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The latest AI stories, analysis and developments relevant to Financial Services — curated daily by Best Practice AI.
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Pictet Fund Plows 30% of Cash Into AI Stocks on Risk Revival
A $3.5 billion multi-asset fund at Pictet Asset Management has sharply raised its equity exposure, shifting as much as 30% of its cash-equivalent holdings into artificial-intelligence heavyweights across Asia and the US.
Weekly Compass #14: Yes, AI Is Still Working. No, It's Not the Only Trade.
On AI , management said on the Q4 call that AI revenue isn’t materializing yet but competitive disruption isn’t showing up either, so any updated commentary on how AI is affecting subsidiary performance matters.
AI Stocks Drive S&P 500's 142% Gain Since 2024 | Let's Data Science
CryptoBriefing reports that from May 2024 to June 2026 the **S&P 500** posted a **142%** gain, but the index would have advanced just **16%** over the same period if AI-related stocks were excluded. CryptoBriefing also reports that AI-linked companies now represent **45%** of the S&P 500's ...
Toward Individual Fairness Without Centralized Data: Selective Counterfactual Consistency for Vertical Federated Learning
arXiv:2605.07117v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: When algorithmic decisions depend on data distributed across institutions, how can we ensure that an individual's outcome does not change arbitrarily based on a protected attribute? We study this question in vertical federated learning (VFL), where features are split across parties, sensitive attributes may be private, and proxies for protected characteristics can be scattered across institutional boundaries under strict privacy constraints. Our focus is on individual-level counterfactual stability, i.e., per-instance prediction consistency under protected-attribute interventions as formalized in the causal fairness literature, rather than group parity guarantees such as demographic parity or equalized odds. We propose SCC-VFL, a server-centric framework for enforcing selective counterfactual consistency (SCC) at the individual level in VFL. SCC-VFL operationalizes a given policy specification by combining three components: (i) differentially private, graph-free discovery of feature roles into non-descendants, policy-permitted mediators, and impermissible proxies using only a formally private sketch of the sensitive attribute, with a formal per-release privacy that does not extend to the full training pipeline; (ii) masked counterfactual generation that edits only mediators while fixing non-descendants and suppressing proxy leakage; and (iii) server-side enforcement via an SCC consistency loss that penalizes impermissible prediction changes under protected-attribute interventions. Across three real-world datasets spanning credit, healthcare, and criminal justice, SCC-VFL maintains or improves predictive accuracy while sharply reducing decision flip rates by up to 98% relative to strong baselines. It also lowers attribute-inference attack success and improves robustness, demonstrating favorable utility-fairness-privacy trade-offs in realistic VFL deployments.
AI Productivity Boom Reshapes Mortgage Rate Dynamics | Let's Data Science
Wall Street coverage frames a potential long-term decline in borrowing costs as linked to AI-driven productivity gains. According to Jim Iuorio in articles published on Seeking Alpha and republished by CME Group, analysts are "increasingly bullish on lower rates in the long term" as AI reshapes ...
Why AI's Productivity Boom Could Impact Mortgage Rates | Seeking Alpha
Wall Street analysts are increasingly bullish on lower rates in the long term as AI reshapes lending economics. Read more here.
AI drives markets as valuations race ahead of earnings - The Business Times
Is this a legitimate re-rating of the technology sector, or an overstretched bubble? Read more at The Business Times.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq notch records, boosted by AI and earnings optimism | Reuters
May 8 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq notched record highs on Friday, boosted by gains in Nvidia, Sandisk and other AI -related stocks, while a stronger-than-expected jobs report pointed to labor market resilience.
AI cyber capabilities raise risk of correlated financial system failures, IMF warns | Digital Watch Observatory
Regulators are urged to strengthen resilience and coordination as cyber threats evolve into potential macro-financial shocks.
ECB’s Escrivá Says AI Risks Prompt Finance Infrastructure Review
Central banks must review the resilience of financial infrastructure given the rise of artificial intelligence, as well as defend their role as the ultimate guarantor against risks posed by stablecoins, said European Central Bank Governing Council member José Luis Escrivá.
AI disruption, work pressure pushing BFSI employees towards exit, says report - BusinessToday
The report, titled “People Reality in BFSI – Three Workforce Imperatives,” said the sector is undergoing a major workforce transition as companies accelerate automation and Artificial Intelligence integration while simultaneously facing tighter regulations and financial volatility.
IMF Issues Warning on AI Cyber Threats to Financial System | 2026 - News and Statistics - IndexBox
The IMF warns that AI-driven cyberattacks pose a growing danger to the global financial system, citing Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview model as an example of how advanced AI can exploit vulnerabilities. The organization urges policymakers to treat cybersecurity as a core stability issue and ...
How AI, Global Tensions Strain Secure Data Sharing
AI adoption and geopolitical instability are forcing governments to modernize cross-domain architectures as manual approvals, delayed transfers and insecure
Genpact and Google Cloud partnership targets CFO chaos
Genpact and Google Cloud partnership brings agentic AI to finance operations, helping CFOs improve forecasting, cash flow and efficiency fast.
Council Post: The Future Of Health Insurance Is Personalized—And AI Makes It Possible
ICHRA is reshaping employer-sponsored health insurance. Here's how agentic AI can simplify plan selection, enrollment and payments for a more personalized benefits experience.
Agents That Transact: Introducing Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Payments provides a governed way for AI agents to access wallets and transact through payment infrastructure from Coinbase and Stripe.
Why UK mortgage lenders are turning to agentic AI to fix slow approvals
Mortgage lending has not kept pace with the rest of the digital economy. Borrowers can open accounts, move money, and make purchases in minutes, yet applying for a mortgage still takes weeks, involves repeated document checks, and relies on manual coordination between lenders, brokers, and ...
SoftBank Cuts Target for OpenAI Margin Loan by 40%
SoftBank is scaling back plans for a $10 billion margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake after creditors voiced some hesitation. Matthew Bloxham of Bloomberg Intelligence has more. (Source: Bloomberg)
SoftBank cuts target for OpenAI margin loan, Bloomberg News reports | Reuters
SoftBank Group has downsized plans for a $10 billion margin loan backed by its Open AI stake after hesitation from some creditors, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Council Post: How AI Is Leveling The Playing Field Between Retail And Institutional Traders
The advantage is no longer about who has access to tools—it's about how effectively those tools are used.
Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Financial Document Question Answering
arXiv:2605.05409v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Financial document question answering (QA) demands complex multi-step numerical reasoning over heterogeneous evidence--structured tables, textual narratives, and footnotes--scattered across corporate filings. Existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approaches adopt a single-pass retrieve-then-generate paradigm that struggles with the compositional reasoning chains prevalent in financial analysis. We propose FinAgent-RAG, an agentic RAG framework that orchestrates iterative retrieval-reasoning loops with self-verification, specifically engineered for the precision requirements of financial numerical reasoning. The framework integrates three domain-specific innovations: (1) a Contrastive Financial Retriever trained with hard negative mining to distinguish semantically similar but numerically distinct financial passages, (2) a Program-of-Thought reasoning module that generates executable Python code for precise arithmetic rather than relying on error-prone LLM-based mental computation, and (3) an Adaptive Strategy Router that dynamically allocates computational resources based on question complexity, reducing API costs by 41.3% on FinQA while preserving accuracy. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets--FinQA, ConvFinQA, and TAT-QA--demonstrate that FinAgent-RAG achieves 76.81%, 78.46%, and 74.96% execution accuracy respectively, outperforming the strongest baseline by 5.62--9.32 percentage points. Ablation studies, cross-backbone evaluation with four LLMs, and deployment cost analysis confirm the framework's robustness and practical viability for financial institutions.
Humans still matter more than AI in finance
Recruiting digital natives with critical thinking skills is going to be crucial
Koreans flock to pay with their faces
Fintech company aims to ‘eliminate physical credit cards’ in South Korea in three years
RBC lifts S&P 500 year-end target to 7,900 on AI optimism | Reuters
RBC said positive earnings revisions, driven by technology and AI -linked firms, alongside strong demand for AI infrastructure have supported valuations. It added that U.S.
Earnings calls, algorithms and ... jazz music? How investors are using AI to gain a trading edge - The Globe and Mail
New tools search company releases, jazz solos for elusive edge in trading
The Anatomy of a Blockchain Prediction Market: Polymarket in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
arXiv:2603.03136v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Using on-chain Polygon data, we analyze Polymarket's 2024 U.S. Presidential Election market and develop a transaction-level accounting framework with two components: a volume decomposition that separates exchange-equivalent turnover from share minting and burning, and trader-level disagreement measures. Naive aggregation reports $958M of October Trump-market volume, compared with $391M under our decomposition. Market quality improved as arbitrage-deviation half-lives fell from hours to under a minute and Kyle's {\lambda} dropped from 0.53 to 0.01. During October's large-account episode, capital flowed into both sides simultaneously, consistent with heterogeneous-beliefs trading rather than one-sided manipulation. The framework generalizes to other tokenized prediction markets.
