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Funding, acquisitions, company strategy, partnerships, and market moves. Reader coverage is updated continuously; Google Search eligibility is decided separately.

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7.8
enterprise-ai
Aug 25, 20262 sources
Porsche Agrees to Sell MHP to TCS, Plans AI Partnership
Porsche has signed an agreement to sell its MHP management and IT consultancy to Tata Consultancy Services, subject to customary approvals. Alongside the sale, Porsche, TCS and MHP plan a digital-and-AI collaboration; independent reporting describes a five-year €1.25 billion services commitment. The deal could reshape how Porsche sources software and AI work, but the companies have not identified individual deployments.
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6.8
softbank-group
Aug 24, 20263 sources
SoftBank Group Prepares 1 Trillion Yen AI Bond Sale
SoftBank Group announced on August 24 that it will offer 1 trillion yen ($6.3 billion) of seven-year unsecured bonds, primarily to individual investors in Japan. Mainichi reports that the offering is the company's largest single bond sale and that proceeds are earmarked for AI-related investments, refinancing 400 billion yen of 2019 bonds, and other purposes. The final coupon will be set September 4.
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6.6
generative-ai
Aug 24, 20263 sources
WildBrain Acquires Personality AI for $11 Million in Cash, With Contingent Consideration
WildBrain said on August 24 that it acquired Personality AI, which it describes as a provider of kid-safe generative-AI character experiences. The closing consideration is about US$11 million in cash plus one million WildBrain shares, with additional consideration linked to future dates and revenue targets. WildBrain says the deal adds an interactive consumer-engagement capability to its family-entertainment platform.
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5.6
physical-ai
Aug 24, 20262 sources
WATER Raises $2.5 Million for Adaptive Surfaces
Physical AI startup WATER raised $2.5 million in a round led by Endiya Partners on August 24, 2026. Indian Startup News reports that WATER is developing FLOW, an adaptive chair, and CAMA, an adaptive bed, which use its VORTEX foundational model for real-time sensing and physical response to the human body.
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7.4
xpeng
Aug 24, 20262 sources
Xpeng Raises Over $900 Million for Robotics Unit
Xpeng said its robotics business has entered share-purchase agreements for more than $900 million in its first funding round, at a post-money valuation above $6.3 billion. The company said the capital will fund robotics R&D, Physical AI model training, data generation, production facilities, and commercial expansion; the underlying transactions remain subject to closing conditions.
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7.7
hugging-face
Aug 24, 20264 sources
Hugging Face Explores Sale at $13 Billion
Hugging Face was reported on August 24, 2026, to be exploring a potential sale that could value the AI model repository at $13 billion or more, according to Business Insider reporting cited by SiliconANGLE, Gizmodo, and Tech Funding News. The reports state that the company has engaged a bank to gauge buyer interest, but discussions remain early and no bidder or agreement has been identified. A deal at that level would substantially exceed Hugging Face's 2023 valuation of $4.5 billion.
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7.6
alibaba
Aug 24, 20262 sources
Alibaba Prices HK$80 Billion Share Placement for AI Infrastructure
Alibaba has priced an HK$80 billion (US$10.2 billion) placement of 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, the company said in an August 23 announcement. The placement is expected to close August 26, subject to customary conditions, with net proceeds intended for the company's full-stack AI capabilities and infrastructure. Reuters reported the price was an 8.4% discount to Alibaba's previous close.
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6.8
nvidia
Aug 24, 20262 sources
Nvidia Reportedly Discusses Perplexity Investment at $30 Billion-Plus Valuation
Reuters, citing The Information, reported on August 23 that Nvidia is discussing an investment in Perplexity as part of a funding round that could value the AI search company at more than US$30 billion. Neither company announced a deal; Perplexity declined to comment and Nvidia did not immediately respond, Reuters said. The reported talks remain unconfirmed and may not result in a transaction.
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6.4
artificial-intelligence
Aug 24, 20264 sources
UK Productivity Rebounds Amid Uneven AI Labor Effects
The Resolution Foundation reported on August 24, 2026, that UK output per hour grew by an average 1.1% annually over the two years to June 2026. Morgan Stanley and London School of Economics researchers also estimated stronger productivity growth, though economists continue to debate AI's contribution. A Business Standard commentary described a K-shaped recovery alongside weaker hiring and labor-market conditions for some workers.
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7.2
apple
Aug 22, 20263 sources
Apple Cuts More Than 200 Siri, Vision Pro Jobs
Apple cut more than 200 jobs across teams working on Siri, Vision Pro, immersive video, gaming, and device AI integration on August 21, Bloomberg reported. About 100 roles came from the Vision Pro group, while roughly 100 affected Siri and software teams, according to Bloomberg. Apple confirmed the changes and said it would create new roles while supporting affected employees' transitions.
