
Elavon Introduces Payments App Integrated With Microsoft 365 Applications
Elavon, a U.S. Bank subsidiary, has partnered with Microsoft to launch Elavon Live Payments, a payments app embedded directly within Microsoft 365. The solution, now listed on the Microsoft Marketplace, operates inside Outlook and Teams, allowing users to create invoices, process PCI‑compliant payments, and receive real‑time notifications without leaving their productivity suite. Elavon claims the integration will cut Days Sales Outstanding and boost efficiency for SMBs and professional service firms. The rollout arrives as Microsoft 365 revenue grew 16% to $34.1 billion in Q2 FY2026.

How to Get Ahead of 99% of SaaS Companies
Most SaaS firms stumble not from lack of intelligence but from unfocused execution. The article argues that the top 1 % succeed by mastering core fundamentals—precise unit economics, a coordinated growth engine, proactive outbound demand, high‑quality educational content, and a brand...

Pulse: The Curated Internet for Smart Professionals
Pulse launches as a topic‑first, creator‑driven platform that curates high‑signal content for busy professionals. It aggregates posts from X, LinkedIn, Substack, YouTube and blogs, then uses human editors and AI summarisation to deliver bite‑sized insights. Users receive a daily email...

Anthropic Brings Agentic Plug-Ins to Cowork
Anthropic has added plug‑ins to its Cowork platform, extending the agentic capabilities of Claude Code to non‑coding enterprise users. The plug‑ins automate specialized tasks across departments such as marketing, legal, and sales, and can be customized without deep technical skills. Anthropic...

Over 175,000 Publicly Exposed Ollama AI Servers Discovered Worldwide - so Fix Now
Security researchers uncovered roughly 175,000 Ollama AI servers worldwide that are publicly reachable because they are bound to all network interfaces instead of localhost. These misconfigured instances lack authentication, allowing attackers to perform "LLMjacking"—hijacking the models to generate spam, malware,...
Microsoft 365 Now Tracks You in Real Time?
Microsoft announced that, beginning March 2026, Microsoft 365’s Teams app will automatically share employees’ real‑time location with managers. The feature works across Windows, macOS, and mobile, displaying the Wi‑Fi network name when users are off‑site. Microsoft says the tracking is optional and...

Mito AI Raises $4.5M to Empower Video Professionals with AI Tools
Mito AI, a collaborative platform that brings AI orchestration tools to video professionals, announced a $4.5 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Kibo, Kfund, Sequoia, a16z scouts, LifeX and several high‑profile angels. The service lets filmmakers,...

Wealth.com Unveils Integrated Tax Planning Platform for Advisors
Wealth.com has launched Wealth.com Tax Planning, an integrated solution that combines tax, estate, and execution workflows within its existing advisor platform. The tool offers multi‑state tax scenario modeling, natural‑language data capture, and client‑ready reporting, and it will be available on...
Efficient String Compression for Modern Database Systems
CedarDB’s v2026‑01‑22 release adds Fast Static Symbol Table (FSST) compression to text columns, cutting string storage roughly in half while accelerating many queries. FSST encodes frequent substrings as 1‑byte tokens and is applied to the dictionary itself, preserving fast integer‑key...

Context Engineering and the Future of AI-Powered Business
The Mint interview highlighted a shift from prompt engineering to context engineering as the key to scaling personalized AI interactions. Salesforce executives explained that embedding customer history, business rules, and emotional cues into AI models creates truly human‑like conversations. Real‑world...
Amazon in Talks To Invest Up To $50 Billion in OpenAI
Amazon is reportedly negotiating a multi‑billion‑dollar investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The funding round could total $100 billion, potentially valuing OpenAI at $830 billion. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is leading talks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman,...

Etleap Introduces a New Managed Pipeline Layer Created for Apache Iceberg
Etleap announced a managed pipeline platform purpose‑built for Apache Iceberg, addressing the missing orchestration layer in Iceberg deployments. The solution consolidates ingestion, transformation, orchestration, and table operations into a single service that runs inside the customer’s virtual private cloud. By...
Backseat Software
Mike Swanson likens modern vehicle software to over‑zealous mobile apps, illustrating how frequent pop‑ups and forced tutorials interrupt drivers. He describes scenarios where a car repeatedly asks for feedback, pushes feature ads, and blocks essential gauges until the user complies....
Euronext Expands SaaS Offering in France
Euronext has rolled out Admincontrol’s governance and secure collaboration SaaS suite across France, following its May 2025 acquisition of the platform. The offering, part of the Euronext Corporate Solutions portfolio, targets listed and private companies seeking stronger board oversight, data sovereignty,...