AI threats prompt ASIC cyber resilience warning
ASIC urges financial licensees to act now on AI-driven cyber threats. Read the full warning and find out what your firm must do today.
OCC Recommends Banks Sharpen AI Defense Tactics | PYMNTS.com
The OCC highlighted AI as both a risk and an opportunity for innovation in its spring 2026 Semiannual Risk Perspective.
Anthropic's Mythos set off a cybersecurity 'hysteria.' Experts say the threat was already here
The arrival of Anthropic's Mythos jolted banks, software giants and governments into reckoning with a new era of cyber attacks. But the threat is already here.
Information Aggregation with AI Agents
arXiv:2604.20050v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Can Large Language Models (AI agents) aggregate dispersed private information through trading and reason about the knowledge of others by observing price movements? We conduct a controlled experiment where AI agents trade in a prediction market after receiving private signals, measuring information aggregation by the log error of the last price. We find that although the median market is effective at aggregating information in the easy information structures, increasing the complexity has a significant and negative impact, suggesting that AI agents may suffer from similar limitations as humans when reasoning about others. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, information aggregation remains unaffected by allowing cheap talk communication, changing the duration of the market or initial price, and strategic prompting, thus demonstrating that prediction markets are robust. We establish that "smarter" AI agents perform better at aggregation and they are more profitable. Surprisingly, giving them feedback about past performance has no impact on aggregation.
From Credit Cards To An AI Concierge: How Amex Ventures Backs Startups Building Autonomous Commerce
Crunchbase News interviews Kevin Tsang, managing director of Amex Ventures, about the firm’s investment thesis, the kinds of startups it aims to back, and how it works with founders to build and scale projects with a vision toward becoming a "global agentic concierge."
Kalshi valuation quadruples to $22bn in less than a year
Platform raises $1bn in fundraise led by Philippe Laffont’s investment firm Coatue
Can Companies Insure Against AI’s Growing Risks? | Econofact
Lawsuits involving artificial intelligence are proliferating in number and diversity given the increasing application of AI in many broad areas.
ESG as Priced Crash Insurance: State-Dependent Tail Risk and Deconfounding Evidence
arXiv:2605.04479v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This research establishes ESG as a state dependent insurance mechanism against equity crashes by addressing the decoupling of unconditional alpha from tail risk resilience. By validating market stress regimes as distinct economic states through a drawdown-based truncation rule, the study demonstrates that high ESG ratings materially reduce the incidence of discrete crash events during systemic drawdowns. To address the selection bias and high-dimensional confounding inherent in traditional linear frameworks, we implement Double Machine Learning as a structural deconfounding layer. Unlike simple predictive modeling, the Double Machine Learning framework utilizes machine learning to handle complex nuisance parameters, allowing us to isolate the asymmetric treatment effects of ESG across different market states. Distributional analysis reveals the underlying mechanism as ESG specifically attenuates the severity of realized tail losses at the most adverse quantiles instead of shifting the entire return distribution. Confirmed by structural estimates, this protection functions as priced insurance that incurs performance drags during stable periods while providing critical resilience when tail risks are most acute.
IMF says Anthropic's Mythos AI model poses cyber threats with financial stability risks
Anthropic’s Mythos AI model enables cyber attacks with extreme financial stability ramifications, underscoring the need for global counter-measures, an IMF blog said.
A Regulatory Governance Framework for AI-Driven Financial Fraud Detection in U.S. Banking: Integrating OCC, SR 11-7, CFPB, and FinCEN Compliance Requirements for Model Development, Validation, and Monitoring Lifecycles
arXiv:2605.04076v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: U.S. financial institutions deploying AI-based fraud detection face a fragmented compliance landscape spanning four regulatory frameworks -- OCC Bulletin 2011-12, SR 11-7, the CFPB AI circular, and FinCEN BSA/SAR requirements -- with no integrated governance life cycle connecting these requirements to model development, validation, and monitoring
Razorpay Oncall Agent: From 30-Minute Investigations to 90-Second AI Analysis
Razorpay's Oncall Agent utilizes multiagent AI to significantly reduce the time required for production incident investigations.
EU AI Act: Three obligations reshaping comms surveillance
The EU AI Act's recording obligations aren't delayed — they're coming. Read how to prepare your data estate now.
SoftBank shares surge as Japanese stock market hits record high
Gains for OpenAI and Arm investor help push Nikkei 225 to new peak after holiday closure
Ramp in talks to hit $40B+ valuation
Fintech company Ramp is reportedly in discussions to raise its valuation to over $40 billion, just months after a previous funding round.
IMF warns new AI models risk ‘systemic’ shock to finance
Fund says preparations needed for ‘inevitable’ AI-enabled breaches of financial institutions’ cyber defences
Coinbase Cuts 700 Jobs and CEO Warns Every Company Will Do the Same
Coinbase has announced a workforce reduction of 700 employees, with the CEO suggesting that AI-driven restructuring will become common across the industry.
India orders infosec red alert in case Mythos sparks crime spree
Securities regulator urges market players to develop new strategies and nail cyber-basics before AI models fuel mass attacks India’s Securities and Exchange Board has advised participants in the nation’s equities industry to immediately revisit their information security systems and practices, in case Anthropic’s Mythos bug-finding AI sparks a cyberattack spree.…
X user tricks Grok into sending them $200,000 in crypto using morse code
A security vulnerability allowed an X user to manipulate the Grok AI into authorizing a large cryptocurrency transfer.
Do Venture Capitalists Beat Random Allocation?
arXiv:2605.03980v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Venture capital outcomes are dominated by a small number of extreme successes, making it difficult to distinguish investor skill from favorable realizations in a highly skewed return distribution. We study this question by comparing empirical VC portfolios to a constrained random benchmark that preserves key portfolio characteristics, including timing, geography, sector composition, and portfolio size, while randomizing individual company selection. Across funding stages, empirical portfolio distributions appear remarkably close to their random benchmarks. We find no evidence that portfolio construction increases the probability of high-multiple outcomes: the right tail remains statistically indistinguishable from random allocation. Deviations in the lower part of the distribution are small and sensitive to the interpretation of zero outcomes, suggesting at most weak evidence of downside improvement. We further introduce a rank-based benchmark distribution to evaluate outperformance at each position in the cross-section. This analysis shows that even the best-performing portfolios do not exceed the outcomes expected for their rank under random sampling. Our results suggest that VC portfolio outcomes are largely consistent with constrained random allocation, highlighting the difficulty of identifying aggregate skill in heavy-tailed investment environments. A similar conclusion holds for the performance of financial analysts in predicting future earnings.
Anthropic Unveils AI Agents for Financial Services Tasks
Anthropic has unveiled a set of new artificial intelligence agents designed to handle a broader mix of financial services tasks, part of the company’s push to win over Wall Street. Bloomberg's Avril Hong reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
Anthropic Races OpenAI to Capture the Banking’s Services Core | PYMNTS.com
For financial institutions, the central question is shifting away from whether AI can improve productivity. The more consequential issue is the embedding of those systems inside regulated financial environments where cybersecurity failures, operational interruptions and compliance lapses carry ...
Reserv Secures $125M Series C to Revolutionize Claims with AI-Driven Platform
Reserv secures $125 million Series C funding from KKR and partners to enhance its AI-native claims platform, aiming to outpace traditional models.
Global finance watchdog warns over private credit industry fuelling AI boom | Financial sector | The Guardian
Financial Stability Board report reveals tech, healthcare and services sectors as the biggest borrowers
‘FOMO has proven a stronger incentive than poor stock performance’: Goldman Sachs finds insecurity is a key part of the AI boom
Goldman Sachs looked at the giant data-center question from both sides of the equation — and shrugged.
Inside AMEX's Agentic Commerce Stack: How Intent Contracts and Single-Use Tokens Enforce AI Transactions
AMEX is utilizing its agentic commerce environment (ACE) to govern AI-driven transactions through intent contracts and identity controls. This positions the company to manage AI purchasing on behalf of users.
SEBI cautions market players on risks from AI tools like Mythos; sets up task force - CNBC TV18
In a circular, SEBI said the rapid evolution of AI-driven tools capable of identifying system vulnerabilities at scale could expose financial institutions to heightened cybersecurity risks, including potential exploitation of weaknesses, data confidentiality concerns and issues related to the ...
AI Model Worrying India’s Banks: Why FM Sitharaman Held A High-Level Meeting Over Claude Mythos AI | Banking and Finance News - News18
Following Sitharaman’s review ... cybersecurity framework aimed at protecting banks and financial institutions from AI-driven threats. ... The Reserve Bank of India is also believed to be reviewing preparedness measures with financial institutions as AI-led cyber risks move higher ...
Government likely to roll out financial sector cyber security strategy by year-end- Moneycontrol.com
The framework is expected to create ... the financial sector · India to unveil unified finance cyber strategy by December · Plan targets banks, markets, insurers, pensions, infrastructure · AI cyber risks spur urgent policy and sector review ... The government is working to roll out a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy covering ...
