Author: Art Ryan

Supply chain orchestration company Cleo has joined forces with CloneOps.ai, a provider of AI virtual agents. The partnership is designed to bring intelligent voice automation to logistics and transportation companies to improve communication across the supply chain, according to a Tuesday (Oct. 21) news release. “The partnership will focus on a go-to-market strategy that integrates CloneOps.ai’s voice automation technology with supply chain orchestration solutions comprising the CIC platform, Cleo Network, and vertical-market solutions catering to the specific needs of logistics and transportation companies,” the companies said in the release. “Combined, CIC and CloneOps.ai expect to empower joint customers to respond in real-time to unforeseen…

OpenAI is reportedly tapping Wall Street bankers to train its next generation of artificial intelligence models. According to Bloomberg, the company has hired more than 100 former investment bankers from firms such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to help its systems learn how to build and interpret financial models. The initiative, called Project Mercury, pays contractors about $150 an hour to create Excel models for initial public offerings, restructurings and leveraged buyouts, and to refine the model’s outputs based on their expertise. The project marks a shift for OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, who has been trying to move the…

Artificial intelligence startup Cohere is looking to launch an initial public offering “soon,” according to Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez. During an interview at Bloomberg Tech in London on Tuesday (Oct. 21), Gomez said that he thinks investors “would be excited to have a pure play AI investment opportunity as opposed to investing by proxy through hyperscalers.” A Cohere IPO would be one of the first listings from an AI model maker, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Gomez also said at the event, per the report, that he expects Cohere to turn a profit before 2029. Cohere focuses on customizable AI software for businesses, with an emphasis on technology that…

Every major shift in technology reshapes the foundations of trust. The rise of autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) systems is doing so at unprecedented scale, transferring decision-making from people to algorithms. Trust has become a form of infrastructure in the AI economy, determining how confidently markets and institutions allow these systems to operate. Trust Gap Slows Deployment A global study by KPMG and Melbourne Business School found that 66% of people use AI weekly and 83% believe it provides benefits, but only 46% say they trust it. The Stanford HAI AI Index 2025 showed a similar sentiment. While most people agree AI will transform how society functions, fewer than…

For decades, the playbook for operational excellence was written in the language of efficiency. Cost per unit, just-in-time delivery and minimal inventory were the markers of a well-run supply chain. The world’s most admired companies built their empires on the ability to extract waste and friction from production and logistics networks. But the assumptions that underpinned this model, such as stable geopolitics, predictable trade rules and reliable shipping lanes, are collapsed under the weight of a more volatile era. “The current trade landscape that we see today is marked by widespread volatility, complete unpredictability,” Dean Bain, SVP supply chain at Coupa, told…

Daily trading activity on Wall Street has reached unprecedented levels, with the New York Stock Exchange now processing about 1.2 trillion order messages each day, according to exchange President Lynn Martin. That is nearly three times the volume seen during a volatile trading day four years ago. Each message represents a single instruction to buy, sell, cancel or modify an order. Martin said the sharp rise reflects how artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic systems are redefining the pace and structure of U.S. financial markets. “When I first took this job four years ago, COVID was still rearing its head, and a volatile day…

Finster AI has raised $15 million in combined Series A and seed funding to support the growth of its artificial intelligence-native research and task automation platform for investment banks and asset managers. The platform helps these financial professionals unlock insights, the company said in a Monday (Oct. 20) press release. Finster AI will use the funding to open a New York office, expand its London headquarters and form data and technology partnerships, according to the release. The company’s platform is designed to meet the needs financial institution teams have for strict controls and robust governance around the handling of confidential information and…

Compliance programs are only as strong as their weakest pillars. And for CFOs and finance departments, artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as one of the biggest opportunities, and most dangerous risks, of the 21st century. Enterprise AI targeted at corporate back-office workflows doesn’t just learn from data; it redefines how decisions are made. That means accountability structures built for human oversight are being stress-tested in ways compliance leaders are still struggling to measure. The challenge isn’t merely technical. It’s structural. The same algorithms that can enhance efficiency or accuracy can also introduce opaque dependencies, unpredictable biases, and noncompliant cross-jurisdictional data flows. Adopting AI doesn’t…

UAE, Dubai – October 16, 2025: ZainTECH, the integrated digital solutions provider of Zain Group, today announced a strategic partnership with DataPatrol to expand and strengthen its presence in the Bahrain market, focusing on advanced data security, and insider threats management. The announcement, made during GITEX Global 2025, establishes a joint operational and commercial framework between ZainTECH and DataPatrol to deliver end-to-end ICT and cybersecurity solutions across Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq. This partnership brings together ZainTECH’s regional scale, technical expertise, and multi-vendor alliances, with DataPatrol’s local market expertise in information security and on-ground delivery capabilities to serve enterprise, financial, and…

The week’s funding rounds highlight startups using AI to solve problems in science, healthcare, agriculture and enterprise operations. The technology is beginning to deliver measurable outcomes for human life. AI Brings Automation to Scientific Discovery Lila Sciences raised $115 million in an extension of its Series A, backed by Nvidia Capital. The Boston-based company is developing “AI Science Factories,” automated laboratories that use robotics, sensors, and generative models to design and run experiments continuously. Instead of relying on publicly available data, Lila’s systems produce their own experimental results. They feed them back into machine-learning models that improve. The funding will support…