Safety First as Insurance Firm Safety National Adopts Planful for FP&A
Safety National, a Tokio Marine specialty insurer, replaced its sprawling Excel‑based FP&A process with Planful’s cloud platform in early 2024. The new system, featuring the Spotlight add‑on, delivers real‑time data to Excel, PowerPoint and Word while maintaining a single source...
They Lied to You. Building Software Is Hard
AI programming and no‑code platforms promise rapid prototyping, but they mask the deeper challenges of software development. While beginners can build simple apps quickly, reliance on these tools delays mastery of core coding concepts and problem‑solving skills. As developers gain...

SMEs Are Rapidly Adopting AI - but a US-UK Gap Is Emerging
New Amex Global Business Travel data shows US small‑and‑medium enterprises are outpacing UK peers in AI adoption, with 36% of US SMEs forming dedicated AI teams versus 25% in the UK. Both markets consider AI critical, as 78% expect it...

Mos Health Secures $1.1M to Expand Personalised Health Offerings
Mos Health, a Polish‑American startup, announced a $1.1 million pre‑seed round co‑led by SMOK Ventures and Movens Capital. The company’s AI‑driven platform combines data from sleep, nutrition, labs and wearables to generate personalized health protocols, complemented by a proprietary supplement line....

How AI Is Reshaping SaaS Product and Pricing, with Nue CEO Mark Walker
Mark Walker, CEO of Nue, explains how AI is compressing SaaS product cycles, forcing companies to rethink pricing and monetisation strategies. He highlights that AI‑native firms like OpenAI, Anthropic and Jasper are adopting faster iteration, usage‑based pricing and committed‑spend contracts....

Forethought Surpasses $1B in Customer ROI as Enterprise Demand for Agentic AI Accelerates
Forethought announced it has delivered over $1 billion in return on investment for its customers since its 2018 launch, underscoring the commercial power of agentic AI in customer service. The company highlighted three new offerings—Headless Forethought, Custom Insights, and Browser Agent—that...

Top 10 B2B Healthcare SaaS SSO Solutions in 2026
Healthcare SaaS vendors now face a non‑negotiable requirement: integrate Single Sign‑On with hospital identity providers to secure access and meet procurement standards. Data breaches in the sector average $12 million per incident, driving CISOs to demand instant revocation and compliance‑ready authentication....

Duetto Names Tripadvisor Vet Robert Matsuoka as New Tech Chief
Robert Matsuoka will focus on the Revenue and Profit Operating System launched by Duetto last year.

How Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Has Ditched Manual Expenses and Invoice Spreadsheets in Favor of Automated Workflows
Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, overseeing 45,000 members and 200 staff, saw turnover rise from £4 million to £12 million, straining its legacy on‑premise finance system. The charity replaced it with iplicit’s cloud accounting platform, automating expense entry, purchase‑order workflows and invoice approvals. The...

DryvIQ’s Latest Integration Extends Platform’s Visibility and Governance Capabilities to Microsoft SharePoint Embedded Content
DryvIQ has launched a Microsoft SharePoint Embedded connector that brings its intelligent data management capabilities to content stored within SharePoint Embedded applications. The new integration adds SharePoint Embedded to the platform’s more than 40 supported repositories, allowing analysis, classification, governance,...

Content Catalyst Introduces DocuViewer Which Delivers Premium PDF and PowerPoint Reading Experience
Content Catalyst has launched DocuViewer, a mobile‑optimized viewer that delivers PDF and PowerPoint research content through a modern interface. The tool promises instant search, direct data extraction, seamless navigation, and embedded hyperlinks, eliminating the friction of legacy PDF readers. It...
Selfotix Launches ‘Self Agent,’ an Agentic AI That Instantly Builds Web Automation Workflows
Selfotix unveiled Self Agent, an agentic AI feature that automatically generates complete web automation workflows within its Chrome extension. Users simply select an AI model and click “Generate Flow,” prompting the system to analyze page structure, create selectors, and build...

