Author: Art Ryan

Predoc raised $30 million in seed and Series A funding for its artificial intelligence-powered health information management system, according to a banner on the company’s website. The company said in a Tuesday (Sept. 2) post on LinkedIn that the fundraise “will enable our team to continue to solve the inefficient and painfully manual Health Information Management workflows plaguing clinicians and researchers everywhere.” “Our mission is to connect and organize the nation’s healthcare data,” Predoc said in the post. “With this funding, we will make a material step towards accomplishing that mission, allowing clinicians to focus on their core purpose — to improve human…

Digital finance app SoFi has introduced its SoFi Agentic AI exchange-traded fund (ETF). The ETF, dubbed AGIQ, will invest in American companies that are part of the BITA US Agentic AI Select Index, SoFi announced Wednesday (Sept. 3). “Emerging market themes can be challenging to capture, especially for new or casual investors—but with the SoFi Agentic AI ETF, investors can easily tap into the next evolution of AI,” Brian Walsh, head of advice and planning director at SoFi, said in a news release. According to the release, the BITA US Agentic AI Select Index tracks businesses engaged in developing, providing, or utilizing agentic artificial intelligence…

OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil is taking on a new role inside the company that goes beyond product development: He is learning to be an AI researcher while building an internal group, “OpenAI for Science.” The move comes as former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo assumes responsibility for the startup’s public-facing products as OpenAI’s new CEO of applications. She started at OpenAI in mid-August. “OpenAI’s products have been my life since I joined, and they’re in great hands,” Weil wrote in a post on X. In a separate post, Weil announced the new group on X, saying its mission is to create “the next great scientific instrument: an AI-powered platform that accelerates…

Google is beefing up its features for Gemini, its primary suite of generative AI models and the chatbot that serves as its main interface. New tools are aimed at productivity, scheduling and learning. The latest update brings Gemini closer to becoming an all-purpose AI platform for individuals and businesses. In the latest update, Gemini gets guided learning, productivity planners, integration with smart watches and access to its Veo video generator, among other capabilities. For creative folks, the Gemini app now offers image editing using text prompts through its viral Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model, codenamed Nano Banana. The additions build on Google’s push to make Gemini more than a conversational assistant and into a generalist learning and productivity platform. The update…

The United Nations has created two new global mechanisms for artificial intelligence (AI) governance, a move described by the Office of the Secretary-General as a “pathbreaking milestone” in international cooperation on emerging technologies. The decision establishes the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, two bodies designed to balance the promise of AI with the risks it poses to societies and economies. The Global Dialogue on AI Governance will provide an inclusive forum within the UN for member states and stakeholders to debate critical issues surrounding AI, according to the global body. The platform is intended…

PayPal is offering customers early access to Perplexity’s new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered browser Comet. The offering, announced Wednesday (Sept. 3) and open to Venmo and PayPal customers in the U.S. and certain global markets, lets users experience Comet before its larger public rollout. “The Comet browser is like a personal shopper and personal assistant all in one, so we’re excited that PayPal users will have early access to Comet,” Ryan Foutty, VP of Business at Perplexity, said in a news release provided to PYMNTS. “In conjunction with Perplexity Pro, we’re arming PayPal and Venmo customers with powerful, accurate AI that’s useful throughout their daily lives.” …

Dubai, UAE: CARE Dialogues, part of Trescon’s global climate action, renewable energy & sustainability event series, CARE, united top sustainability leaders, policymakers, and innovators from across the UAE to discuss ESG priorities, challenges, opportunities, and solutions to be covered during CARE MENA, taking place on November 26-27 at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai. Hosted by Supercool Mobility, Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), and Global Education Energy Environment Organisation, the Dialogues focused on sustainability policies, financing mechanisms, scalable solutions, mobility, circular energy systems — from generation and storage to intelligent reuse — and cross-sector energy transformation. Talking about the CARE series, Naveen Bhardwaj, Group…

Eight U.S. and Indian venture capital and private equity firms — including storied investors Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, and Premji Invest — have formed an unusual coalition to back India’s deep tech startups, pledging more than $1 billion over the next decade to strengthen U.S.-India tech ties. The alliance addresses longstanding funding concerns. In April, Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal drew criticism after slamming domestic startups for focusing on food delivery instead of innovation, contrasting them with Chinese firms in a presentation titled “India vs. China: The Startup Reality Check.” Several investors and founders countered that India lacks capital for deep tech ventures…

Web publishing platform WordPress is introducing an early version of an AI development tool, which CEO Matt Mullenweg described as a “V0 or Lovable, but specifically for WordPress” — V0 and Lovable being references to popular “vibe coding” services for building software using prompt-based, AI interfaces. Mullenweg introduced the new WordPress AI tool, called Telex, at the company’s WordCamp US 2025 conference in Portland last week, alongside other AI experiments. During his keynote address, Mullenweg briefly demonstrated how Telex would allow users to create Gutenberg blocks — or the modular bits of text, images, columns, and more — that make up a…

Picture this: a treasury office in 2035. The morning might start with a chief financial officer logging into a secure portal, where an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar greets them with a briefing of overnight currency swings, projected cash balances, and maybe an alert about a supplier default risk in Asia. The AI, against this backdrop, could propose a handful of mitigation strategies, complete with financial impacts and probabilities. The CFO might ask follow-up questions, challenge assumptions, and ultimately greenlights one path. The avatar would then execute, documenting rationale for auditors. Minutes later, the company’s global liquidity profile is adjusted. This…