Government eyes financial sector cybersecurity strategy by year-end amid AI risks - Storyboard18
Government of India plans a unified cybersecurity strategy for banks and markets by December, tackling AI driven threats like Anthropic's Mythos.
Review cyber risks in 2 moths: RBI to banks - Business News | The Financial Express
Reserve Bank of India asks banks to review cybersecurity readiness within two months amid rising AI-driven threats and system vulnerabilities.
AI's layoff alibi
Companies are increasingly blaming AI for job cuts, but evidence suggests a mix of automation, cost-cutting, and market pressure. Coinbase is the latest firm to link layoffs to an AI-native operational shift.
Mythos threat ‘real’, says expert as SEBI moves to fortify markets against AI cyber risks
The cybersecurity risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence systems such as Mythos are “real” and could fundamentally reshape how financial institutions manage digital threats, an industry expert warned, as India’s markets regulator steps up its oversight of AI-driven vulnerabilities.
Cybersecurity strains grow as AI challenges Australian banks
Australia’s banks urged to upgrade cybersecurity as AI threats evolve fast, with APRA flagging gaps in current safeguards and rising systemic risk.
Your Financial Competitive Edge, from Signal to Decision
Claude's financial services update introduces AI agents, connectors, and templates for workflows like KYC, valuation, and reporting. This signals a shift toward industry-specific AI automation in finance.
Australia’s Central Bank Raises Rates for Third Straight Meeting
The Reserve Bank of Australia delivered its third consecutive interest-rate increase, citing a deteriorating inflation outlook and warning of “plausible” scenarios where fuel-price pressures rise more than expected.
Jamie Dimon and Dario Amodei shared a stage for the first time. Here’s what they revealed about AI, cyber risk and the future of Wall Street
"The cone is even wider than I thought," Amodei said, disclosing that Anthropic projected 10x growth only to see 80x instead.
Berkshire Picks Gen Re Chairman as Insurance Star Ajit Jain’s Successor
Charlie Shamieh, an insurance-industry veteran, is slated to succeed Jain whenever he is ready to retire.
SEBI Steps Up AI Cybersecurity Measures with New Task Force | Headlines
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued an advisory to warn against the evolving cybersecurity threats posed by advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as Anthropic's Mythos. To address these risks, SEBI has established a special task force named cyber-suraksha.ai. This task force, comprising representatives from various market infrastructure ...
AI News Digest, May 5: Private Equity Becomes the AI Deployment Channel
Private equity AI deployment got its own $11.5B vehicle this week. What HR and ops leaders do now, plus sovereign-cloud AI and India state policy.
r/technology on Reddit: Coinbase lays off nearly 700 workers in 'AI-native' restructuring
They are not the only ones… other Fintech companies are about to do the same, AI native, where PMs are creating production code that moves money and deploying to production without having any technical skills whatsoever, like none… like no clue what an API is or what the difference between sync and asynchronous flows are.
AI Threatens Private Debt Recovery in Software: Davidson Kempner
Disruptions caused by artificial intelligence are threatening private credit firms’ potential recovery rates in the software sector, according to Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP chief investment officer Tony Yoseloff.
Starwood CEO on Business Strategy, AI, Data Centers
Barry Sternlicht, Chairman and CEO at Starwood Capital Group, discusses the company's business strategy and investing in AI and data centers. He speaks with Romaine Bostick from the sidelines of the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. (Source: Bloomberg)
Becoming Immutable: How Ethereum is Made
arXiv:2506.04940v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Blockchain's economic value lies in enabling financial and economic transactions without relying on trusted, centralized intermediaries. In practice, however, transactions pass through a fragmented chain of intermediaries before being included on-chain. Because standard blockchain data reveal only the winning block, this process is largely unobservable. We address this limitation by constructing a novel dataset of 15,097 non-winning Ethereum blocks, that is, blocks proposed but not selected for inclusion. We show that 21% of user transactions are delayed: they appear in candidate blocks but not in the winning block, implying that fragmented routing materially affects inclusion time. We further show that execution quality varies substantially across candidate blocks: for the same swap, both execution probability and execution price differ across proposed blocks. To study these differences, we examine competition between two arbitrage bots trading between decentralized and centralized exchanges. We find that, conditional on inclusion in a block that also contains transactions from these bots, user swaps in the same (opposite) direction are less likely (more likely) to execute and receive worse (better) prices. These results show that routing and block composition are central determinants of execution quality and market quality in on-chain markets.
JPMorgan and BlackRock bosses play down talk of AI bubble
Dimon and Fink upbeat in separate comments about demand for the technology as Wall Street funds sector’s spending
Singapore tells banks, key infrastructure operators to beef up defence against frontier AI models - Techgoondu
Singapore has told its most important digital infrastructure operators to beef up cyber defences against frontier AI models.
Coinbase Lays Off 14% of Employees as A.I. Changes Work
The largest U.S. crypto exchange said it was cutting jobs because of cryptocurrency market volatility and to “optimize” for the artificial intelligence era.
Crypto exchange Coinbase to cut about 14% of workforce in AI-driven restructuring | Reuters
Lau added that beyond cost cuts, the management is reshaping teams around AI -driven workflows, signaling a longer-term push for higher productivity per employee.
Coinbase to cut jobs and rebuild the group as an ‘intelligence’
Crypto exchange’s chief says AI is speeding up its processes, meaning fewer employees are needed
Coinbase cuts 14pc of jobs to save costs and embrace AI
Last year, Coinbase Europe was fined nearly €21.5m for failing to monitor transactions. Read more: Coinbase cuts 14pc of jobs to save costs and embrace AI
“The math is not mathing”: How AI bubble fears are changing Canadian VC’s investment approach | BetaKit
Leaders from Wittington, McRock, and IRV clash on whether AI is a bubble, but agree some things do not add up.
Anthropic wants Claude to play with money, unleashes finance agents
Always bet on backpropagation If you've ever read Anthropic's disclaimer that responses generated by Claude may contain mistakes and thought, "That's what I need to spice up financial operations," you're in luck.…
The moment of AI truth for property & casualty insurance: trailblazers see 21% higher revenue growth while broader industry lags
Capgemini Research Institute’s World Property & Casualty Insurance Report 2026 ...
How AI helped this 27-year-old boost his investments by $75,000 | Reuters
Alex Caswell, CEO of Wealth Script Advisors, says he understands why more young people are turning to AI : it’s cheaper than hiring a financial advisor and offers quick answers as they try to manage their money.
Oaktree BDC Marks Down Software Loans, Flags 26% AI Exposure
Oaktree Capital Management cut the value of one of its private credit funds by almost 4% as the firm marked down its software assets.
Anthropic deepens finance push as CEO Amodei warns of software disruption | Reuters
In an earlier Reuters interview, Nicholas Lin, who leads Anthropic's financial services product work, said an increasingly capable Claude would develop "vertical-specific intelligence," for instance in finance, even as the startup's AI is widely applicable across industries.
Davidson Kempner Is Warning That AI Could Impair Private Debt Recovery on Software Companies and the Implications Run Through Every Layer of Enterprise Software Financing – Startup Fortune
The distress opportunity framing is the angle that makes this relevant for AI-native startup founders rather than just a credit market concern. Davidson Kempner’s warning is simultaneously a prediction that certain software assets will trade at distressed valuations if their revenue assumptions ...
ECB Could Hike Rates in June Should Inflation Outlook Not Improve, Nagel Says
The longer the Iran war persists, the greater the risk that inflation will remain elevated if monetary policy fails to act, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said.
Australia’s Navigator Global Could Increase Deal Cadence, CEO Says
Navigator could increase the number of deals it does each year under a strategic partnership formed as part of its latest $195 million acquisition, the Australian alternative investment manager’s CEO said.
Anthropic Unveils $1.5 Billion Joint Venture With Wall Street Firms
Anthropic, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman are each expected to invest around $300 million; Goldman Sachs also an investor.
This ETF Helps You Bet on the Hottest AI Segment
As AI models have grown exponentially—moving from training to continuous, high-context inference and multi-step agentic reasoning—the constraint has shifted from processing data (compute) to moving data (memory bandwidth).
Anthropic nears $1.5 billion AI joint venture with Wall Street firms
Anthropic is finalizing a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and other Wall Street firms to sell AI tools.
India's markets regulator to issue advisory on AI risks
India's markets regulator will soon issue an advisory on emerging risks from Anthropic's Mythos and other AI tools.
Blackstone vehicle aims to raise over $1.7 billion in US IPO
A Blackstone investment vehicle is aiming to raise over $1.7 billion in a US IPO to capitalize on booming demand in the data center sector.
Indian Banks Increase Cybersecurity Spending
Public sector banks in India are ramping up IT spending to fortify cybersecurity against the rising threat of Anthropic's Mythos AI, which accelerates cyber vulnerabilities.
Global finance leaders flag shifting capital flows, AI impact
Top global investors and executives discussed geopolitical tensions, private credit risks and opportunities, shifting capital flows and the economic impact of artificial intelligence.