Cisco Foundation AI Debuts Agentic Security Tools to Protect Autonomous AI Systems
Cisco Foundation AI unveiled a suite of agentic security tools aimed at safeguarding increasingly autonomous AI systems in enterprise environments. The flagship offering, Foundation‑sec‑8B‑Reasoning, is an open‑weight model optimized for multistep cybersecurity analysis and produces explicit reasoning traces. Complementary releases...

PwC Expands Google Cloud Alliance with $400M Push Into AI-Driven Security Operations
PwC announced an expanded alliance with Google Cloud, committing $400 million over three years to accelerate AI‑driven security operations. The partnership blends Google Cloud’s AI‑powered security platforms with PwC’s transformation, risk, and managed‑service expertise to modernize security across hybrid and multicloud...
Grid: Forever Free, Local-First, Browser-Based 3D Printing/CNC/Laser Slicer
Grid.Space launches a free, privacy‑first, browser‑based slicer that supports 3D printing, CNC machining, and laser cutting. The tool requires no installation, runs on any modern OS or Chromebook, and works offline after the initial load. Built on an open‑source MIT...

What Is a Good Monthly and Annual Churn Rate for a SaaS Company?
Churn rates in SaaS vary dramatically by ACV tier, with under‑$5K products targeting ~3% monthly churn, $5K‑$25K aiming for ~2%, and over $25K striving for ~1%. Mid‑market firms ($10K‑$15K ACV) consider 1‑1.5% monthly (10‑15% annual) acceptable, especially when customer lifespans...

How to Actually Do SEO in 2026
The article reframes SEO for 2026 as a discovery engine that spans traditional search, AI answer platforms, community sites, and high‑authority third‑party domains. It stresses that on‑site fundamentals must be paired with scalable, programmatic content systems, while off‑site authority—backlinks, reviews,...
.png)
SaasRise CEO Mastermind Recaps for the Week of Jan 26 - 29, 2026
The SaaS CEO Mastermind covered ten high‑impact growth topics for early‑stage companies, from web analytics and SEO to churn management and paid search. Participants received concrete metrics—such as a 6‑minute average visit duration and a 51% bounce rate benchmark—for evaluating...
Massive AI Chat App Leaked Millions of Users Private Conversations
Chat & Ask AI, a popular AI chatbot with over 50 million installs, suffered a massive data exposure due to a Firebase misconfiguration. An independent researcher accessed roughly 300 million messages belonging to more than 25 million users, revealing full conversation histories, timestamps,...
Reflex (YC W23) Senior Software Engineer Infra
Reflex, a Y Combinator W23 startup, is hiring a Lead Software Engineer for infrastructure in San Francisco. The position offers a $130K‑$200K salary plus 0.15‑0.50% equity and demands deep expertise in Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, Python, and the Reflex platform. The...
Launch HN: AgentMail (YC S25) – An API that Gives Agents Their Own Email Inboxes
AgentMail, a YC S25 startup, launched an API that lets developers programmatically create and manage email inboxes for autonomous agents. The platform solves Gmail’s API limitations by offering inbox provisioning, domain configuration, real‑time webhooks, websockets, and semantic search. It targets...

The New Way to Build a SaaS in 2026 With AI Coding Tools
A new AI‑driven workflow is letting SaaS teams prototype at ten‑times the traditional speed, with founders building production‑ready features in weeks instead of months. The process collapses the old spec‑design‑engineer handoff into a rapid first pass created by product owners...

WealthTech Buying: Three Red Flags to Avoid
Kidbrooke warns wealth managers that choosing analytics platforms based solely on features and price can lead to costly structural problems. It identifies three red flags: narrow‑scope analytics that hinder future expansion, opaque or expensive customisation that stalls innovation, and vendors...
Is the RAM Shortage Killing Small VPS Hosts?
The AI boom has pushed DRAM manufacturers toward high‑bandwidth memory for hyperscalers, driving standard RAM prices up to $2,500 per module and doubling server costs. Small VPS operators, which rely on commodity servers, now face dramatically higher capital expenses. The...