Autonomous agent infrastructure company Kite has raised $18 million in a PayPal Ventures-led funding round. “Formerly known as Zettablock, Kite leverages years of experience in distributed infrastructure systems to bring forth a new architecture purpose-built for the agentic web,” PayPal said in a news release Tuesday (Sept. 2). “The team previously built large-scale, real-time data infrastructures serving decentralized networks like Sui, Polygon, Chainlink, and EigenLayer. Kite is built directly on that foundation to serve a new breed of users: agents.” The funding round was co-led by General Catalyst, with participation by several other investors. The release noted that Kite recently introduced Kite Agent Identity Resolution, or “Kite…

Anthropic has raised $13 billion in a Series F funding round that values the artificial intelligence (AI) startup at $183 billion. The company said in a Tuesday (Sept. 2) press release that its run-rate revenue leapt from about $1 billion at the beginning of the year to over $5 billion in August. Claude Code, a tool for developers that Anthropic launched fully in May, now generates run-rate revenue of over $500 million, according to the release. In addition, Anthropic now serves more than 300,000 business accounts. Over the past year, the company has increased by seven times the number of customers that each represent run-rate revenue of over $100,000, per the release. “We are…

Eight U.S. and Indian venture capital and private equity firms — including storied investors Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, and Premji Invest — have formed an unusual coalition to back India’s deep tech startups, pledging more than $1 billion over the next decade to strengthen U.S.-India tech ties. The alliance addresses longstanding funding concerns. In April, Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal drew criticism after slamming domestic startups for focusing on food delivery instead of innovation, contrasting them with Chinese firms in a presentation titled “India vs. China: The Startup Reality Check.” Several investors and founders countered that India lacks capital for deep tech ventures…

Tokyo (Jiji Press) — A Japanese research team has said that it developed artificial intelligence models to predict ovarian function for expected use in preconception care to prepare for future pregnancy and birth. The AI models can predict both the number and quality of eggs, based on data from patient interviews about age and menstrual cycle, and a small amount of blood. University of Tokyo professor Miyuki Harada and other team members built prediction models using data on 442 patients who underwent infertility treatment from June 2021 to January 2023. In predicting the number of eggs, the model using five…

Amazon is further investing in AI-powered shopping experiences with Tuesday’s launch of Lens Live, a new AI-powered upgrade to its Amazon Lens shopping feature that allows consumers to discover new products through visual search, similar to competitors like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens. The tool will also integrate with Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, Rufus, for product insights, the retailer notes. Lens Live will not replace Amazon’s existing visual search tool, Amazon Lens, which lets you take a picture, upload an image, or scan a barcode to discover products. Instead, it brings a real-time component to Amazon Lens so you can point your phone at things you’re…

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is driving efforts to close the $2.8 trillion global connectivity gap and shape artificial intelligence governance as it hosts the 25th Global Symposium for Regulators. The event, organized with the International Telecommunication Union, opened Sept. 1 at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh under the theme “Regulation for Sustainable Digital Development.” It convenes regulators and industry leaders from 190 countries, reinforcing the Kingdom’s push to advance digital inclusion under Vision 2030. The summit follows a UNCTAD World Investment Report 2025 showing digital infrastructure investments remain heavily concentrated in advanced economies, leaving developing nations struggling with…

Aging demographics, labor shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are driving companies to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. Yet only 16% of digital transformations succeed, and that’s only 4-11% in traditional industries. The main barriers? Weak leadership commitment, a rigid culture, and a lack of digital talent. LayerX offers an AI SaaS platform to help enterprises scale back-office automation. LayerX, a Japanese AI SaaS startup that enables businesses to cut back-office workload, has raised $100 million in a Series B round led by TCV, marking the U.S. fund’s first investment in a Japanese startup. The company declined to disclose its…

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — September 2, 2025.The CARE Dialogue, held today in Dubai, brought together an influential network of government leaders, industry pioneers, academics, and civil society representatives under one roof. The high-level forum was dedicated to advancing Collaborative Action, Resilience, and Engagement (CARE) across critical sectors, including climate, sustainability, health, and technology. A Platform for Global Action The CARE Dialogue is more than a conference — it is a catalyst for collective solutions to some of the world’s most urgent challenges. By fostering open dialogue and knowledge exchange, the event aims to break silos between sectors and nations.…

Retailers are increasingly employing artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize their customers’ shopping experience. It’s a trend CNBC explored in a report Saturday, focusing on Walmart’s effort to use AI “super agents,” such as its “Marty” AI assistant, to save time for both consumers and employees. The report also noted that this is happening against the backdrop of a wider shift in retail, with Amazon seeing generative AI use skyrocket by 3,300% during this year’s Prime Day event. And Google Cloud AI, the report added, has teamed with body care retailer Lush to visually identify projects without packaging, thus cutting down on the expense of training new employees. Walmart is also invested in physical and spatial AI, CNBC said, pointing to the company’s use of digital twins (a…

Sports gambling has DraftKings. Political junkies have PredictIt. And now the world’s nerdiest corner — the artificial intelligence (AI) scene — has its own set of bettors, where people wager actual money on whether Google’s Gemini will dunk on OpenAI’s GPT-5 this month. Forget fantasy football, this is fantasy machine learning. People are placing their bets on markets like Kalshi, where they can trade on the outcome of real-world events, everything from when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will wed to whether Google will break up and, of course, the AI model race. Kalshi saw 10 times the volume on AI…