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7.6
nscale
Aug 22, 20262 sources
Nscale Seeks Up to $3 Billion US IPO
Nscale is seeking to raise up to $3 billion through a US initial public offering that could occur as soon as September, according to Bloomberg's unnamed sources. The London-based AI cloud and data center developer has told prospective investors it holds about $51 billion in total contracted revenue, Dealroom reports. Deliberations remain ongoing, and Nscale declined to comment to Dealroom.
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7.8
nvidia
Aug 21, 20263 sources
Nvidia Reportedly Licenses Poolside Model-Development Software in $6 Billion Deal
Reports published August 20 and 21 say Nvidia agreed to pay $6 billion for a non-exclusive license to Poolside’s model-development software. Newcomer, citing a Poolside investor letter, also reported a separate $1 billion investment at a $12 billion pre-money valuation. The reported structure could give Nvidia access to Poolside’s tooling while leaving the startup a separate company.
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6.7
dexmal
Aug 21, 20262 sources
Dexmal Seeks Billion Valuation in Ongoing Funding Talks
Chinese robotics startup Dexmal is seeking a valuation of about 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) in an ongoing funding round on August 21, 2026, founder Tang Wenbin told Bloomberg News. The talks follow a previous round involving Zhipu, while Dexmal said Alibaba and NIO Capital led rounds late last year.
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7.7
callosum
Aug 20, 20264 sources
Callosum Raises $100M for AI Workload Routing
Callosum announced a $100 million seed round on August 20 to build software that routes AI workload components across models and chip types. Atomico led the financing, joined by Plural, DCVC and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. The London-based company says the capital and new compute partnerships will support a routing layer designed to balance cost, speed and hardware availability.
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6.9
expedia-group
Aug 20, 20262 sources
Expedia Reorganizes Product and Technology Around AI
Expedia Group eliminated eight senior product and technology leaders in an AI-focused reorganization reported by Skift on August 20. GeekWire reported that Expedia confirmed the departures and that the new structure uses smaller end-to-end squads, while Skift reported that AI, data, and agentic platforms are centralized under Chief AI and Data Officer Xavier Amatriain.
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6.8
twin1-ai
Aug 20, 20263 sources
Twin1 AI Raises $20M for Digital Twins
Twin1 AI emerged from stealth on August 20 with a $20 million seed round to develop AI-powered digital twins for knowledge workers. City AM reports that Bessemer Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Aramco Ventures co-led the financing, while Linklaters, Orrick, and Dechert are among the company's named law-firm customers. The platform connects employee context from workplace systems to answer questions, draft communications, and perform selected tasks.
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6.4
crowdstrike
Aug 20, 20262 sources
CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev Leaves to Launch AI-Cyber Fund
CrowdStrike global CTO Elia Zaitsev is leaving after 13 years to launch Cognition, a venture firm targeting a $170 million fund for AI cybersecurity startups, Axios reported on August 20. The firm plans concentrated seed and Series A investments, signaling continued investor attention to security challenges created by agentic AI.
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6.8
cerebras
Aug 20, 20262 sources
Cerebras Partners With Callosum on Agentic Inference
Cerebras and London-based Callosum announced a partnership on August 20 to integrate Cerebras silicon into Callosum's software platform for heterogeneous agentic AI inference. The companies describe the offering as combining Callosum's workload decomposition and orchestration with Cerebras' Wafer-Scale Engine for ultra-low-latency inference, while expanding Cerebras' European customer footprint.
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6.8
forrester
Aug 20, 20262 sources
Forrester Maps AI Disruption Across Technology Markets
Forrester introduced its AI Disruption Model on August 19, assessing AI's likely effect across 17 technology and service categories containing more than 200 markets. The firm identifies infrastructure, data and AI, and identity and security as broad growth areas, while reporting greater exposure for labor-intensive services including software development and technology implementation.
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5.7
autonomous-drones
Aug 20, 20262 sources
DefendEye Raises Funding to Scale Overwatch Drone Production
DefendEye announced on August 18 that it closed an undisclosed investment round led by NovaCapital to scale production of its Overwatch Drone for first responders. FinSMEs reports that ff Venture Capital, Hard2beat, Sunfish Partners, and In-Q-Tel also participated. The company describes the system as a fully autonomous, pilot-free aerial intelligence platform that launches from a rugged base station and transmits live video over tactical LTE connectivity.
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6.1