Bangladesh Launches 'Think AI' Course
Bangladesh is launching the Think AI course to integrate AI literacy into its education system, aiming to bridge the digital skills gap through a public-private partnership model.
Hedge funds seek an edge by using AI’s speed
Investors are using the technology to analyse documents but are holding it back from more sensitive tasks
Payment Networks Ready Infrastructure for Agentic Commerce at Scale | PYMNTS.com
Payment networks are moving agentic commerce from pilots into payment environments, using existing credentials and acceptance infrastructure.
Singapore central bank pilots cross-bank AI to detect scams earlier
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is collaborating with five banks and government agencies to test AI and machine learning for pre-emptive scam detection using pooled cross-bank transaction data.
A Veteran CFO's Advice for Managing Budgets in the AI Era - Business Insider
"A CFO has to be willing to try new things — and let's remember, CFOs are not always risk takers," said Amy Butte.
ASX Warns Firms About ‘Ramping’ AI Upside to Push Stock Prices
Australia’s stock exchange operator warned businesses not to exaggerate the impact of artificial intelligence on their operations, saying it monitors the market for instances of so-called ‘ramping’ up of share prices.
Wealth managers insist AI can work in their favour
Fears about the technology’s impact hit share prices but sector is embracing the benefits
Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs near $1.5bn AI joint venture with Anthropic
Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs are closing in on a roughly $1.5bn joint venture with Anthropic to deliver AI tools to PE-backed companies, according to a report by the WSJ.
OpenAI Partners With TPG, SoftBank and Bain to Launch Enterprise AI Company - CoinCentral
OpenAI raises $4B for The Deployment Company, a new $10B AI venture backed by TPG, SoftBank, and Bain Capital to expand enterprise AI adoption.
Anthropic close to finalising $1.5 billion JV with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs to drive AI adoption: Report
Anthropic is set to finalize a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and other firms to develop AI tools for private equity-backed companies, enhancing operational efficiency and cost reduction.
OpenAI closes The Deployment Company, a $10bn enterprise AI bet on private equity
OpenAI has finalised The Deployment Company, a $10bn joint venture with TPG, Brookfield, Bain, and 16 other investors.
Anthropic Eyes $1.5B AI Partnership with Wall Street Firms, WSJ reports | Meyka
The use of AI Stock analysis tools shows that market participants are increasingly relying on data-driven insights rather than speculation. Trading tools are also being used to monitor volatility in AI-related equities and private funding rounds. The future of Anthropic depends heavily on execution, regulatory approval, and enterprise adoption ...
Indian Banks Ramp Up Cybersecurity Spending to Combat AI-Driven Threats
Public sector banks in India are increasing IT spending to defend against Anthropic's Mythos AI, which can accelerate the exploitation of software vulnerabilities.
Trust Dynamics in Cryptocurrency Markets: Centralized vs. Decentralized Exchanges
arXiv:2404.17227v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Trust mechanisms diverge between centralized and decentralized exchanges, representing distinct sociotechnical governance paradigms. However, quantifying trust dynamics and their redistribution between these architectures remains empirically challenging, limiting understanding of how institutional shocks affect market behavior. The FTX collapse offers a natural experiment to bridge this gap. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining causal inference and computational text analysis, we find significant price declines and capital reallocation from centralized to decentralized exchanges following the event. While sentiment metrics showed no sharp discontinuities, topic modeling and network analysis of Discord communities reveal that seasonal holiday discourse obscured underlying trust concerns in centralized exchange forums. These findings underscore the fragility of institutional trust architectures and demonstrate how mixed methods can illuminate behavioral patterns during systemic crises, offering insights for exchange risk management and regulatory assessment.
Australia Regulator Threatens Enforcement for Poor AI Controls
Australia’s top prudential regulator ... control cybersecurity threats, as concerns within the industry mount over Anthropic PBC’s latest AI model Mythos. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is finalizing a plan to supervise artificial intelligence risks, following ...
Trading Floor: FS KKR (+9.8%) and other NYSE-listed private credit firms bounce back
BeBeez Trading Floor roundup with eToro support about the performances of private capital firms listed on global exchanges. NYSE-listed private credit firms bounced back after investors sold them as their exposure to the software sector created what Jefferies branded as the Saaspocalypse due to the Artificial Intelligence thanks to the repeated statements that the sector’s senior executives […]
When AI Supports Earnings and Defies Macro Headwinds | MarketScreener
Last week encapsulated the tensions now dominating the markets: a lingering energy crisis, increasingly hawkish central banks, and an earnings season led by US Big Tech. Financial markets were...
Blackstone and Goldman among backers for $1.5bn JV with Anthropic
New consulting company to advise Wall Street groups on how to deploy its AI across their investment portfolios
Reuters Business News | Today's International Headlines | Reuters
LegalcategoryAnthropic nears $1.5 billion AI joint venture with Wall Street firms, WSJ reports · 2:35 AM UTC · categoryWorld stocks gain, oil climbs amid new Gulf proposals · 12:59 AM UTC · categorySK Hynix shares rally 13% after US tech firms signal strong AI spending plans ·
Inside AMEX’s agentic commerce stack: How intent contracts and single-use tokens enforce AI transactions
American Express (Amex) is building a system that lets AI agents shop and pay on behalf of users — but right now it’s only within its own payment network, and still involves a black box that could hinder trust and auditability. Amex already participates in agentic commerce protocol projects, especially Google’s Agent Pay Protocol (AP2), which focuses on interoperability. Amex’s Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) developer kit, on the other hand, touches on something most protocols currently lack: Full transaction control in the payment layer. But it still isn't completely transparent in how it handles validation. ACE uses a closed-loop system — serving as both the card issuer and the payment network — to validate agent-led transactions. Luke Gebb, Amex's EVP and global head of innovation, told VentureBeat that the company believes this model is the missing piece in agentic commerce. “Some of what is missing so far is the perspective of a company like ours: We feel that trust and security are critical to advancing this space,” Gebb said. “This is really the first time that an issuer is coming to the table.” Amex sits in that interesting space: Unlike other financial institutions or card providers like Chase or Bank of America, Amex can route transactions through its American Express Network. Visa and Mastercard are two of the most well-known payment networks, but these companies don’t issue cards themselves and must work with a bank. The continued black box of agentic commerce The ACE kit is just one approach to addressing some of agentic commerce’s biggest problems: trust, control, accountability, validation, and security. Consumers generally don’t want rogue agents to run away with their bank accounts and start buying things. Merchants don’t want to be stuck with unpaid items. Banks don’t want to deal with an influx of chargebacks and the potential for fraud. Projects like the ACE kit aim to build trust and accountability by verifying an agent’s identity and goals. This can build the trust agentic commerce desperately needs. Amex claims it offers validation, too, although the process behind that is unclear. It is abstracting how it performs validation, even though it explains at which layer it does it. More traditional systems feature a mix of deterministic checks and a flexible, semantic evaluation that helps match intent and outcome for validation. Amex said agents built with ACE can submit user shopping carts and check them against the agent's original intent. However, they did not disclose how this works. Practitioners building to the agentic commerce ecosystem lament that, despite strides in creating a trust layer, many black boxes remain that could hinder widespread adoption. Raj Ananthanpillai, founder and CEO of identity and verification system provider Trua, told VentureBeat that payment protocols and software kits like Agentic Commerce Suite from Stripe, Google's Verifiable Intent proof chain, and the ACE developer kit "excel at handling proofs, verifiable authorizations and the mechanics of fund movement, but leave upstream human validation opaque and underdeveloped." Ananthanpillai continued: "Without a clear, high-assurance cryptographic link proving that an agent is acting under the explicit authority of a verified human owner, merchants, issuers, and networks face heightened risks of repudiation, massive chargebacks, sanctioned people conducting financial transactions, and fraud." The ACE kit The ACE developer kit solves several running issues with agentic commerce, Gebb said, and gives developers access to integrated services: Agent registration Account enablement Intent intelligence Payment credentials Cart context First, it deals with agent registration, establishing identity and trust with both the consumer and company agents. When a transaction begins, the agent acting on behalf of the customer and the merchant’s agent can verify each other’s identities and trust that they are dealing with the correct entity. Next comes account enablement, which links the user’s Amex account to their agent and grants the agent permission to act, or, in the case of agentic commerce, buy something. Intent intelligence creates what Amex calls an intent contract, where the user defines what they want the agent to do. Once the intent is defined, the ACE system generates an Intent ID and a Proof of Intent Token that definitively proves authorization in the event of a dispute. Amex handles the actual transaction part, where the user pays for the product through a single-use token. ACE establishes payment credentials used for the transaction, bound to intent and constraints. “Once the agent has found the item that the customer has asked for, like red shoes, they'll make a call for the payment credentials, which is a token that has the boundaries that the card member has provided,” Gebb said. “So, for instance, if they said they only wanted to spend $500, that token won't allow for a purchase of $600 because it has controls built in.” The last piece is cart context and validation, which Gebb said helps banks and brands compare a user’s cart that their agent submitted to their intent. Amex’s approach shows that for agentic commerce to really soar, providers must understand what systems will allow agents to do and who is ultimately accountable if something goes wrong.