NContracts has introduced a pair of AI-powered compliance and risk management solutions for financial institutions. The company’s new “Ntelligence product line,” announced Monday (Oct. 20), is designed to help financial organizations better manage compliance by “cutting through data noise” to get faster actionable insights. “Financial organizations are drowning in data while everyone expects faster, more sophisticated responses to compliance issues,” Michael Berman, founder and CEO of Ncontracts, said in a news release. “Our Ntelligence solutions don’t just process information – they decode it, interpret it, and tell you exactly what needs attention and why. We’re giving compliance teams superpowers they’ve never had before.” The…

Artificial intelligence (AI) firm 1001 AI has raised $9 million in seed funding. That funding, announced Monday (Oct. 20), will allow the company to further its mission of developing AI infrastructure for critical industries such as aviation and oil and gas in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). “Just looking at the top three or four industries like airports, ports, construction, and oil and gas, we see more than $10 billion in inefficiencies across the Gulf alone,” Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh, the company’s founder and CEO, said in an interview with TechCrunch. “That’s just in markets like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Even without counting other sectors,…

Technology and data are changing the face of credit and in particular, the underwriting of that credit. AI is proving to be, and will continue to be, part of that transformation. In the third-quarter earnings season, the largest U.S. banks spoke of stronger balance sheets, credit normalization and digital efficiency. Beneath that surface, and especially at some of the banks’ own partners and FinTechs backed by the financial institutions, artificial intelligence is beginning to redraw the lines between risk assessment and credit opportunity though executives seem careful not to over-promise. As earnings season kicked off in earnest this month, among…

Commerce has always been built on complexity, but few areas are as intricate as payments. Merchants today face a proliferating array of providers, gateways, tokens and transaction flows, all while needing to deliver seamless experiences that convert at the lowest possible cost. Artificial intelligence is beginning to make real-time decisions about routing and risk, and payments orchestration is moving from optional infrastructure to strategic necessity. Spreedly CEO Justin Benson told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview that the orchestration model will be turbocharged by AI. “It’s the sort of perfect use case for AI in the sense that it can take the complexity around working with…

The emerging divide over generative AI isn’t simply generational. It’s about how much people trust technology to make judgment calls once reserved for humans. Younger users may embrace artificial intelligence more eagerly, but even they are approaching the technology with an ambivalence that belies the hype. The latest PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Generation AI: Why Gen Z Bets Big and Boomers Hold Back,” suggests that Americans’ comfort with AI depends less on familiarity and more on faith in the technology, in the data behind it and in the institutions deploying it. The July 2025 report finds that 57% of U.S. adults — roughly 149…

It was a big week for Big Tech in the Prompt Economy, as it continues to take shape from both a technology and use case perspective. This week saw major developments from Amazon and Microsoft and a fascinating future use case from the world of media. Amazon Aims for Enterprise AI Amazon’s new Quick Suite represents one of the clearest examples yet of agentic AI making the leap from experimental to enterprise-ready. Marketed as a digital workspace built around autonomous “teammates,” Quick Suite can answer questions, conduct research, analyze data, generate reports and, critically, turn those answers into real-world actions. Users can…

The president of private capital group Blackstone says Wall Street is still underestimating artificial intelligence (AI). In comments published Saturday (Oct. 18) by the Financial Times (FT), Jonathan Gray says investors are discounting the potential of AI to render whole industries obsolete, and said that understanding these risks has become key for Blackstone when considering investments. “We’ve told our credit and equity teams: Address AI on the first pages of your investment memos,” said Gray at the FT’s Private Capital Summit in London earlier in the week. As the FT noted, high valuations at loss-making AI startups and circular arrangements between many major players have triggered concerns about…

OpenAI reportedly continues to lead Google in the race for consumer AI usage. As Seeking Alpha reported Saturday (Oct. 18), OpenAI announced at its recent developer day that its API platform was processing 6 billion tokens each minute, up 20 times across the last two years. The company also said that its artificial intelligence (AI) model ChatGPT had exceeded 800 million weekly active users. By comparison Google said recently it was processing 1.3 quadrillion tokens per month on all of its services, including AI Overviews, Gemini, and the API platform on Google Cloud. As the report noted, tokens are units of data like words used…

The former chief financial officer for Builder.ai has reportedly been subpoenaed by American prosecutors. Andres Elizondo, ex-finance chief for the collapsed artificial intelligence (AI) startup, was called to appear before a grand jury in Manhattan last month, the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (Oct. 19), referring to a subpoena seen by the news outlet. According to the report, Elizondo oversaw the London-based Builder’s finances from 2021 to 2023. He was stopped by the FBI in August on a flight stopover in Dallas, sources familiar with the matter told the FT. One source said he was not a suspect and cooperated willingly. Builder.ai, which promised to help…

Sydney, Australia — Volvo Cars Australia today announced that its upcoming Volvo EX60 electric vehicle (EV) will be the first new-car model in Australia equipped with Google Gemini conversational AI, reflecting the company’s leadership in mobility, connected-car innovation and premium electric performance. This milestone follows an expanded global partnership between Volvo Cars and Google LLC, positioning the EX60 as the reference vehicle for next-generation in-car intelligence.(See Volvo Cars/Google media statement) Breakthrough Technology: What It Means for the Driver Why the EX60 Matters in Australia’s EV Landscape Leadership Commentary “With the EX60, we are launching more than an electric vehicle —…