Copilot Studio Extension Now Available in VS Code
Microsoft announced the general availability of the Copilot Studio Extension for Visual Studio Code, allowing developers to create and manage Copilot agents directly within their IDE. The tool mirrors traditional software development workflows by integrating source control, pull‑request reviews, change history, and deployment pipelines. It enables cloning, editing, reviewing, and deploying agents using familiar VS Code features such as keyboard shortcuts and search. Microsoft positions the extension as a bridge between AI agent development and established engineering practices.
Former Adyen Exec Edgar Verschuur Joins Gigs
Gigs, a leader in embedded connectivity, has appointed former Adyen Global Head of Payments Edgar Verschuur as Head of Connectivity. Verschuur will spearhead Gigs' strategic push into local consumer plans, global roaming solutions, and enterprise connectivity offerings. The hire signals...
FinovateEurope 2026 Sneak Peek Series: Part 1
FinovateEurope 2026’s sneak‑peek highlights four innovators set to demo in London on February 10. AAZZUR offers a vendor‑agnostic, plug‑and‑play platform that can launch banking and card products in four to six months at a fraction of traditional costs. Francis delivers an...
Managing an Orbital Economy as Space Grows More Congested
In a Space Minds interview, Neuraspace CEO Chiara Manfletti explains how AI‑driven space situational awareness is evolving from debris tracking to automated orbital logistics as megaconstellations and high‑capacity launchers crowd low‑Earth orbit. She highlights the shift toward autonomous decision‑making for...
‘Half of India’s Next Wave of Unicorns Will Be AI Companies’: Google Exec Seema Rao at AI Startups Conclave
Google’s Managing Director Seema Rao told the AI Startups Conclave that within three to five years more than half of India’s new unicorns will be AI‑focused firms. She highlighted how generative AI collapses product‑development cycles, enabling rapid prototyping and multilingual...
NDSS 2025 – SKILLPoV: Towards Accessible And Effective Privacv Notice For Amazon Alexa Skills
Researchers at NDSS 2025 introduced SKILLPoV, a tool that automatically generates voice‑based privacy notices for Amazon Alexa skills. By analyzing skill code and leveraging ChatGPT, SKILLPoV creates concise notices delivered at skill launch, achieving 91.3% detection accuracy and 96.4% completeness....
Alfasigma Gains Neuro Treatment; BridgeBio Offers $550M in Notes
Alfasigma has secured worldwide rights to a parenteral formulation of adibelivir for the treatment of HSV encephalitis, an ultra‑rare neurological condition. The agreement positions Alfasigma to commercialize the therapy across major markets. Meanwhile, BridgeBio announced a $550 million senior unsecured note...
Boston Scientific to Acquire Penumbra for $14.5B
Boston Scientific announced a $14.5 billion acquisition of Penumbra, paying $374 per share in cash and stock. Penumbra’s portfolio of clot‑removal and embolization devices will broaden Boston Scientific’s reach into fast‑growing thrombectomy and vascular bleeding markets. The deal values Penumbra at...
What to Consider When Comparing Personal Loan Options
Choosing a personal loan requires weighing APR, fees, repayment terms, and lender reputation. While a low APR reduces monthly payments, hidden fees and inflexible terms can erode savings. Borrowers must assess eligibility criteria, credit‑score impact, and the flexibility to make...
Visa, Mastercard Rebuff Merchant Gripes
Visa and Mastercard have filed a federal court reply defending a proposed settlement that would modestly lower interchange fees and grant merchants new card‑acceptance options. The settlement, announced in November, would cut posted credit interchange rates by ten basis points...
Hackers Increasingly Shun Encryption in Favour of Pure Data Theft and Extortion
Cyber‑criminals are increasingly abandoning encryption‑based ransomware in favor of pure data‑theft extortion. Symantec and Carbon Black report a jump from 28 incidents in 2024 to nearly 1,500 in 2025, while traditional ransomware remained flat at about 4,700 attacks. The surge...
Selective GlcNAc to GalNAc Epimerization via Kinetic Control
The latest Bioengineer roundup highlights several cutting‑edge chemical and biological advances. A thermal [2+2] cycloaddition delivers gem‑difluoro bicycloalkanes, while cobalt‑catalyzed siloxycarbene chemistry enables efficient thioester coupling. Researchers also report a homologative difunctionalization method that broadens alkene functionalization, a biocompatible ligand...
