Author: Art Ryan

Google is adding more artificial intelligence into its Chrome browser as the search giant tries to fend off burgeoning competition from AI startups OpenAI and Perplexity. In a blog post Thursday, Google said it’s rolling out Gemini in Chrome to users of Mac and Windows computers in the U.S. as well as to mobile devices. Users will be able to ask Gemini for help understanding the contents of a particular webpage, work across tabs, or do more within a single tab, such as schedule a meeting or search for a YouTube video. “We are evolving the browser to help you get the most from the web – in…

Oracle’s $300 billion agreement to provide cloud services to OpenAI beginning in 2027 is one of the largest technology contracts on record. According to The Wall Street Journal, the five-year deal secures vast amounts of computing power and requires 4.5 gigawatts of electricity, roughly equal to what 4 million U.S. homes consume. The size of the contract reflects how artificial intelligence (AI) is shifting into a new stage. The industry is no longer centered only on model releases or consumer apps, but on long-term commitments to the infrastructure needed to support them. One way to read this agreement is as a…

PayPal and Google are collaborating on agentic shopping and commerce experiences and other initiatives to advance agentic commerce. These initiatives are part of a new multiyear strategic partnership between the companies, they said in a Wednesday (Sept. 17) press release. With the combination of PayPal’s global payment infrastructure, personalization and identity solutions and Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) expertise, the companies will create new AI shopping experiences and develop standards for agentic commerce, according to the release. The partnership also includes embedding PayPal’s branded checkout, Hyperwallet global payout capabilities and PayPal Payouts mass payments solutions across Google’s platforms; making PayPal Enterprise Payments a key payment provider processing card payments across Google Cloud, Google Ads and Google Play; and working with Google Cloud to power the next generation of PayPal’s commerce…

Dubai, UAE: Dubai is set to host one of the most anticipated tech events of the year as DATE (Digital Acceleration & Transformation Expo) makes its debut in the city on 26–27 November 2025, followed by DATE KSA on 8-9 December in Riyadh. Part of the flagship DATE series by Trescon, a global business catalyst, the MENA edition will bring together 2,000+ decision-makers, 200+ investors, 60+ speakers, and 50+ tech companies for two days of dialogue, deal-making, and innovation. The event is co-located with Trescon’s CARE (Climate Action & Renewable Energy) series. “Dubai is setting the pace for the next…

For years, Big Tech CEOs have touted visions of AI agents that can autonomously use software applications to complete tasks for people. But take today’s consumer AI agents out for a spin, whether it’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent or Perplexity’s Comet, and you’ll quickly realize how limited the technology still is. Making AI agents more robust may take a new set of techniques that the industry is still discovering. One of those techniques is carefully simulating workspaces where agents can be trained on multi-step tasks — known as reinforcement learning (RL) environments. Similarly to how labeled datasets powered the last wave of AI, RL environments are…

For decades, Fortune 500 companies had to hire market research firms to get meaningful insights into customer satisfaction. These services come with a hefty price tag and often take weeks to complete. Keplar, a market research startup, uses voice AI to conduct customer interviews, providing clients with analysis much faster and at a fraction of the cost of traditional research consulting firms. On Wednesday, the two-year-old company announced that it raised $3.4 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from SV Angel, Common Metal, and South Park Commons. The idea for Keplar was conceived in 2023 when…

Nvidia just got shut out of the Chinese market — this time by the Chinese government instead of the US. China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, banned domestic tech companies from buying Nvidia AI chips on Wednesday, as first reported by the Financial Times. The agency also told tech companies including ByteDance and Alibaba to stop testing and ordering Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D server, a device designed specifically for the market in China. Beijing had previously discouraged companies from buying these chips in late August, instead promoting alternatives from local manufacturers. This ban will deliver quite a blow to China’s tech ecosystem. While companies like Huawei and Alibaba…

Financial institutions have long treated customer data as a proprietary asset, but a new PYMNTS report, “Fighting Fraud and Finding Trust Amid Banking’s Data Deluge,” suggests the bigger competitive advantage may come from knowing when to pool information. In a digital economy where fraud evolves by the week and government datasets are shrinking, banks and credit unions are discovering that collaboration, not just competition, can make the difference between trust gained and trust lost. The study is part of the PYMNTS “Searching for Reliable Signals in Banking’s New Data Reality” series, which examines how banks, credit unions and FinTechs are rethinking…

OpenAI is working on measures aimed at protecting younger users of ChatGPT. The artificial intelligence (AI) startup announced Tuesday (Sept. 16) that it plans to create an automated age-prediction system that can determine whether users of its chatbot are over 18, sending younger users to an age-restricted version of ChatGPT. The company also says it is also working on parental controls, set to roll out at the end of this month, that let parents link their accounts with their teens accounts and manage which features to disable, such as memory and chat history. “Teens are growing up with AI, and it’s on us to…

There’s a little of my mother in my grocery cart. Downy Fabric Softener, Reynolds Wrap and Philadelphia Cream Cheese are brands I still buy without thinking. They were always in her kitchen, symbols of quality and trust. Price didn’t matter. Once a brand earned her loyalty, she stuck with it. I’ve carried that habit with me. Strong brands don’t just sell products. They create memories. That power is now being tested. Search engines, marketplaces and AI agents flatten the landscape. They don’t know what your mother always bought. They don’t care. Search and marketplaces optimize around algorithms and ad dollars.…