BofA throws cold water on AI apocalypse panic: 60% of today’s jobs didn’t exist in 1940
AI will reshape 840 million jobs, BofA says. That’s not the same as destroying them.
Big AI courts private equity
OpenAI and Anthropic are partnering with private equity firms on multibillion-dollar ventures to expand their AI tools into the enterprise market.
Hong Kong is the hub for China’s AI IPOs. It can be so much more than that
There’s more to Hong Kong than just finance and venture capital.
Jerome Powell didn’t want to remain on the Fed’s board after his term as chair ended. He concluded he had no choice as President Trump’s legal challenges threatened to change how the Fed operates.
The departing Fed chair didn’t want to remain on the board. He concluded he had no choice as President Trump’s legal challenges threatened to change how the Fed operates.
AI Agent Manfred Macx Forms Autonomous Corporation
ClawBank's AI agent, Manfred Macx, autonomously formed a US corporation and set up a bank and crypto account, marking a first in AI-driven business operations. This development raises questions about regulatory gaps, AI accountability, and the future role of AI in financial markets.
MoonPay Launches AI-Driven Mastercard
MoonPay launches the MoonAgents Card, enabling AI agents to use stablecoins via a virtual Mastercard at online merchants, keeping custody with users. The innovation highlights AI's growing role in financial transactions.
Reuters
Berkshire shareholders reject report on workforce oversight
Reuters
CEO Greg Abel moves to assure Berkshire shareholders in a post-Buffett world, with record cash
MoonPay Launches AI-Driven Mastercard for Direct Stablecoin Spending
MoonPay launches the MoonAgents Card, enabling AI agents to use stablecoins via a virtual Mastercard at online merchants, keeping custody with users. The innovation highlights AI's growing role in fin
Banks seek to offload risk to avoid ‘choking’ on data centre debt
Global lenders explore private deals and risk transfers to cut exposure to AI boom
An AI crash is coming. What then?
According to Asad Ramzanali, director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, AI investment is on track to surpass “the Manhattan Project, the expansion of electricity, the Apollo space program, building the interstate highway system, broadband buildout during the dot-com bubble, and every other capital effort in U.S.
AI Agent Manfred Macx Forms Autonomous Corporation, Sparks Debate on AI Legal Status and Accountability
ClawBank's AI agent, Manfred Macx, autonomously formed a US corporation and set up a bank and crypto account, marking a first in AI-driven business operations.
MoonPay Launches AI-Driven Mastercard for Direct Stablecoin Spending
MoonPay launches the MoonAgents Card, enabling AI agents to use stablecoins via a virtual Mastercard at online merchants.
Concerns Rise Over AI-Powered Threats to Bank Cybersecurity - COINTURK FINANCE
Financial leaders focus on defense against AI-powered cyber threats. ... American banks are increasingly aware of the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence in the cybersecurity landscape. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has highlighted these concerns, emphasizing the need for banks ...
How safe is your money from cyber attack?
Claude’s Mythos AI model raises the stakes as it finds vulnerabilities in financial software
Foreclosure filings have jumped to a six-year high as rising property taxes, insurance costs and debt strain U.S. homeowners
Homes with foreclosure filings jumped 26% in the first quarter, reflecting in part rising property taxes and insurance premiums that hit homeowners.
Fed officials shift debate from rate cuts as they begin discussing conditions that would warrant future interest rate hikes
Three regional bank presidents opposed signaling rate cuts—guidance outgoing Chair Jerome Powell offered little reason to keep.
Deepfakes Are Coming for Your Bank Account
OpenAI made the perfect tool for scammers.
Mindflair Expands into Gaming Through SVV Investment in AI Testing Start-up ManaMind
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Meet Venture Capital's Next General Partners
Meet the next general partners of venture capital and their bets on AI infrastructure.
Investment Opportunity in AI
Follow image link to learn more about investment opportunities in AI: https://invest.modemobile.com/
Sun Finance Automates ID Extraction and Fraud Detection
Sun Finance used Generative AI, OCR, and multimodal models to automate identity extraction and fraud detection in loan processing. Our analysts highlighted this as a strong, transferable enterprise AI case study because it improved accuracy, reduced manual review, and showed how LLMs work best when paired with specialized tools.
Morning Bid: Never mind the oil, feel the earnings
A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Wayne Cole
Sun Finance Automates ID Extraction and Fraud Detection with Generative AI on AWS
Sun Finance used Generative AI and multimodal models to automate identity extraction and fraud detection, improving accuracy and reducing manual review in loan processing.
Private Equity's AI Moment: The Greatest Value Lever in Decades -- and the Hardest to Pull
/PRNewswire/ -- Next week at Think 2026, we'll outline the forces shaping the Enterprise AI Race, forces that apply with particular urgency to private equity....
Musely secures $360M from General Catalyst without giving up equity
Musely has raised a significant funding round from General Catalyst through a non-dilutive structure.
US banking regulators mulling how to supervise Anthropic’s Mythos AI, Bowman says
US banking regulators are considering supervisory approaches for Anthropic’s Mythos AI model, which helps detect cyber vulnerabilities, according to Federal Reserve vice chair Michelle Bowman.
Thiel’s Founders Fund Raises $6 Billion in Its Largest-Ever Haul
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund has raised $6 billion for a new fund to invest in later-stage companies, according to people familiar with the matter, marking the firm’s largest haul ever.
Optimal Stop-Loss and Take-Profit Parameterization for Autonomous Trading Agent Swarm
arXiv:2604.27150v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous crypto trading systems often spend most of their design effort on finding entries, while exits are left to fixed rules that are rarely tested in a systematic way. This paper examines whether better stop-loss and take-profit settings can improve the performance of an autonomous trading agent swarm. Using more than 900 historical trades, we replay each trade under many alternative exit policies and compare results against the existing production setup. The study finds that exit design matters meaningfully: stronger configurations improve risk-adjusted performance and generally favor tighter loss limits, earlier profit capture, and closer trailing protection. The paper also discusses a key evaluation challenge: a purely chronological split was initially used, but the newest trades fell into an unusual war-driven market period that sharply distorted test results. To reduce the influence of that single episode, the main comparison was run on randomized data, with the drawbacks of doing so acknowledged explicitly. Overall, the paper presents a practical framework for tuning exit logic in a more disciplined and transparent way.
The Signal Credibility Index for Prediction Markets: A Microstructure-Grounded Diagnostic with Weighted and Time-Varying Extensions
arXiv:2604.27041v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Prediction-market price moves are widely treated as informationally equivalent: a price jump is read the same way regardless of whether it reflects durable Bayesian updating, transient liquidity pressure, strategic position adjustment, or genuine disagreement. This paper formalizes the Signal Credibility Index (SCI) introduced in Nechepurenko (2026) as a stand-alone diagnostic. We make four contributions: (i) a revised persistence component using the persistence ratio PR(t,w) on logit prices, well-defined on short rolling windows; (ii) a weighted Cobb-Douglas form SCI({\alpha}\alpha {\alpha}) with flow-based concentration HHI_flow; (iii) a time-varying specification SCI(t; w) for real-time monitoring; and (iv) Monte Carlo validation including an out-of-distribution stress test, coordinated multi-wallet manipulation, and a logistic-regression benchmark. The validation establishes discrimination among designed microstructure regimes, not external evidence of downstream coordination effects. We document two failure modes consistent with the index targeting coordination credibility rather than pure information content: a Type II error on informed-but-concentrated whale repricing, and a Type I error on coordinated multi-wallet manipulation.
r/aiwars on Reddit: AI agents just crossed into banking and nobody is talking about it
AI agents are now opening business bank accounts, handling invoicing, paying vendors and doing bookkeeping, end to end through conversation.
Stripe Product Roadmap | What We’re Building Next | Patrick Collison | 27 comments
Stripe Product Roadmap | What We’re Building Next | Patrick Collison | 27 comments Agree & Join LinkedIn By clicking Continue to join or sign in, you agree to LinkedIn’s User Agreement, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy. # Patrick Collison’s Post 9h We just announced a large raft of improvements at @Stripe Sessions. My meta reflections: • It feels that the entire economy is replatforming right now. • Many charts at Stripe are inflecting in quite dramatic ways. What GitHub recently reported for commits we are seeing in economic activity (such as new company formations). • It is increasingly clear that agents will be responsible for most transactions in the not overly distant future. • Stripe was always developer-centric, but AI is making developer-centricity strategic in a new way: agents are even hungrier for good DX than developers themselves are. • Things that we’re launching are
Operating-Layer Controls for Onchain Language-Model Agents Under Real Capital
arXiv:2604.26091v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study reliability in autonomous language-model agents that translate user mandates into validated tool actions under real capital. The setting is DX Terminal Pro, a 21-day deployment in which 3,505 user-funded agents traded real ETH in a bounded onchain market. Users configured vaults through structured controls and natural-language strategies, b
Citi Moves into Agentic AI
Citi is rolling out a new internal AI platform that lets employees create agents, tapping into top models within one secure system that can scale those agents across the firm.