Parsons Buys Altamira for $375 Million to Expand Space and Intelligence Portfolio
Parsons announced a $375 million acquisition of Altamira Technologies, paying $330 million in cash with a $45 million earn‑out tied to 2026 performance. Altamira, a specialist in signals intelligence, missile‑warning and space‑focused data analytics, brings AI‑enabled tools for processing satellite sensor feeds. The...
Turning Crystal Flaws Into Quantum Highways: A New Route Towards Scalable Solid-State Qubits
A new theoretical study shows that crystal dislocations, traditionally seen as defects, can serve as quantum highways for nitrogen‑vacancy (NV) centers in diamond. Using GPU‑accelerated first‑principles simulations, researchers from Ohio State and the University of Chicago demonstrated that NV qubits...
Grok AI: What Do Limits on Tool Mean for X, Its Users, and Ofcom?
Elon Musk’s X announced technical safeguards that stop the @Grok AI tool from generating images of real people in revealing clothing, such as bikinis. The new limits apply to all users, including the platform’s 2.6 million paid subscribers, and extend to...
Thredd and Paywith Team to Launch Australian Card Programs
Thredd has partnered with Australian payment‑orchestration platform Paywith to launch flexible, customer‑centric card programs. The joint solution leverages Thredd’s API suite, tokenization, 3DS, push provisioning, and fraud monitoring to deliver prepaid cards with earn‑and‑redeem capabilities. Paywith can now bring these...
Vulnerabilities Surge, But Messy Reporting Blurs Picture
The National Vulnerability Database recorded a record 48,177 CVE identifiers for 2025, marking the ninth consecutive year of growth. Reporting is now dominated by new CNAs, with Patchstack, Wordfence and WPScan contributing 23% of all entries and MITRE falling to...
Wikimedia Foundation Announces New AI Partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity and Others
The Wikimedia Foundation announced new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, Mistral AI and several others through its commercial offering, Wikimedia Enterprise. The deals give these tech firms high‑volume, low‑latency access to Wikipedia’s 65 million articles in 300 languages, supporting...
Higgsfield Raises $80M in Series A Extension Funding
Higgsfield, a San Francisco AI‑native generative video platform, secured $80 million in a Series A extension, bringing total Series A capital to over $130 million and valuing the company at more than $1.3 billion. The funding follows a rapid growth trajectory that saw the firm...
Coxwave Raises $5M in Pre-Series A Funding
Coxwave, a Seoul‑based AI product analytics firm, closed a $5 million pre‑Series A round. The financing was led by L&S Venture Capital and included Hyundai’s venture arms and KDB Capital. CEO Joowon Kim says the capital will boost technical development and broaden...
ConverSight and Katana Partner to Help Growing Businesses Forecast Demand and Optimize Inventory with AI
ConverSight announced a strategic partnership with Katana Cloud Inventory to embed its AI employee, Athena, into Katana’s real‑time inventory platform. The joint QuickStart AI for Katana offers SMB manufacturers, e‑commerce, wholesale and retail firms three months of free access, delivering...
Key Senate Staffer Is “Begging” NASA to Get on with Commercial Space Stations
Senate staffer Maddy Davis told the Texas Space Coalition that Sen. Ted Cruz is pressing NASA to fast‑track Commercial LEO Destinations (CLDs) so a private space station is operational before the International Space Station retires in 2030. The Senate Commerce...
Seerist Launches AskAnna, a Breakthrough AI-Powered Q&A Tool Transforming Security and Intelligence Workflows
Seerist has launched AskAnna, an AI‑powered natural‑language Q&A tool that taps the company’s proprietary event models and Control Risks’ human‑generated analysis to deliver fully sourced intelligence answers. The platform instantly synthesizes thousands of vetted reports, providing line‑item attribution and transparent...
GrowthPal Raises $2.6m to Accelerate AI-Led M&A Deal Sourcing
GrowthPal announced a $2.6 million funding round led by Ideaspring Capital to fast‑track its AI‑driven M&A sourcing platform and broaden its global footprint. The solution replaces traditional banker networks with AI agents that scan a database of over four million technology...
