Author: Art Ryan

While Adobe’s annual conference held this week focused on retaining the business of marketers, filmmakers and content creators, it reportedly also sought to reassure investors. The company has been adding artificial intelligence (AI) to its software for creative professionals, but it is being challenged by other companies that are offering new AI tools, Bloomberg reported Friday (Oct. 31). Facing competitors like Google’s Veo, OpenAI’s Sora, and Canva, Adobe’s stock has dropped by about a quarter this year, according to the report. This drop occurred even as Adobe’s AI features in products like Photoshop have been used tens of billions of times, per the report. The report said that while some…

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…

A recent Wharton study shows just how quickly the Gen AI adoption has gone mainstream: 82% of enterprise leaders now use generative AI weekly, and nearly 50% use it daily. The report, “Accountable Acceleration: Gen AI Fast-Tracks Into the Enterprise,” surveyed more than 800 enterprise decision-makers across the U.S. and charts a sharp shift from experimentation to execution. Nearly 75% of respondents say their organizations now track AI’s financial impact through structured ROI frameworks, and three in four already report positive returns on their generative AI investments. 88% expect spending to rise in the next 12 months. But as budgets climb, 43% of…

Business travel and expense management software company Navan raised $923 million upon going public. The company’s shares opened at $22 each Thursday (Oct. 30), below an initial public offering (IPO) of $25, per a Bloomberg News report, which listed Navan’s market value at $5.5 billion. The company’s listing comes amid a government shutdown, which has caused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to furlough workers and put its reviews of listings on hold. The commissioner later said that because regulators were not able to go over registration statements, the SEC would not seek to penalize companies that left out pricing information from prospectuses filed during the shutdown…

OpenAI would like to build an artificial intelligence (AI) factory to make 1 gigawatt of compute per week of new capacity, CEO Sam Altman said in a Wednesday (Oct. 29) post on X. The company would like to do so “at a greatly reduced cost relative to today” Altman said. Currently, OpenAI has committed to about 30 gigawatts of compute with a total cost of ownership of about $1.4 trillion, Altman said. “We are comfortable with this given what we see on the horizon for model capability growth and revenue growth,” Altman said in the post. Altman posted this a day after OpenAI announced that it had completed its restructuring that transformed its for-profit arm…

Agentic commerce, stablecoins and steady consumer spending were among the highlights of Mastercard’s third-quarter earnings report on Thursday (Oct. 30). CEO Michael Miebach said on the call that “we continue to see healthy consumer and business spending in the quarter with the macroeconomic environment still generally supportive. Inflation levels have remained fairly steady and labor markets remain well balanced.” He said the consumer payments “secular opportunity is tremendous” with $11 trillion and 1.5 trillion transactions still happening in cash and checks across the world. The rental market represents a particular opportunity, he told analysts, as most payments are done through ACH and checks,…

Global commerce platform WEX has found that artificial intelligence has accelerated its product innovation by 20%. WEX CEO Melissa Smith said Thursday (Oct. 30) that those gains have been enabled by the company’s use of AI in customer discovery, prototyping, coding, quality assurance, infrastructure management and security. Speaking during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Smith said that WEX is “leveraging AI to reimagine how we operate and serve our customers.” WEX also uses AI and the company’s proprietary data to make “faster, smarter decisions” in fraud prevention, credit management, claims processing and customer support, Smith said. “In our benefit segment, AI has reduced claims…

OpenAI is reportedly planning what could be one of the largest-ever initial public offerings (IPOs). That’s according to a report late Tuesday (Oct. 29) by Reuters, citing three sources who say the public listing could value OpenAI at up to $1 trillion. The artificial intelligence (AI) startup is considering filing with regulators as soon as the second half of next year, sources told Reuters, and has — in preliminary talks — looked at raising at least $60 billion, but likely more. Sources added that OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told some associates the company is targeting a 2027 listing, though some advisers predict…

Meta told investors on Wednesday (Oct. 29) to brace for a step-up in infrastructure spending next year as it races to build what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “personal superintelligence.” CFO Susan Lee said the company now expects capital-expenditure dollar growth to be “notably larger in 2026 than 2025,” and total expenses to grow at a “significantly faster” rate next year. The biggest driver of those expenses will be compute — both company‑owned data centers and third‑party cloud — followed by compensation for artificial intelligence (AI) talent. Lee’s written outlook in the earnings release echoed her message to analysts during the company’s Q3 earnings call, noting expanding compute needs and “further upward pressure”…

If there were any questions about what drove Google parent Alphabet towards its first ever quarter of notching more than $100 billion in sales, they were quickly laid to rest on Wednesday night (Oct. 29th). “We are firmly in the generative AI era,” CEO Sundar Pichai said on the conference call with analysts when the company posted third-quarter numbers after the bell. Double digit growth across several business lines, from search to ads to content, had the common underpinning of artificial intelligence (AI). Alphabet’s third-quarter results underscored how its AI strategy is driving both growth and scale across its business. Google Cloud, which includes the…

Microsoft is no longer just a software company or even a cloud company. It’s now an AI infrastructure provider shaping how work, creativity and productivity will function in the next decade. For proof, look no further than the tech giant’s successfully restructured relationship with OpenAI, one that on Tuesday (Oct. 28) gave Microsoft a 27% stake and pushed its valuation north of $4 trillion. On Wednesday (Oct. 29), Microsoft reported for its first quarter 2026 earnings nearly $78 billion in quarterly revenue, fueled by 40% cloud growth and an expanding AI moat built atop a foundation of trust and technical scale. The company also…

B2B commerce infrastructure platform Balance has a new tool for customers’ artificial intelligence (AI) agents. The Balance Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, now in beta, lets the AI communicate with Balance’s payments, credit, and receivables APIs, the company said in a Wednesday (Oct. 29) news release. By connecting Balance to large language models through MCP, merchants can tap into and act on real-time buyer intelligence leaving their preferred AI chat interface, the release added. “Agentic B2B commerce brings intelligence and autonomy to transactions between businesses,” said Bar Geron, Balance co-founder and CEO. “As B2B eCommerce continues expanding, incorporating the latest developments in AI is crucial to…

Etsy is continuing its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) as it names new leadership. The online marketplace released earnings Wednesday (Oct. 29) showing gross merchandise sales of $2.72 billion, down 6.5% year over year. The number of buyers and sellers on the platform dipped as well, at a respective 86.6 million (down 5%) and 5.5 million (down nearly 11%) year over year. Etsy announced its earnings in tandem with a leadership change: Josh Silverman, the company’s chief executive, is stepping down after eight years. He will become Etsy’s executive chairman at the end of the year. Taking his place will be Kruti Patel Goyal, Etsy’s president…

AI systems only perform as well as the information they are given. When inputs are scattered, incomplete or outdated, even advanced models can produce inconsistent or irrelevant results. Context engineering addresses that gap by structuring how information is organized, prioritized and refreshed so that models can interpret complex, interconnected data in real time. Prompt engineering used to be a hot topic in AI. Developers believed that better wording could unlock better answers, flooding forums with prompt tricks and tips. It worked for simple tasks, but not for complex workflows. For example, a customer service chatbot must pull from multiple data…