A year after introducing Project Amelia as a generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to answer seller questions, Amazon has upgraded the tool with agentic AI that can reason, plan and take actions with a seller’s approval. The company said in a press release Wednesday (Sept. 17) the enhanced Seller Assistant now goes beyond Q&A guidance to monitor inventory, manage compliance and generate advertising campaigns, positioning the eCommerce giant as a more active partner to the millions of independent merchants on its marketplace. Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of worldwide selling partner experience, said the announcement represents “an important step forward that allows AI to not just respond, but to reason,…

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the US AI chipmaker Nvidia, has predicted “the UK is going to be an AI superpower” as he announced a new £500m investment in a British firm. Huang, who is due to join Donald Trump at Wednesday night’s state banquet with the king, said he was taking an equity stake in NScale, a UK cloud computing company, and predicted it would earn revenues of up to £50bn over the next six years. “We’re here to announce that the UK is going to be an AI superpower,” he told a press conference in London.…

As robots increasingly enter human spaces, robotics companies will need to think about safety differently than they did when robots were largely siloed from their human counterparts. Sonair thinks its sensors can help robotics companies reach their safety goals — with a solution that is both better and cheaper than popular LIDAR technology. The Oslo, Norway-based company built an ADAR (acoustic detection and ranging) sensor for robots that uses high frequency sound. These sensors send out ultrasound waves and capture how the sound echoes back. These signals give robots a three-dimensional view of their surroundings. This data complements a robot’s other…

While many robotics companies are building human-sized robots, or working to automate entire factories, MicroFactory is instead trying to think big by building small. San Francisco-based MicroFactory built a general-purpose, tabletop manufacturing kit that’s about the size of my Siberian husky’s dog crate. This compact factory includes two robotic arms and can be trained by human demonstration, as well as through AI. “General purpose robots are good, but it’s not necessary [to] be humanoid,” said Igor Kulakov, the co-founder and CEO of MicroFactory, in an interview with TechCrunch. “We decided to design robots from scratch that will still be general purpose but…

On Tuesday, Google announced a new open protocol for purchases initiated by AI agents — automated software programs that can shop and make decisions on behalf of users — with backing from more than 60 merchants and financial institutions. Called the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), the system is meant to be interoperable between AI platforms, payment systems and vendors, providing a traceable paper trail for each transaction. In a post announcing the protocol, Google executives emphasized their commitment to openness. “We are committed to evolving this protocol in an open, collaborative process, including through standards bodies, and invite the entire…

Etsy has added artificial intelligence (AI)-powered title suggestions and writing assistance to its tools for sellers. These tools are among several new offerings the company has added to its eCommerce platform ahead of the holiday shopping season, according to a Monday (Sept. 15) blog post. The new AI-powered title suggestions and Writing Assistant are designed to “make it easier for [sellers] to clearly communicate with buyers and spend more time on the parts of their business they love,” Etsy President and Chief Growth Officer Kruti Patel Goyal said in the post. Other new tools for sellers include a Top Tasks feature in Shop Manager…

Y Combinator-alum Rulebase is betting that the next wave of automation in financial services won’t be about flashy AI interfaces, but the unglamorous back-office tasks like compliance. The startup, founded by Gideon Ebose and Chidi Williams, two Nigerian engineers who met in London, just raised a $2.1 million pre-seed round led by Bowery Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform VC, alongside several angels. Financial services firms spend enormous amounts of effort on support tickets, resolving disputes, ensuring quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. Rulebase’s software, which it calls an agent coworker, replaces much of the manual grunt work in…

Freelancer platform Fiverr is laying off 250 employees across different departments as part of a restructuring plan that aims to make the company artificial intelligence (AI)-focused “from the ground up.” In a Monday (Sept. 15) letter to employees shared on the company’s investor relations website, Fiverr Founder and CEO Micha Kaufman said the company has already embraced AI in everything it does, including coding, marketing and providing customer care. “We need to accelerate this mode of work,” Kaufman said in the letter. “We can and should dream bigger and build faster, using this moment to build what’s next for Fiverr on a modern, clean, AI-focused infrastructure from the ground up.” In a note to…

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has announced integrations with several artificial intelligence (AI) leaders, saying these partnerships deliver unified protection across the entire AI stack. The integrations of the CrowdStrike Falcon platform include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Intel, Meta, Nvidia and Salesforce, and provide protection “from compute to cloud, data to models, and agents to applications,” CrowdStrike said in a Monday (Sept. 15) press release. The protection guards against AI models being stolen, data being poisoned, agents being manipulated and cloud workloads being hijacked, according to the release. “Securing AI is not just about technology — it’s about securing the full ecosystem where AI is built, deployed and used,” Crowdstrike Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard said in the release. “By embedding protection…

At its Made on YouTube live event on Tuesday, the company unveiled new generative AI tools for Shorts creators. YouTube is bringing a custom version of Google’s text-to-video generative AI model, Veo 3, to Shorts, along with a new remixing tool, an “Edit with AI” feature, and more. The custom version of Veo 3, called Veo 3 Fast, generates outputs with lower latency at 480p, making it easy to create video clips, YouTube says. And now users can do so with sound for the first time. This update is rolling out in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,…