Affirm to Offer BNPL for Rent
Buy‑now‑pay‑later provider Affirm Holdings announced a pilot with fintech platform Esusu to extend its installment loans to renters. The service will let eligible tenants split rent into two interest‑free payments every two weeks, with some qualifying for zero‑APR loans. While...
HHS OCR Comments on Its 2026 Priorities
The HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released its 2026 enforcement roadmap, highlighting four priority areas: continuing the HIPAA Privacy Rule Right of Access initiative, expanding the Security Rule Risk Analysis to broader risk management, intensifying hacking and ransomware actions,...
Standard Chartered Completes First ICC-Swift API Standards Digital Bank Guarantee Transaction
Standard Chartered has completed the first digital bank guarantee transaction using the newly released ICC‑Swift API standards, partnering with Komgo’s Konsole platform. The API‑based workflow automates instruction receipt and guarantee issuance, delivering faster, more transparent service for a global energy...
How to Upgrade Your Clearpath Robots to ROS 2
Clearpath Robotics released detailed guidance for upgrading its robot platforms to ROS 2 Humble and Jazzy. The company provides a compatibility matrix showing which models support each ROS 2 distribution on amd64 and, for some, arm64 architectures, along with firmware‑aware installation images...
Monitoring Beer Fermentation at the Single-Cell Level with a Novel Raman Method
Scientists at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology have introduced “process ramanomics,” a single‑cell Raman spectroscopy workflow that monitors beer fermentation in real time. By capturing Raman fingerprints from individual yeast cells, the method accurately predicts 19 extracellular...
Frequency Comb Lasers Enable Clearer Observation of Black Holes
A research team led by KAIST professor Jungwon Kim has integrated optical frequency‑comb lasers into radio‑telescope receivers, achieving the world’s first laser‑based reference signal for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). The ultra‑precise comb provides thousands of stable frequencies, allowing exact...
Daily Search Forum Recap: January 15, 2026
Google rolled out “Personal Intelligence” in the Gemini app, unifying Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search with a single tap, and announced its upcoming arrival in Google Search AI Mode. The company also clarified that the new Universal Commerce Protocol will...
Satellites Spy Raging Bushfires in Australia | Space Photo of the Day for Jan. 15, 2026
On Jan 9, 2026, a European Copernicus Sentinel‑2 satellite captured a stark image of raging bushfires in Victoria, Australia. The high‑resolution multispectral data reveals extensive burn scars, smoke plumes, and displaced communities, providing precise boundaries for emergency responders. Sentinel‑2’s infrared capabilities enable...
Cyber Threat Actors Ramp Up Attacks on Industrial Environments
Cybercriminals and hacktivists sharply increased attacks on industrial control systems in 2025, with vulnerability disclosures nearly doubling to 2,451 across 152 vendors. Siemens was the most affected vendor, reporting 1,175 flaws, while Schneider Electric faced a higher proportion of critical...
CodeBuild Flaw Put AWS Console Supply Chain At Risk
Security researchers at Wiz uncovered a critical misconfiguration in AWS CodeBuild that let unauthenticated attackers inject malicious code into core AWS open‑source repositories, including the widely used AWS SDK for JavaScript. The flaw stemmed from an unanchored regular‑expression filter on...
Marketplace Briefing: Inside the Marketplace Strategies of Target, Best Buy and Nordstrom
At NRF’s Big Show, executives from Target, Best Buy and Nordstrom detailed how their third‑party marketplaces have evolved into strategic growth engines. After years of investment, each retailer is using the marketplace to broaden product assortments, boost margins and enhance...
GovDash Raises $30M in Series B Funding
GovDash, a New York‑based AI‑driven ERP for government contractors, closed a $30 million Series B round led by Mucker Capital and BCI. The funding will fuel engineering expansion, customer‑success initiatives, and new offices in New York and Arlington. In 2025 the company posted...
Uniqlo to Debut Stores in Miami, Add to Texas Footprint
Uniqlo will launch its first Miami stores this fall while entering Austin and adding a location at Houston’s Galleria, expanding its Texas presence that began in 2024. The new stores will showcase RFID‑enabled self‑checkout, on‑site alterations, RE.UNIQLO donation bins, and...