SAP Tops Estimates but Cloud Backlog Miss Rattles Investors
SAP reported Q4 2025 revenue of $11.6 billion and operating profit of $3.1 billion, beating estimates and delivering a 27% profit surge. Cloud revenue rose 19% to $6.7 billion, pushing the operating margin to 29.2% and free cash flow to $1.2 billion. However, the...

M3ter Announces “M3sh Workflows”
m3ter unveiled m3sh Workflows, a low‑code automation layer that links core CRM and ERP systems—such as Salesforce and NetSuite—to its usage‑based pricing platform. The solution lets software firms process usage data, apply complex rating, and synchronize quote‑to‑cash flows without replacing...

Digital Friction Is Quietly Crippling UK Productivity, and AI Could Be the Turning Point
Digital friction is eroding productivity across UK businesses, with 46% reporting revenue loss and 55% facing project delays. Frequent connectivity glitches, software crashes, and authentication failures force employees into workarounds, increasing security risks and turnover costs. The article highlights AI‑driven...

Pipe17 Customers and Their AI Agents Are Now onX-Enabled
Pipe17 announced that every customer now accesses the Order Network eXchange (onX), an open standard built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for sharing order, inventory, and fulfillment data. The onX specification, governed by the Commerce Operations Foundation—a body co‑founded...

Lorikeet Launches Coach: An Analytics Agent to Perk up AI Customer Support
San Francisco‑based Lorikeet has launched Coach, a self‑service analytics agent now generally available to diagnose AI‑driven customer support tickets. Coach combines thematic analysis and a ticket quality score to pinpoint failing topics, sentiment shifts, and configuration issues across both AI...

IAAH Goes Live on EIS OneSuite to Modernise Core Systems
Industrial Alliance Auto and Home (iAAH) has gone live on EIS OneSuite, the SaaS core insurance platform, marking a key milestone in its long‑term modernization programme. The cloud‑native solution supports underwriting, pricing and servicing for auto and home lines through...

Jotform Brings AI-Powered Chatbots to Canva Designs
Jotform has launched Jotform AI Chatbot for Canva, the first native AI chatbot integration within Canva’s design platform. The tool lets viewers interact with designs to ask questions, book appointments, track orders, or submit inquiries without leaving the editor. Users...

TetraxAI Raises Pre-Seed Funding for AI Risk Tools in Clean Energy
AI‑focused SaaS startup TetraxAI announced a €1.2 million pre‑seed round led by The Footprint Firm, bringing total funding to €1.5 million including a NEOTEC grant. The company’s platform automates due‑diligence and risk analysis for utility‑scale clean‑energy projects, cutting review times from weeks...

Levellr Raises $2.5M to Turn Discord and Gaming User Voice Data Into Brand Intelligence
Levellr, an AI‑driven insights platform for Discord and next‑gen community data, secured $2.5 million in a round led by Fuel Ventures. Founded in 2021, the company reports back‑to‑back revenue doublings as brands seek real‑time user sentiment to guide product and marketing...

Dot Ai to Unveil Next-Generation Asset Intelligence Platform at Manifest 2026
Dot Ai joins Wiliot and Würth Industry North America to showcase the intelligence layer powering modern industrial operations Dot Ai (“Dot Ai” or the “Company”), an IoT and AI-based SaaS company redefining asset intelligence for industrial technology, announced it will...

CognyX AI Launches Chatbix.AI: A No-Code AI Agent Platform for Customer Support
CognyX AI unveiled Chatbix.AI, a no‑code platform that lets businesses build, train, and deploy AI agents for customer support across web, messaging and inbox channels. The solution centralizes disparate knowledge—FAQs, policy pages, product docs—so agents can generate grounded answers while...
Citibot Unveils AI Voice and Refresh, Expanding Access and Accuracy for Government Services
Citibot introduced two new platform upgrades for 2026—Citibot Refresh and AI Voice—aimed at modernizing government digital services. Refresh automatically scans websites and PDFs to identify outdated, inaccurate, or inaccessible content, helping agencies maintain compliance with ADA WCAG 2.1 standards. AI...