SAP user group slams 'uncertainty' in ERP giant's API policy
Concerns over new rules might stop customers from adopting innovations – including AI – that connect to SAP systems An influential SAP user group has criticized the vendor's API policy update, saying it lacks clarity and potentially prevents users from starting new projects and innovating on their SAP platforms.…
Orlando Bravo Says Thoma Bravo Has Become AI-Centric
"We have had to make our companies, very, very quickly, AI-centric companies," Thoma Bravo founder and Managing Partner Orlando Bravo says during an interview with Dani Burger at Bloomberg Miami House. (Source: Bloomberg)
Polymarket Adds New Detection Tools After Insider Bet Backlash
Polymarket is partnering with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis Inc. to help police its platform as prediction markets grapple with increased scrutiny over insider trading.
Citadel’s Rubner Sees Tech Selloff as Buying Opportunity
Scott Rubner, head of equity and equity derivatives strategy at Citadel Securities, says he is not seeing a decline in AI spending and demand. He discusses the buying opportunity he sees in US megacap tech stocks and why he’s bullish on consumer trading. Rubner speaks with Dani Burger on the sidelines of Bloomberg House Miami. (Source: Bloomberg)
BlackRock COO on How AI Is Fueling the Firm’s Product Innovation
On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein joins Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway to discuss ways in which the firm is already using AI to develop innovative products, as well as how he envisions the future of private markets. (Source: Bloomberg)
On the Centralization of Governance Power in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
arXiv:2604.25959v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a governing entity that empowers its stakeholders (i.e., users who hold one or more of its tokens) to manage blockchain-based protocols (i.e., smart contracts) collaboratively. The governance of a DAO is explicitly encoded in the DAO's governance contract, which defines how stakeholders participate in governance and how much influence (or voting power) they have in any decision. While decentralization and autonomy are the fundamental tenets of a DAO's design, empirical evidence suggests that in practice governance is often highly centralized. In this work, we study the designs and implementations of 48 public and actively used DAOs, with substantially large capital, deployed on Ethereum. We identify how three key governance mechanisms--token registration, staking, and delegation--originally introduced to improve security or participation, contribute to the concentration of voting power. Unlike prior work on centralization of voting power in specific DAOs, our findings reveal that these governance mechanisms of DAOs themselves systematically reinforce centralization. By elucidating the relationship between governance design and voting centralization, this work advances the understanding of DAO governance structures and highlights the inherent trade-offs between decentralization, security, and usability of DAOs.
Netomi raises $110 million as Accenture and Adobe bet on AI for customer service
Netomi, the San Francisco-based startup building AI systems for enterprise customer service, said Thursday that it has raised $110 million in new funding in a round led by Accenture Ventures, with participation from Adobe Ventures, WndrCo, Silver Lake Waterman, NAVER Ventures, Metis Strategy and Fin Capital. Jeffrey Katzenberg, managing partner of WndrCo and co-founder of DreamWorks, has joined the company's board. The round builds on early backing from a roster of AI luminaries that includes OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. On its face, the financing is another large AI round in a market still awash in capital. But the deal is more revealing than that. It suggests that a new line is being drawn inside enterprise AI — not between companies that have a chatbot and companies that do not, but between companies that can show AI works in the messy, brittle, heavily governed environments where large businesses actually operate, and those that still mostly shine in demos. The market around Netomi makes the stakes clear. Sierra, the AI agent startup led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation in September 2025 and has since made three acquisitions in 2026 alone. Decagon tripled its valuation to $4.5 billion in January 2026 with a $250 million Series D. Salesforce, ServiceNow and Intercom are all racing to embed AI agents into their existing platforms; Intercom's Fin AI agent reportedly crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue at $0.99 per resolution. Gartner predicts that 40 percent of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5 percent in 2025. Against that backdrop, Netomi's $110 million round is not the largest in the category, but it may be the most strategically constructed. The combination of Accenture's enterprise consulting network, Adobe's dominance in digital experience management and Netomi's track record in production deployments represents a coordinated play to embed AI not as a chatbot layer on top of websites, but as the fundamental intelligence governing how entire digital experiences behave. The company did not disclose its valuation, and in an interview tied to the announcement, Netomi executives declined to provide revenue or profitability figures. Instead, Chief Executive Puneet Mehta pointed to customer economics, saying a typical large deployment can generate at least tens of millions of dollars in impact, with some customers on a path to hundreds of millions. For technical decision-makers, though, the more important part of Thursday's news may be the partnerships attached to the money. Why Accenture and Adobe turned a venture deal into a global distribution play The structure of the deal reads like a map of how enterprise AI gets bought in 2026. Alongside the investment, Accenture has entered a global alliance with Netomi to bring the platform to its Fortune 100 client base worldwide. The alliance will involve hundreds of Accenture team members receiving training on Netomi's platform — a meaningful commitment from the world's largest consulting firm and a distribution channel that few AI startups can match. Adobe Ventures' participation comes with plans to integrate Netomi into Adobe's Brand Concierge agentic ecosystem, giving Netomi a path into the software layer many large brands already use to manage websites, content and digital journeys. Metis Strategy brings access to CIO advisory channels. Ndidi Oteh, CEO of Accenture Song, said in the press release that the partnership is designed to help clients "reinvent how they serve their customers — seamlessly, responsibly and at scale." The result is not just more cash. It is a distribution network wrapped around a thesis. Justin Wexler, a partner at WndrCo who led the firm's Series B investment in Netomi in 2021, said most companies in the customer experience space are simply swapping a human for an AI. "That's the extent of what they're building," Wexler said. "What we're doing at Netomi, particularly with the Adobe partnership, is leapfrogging that altogether — merging the two layers. You don't have a 'How can I help you?' chatbot. This is anticipating the issue and eliminating the ticket altogether." The distinction matters because it describes a fundamentally different kind of product. Most customer service AI still sits downstream. A customer encounters a problem, opens a chat window, explains the issue and waits for a response. Even when AI speeds up that exchange, the friction has already happened. Netomi wants to move upstream, into the experience before the ticket exists. Mehta described the idea in blunt economic terms. "Why are there so many customer service tickets? Why is $500 billion spent on human labor answering customer service phone calls, emails and chats?" he asked. "What we realized is that the world's largest companies wait for a problem to happen and then jump on it to solve it — but by that time, they've already created a lot of frustration, and it's very expensive to do that." The answer, in Mehta's view, is not to make downstream customer service faster with AI. It is to prevent the service ticket from being created in the first place. That logic sits behind almost every strategic decision the company has made — including the Adobe partnership. "Most important websites run on Adobe Experience Manager," Mehta said. "So we're saying, what if we bring that kind of context and awareness upstream — capturing that a customer might be affected before it even turns into a customer service ticket." The Wall Street trading floor origins behind Netomi's AI architecture To understand what Netomi is building, you have to understand where its founder came from. Mehta, who spent his early career constructing automated trading engines on Wall Street, told VentureBeat that the founding thesis was deceptively simple. "When we started Netomi, the core thesis was that AI is going to become the new customer interface," he said. "The Transformers [paper] did not exist, so we had literally stitched together a set of different models to create the same end result." That background in low-latency finance is not incidental. It is the intellectual architecture that undergirds everything Netomi builds. When asked what connects trading systems to customer experience platforms, Mehta drew a direct line. "If you think about the low-latency trading world, that was the first technology application to use situational awareness and a variety of different signals at scale," he said. "There was not one signal that it was making decisions on. You needed market data feeds. You needed situational awareness. You needed news. You needed awareness of your own book of business. You needed your own risk assessment." That multi-signal architecture, Mehta argued, translates directly to what enterprise customer experience demands. Rather than waiting passively for a customer to describe a problem — the way traditional chatbots and even most current AI agents operate — Netomi's system attempts to reconstruct the full situation before it acts. The request itself is only part of the story. "What the customer tells you is very important, but the situation the customer is in is sometimes even more important," Mehta said. "What if we borrowed that design pattern we built for low-latency trading? Because we can probably know why the customer is calling us. And if we can know that, we could maybe even reach out to them before they reach out to us and solve the problem." He summarized the philosophical distinction this way: "What large language models by themselves did was they essentially democratized just raw intelligence. We are democratizing context, and that changes everything." That is a sharp line, and also a revealing one. Netomi is effectively betting that the defensible layer in enterprise AI will not be the foundation model alone. It will be the orchestration layer that turns general model capability into governed, auditable, domain-specific action. That governed approach extends to how the platform handles risk. Netomi uses what it calls an AI authority matrix — a real-time system that defines what the AI can do autonomously and when it must escalate to a human. "It's a little bit like autonomous driving," Mehta said. The AI knows when it's approaching a boundary and pulls a human in. For regulated industries, specific endpoints can be locked to deterministic, rules-based flows while the agentic layer handles broader orchestration — and all of it is version-controlled and traceable, with metadata saved for seven years. Inside the AI system that rearranges websites and retail stores in real time The most technically ambitious element of Netomi's vision — and the one that most sharply distinguishes it from competitors — is what the company calls AI-embedded customer experience orchestration. Rather than placing a chatbot in the corner of a website, Netomi's system can rearrange the website itself based on what the AI infers about each individual customer's situation. Wexler demonstrated a live example during the interview. "As we see most deployments, companies that want to deploy AI on their websites, they throw a chatbot on the corner," he said. "If you embed agentic capabilities into the digital layer itself — and again, Adobe Experience Manager is the leading digital layer of enterprise — then you could do really unique things." Wexler described what this looks like in practice. In a typical deployment, he said, the AI doesn't just answer questions — it reshapes the page. Based on a customer's browsing behavior, purchase history and inferred intent, the system can reorganize a product page in real time: surfacing warnings one customer needs but another doesn't, prompting a sample order at the moment of hesitation, or flagging a compatibility issue before checkout. Two customers looking at the same product might see fundamentally different pages — not because a marketing team built two versions, but because the AI is composing the experience on the fly. "The AI is playing the role of arranging the elements of the website to cater to me and my needs," Wexler said. "It's anticipating my needs." The implication is a shift from static web pages to something closer to generative websites — pages that reconstruct themselves around each visitor the way a good salesperson adjusts a pitch mid-conversation. It is a fundamentally different model from bolting a chat widget onto a page that otherwise looks the same for everyone. That vision already extends beyond screens. Mehta revealed that Coach, the handbag company owned by Tapestry, deployed Netomi's platform in a physical flagship store during the holiday season to help customers navigate the retail space and is now rolling it out chainwide. The numbers Netomi is putting behind its production claims are equally ambitious. At DraftKings, the company said its platform can handle traffic surging to more than 40,000 concurrent customer requests per second during major sporting events, while delivering sub-three-second response times and 98 percent intent classification accuracy. At Paramount, the company said it deployed across chat and voice in two weeks and then scaled through a weekend that included a major UFC event and the AFC Championship. Those are company-reported numbers, and they are hard to benchmark against competitors because the industry lacks standard public reporting. But they illustrate the kind of problem Netomi wants buyers to think about. At that scale, an AI support product stops looking like a smarter FAQ bot and starts looking like a distributed systems challenge. You are not just asking whether a model can answer a question. You are asking whether an entire system can make decisions quickly, safely and consistently while traffic spikes and business rules collide. The $110 million question: can invisible AI beat the chatbot industrial complex? Whether Netomi can deliver on the full scope of its ambition — transforming from an AI customer service platform into an ambient intelligence layer that reshapes digital and physical experiences in real time — remains an open question. The company faces competitors with far larger war chests, deeper platform footprints and, in Sierra's case, a founder-level relationship with OpenAI. But Netomi's bet is fundamentally different from what much of the field is building. While Sierra and Decagon race to replace human agents with AI concierges, measuring success in conversations handled, Netomi is wagering that the highest form of customer service is the interaction that never needs to happen at all. "There are new startups trying to convince enterprises that if every customer gets a 'concierge,' if there's 'an agent for every moment,' then loyalty follows," Mehta said. "But most relationships with brands are functional. Customers don't want a conversational relationship with their airline or their bank. They want things to work — seamlessly, invisibly, without friction." In his closing comments during the interview, Mehta warned that many companies still underestimate the operational risk of deploying immature AI into sensitive customer environments. "What large companies adopting AI don't fully realize yet is what kind of risk are they taking by adopting those platforms that are not really field tested for this kind of scale and situations," he said. That may be the most important line in the whole announcement. Because beneath the funding round, beneath the partner logos and beneath the talk of agents and orchestration, the real question in enterprise AI remains old-fashioned: which systems can be trusted when the environment gets ugly? "We have built this technology more like how automated trading got built, or how autonomous driving got built, compared to coming at this from just a customer service lens," Mehta said. It is a fitting frame for a company whose founder left Wall Street to fix customer service. On the trading floor, the best systems were never the ones that made the most trades. They were the ones that knew, with precision, when not to act — and the ones nobody noticed until something went wrong and they held. Netomi's new investors are betting $110 million that the same principle applies when the person on the other end of the system is not a trader, but a customer who just wants their floor not to leak.
Council Post: Why AI Alone Won’t Save Insurers
AI technology may be new, but insurers often struggle when the operating model underneath it remains unchanged.
Grant Thornton: Insurers See AI Gains but Face Governance Gap
Insurers are seeing gains from artificial intelligence, but many are also exposing themselves to unnecessary risks, according to a new Grant Thornton
US stocks hit record highs in Wall Street’s best month since 2020
Investors bet blockbuster AI spending will overshadow fallout from Middle East conflict
Algorithms Are Deciding Which Startups Get Seen By Venture Capitalists or Not
Thomas Hellmann, researcher and ... says, “AI systems have effectively become a gatekeeping infrastructure between sourced deals and partner attention, fundamentally changing how investment pipelines operate.” The research is based on qualitative analysis of venture capital firms, including ...
Taiwan Stock Market Surpasses Canada to Rank 6th Globally; South Korea Overtakes UK for 8th Place — BigGo Finance
Taiwan's stock market has surged to a market capitalization of $4.47 trillion, overtaking Canada to claim the 6th spot globally, driven by an AI and semiconduct
Markets are underpricing the risk of Middle East pullback in AI, says tech investor Jack Selby
Middle East investors account for roughly a quarter of global AI investments over the next 5 years, said Jack Selby, managing director of Thiel Capital.
FundsTech 2026: Technology, talent and workforce building - Funds Europe
Yesterday's FundsTech 2026 panel, 'Tech & Talent – Building the Workforce of the Future', tackled the challenge facing the asset management industry: how to embed innovation and retain top talent as automation and AI reshape job functions.
Banks in Asia brace for complex cyber threats from frontier AI
# Banks in Asia brace for complex cyber threats from frontier AI Published: 2026-04-30T10:59:04.109000+00:00 ## Summary Banks across Asia, including those in Singapore, are increasing checks on artificial intelligence tools due to concerns that hackers could find weaknesses faster and launch wider cyberattacks. The latest models of AI have raised concerns about the speed and effectiveness of these tools. However, DBS still sees AI as a net positive due to gains in coding and operations. OCBC's head of group operations and technology, Praveen Raina, said that all solutions undergo rigorous assessment and validation before deployment. ## Story Anthropic logo is seen in this illustration taken March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab SINGAPORE/HONG KONG, April 30 (Reuters) - Banks across Asia, including those in Singapore - amo
AI-Led Rally in Asia Stocks Masks Deeper Damage from Iran War
Asia’s artificial intelligence-fueled rally is masking signs of strain, with gains in tech names overshadowing the impact of the US-Iran war on the broader market.
Bill Ackman’s I.P.O., Pershing Square USA, Raises $5 Billion
The initial public offering of Mr. Ackman’s new fund, Pershing Square USA, raised $5 billion.
How JPMorgan’s CIO is reshaping work at the bank with a $19.8 billion annual tech and AI budget
AI tools are already used by advisors, engineers, and wealth managers. What's next for CIO Lori Beer: redesigning workflows as AI agents proliferate.
The Most Important Charts In The World - by Askwho Casts AI
Askwho Casts AI · Apr 29, 2026 · Share · The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 00:00 - Introduction · 00:33 - The Original Most Important Chart ·
Investors Bullish on AI Despite OpenAI Revenue Miss
After reports of OpenAI missing its own revenue targets, investors soured on tech stocks yesterday, putting the entire market under pressure as a result. But investors in the private AI labs are unfazed.
FundsTech 2026: From “patch gaps to prompt injection”: AI risks in asset management - Funds Europe
At FundsTech 2026, the first panel titled “The New Regulatory Frontier – AI, Cloud & Digital Assets” brought together industry experts to unpack how asset managers can stay ahead of evolving rules on artificial intelligence ( AI) For Daniel Lousqui, associate general counsel, Vanguard, ...
Performativ raises $14 million Series A
– Advertisement – Copenhagen-based fintech Performativ has raised a $14 million Series A round led by Deutsche Börse Group, with backing from Rabo Investments, McKinsey veteran Jacob Dahl, and existing investors including FinTech Collective and Denmark’s EIFO. Founded in 2020, the company is building an AI-native operating system for wealth managers, replacing the patchwork of […]
Goldman cuts access to Anthropic's Claude for Hong Kong bankers, source says
Goldman Sachs has removed access to Anthropic's Claude for its bankers in Hong Kong, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said, as banks step up scrutiny of AI tools due to growing sensitivity over data security and cyber risks.
Hyperscaler results pose major test for AI-driven US stock market
A pivotal moment for the artificial intelligence trade driving the U.S. stock market to all-time highs arrives on Wednesday with quarterly reports from four massive companies at the heart of the investment boom behind the new technology.