Sprinklr Named Innovative Products Winner in the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards
Sprinklr, the AI‑native Unified Customer Experience Management platform, has been named the Innovative Products winner in the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards. The honor highlights Sprinklr’s AI agents, purpose‑built to automate and optimize marketing, care, research, and commerce workflows. Executives say...
Olelo Intelligence Raises $1M in Funding
Olelo Intelligence, a Honolulu‑based AI sales‑coaching platform for automotive repair shops, secured $1 million in funding led by Hawaiʻi Angels, which contributed $500 k. The capital will fund operational expansion and further product development. Since the round’s close in fall 2025, Olelo has...
Emplifi Partners with Reddit to Fuel Actionable Industry Intelligence and Strategic Execution
Emplifi announced a strategic partnership with Reddit, embedding Reddit’s Enterprise API into its Emplifi Fuel execution engine. The integration delivers real‑time, unfiltered community conversations to the platform’s AI‑powered analytics, turning raw signals into industry‑specific recommendations for retail, CPG, sports and...
Doceree Enters 2026 as the Only Truly Direct Point-of-Care Engagement Platform at Scale
Doceree, the AI‑powered operating system for healthcare marketing, closed 2025 as the largest directly integrated point‑of‑care (POC) engagement platform in the United States, leveraging over 150 native EHR connections including Epic and Oracle Cerner. The company reported a roughly 50%...
Goldman Surges Past Estimates, Despite Apple Card Costs
Goldman Sachs reported fourth‑quarter 2025 earnings that topped Wall Street forecasts, posting $14.01 earnings per share and $4.62 billion net income, well above analyst expectations. Revenue slipped to $13.45 billion, missing estimates, largely because the Platform Solutions unit logged a $1.68 billion loss...
Feedzai and Matrix USA Launch Global Partnership to Modernize Financial-Crime Prevention with AI-Native Defenses
Feedzai, the AI-native risk‑operations platform, has partnered with Matrix USA to create a global Center of Excellence that accelerates AI‑driven fraud and anti‑money‑laundering (AML) deployments for banks. The collaboration blends Feedzai’s real‑time detection engine with Matrix USA’s advisory and integration...
KH Brokers and LaunchVector: A Transparent Comparison for E-Commerce Investors
KH Brokers and LaunchVector dominate the e‑commerce acquisition niche with contrasting business models. KH Brokers acts as a brokerage, delivering a high‑volume, vetted deal pipeline that has facilitated over $14 million in Flippa transactions and offers 100 % ownership at modest profit...
What Does a Blue USB Port Mean? I Learned the Truth Behind All the Colors, and It's Wild
USB ports use a standardized color scheme to signal their generation and data‑transfer capabilities. Blue indicates USB 3.0 SuperSpeed (up to 5 Gbps), while teal, red, orange, yellow, black and white denote other speeds and power features. The colors help users match...
Saying Goodbye to Windows Hello for Business: Five User Experience Pitfalls that Make Business Leaders Go for Best-in-Breed Solutions
The article highlights five user‑experience pitfalls of Windows Hello for Business that cause employees to abandon biometric authentication. Environmental variables—lighting, glasses, hats, facial hair, and device positioning—lead to frequent failures, prompting users to fall back on PINs or passwords. This...
Slips Raises $3.5M in Series Seed Funding
Los Angeles‑based peer‑to‑peer betting platform Slips raised $3.5 M in a Series Seed round led by Las Olas Capital and Sunset Bay Capital, with participation from Andrew Schwartzberg and other strategic investors. The funding will be used to upgrade the technology...
R Systems Launches GCC Copilot to Power the Next Generation of Global Capability Centers Following Three-Fold Increase in Demand
R Systems unveiled GCC Copilot, an AI‑assisted service that helps mid‑market and large enterprises launch, scale, and optimize Global Capability Centers with accelerated speed. The platform promises operational readiness within 90 days and up to 30% cost reduction through AI‑driven...
Ancient Type II Supernova Discovered From Universe's First Billion Years
Astronomers using JWST have confirmed SN Eos, a Type II supernova at redshift 5.133, making it the most distant spectroscopically verified supernova ever observed. The explosion occurred when the universe was about one billion years old, shortly after reionization, and the host galaxy...