Artificial Intelligence

Paper Raises $34 Million Series A To Build Design Platform For The Agentic Era

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Paper, a design platform aimed at the agentic era of software development, announced a $34 million Series A round led by Accel and ICONIQ. Additional participants include Designer Fund, WorkOS co-founder Michael Grinich, Lovable founder Anton Osika, and individual engineers and designers from Anthropic and OpenAI. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand its team, and deepen investment in AI-native workflows for designers.

Databricks And Microsoft Expand Partnership To Bring Business Context To Enterprise AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Databricks and Microsoft announced an expansion of their decade-long strategic partnership, extending the collaboration into the 2030s. Under the deal, Databricks will deepen its use of Azure Databricks to run its own core business operations and build its unified lakehouse, while Microsoft continues integrating Databricks' Data and AI platform across its products, bringing capabilities like Genie, Databricks' AI co-worker, directly into customer workflows.

Amkor Technology Announces $1.5 Billion Strategic Partnership With NVIDIA

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Amkor Technology announced a multi-year strategic partnership with NVIDIA to develop advanced semiconductor packaging and test technologies for next-generation AI and accelerated computing platforms. Under the agreement, NVIDIA will provide a prepayment to support the expansion of Amkor's U.S. advanced packaging capacity, part of a $1.5 billion multi-year advanced packaging and development agreement.

1872 Launches Autonomous Steel Fabrication Factory In Cincinnati And Closes $15 Million Seed Round

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

1872, a startup focused on AI-native manufacturing, announced the launch of an automated steel fabrication factory in Cincinnati's Camp Washington neighborhood, backed by a $15 million seed funding round described as one of the largest in Ohio history. The round was led by private funds advised by The O.H.I.O. Fund. The company was founded by three former SpaceX engineers.

Anthropic Launches 4 Role-Based Certifications And Partners With Pearson On Verified Assessment

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Anthropic announced an expansion of its Claude Certification Program with three new role-based certifications, rounding out a set of four credentials designed to cover the full range of roles a customer needs to deploy Claude across an enterprise. The expansion builds on the Claude Partner Network, which launched in March alongside a $100 million investment, and a Services Track introduced in June to help enterprise buyers identify qualified partner firms.

Bretton AI: Interview With Co-Founder And CEO Will Lawrence About AI-Native Operations For The Financial Back Office

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Bretton AI runs AI-native operations for the financial back office. Banks regulated by the OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC use Bretton AI to run compliance, risk, fraud, and operations on one platform, on their own data and policies, with every output traced, cited, and audit-ready. Bretton AI offers two paths: the Bretton AI Platform, where teams build and run their own agents, and Bretton AI Managed Services, where a dedicated Bretton team runs the program end to end. Everything is underpinned by Bretton AI’s Trust Infrastructure for model governance, continuous evaluation, traceability, and quality assurance. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Bretton AI Co-Founder and CEO Will Lawrence to learn more.

TechWolf And WTW Partner To Turn Skills And Workforce Data Into AI-Driven Business Impact

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

TechWolf and WTW announced a strategic partnership designed to help large enterprises accelerate the shift from skills strategy to practical execution. The collaboration combines WTW's expertise in skills design, job architecture, and workforce transformation with TechWolf's AI-driven Skills, Work, and Market Intelligence platform.

Sierra Acquires Takeoff, Building Long-Horizon Agent Platform Called Horizon

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Sierra announced it is acquiring Takeoff, a company that has grown from $0 in annual recurring revenue at the start of the year to nearly eight figures in revenue as of earlier this month. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Together, the two companies are building a new platform called Horizon.

StrongestLayer Reaches $9.3 Million In Total Seed Funding To Address AI-Era Email Attacks

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

StrongestLayer, an AI-native email security company, announced it has raised $4.1 million in new funding, bringing its total seed funding to $9.3 million. The round was led by Inovia Capital, with participation from existing investor Sorenson Capital and new investors LaunchPod, Alumni Ventures, and Chris Key, former Chief Product Officer of Mandiant. The company said production deployments have grown more than eightfold over the past year, and the new capital will support go-to-market investment, platform expansion, and preparation for a planned Series A.

Genius AI Announces Series D At $1.15 Billion Valuation And Rebrands From GlossGenius

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Genius AI, formerly known as GlossGenius, announced a Series D funding round at a $1.15 billion valuation, bringing the company's total capital raised to more than $125 million. The round was led by Lux Capital, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, 2048 Ventures, L Catterton Growth Fund, and StepStone Private Ventures. Alongside the funding announcement, the company introduced its new name, which it said reflects a customer base and product that have grown beyond its original focus on the beauty and wellness industry.

Yope Raises $12.3 Million Pre-Series A Led By Northzone For AI-Native Private Social Platform

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

Yope, an AI-native private social platform built for micro communities, announced it has raised $12.3 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Northzone, with participation from Inovo, Redseed, and Geek Ventures. The round brings the company's total funding to $20 million.

TeamViewer And ServiceNow Launch Strategic Partnership To Accelerate Autonomous IT Operations

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

TeamViewer and ServiceNow announced a multi-year strategic technology partnership under which TeamViewer's Digital Employee Experience and Remote Connectivity solutions will be integrated with the ServiceNow AI Platform. The companies said the partnership includes joint go-to-market investments aimed at delivering end-to-end autonomous IT solutions for enterprise customers.