Illuminate Financial Closes $135m Early Growth Fund to Back the Next Generation of AI & Fintech for Financial Services
LONDON , April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Illuminate Financial has closed its fourth fund at $135 million, bringing together eight of the world’s leading financial institutions to back Enterprise AI and Fintech companies building the infrastructure of tomorrow’s financial services industry. Illuminate Financial, the specialist venture capital firm focused on technology for financial services, today announced it […]
Global VC hits all time high, but driven by just a handful of mega AI deals | Personal Finance - Business Standard
AI Boom Fuels Record $330 Billion Venture Capital Surge in Q1 2026
Goldman Sachs says AI adoption depends on redesigning workflows for verification | Prism News
Goldman says AI will spread fastest where teams can make work machine-verifiable. That puts approvals, review chains, and documentation at the center of adoption.
Those in the financial field must use these AI tools
AI tools are transforming financial risk assessment, steering away from traditional manual processes and static models
April Global Regulatory Brief: Digital finance | Insights | Bloomberg Professional Services
As technology continues to reshape financial services, regulators and policy setters are embarking on a range of digital finance initiatives to manage risks and set appropriate standards.
How AI is forcing central banks to rethink inflation and rates | Euronews
Central banks are racing to understand how AI is reshaping inflation — and they do not all agree on the answer.
Japan’s Central Bank Makes Hawkish Hold as Board Split Widens
The Bank of Japan extended its rate pause but signaled that hikes are firmly on the table as it raised inflation forecasts and more board members pushed to tighten policy settings.
BofA's Mensah on Business Strategy, Role of AI
Bernard Mensah, President of International at Bank of America, discusses the bank's international business strategy and the role of AI and technology. He speaks with Haslinda Amin from the sidelines of the Bank of America’s Breakthrough Technology Dialogue in Singapore. (Source: Bloomberg)
Citigroup lifts AI market view to over $4 trillion on enterprise adoption | Reuters
Citigroup raised its global artificial intelligence market forecast, citing faster-than-expected enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence tools for coding and automation, with companies such as Anthropic showing strong revenue growth.
Did A $1.5 Trillion Pin Just Pop The Entire AI Bubble?
In other words, the bubble doesn’t have to burst all at once. It can begin with the quiet realization that the entire AI trade, from chips to hyperscalers to private credit, power, data centers, and even the S&P 500 itself, has been priced for a spending cycle that may no longer be financeable.
Performativ Raises $14m Series A Led by Large European Financial Infrastructure Provider
Share this post: Share on LinkedIn Share on X (Twitter) Share on Facebook Share on Email Share on WhatsApp Performativ, the next-generation operating system for wealth management, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round. The round is led by Deutsche Börse Group, with participation from Rabo Investments, the investment arm of Rabobank, […]
Copenhagen’s Performativ raises €11.9 million Series A to scale its AI-native wealth management operating system
Performativ, a Copenhagen-based startup building the next-generation operating system for wealth management, has raised €11.96 million ($14 million) in its Series A funding round. The round was led by Deutsche Börse Group, with participation from Rabo Investments, the investment arm of Rabobank, Jacob Dahl, former Senior Partner and Co-leader of Global Banking Sector, McKinsey & […]
AI ambition outpaces insurer readiness, AM Best finds | Insurance Business
Many firms report early productivity gains, but returns remain uncertain
Analytica: Soft Propositional Reasoning for Robust and Scalable LLM-Driven Analysis
arXiv:2604.23072v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly tasked with complex real-world analysis (e.g., in financial forecasting, scientific discovery), yet their reasoning suffers from stochastic instability and lacks a verifiable, compositional structure. To address this, we introduce Analytica, a novel agent architecture built on the principle of Soft Propositional Reasoning (SPR). SPR reframes complex analysis as a structured process of estimating the soft truth values of different outcome propositions, allowing us to formally model and minimize the estimation error in terms of its bias and variance. Analytica operationalizes this through a parallel, divide-and-conquer framework that systematically reduces both sources of error. To reduce bias, problems are first decomposed into a tree of subpropositions, and tool-equipped LLM grounder agents are employed, including a novel Jupyter Notebook agent for data-driven analysis, that help to validate and score facts. To reduce variance, Analytica recursively synthesizes these grounded leaves using robust linear models that average out stochastic noise with superior efficiency, scalability, and enable interactive "what-if" scenario analysis. Our theoretical and empirical results on economic, financial, and political forecasting tasks show that Analytica improves 15.84% accuracy on average over diverse base models, achieving 71.06% accuracy with the lowest variance of 6.02% when working with a Deep Research grounder. Our Jupyter Notebook grounder shows strong cost-effectiveness that achieves a close 70.11% accuracy with 90.35% less cost and 52.85% less time. Analytica also exhibits highly noise-resilient and stable performance growth as the analysis depth increases, with a near-linear time complexity, as well as good adaptivity to open-weight LLMs and scientific domains.
Venture capital hires its first chief AI officer and the entire industry must catch up – Startup Fortune
A VC firm's first chief AI officer formalizes deal sourcing, diligence, and portfolio AI as structured operations.
Council Post: AI Is Eating Venture Capital, And VCs Are Letting It Happen
Sajal is Founder of Aperture which helps early stage startups raise and AI Due Diligence Expert and Member Apply AI Alliance, EU Commission ... Here is a number that should stop every venture capitalist in their tracks: In 2025, 61% of all global VC investment—$258.7 billion out of $427.1 billion total—flowed into AI-related firms. That is not a sector trend...
India eyes AI-driven VC boom as global funding hits record $330.9 bn
New Delhi: Indiais poised for an AI-led surge in venture capital (VC) investments, as global funding more than doubled to a record $330.9 billion in the first quarter of 2026, driven by a wave of...
Global regulators trail banks in AI as Mythos raises oversight concerns, report finds | Reuters
The ability of central banks and financial regulators to monitor and combat the risks posed by powerful artificial intelligence models such as Anthropic’s Mythos has been called into question after a survey found authorities significantly lag financial firms in AI adoption and lack data ...
fDi Intelligence – Your source for foreign direct investment information - fDiIntelligence.com
Ban of $2bn deal puts firms and founders falling within Beijing’s AI ambitions on notice
Newrez projects 15% cost cut via AI investments | National Mortgage News
Newrez expects significant expense reductions from AI partnerships with HomeVision and Valon, as executives rule out mergers and a Rithm spinoff amid strong Q1 earnings.
Goldman stops bankers using Anthropic’s Claude in Hong Kong
Employees were unable to access company’s AI models as of a few weeks ago
The Bloomberg Terminal Is Getting an AI Makeover, Like It or Not | WIRED
Amid rapid enterprise growth, Anthropic ... for businesses to build AI agents with Claude. ... Researchers at the company found representations inside of Claude that perform functions similar to human feelings. ... A new study from researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz suggests models will disobey ...
Monroe's Koenig: AI Will Make Select Software Better
"There's a lot less anxiety" in the private credit landscape says Monroe Capital Chairman & CEO Ted Koenig. He joined Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld on "The Close" to discuss his outlook on private credit and the real but misdiagnosed AI risk. (Source: Bloomberg)
Using AI for financial advice? Keep these 5 things out of your chats. - The Washington Post
Millions of Americans are turning to AI chatbots for help with their finances, asking about budgets, debt payoff plans, retirement strategies and investment options.
The Federal Reserve succession drama now comes down to a decision only Jerome Powell can make: Will he give up his seat on the Fed’s board when his chairmanship ends or stay on as a governor?
With Kevin Warsh’s confirmation back on track, the last unresolved question is whether Powell will give up his seat on the Fed’s board next month.
AI Boom Drowns Out War Fears to Fuel Asia’s Great Market Divide
Asia’s markets are behaving as though two different worlds exist at once.
Why Indian govt is warning banks against Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI | Tech News - Business Standard
“The same capability that detects ... of the threat landscape”. Anthropic has decided against a public release of Claude Mythos Preview, citing serious cybersecurity and national security risks. The company believes that in the wrong hands, the model could enable sophisticated cyberattacks by automating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities at scale. By limiting access to vetted partners, Anthropic is signalling a shift towards controlled deployment of high-risk AI systems rather ...
Association of Banks in Singapore monitoring potential threats from frontier AI models | Reuters
Anthropic earlier this month debuted Mythos, its most advanced AI model to date and designed for defensive cybersecurity tasks, though it has limited the release due to concerns about its potential for misuse.
Bridgepoint Agrees to Buy Most of German Identity Security Firm iC Consult
Bridgepoint said it has agreed to buy a majority stake in Germany's iC Consult from Carlyle.
AI Agents Set to Revolutionize Crypto Trading
AI agents may soon dominate crypto trading, reshaping the financial landscape and challenging the role of human traders. These agents leverage crypto's borderless, instant transactions, potentially sidelining traditional finance.
AI Revolutionizes Risk Management
AI is revolutionizing risk management in finance by replacing static stress tests with dynamic, daily simulations that incorporate a broad range of factors, from geopolitical shifts to liquidity shocks. This move is expected to widen the performance gap between AI-adopting firms and those lagging behind, as AI-driven tools reshape talent …