From the archive
Follow the latest AI news and artificial intelligence developments across models, agents, robotics, research and the wider industry. Explore new AI tools, advances in computing, business moves, safety and policy, with clear reporting and useful sources. Read the stories, catch up with News in Brief and join the conversation.
Lead story
Nous Research has raised $90 million to develop Hermes Agent as a business product, with private deployment, single sign-on and auditing among the features planned for organisations. The expansion could give companies more control over how staff use the open-source AI agent, while leaving its underlying project open…
Read the report & discussion ↗SAP Watch
SAP has introduced SAP Pay for institutional stablecoin settlement within SAP Cloud ERP, according to Forkast. The service is reported to support USDC and EURC across 89 payment corridors, putting digital-currency settlement inside software companies already use to manage finance.
Nous/Hermes Watch
Nous Research says it has raised a Series B to take Hermes Agent into new areas, including a planned mobile app. The funding could widen the reach of an open-source AI agent that has so far been known chiefly as software for computers and developers.
Cloudflare Watch
Cloudflare says its Managed Defense team is testing an AI-assisted security operations harness that gathers evidence before models analyse alerts. The early beta is available for eligible application-security alerts and cases, with human analysts retaining the decision and any mitigation.
Watch Desk
Tab has emerged from stealth with a personal AI assistant that can handle everyday tasks through iMessage or WhatsApp, and a reported $300 million valuation. The startup’s pitch is that useful AI depends not just on what an assistant can do, but on whether people will let it…
Watch Desk
Torch Systems has raised $11.5 million to expand its AI-powered monitoring of outdoor infrastructure, from solar sites to transmission corridors. Its solar-powered TerraNode devices combine cameras and environmental sensors with on-device AI to flag changes such as fires, overheating equipment and intrusions.
Watch Desk
Axya has raised C$17 million to expand its AI-powered procurement platform for manufacturers, including its risk detection and automated workflow capabilities. The funding puts a practical question on the table: can AI help procurement teams spot supply-chain trouble without taking strategic decisions out of their hands?
Watch Desk
Valon has raised $150 million at a $2.3 billion valuation to expand ValonOS, its mortgage-servicing platform, and the AI agents built into it. The company says one in six outstanding US mortgages is now under contract to run on the platform, putting its claims about AI in regulated…
Watch Desk
TikTok is bringing conversational AI shopping help and one-click checkout into its app, according to a report on the company’s announcement. The pairing could let people go from product questions to buying without leaving the For You feed, making the shopping journey itself part of the platform’s pitch.
AWS AI Watch
AWS has published a framework for assessing the business value of agentic automation, arguing that time saved is only part of the return. Its practical warning: freed hours do not become financial savings unless an organisation turns them into a measurable outcome.
AWS AI Watch
Qlik says most of its Qlik Cloud accounts with agentic tools enabled are actively using them, while its Discovery Agent has surfaced more than 100,000 discoveries since launch. The case study also shows how Qlik built its AI assistant to ground answers in company data rather than asking…
AWS AI Watch
AWS describes a six-week programme in which four customer-facing professionals without engineering backgrounds built a multi-agent AI prototype, with about four hours of work each week. Its useful lesson is practical: give people time, mentors and a real problem to solve, rather than asking them to learn AI…
Watch Desk
Sainsbury’s has added SmartLists to its shopping app, letting customers type a shopping list or photograph a handwritten one and turn it into a basket of products, including Nectar Prices. The practical bet is that a quicker list also makes Sainsbury’s offers the first ones shoppers see.
AWS AI Watch
Cornerstone says its multi-agent AI system cut database diagnosis from 45 minutes to 10, while also reducing redundant alerts and replacing manual operational steps with a single interaction. The system, built with Amazon Bedrock and Strands Agents, offers a concrete example of AI being put to work inside…
OpenAI Watch
OpenAI used DevDay in San Francisco to announce Dots, an always-on AI assistant, alongside a faster Codex tier and a new $500 monthly plan. The announcements point to a broader push: AI that works in the background, collaborates across shared spaces and charges a premium when speed matters.
Watch Desk
As agentic AI workloads grow, companies are trying to get more useful work from each unit of computing rather than simply buying more capacity. An Uber infrastructure leader said the company stabilised token costs while expanding agent use, using caching and a 24-million-node internal context graph to speed…
Mistral AI Watch
Mistral has unveiled ML4, an open-weight model the French company says can match leading closed systems on several business tasks. If that holds up, the attraction is not just another model score: organisations could adapt and run it on their own infrastructure.
Anthropic Watch
Anthropic is committing $100 million to train 10,000 engineers to deploy Claude inside businesses by the end of 2027, according to EdTech Innovation Hub. The academy is aimed at experienced engineers who will take AI projects into production, not people looking for an introductory course.
Watch Desk
Brandenburg AI lab Deepslate has raised €7.7 million to develop speech-to-speech models built and hosted in Europe. The funding is aimed at expanding model training and European infrastructure, in a field where latency, language coverage and control of data all matter.
