Apollo.io acquires Pocus as it pushes to build an AI-native operating system for sales teams
Apollo.io acquires Pocus as it pushes to build an AI-native operating system for sales teams

The San Francisco B2B sales platform, which recently approached $200M in ARR and appointed a new CEO, absorbs the revenue intelligence startup’s signal-layer technology to deepen its enterprise push. Apollo.io has acquired Pocus, a revenue intelligence…

Austrian startup TACEO launches a network that runs sensitive computation without seeing the underlying data
Austrian startup TACEO launches a network that runs sensitive computation without seeing the underlying data

The TACEO Network, already live inside World ID’s biometric verification system for more than 18 million users, lets organisations share digital infrastructure without sharing sensitive data. When Sam Altman’s World needs to verify that a new user’s ir…

Ringtime raises €1.8M to send AI agents after blue-collar candidates
Ringtime raises €1.8M to send AI agents after blue-collar candidates

Recruiters spend hours a day calling, leaving voicemails, and asking the same questions. Ringtime automates the whole thing, and has already found a second home in real estate. There is a well-worn frustration in blue-collar recruitment. A warehouse op…

Reson8 raises €5M pre-seed funding to scale Europe’s first customisable speech AI
Reson8 raises €5M pre-seed funding to scale Europe’s first customisable speech AI

Amsterdam-based Reson8 has raised €5M in pre-seed funding to challenge US-centric speech platforms by building a high-precision, industry-specific speech recognition platform tailored for European languages. Reson8, a hyper-customised speech AI startup…

GlobalComix raises $13M, acquires INKR, and appoints new CEO to build the infrastructure for global comics distribution
GlobalComix raises $13M, acquires INKR, and appoints new CEO to build the infrastructure for global comics distribution

The New York digital comics platform is combining its 300,000-title library with INKR’s AI localisation engine, and bringing in new leadership to execute the expansion. The problem with getting manga into the hands of readers outside Japan is not deman…

Meta’s Manus AI agent arrives on your desktop to take on OpenClaw
Meta’s Manus AI agent arrives on your desktop to take on OpenClaw

Manus’s new desktop app can read, edit, and act on files and applications directly on a user’s machine. The launch puts Meta’s AI agent ambitions in direct competition with the open-source tool that has dominated the conversation this week. OpenClaw ar…

Mastercard buys stablecoin firm BVNK for up to $1.8bn
Mastercard buys stablecoin firm BVNK for up to $1.8bn

For most of its fifty-year history, Mastercard has been, in essence, a message-passing network. A transaction happens; Mastercard’s rails carry the authorisation signal between issuer and acquirer in milliseconds; settlement follows on a separate, slow…

Google, Meta, Amazon and 8 other tech giants sign global accord to share scam intelligence
Google, Meta, Amazon and 8 other tech giants sign global accord to share scam intelligence

The Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud, announced at the UN Global Fraud Summit in Vienna, commits 11 companies to share threat intelligence and coordinate defences against AI-driven fraud at scale. When Google’s vice president of trust and…

Upvest raises $125M at €640M valuation as European retail investing accelerates
Upvest raises $125M at €640M valuation as European retail investing accelerates

The Berlin startup, now valued at €640M, counts Revolut, N26 and Santander’s Openbank among its clients after processing more than 100 million investment orders last year. Twelve months after its last fundraise, Upvest has done it again, and at a price…

Gecko Robotics lands $71M Navy deal to send wall-climbing robots inside warships
Gecko Robotics lands $71M Navy deal to send wall-climbing robots inside warships

The Pittsburgh startup’s AI platform will create digital twins of Pacific Fleet vessels, starting with 18 ships, as the Navy races to fix a maintenance crisis costing up to $20 billion a year. Roughly 40% of the United States Navy’s fleet is unavailabl…