K25.ai Secures Series A Investment From Amber Group And Valuation Doubles To $200 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 24, 2026

K25.ai, an AI-native prediction market platform for live digital content, announced the closing of its Series A investment round with strategic support from Amber Group at a post-money valuation of $200 million, doubling the company's valuation in under 60 days. The round follows K25.ai's recently closed Pre-A round, which was led by Nasdaq-listed NewGenIVF Group Limited.

Progress Software To Acquire Domo’s AI And Data Platform Business For $400 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Progress Software announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets and assume certain liabilities of Domo, including its AI and data products platform, for a cash purchase price of $400 million. The transaction is structured as an asset purchase and is expected to close within Progress's fiscal year ending November 30, 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Revolut Launches Secondary Share Sale At $115 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Revolut has started a secondary share sale that would value the British financial technology company at approximately $115 billion, according to a Reuters source familiar with the deal. The sale values Revolut shares at $2,017 each. A company spokesperson confirmed that the transaction is underway but declined to comment on its specific terms, saying Revolut would provide an update after the process is completed.

imagi Raises $4.5 Million Seed Round Led By Brighteye Ventures And Day One Capital

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

imagi has raised $4.5 million in seed funding to expand its artificial intelligence literacy platform for K-12 students and teachers across the United States and other international markets. The round was led by Brighteye Ventures and Day One Capital, with participation from FemInvest and We Are Human, an investment group led by the founders of Kahoot.

Michaels Launches Ask Mike AI Shopping Assistant Built With Google Cloud Gemini

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Michaels has launched Ask Mike, an artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant developed with Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience.

Foundation Robotics And AMD Partner To Power Phantom Humanoid Robots For Industrial And Defense Applications

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Foundation Future Industries, also known as Foundation Robotics, has entered a strategic collaboration with AMD to train and operate its Phantom humanoid robots using AMD computing technologies.

Etched Raises $300 Million At $10.3 Billion Valuation To Scale AI Inference Hardware

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Etched has raised $300 million in new financing at a $10.3 billion valuation to increase production and customer deployments of its purpose-built artificial intelligence inference systems. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion and SK Hynix. Etched described the transaction as the highest valuation achieved by a Sequoia-led Series C financing.

Alphabet Reports $109.9 Billion In Q1 2026 Revenue As Google Cloud Growth Accelerates To 63%

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Alphabet reported revenue of $109.9 billion for the first quarter of 2026, representing a 22% increase from the prior-year period and the company's 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Apollo And San Jose Earthquakes Launch AI-Powered Go-To-Market And Jersey Sleeve Partnership

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Apollo has entered a multiyear partnership with Major League Soccer's San Jose Earthquakes that combines a jersey sleeve sponsorship with the deployment of Apollo's artificial intelligence-based go-to-market system across the club's commercial operations.

Naval Postgraduate School Brings NVIDIA DGX GB300 AI Supercomputer Online

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

The Naval Postgraduate School has commissioned an NVIDIA DGX GB300 supercomputer to expand artificial intelligence research, education and mission-focused technology development at the U.S. military's graduate university in Monterey, California.

Advyzon Launches Embedded Agentic AI Platform For Wealth Management Firms

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Advyzon has launched Advyzon AI, an embedded agentic intelligence system designed to help financial advisory firms analyze information, coordinate workflows and execute tasks across the company’s wealth management platform.

Bluebeam: Interview With Head Of Product Luke Prescott About AI-Powered Construction Technology

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Bluebeam provides collaboration and workflow software that helps architects, engineers, builders, trades, and owners review documents, manage construction workflows, and coordinate projects in real time. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Bluebeam Head of Product Luke Prescott to learn more.

Travis Kalanick’s Atoms Raises $1.7 Billion In Equity Funding Led By Andreessen Horowitz

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 23, 2026

Atoms, the industrial AI and robotics company founded by Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, has secured a $1.7 billion equity investment led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round also included Bain Capital Ventures, Uber, Fifth Wall, A*, Chemistry, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel and Alpha Square Group. Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz will join the Atoms board.

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Fold8 And Flip8 With Expanded AI Features

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 22, 2026

Samsung Electronics has unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Flip8, expanding its foldable smartphone portfolio with three devices designed around productivity, content consumption and personal expression.

PathFinder Raises Multi-Million-Dollar Angel Round To Launch BirdieSense Golf AI Agent

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 22, 2026

PathFinder has raised a multi-million-dollar angel financing round to accelerate development and manufacturing of BirdieSense, its vision-based artificial intelligence training device for golfers. Jinqiu Capital exclusively led the round. PathFinder did not disclose the precise amount raised or the company’s valuation.

AMD And Anthropic Partner On 2-Gigawatt AI Infrastructure Deployment And Up To $5 Billion Investment

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 22, 2026

AMD and Anthropic have entered into a strategic partnership involving the planned deployment of up to two gigawatts of AMD Instinct graphics processing units and a potential equity investment of as much as $5 billion in Anthropic.

Exascale Labs Advances $300 Million Customer Pipeline Across AI Infrastructure And GPU Services

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 22, 2026

Exascale Labs said it is advancing an estimated $300 million pipeline of potential customer opportunities across its GPU-as-a-Service and AI infrastructure businesses. The company highlighted a combination of signed commercial agreements and nonbinding memoranda of understanding that could support near-term and recurring revenue.

Box Unveils Security And Governance Controls For Enterprise AI Agents

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 22, 2026

Box has announced new security and governance capabilities designed to give organizations greater control over AI agents accessing and acting on enterprise content. The features will apply to Box-native agents and third-party systems such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini.