The buzzy AI startup Instinct has just revealed a new potential revenue stream: product recommendations. Unfortunately for the company, the rollout is already rubbing some users the wrong way.
Overnight, the AI agent began pushing product suggestions to users as part of a new feature called Instinct Selections, an effort to curate personalized lists for users in areas like dining, travel, and…
When Stephan Ewen co-founded Restate in 2022 to provide durable workflow infrastructure, he couldn’t have anticipated how valuable such an offering would become for managing AI agent processes.
The Berlin-based startup had set out to build an execution engine that made…
Airbnb adds AI search, more social features
October 1, 2026
Airbnb is evolving in two directions: On the ground, it wants to compete with hotels by providing myriad services; online, it is using AI and people in its Airbnb network to aid travel discovery.
As part of its fall product update, the company is adding services to the app…
OpenAI on Monday apologized to the Australian government for not immediately notifying the country’s administration that its agents had breached some public services websites. The company also detailed how some of those breaches happened and outlined additional measures it is taking to assess the impact of the events.
“In June, during internal training and evaluation our models…
Reco raises $55M as AI agent security startups crowd the market
September 30, 2026
Terms like “AI sprawl” have become common fare on tech social media and in thought leadership as enterprises start deploying AI agents en masse. But CISOs worried about securing swarms of agents suddenly operating across networks are likely finding themselves…
Anthropic’s prospectus details losses, growth, and, yes, a warning that its AI could end humanity
September 30, 2026
Anthropic devoted nearly a third of its hotly anticipated IPO prospectus to risk factors, according to the Financial Times, which says it has reviewed the filing in recent days. The filing details specific, worrisome behaviors that Anthropic says its models have already…
When the call came, Tarini Padmanabhuni’s grandfather believed he was talking to his brother. The voice on the other end of the line said he’d been kidnapped and that the only way to get him back was to pay a ransom. Her grandfather paid, only to learn later that his brother had been somewhere else entirely, with no clue any of it was happening. The voice, it turned out, was a…
Modulate raises $25M for its voice models and analysis suite
September 29, 2026
Boston-based voice intelligence startup Modulate has raised $25 million in new funding for its platform that uses an array of small models to offer enterprises transcription, emotional analysis, deepfake and AI music detection, and policy enforcement for voice agents in…
Viral AI agent Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation
September 29, 2026
It’s only been a month since AI assistant startup Instinct announced a fundraise that valued it at $2.5 billion, and now the company has already raised another $1 billion from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue, valuing the company at…
Can Muse overcome Meta’s trust issues?
September 28, 2026
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Meta’s new AI agent Muse took the spotlight at the company’s annual Connect event, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook’s parent company plans to push AI features everywhere.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Meta’s AI announcements…
