Author: Art Ryan

Meta is pouring billions into its biggest artificial intelligence (AI) bet yet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts in the company’s Q3 earnings call that he is “very focused on establishing Meta as the leading frontier AI lab” and on “building personal superintelligence for everyone.” It’s a moonshot goal backed by massive spending but without a clear plan for returns. CFO Susan Li said Meta expects capital expenditures to be “notably larger in 2026 than in 2025,” with total expenses rising at a “significantly faster rate.” The main costs are data centers, cloud contracts and AI talent. “We expect further upward pressure on…

In the accelerating race to embed artificial intelligence (AI) across enterprise workflows, most organizations face what seems like an impossible paradox: innovate fast enough to stay competitive, yet cautiously enough to avoid regulatory, ethical and security landmines. At Billtrust, Chief Information and Security Officer (CISO) Ankur Ahuja believes that paradox may be somewhat of an illusion. “AI doesn’t get a special treatment,” Ahuja said. “It’s the same strong audited controls that protect all our financial data.” “If you follow strong data security policy, it automatically replicates to strong AI security policy,” Ahuja added, noting that Billtrust has built a foundation where AI adoption feels…

Amazon’s latest results, announced Thursday (Oct. 30th) after the bell, gave investors and analysts a snapshot of how AI is powering and fine-tuning everything from eCommerce to enterprise customers operations. And the company is making headway in its grocery efforts as well, management said during the Thursday evening conference call. Consolidated revenues were up 12% to $180.2 billion. AI was the star of the show, as demonstrated by AWS’ double digit growth rate that outpaced that of the overall company. During his remarks on the conference call with analysts, CEO Andy Jassy said that “AWS is growing at a pace that we haven’t…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become the backbone of B2B payments, but it’s part of a larger set of tools needed to build the “trust infrastructure” for transactions in the age of digital fund flows. As Alex Yen, vice president of product architecture at Persona, told PYMNTS, “Trust infrastructure is about shifting from this concept of a one-time verification … to continuous monitoring, continuous reverification … and maintaining trust over time.” That, he added, requires technology that can adapt as fast as the fraudsters using it. When Fraud Thinks for Itself Fraudsters have learned to leverage generative AI as efficiently as the…

Apple painted a picture of a resilient U.S. consumer heading into the holidays in its Q4 earnings. On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company said iPhone demand drove a record September and guided to what it called its “best quarter ever,” with CFO Kevan Parekh saying Apple expects December‑quarter revenue to grow 10-12% year over year and iPhone to grow double digits. The iPhone itself set a September‑quarter revenue record of $49 billion, up 6%, and Tim Cook said the lineup is “resonating around the world,” adding Apple set “a September quarter record for upgraders” which shows signals of consumers trading up despite macro noise. Artificial Intelligence (AI) took center stage in the…

Legora raised $150 million in a Series C funding round to continue the global expansion of its collaborative artificial intelligence (AI) platform for lawyers. The company’s latest funding round valued it at $1.8 billion, it said in a Thursday (Oct. 30) press release. Legora will use the new capital to establish more global hubs to serve its international client base, according to the release. The company currently has offices in Stockholm, London, New York, Denver and Sydney, as well as a team of 200 legal experts and technologists, the release said. Its AI platform helps lawyers review, research, draft, advise and collaborate,…

A growing body of peer-reviewed and industry research is reframing neurodiversity as a strength in artificial intelligence (AI) development. Far from a social-impact program, autistic participation in data labeling, quality control and debugging is proving to raise the accuracy, reliability and integrity of AI systems. A study by Temple University found that neurodivergent professionals performing image and text annotation produced “diverse annotations that are valuable for employers in digital data annotation work,” enriching training sets and mitigating bias. Researchers observed that autistic annotators approached labeling with consistent logic and less susceptibility to context drift, a key factor when building models that must interpret complex real-world data. A paper in the Journal…