circeus
Aug 20, 20263 sources
Circeus Acquires Dondy for Agentic Commerce
On July 22, Circeus acquired Dondy, a conversational-commerce platform, and placed it in the Shop Circle division. Circeus says Dondy serves more than 70,000 businesses and its AI agents resolve 70% of agent-handled conversations end-to-end; the company did not disclose the transaction terms.
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6.9
nvidia
Aug 19, 20263 sources
Nvidia Weighs Mercor Investment at $20 Billion Valuation
On Aug. 19, Nvidia discussed joining a funding round valuing data-labeling provider Mercor at a reported $20 billion, according to The Information as reported by PYMNTS. Neither the total round size nor Nvidia's potential commitment was known. PYMNTS also reported that Mercor's Nvidia revenue was growing as the chipmaker developed its Nemotron open-source models.
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7.7
openai
Aug 19, 20262 sources
OpenAI Targets 2027 Public Market Debut
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees on August 19 that the company "will be a public company in 2027," with a potential earlier debut if its business continues to improve, CNBC reported, citing two people familiar with the meeting. CNBC also reported that OpenAI has confidentially filed an IPO prospectus and presented employees with quarter-to-date growth metrics for revenue, enterprise revenue, and AI coding products.
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6.3
stripe
Aug 19, 20262 sources
Stripe Tells Investors It Sees a 2026 Economic Inflection Point
Stripe told investors that it views January 1, 2026 as the start of a major economic inflection point, using the term “singularity” for that internal framing. The company reported 41% first-half revenue growth and said AI and crypto customers contributed a growing share of revenue, but its language did not amount to a technical claim that artificial general intelligence has arrived.
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7.3
world-models
Aug 19, 20262 sources
Sanja Fidler Launches Veeda AI for World Models
Former Nvidia Toronto AI lab leader Sanja Fidler launched Veeda AI on August 19, 2026, to develop world models for physical AI and robotics. BetaKit reports that Veeda, launched with former Nvidia colleagues Zan Gojcic and Huan Ling, has raised US$90 million and is backed by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The Logic reports that the Toronto-headquartered company is recruiting scientists and machine learning engineers.
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6.8
goldman-sachs
Aug 19, 20263 sources
Goldman Finds AI Exposure Pressures Entry-Level Hiring
Goldman Sachs reported on Aug. 19 that industries with greater exposure to AI automation have seen slower job-opening growth since the second half of 2022, with entry-level workers facing stronger hiring headwinds. CNBC and PYMNTS reported that call centers, software publishing, advertising services, and management consulting have fallen below historical employment trends across developed markets.
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7.0
enterprise-ai
Aug 19, 20261 source
Prevalent AI's CEO tells LDS where data sovereignty ends
Paul Stokes, co-founder and chief executive of Prevalent AI, answered six technical questions from Lets Data Science after the London company announced a $22 million growth investment. He set out how the platform arbitrates between data sources that disagree, using fidelity rules, frequency weighting and per-field precedence, and said the system is designed to return a transparent unknown rather than a clean but incorrect answer. On sovereignty he was candid: the platform supplies the trusted data layer, and customers reach full data sovereignty only by running open-weight models on their own infrastructure. Revenue and customer numbers remain undisclosed.
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7.3
nebius
Aug 19, 20262 sources
Nebius Proposes $4.5B Convertible Notes Offering
Nebius Group proposed a $4.5 billion private offering of convertible senior notes on August 19, split between $2.75 billion due in 2030 and $1.75 billion due in 2034. The AI cloud company said it intends to use the proceeds for data-center construction, its full-stack cloud, GPU procurement and general corporate purposes, while final pricing and completion remain subject to market conditions.
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6.2
prevalent-ai
Aug 19, 20262 sources
Prevalent AI Raises $22M to Expand Security Data Fabric
Prevalent AI raised $22 million from Integrity Growth Partners, its first outside capital since the London company was founded in 2017. The August 19 growth investment will fund U.S. expansion, a formal go-to-market organization, and work to extend its enterprise data fabric beyond cybersecurity into compliance, financial crime, and operational risk.
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7.2
openai
Aug 19, 20264 sources
OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Ads Across Europe
OpenAI will expand in-chat ChatGPT ads to 31 European markets, including the Netherlands, during the week of August 24, 2026. Its August 18 announcement limits ads to Free and Go users, while Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscriptions remain ad-free. Digiday reports that advertisers can initially buy inventory through OpenAI's sales team and agency or technology partners.
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Funding & Business

Latest coverage

Porsche Agrees to Sell MHP to TCS, Plans AI Partnership

SoftBank Group Prepares 1 Trillion Yen AI Bond Sale

WildBrain Acquires Personality AI for $11 Million in Cash, With Contingent Consideration

WATER Raises $2.5 Million for Adaptive Surfaces

Xpeng Raises Over $900 Million for Robotics Unit

Hugging Face Explores Sale at $13 Billion

Alibaba Prices HK$80 Billion Share Placement for AI Infrastructure

Nvidia Reportedly Discusses Perplexity Investment at $30 Billion-Plus Valuation

UK Productivity Rebounds Amid Uneven AI Labor Effects

Apple Cuts More Than 200 Siri, Vision Pro Jobs

Nscale Seeks Up to $3 Billion US IPO

Nvidia Reportedly Licenses Poolside Model-Development Software in $6 Billion Deal

Dexmal Seeks Billion Valuation in Ongoing Funding Talks

Callosum Raises $100M for AI Workload Routing

Expedia Reorganizes Product and Technology Around AI

Twin1 AI Raises $20M for Digital Twins

CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev Leaves to Launch AI-Cyber Fund

Cerebras Partners With Callosum on Agentic Inference

Forrester Maps AI Disruption Across Technology Markets

DefendEye Raises Funding to Scale Overwatch Drone Production

Circeus Acquires Dondy for Agentic Commerce

Nvidia Weighs Mercor Investment at $20 Billion Valuation

OpenAI Targets 2027 Public Market Debut

Stripe Tells Investors It Sees a 2026 Economic Inflection Point

Sanja Fidler Launches Veeda AI for World Models

Goldman Finds AI Exposure Pressures Entry-Level Hiring

Prevalent AI's CEO tells LDS where data sovereignty ends

Nebius Proposes $4.5B Convertible Notes Offering

Prevalent AI Raises $22M to Expand Security Data Fabric

OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Ads Across Europe

Funding & Business

Latest coverage

Porsche Agrees to Sell MHP to TCS, Plans AI Partnership

SoftBank Group Prepares 1 Trillion Yen AI Bond Sale

WildBrain Acquires Personality AI for $11 Million in Cash, With Contingent Consideration

WATER Raises $2.5 Million for Adaptive Surfaces

Xpeng Raises Over $900 Million for Robotics Unit

Hugging Face Explores Sale at $13 Billion

Alibaba Prices HK$80 Billion Share Placement for AI Infrastructure

Nvidia Reportedly Discusses Perplexity Investment at $30 Billion-Plus Valuation

UK Productivity Rebounds Amid Uneven AI Labor Effects

Apple Cuts More Than 200 Siri, Vision Pro Jobs

Nscale Seeks Up to $3 Billion US IPO

Nvidia Reportedly Licenses Poolside Model-Development Software in $6 Billion Deal

Dexmal Seeks Billion Valuation in Ongoing Funding Talks

Callosum Raises $100M for AI Workload Routing

Expedia Reorganizes Product and Technology Around AI

Twin1 AI Raises $20M for Digital Twins

CrowdStrike CTO Elia Zaitsev Leaves to Launch AI-Cyber Fund

Cerebras Partners With Callosum on Agentic Inference

Forrester Maps AI Disruption Across Technology Markets

DefendEye Raises Funding to Scale Overwatch Drone Production

Circeus Acquires Dondy for Agentic Commerce

Nvidia Weighs Mercor Investment at $20 Billion Valuation

OpenAI Targets 2027 Public Market Debut

Stripe Tells Investors It Sees a 2026 Economic Inflection Point

Sanja Fidler Launches Veeda AI for World Models

Goldman Finds AI Exposure Pressures Entry-Level Hiring

Prevalent AI's CEO tells LDS where data sovereignty ends

Nebius Proposes $4.5B Convertible Notes Offering

Prevalent AI Raises $22M to Expand Security Data Fabric

OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Ads Across Europe