oversees over 93,000 units. The transaction leveraged Funnel’s existing Resident Portal workflows, requiring no new software integrations. This proof‑of‑concept...
Tech Gives Traffickers a Devastating New Weapon
Traffickers are exploiting artificial intelligence, digital platforms and generative AI to scale sexual exploitation, financial sextortion and online scams targeting women and children. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reports 162 nationalities trafficked to 128 countries, with a 77%...
16 Air Assault Demos AI-Enabled Air Manoeuvre Strike
The British Army’s 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team showcased AI‑enabled reconnaissance‑strike capabilities during a visit by Chief of the General Staff General Sir Roly Walker. The demonstration linked new hardware, software and procedures to accelerate target acquisition and air‑delivered...
Organizational Readiness, Not Employee Resistance to Change, Is the Biggest Barrier to AI Success
New research from Qualtrics and Celonis shows that employee resistance is no longer the primary obstacle to AI adoption; instead, organizational readiness is. While 52% of workers regularly use AI and 89% of leaders view AI as a competitive opportunity,...
Razorpay and NPCI Bring Agentic Payments to Claude at India AI Impact Summit
Razorpay and India’s National Payments Corporation (NPCI) have partnered with Anthropic’s Claude to launch Agentic Payments, a pilot that lets users complete purchases from Zomato, Swiggy and Zepto directly within a conversational AI interface. The solution combines Razorpay’s UPI‑based Reserve...
Build Beyond the AI Bubble, Create Lasting Impact
People keep asking if we’re in an AI bubble. We probably are. And that’s not the point. I’ve lived through bubbles before. Dot-com wiped out companies and fortunes. But it also left us the internet, fiber optics, and e-commerce. Same with biotech. Most bets failed. Society still got...
AI Teaches Us About Bias, Complexity, and Knowledge Fragility
As AI learns from us, we must also learn from it, about bias, complexity, and the fragile nature of knowledge
AI Ethics in Action: Bending the AI Curve with Nasser Jones – Bonus Episode with Jotform
Monica Burns hosts a podcast with Nasser Jones, founder of the nonprofit Bending the AI Curve, to discuss practical AI ethics for education. The conversation highlights how bias, access disparities, and an overabundance of AI tools can widen the digital...
SarvamAI Leads India's Sovereign AI Model Race
. @SarvamAI clearly outdistancing everyone in the India sovereign AI model race judging by dominance at the India AI summit event
India’s AI Surge: Codex Users Grow 4x Weekly
Great meeting with PM @narendramodi today to talk about the incredible energy around AI in India. India is our fastest growing market for codex globally, up 4x in weekly users in the past 2 weeks alone. 🇮🇳! https://t.co/MRbw0UkotJ
Coca-Cola Turns to AI Marketing as Price-Led Growth Slows
Coca‑Cola is pivoting from price‑driven growth to AI‑enabled persuasion, testing generative AI across its marketing pipeline. The company is using AI to draft scripts, create images, and tailor campaign messaging in near real‑time as inflation eases. This shift positions AI...
Experience Instant Intelligence with Taalas Inc’s Chatbot
You all have to try the @taalas_inc chatbot, I guarantee you'll find it crazy. Instant intelligence is a heck of a thing https://t.co/RzACWWxJGP https://t.co/F6OeYDxQXm
Anthropic Alienates Open‑source Devs, Pushes Enterprise‑only Lock‑in
Anthropic has alienated devs who care about using open source tools, portability between vendors and using LLM subscriptions in the tool of *their* choice This all seems deliberate: Anthropic gunning at enterprise, not caring much if these devs go elsewhere/use other...