AI Applications & Copilots

Meta Connect 2026 begins Wednesday, September 23 at 4:00 P.M. at Meta's campus in Menlo Park, California, headlining a week of investor events that also includes McDonald's Investor Day and a White House meeting between President Trump and China President Xi. The two-day livestreamed Meta showcase will include updates on the company's latest work in AI, AI-powered glasses, virtual and mixed reality, and related developer technologies, with major product announcements and a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg anticipated. McDonald's holds its highly-anticipated Investor Day the same day, with investors watching how management plans to restore U.S. momentum while sustaining international growth and the durability of its new beverage platform, whose launches in the U.S., Canada, and Germany reportedly exceeded expectations. On Thursday, September 24, President Trump meets China President Xi at the White House, with Taiwan, AI, tariffs, and global conflicts expected on the agenda and more details possible on China's purchase of Boeing aircraft; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon are expected at the evening state dinner. Also Thursday, a bond hearing is scheduled at 4:30 p.m. related to Paramount Skydance's planned $110B purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. The week's earnings slate includes Autozone, Thor Industries, and KB Home on Tuesday; Cintas, Paychex, General Mills, and Cracker Barrel on Wednesday; and Darden Restaurants and Costco on Thursday.

Palantir Technologies' commercial revenue surged 110% to $945 million in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling the $451 million recorded a year earlier. The commercial segment added $494 million year over year, expanding by more than its entire year-earlier base, while government revenue rose 79% to $990 million from $553 million. Combined, the two businesses generated $1.94 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, up from roughly $1 billion a year earlier, with commercial operations contributing more than half of the combined year-over-year increase and narrowing the gap with government revenue to just $45 million. Among peers, C3.ai reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $51.6 million, down substantially year over year, and forecast fiscal 2027 revenue of $210-$240 million, while Datadog's second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 36% to $1.12 billion, with customers contributing at least $100,000 in ARR up 23% to roughly 4,720 and free cash flow of $279 million. Palantir shares have gained 37% over the past three months against 19% industry growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 39.96X versus an industry average of 4.2X, carrying a Value Score of F and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Chinese AI startup Manus is in discussions to raise $500 million at a $4 billion valuation now that it has resumed operations as an independent company, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. Potential investors in the round include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology, as well as existing backers Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund. Manus is also said to be considering a restructuring exercise to prepare for an IPO in Hong Kong. The startup relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a $2 billion acquisition deal with Meta that December, when it was said to be pulling in annual recurring revenue of over $100 million. Beijing blocked that deal citing potential violations of export controls and foreign investment rules, and early investors and backers have reportedly helped the company buy back its shares at a valuation of about $2 billion. Manus said this month that it has resumed independent operations and that its founding team will continue to lead it.

The Walt Disney Company announced that Karandeep Anand will join as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, a newly created position, effective October 2. Anand, currently CEO of Character.AI and a former technology leader at Meta and Microsoft, will report directly to Disney Chief Executive Officer Josh D'Amaro. In the role, he will oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product, and engineering, working across the company's segment technology teams. Along with his appointment, a number of Character.AI's technical team are expected to join Disney. The move comes as D'Amaro sharpens Disney's focus on technology as a driver of growth, emphasizing deeper direct relationships with fans and Disney+ as the digital centerpiece.

Envestnet released its third technology update of 2026, introducing an interactive dashboard, self-service configuration tools for Unified Managed Portfolios, and AI-powered widgets designed to reduce administrative work for advisors. The updates include a redesigned interface with customizable widgets, a new side-panel navigation system, and an AI assistant that lets advisors query dashboard data in plain language, according to the company. The interactive dashboard will be available for early opt-in by larger clients beginning in mid-September, while the UMP configuration portal is now live for admin template creation, with sponsor self-service capabilities planned for the fourth release later this year. Envestnet also announced enhancements to Tamarac, including expanded Report Studio capabilities, streamlined client portal features, tighter connectivity between Tamarac Trading and Tamarac CRM, an AI-assisted migration tool for converting legacy reports into Report Studio templates, and a new AI Data Analyst Agent that lets users query account data using natural language. In addition, Envestnet released enhancements to Envestnet | MoneyGuide designed to help financial advisors address complex financial planning needs, including support for deferred income annuities, fixed-indexed annuities, registered index-linked annuities and structured investments.

BigBear.ai reported second-quarter 2026 revenues of $36.7 million, up 13% year over year, as higher-margin generative AI products took a larger share of the business. Gross margin expanded to 32.8% from 25% a year earlier, driven by volume from Ask Sage's generative AI platforms and products. The company won more than 20 contracts in the quarter, including a second-quarter win with Naval Air Systems Command, and backlog rose 9% from 2025-end to $269.6 million, while CargoSeer secured a five-year commercial deployment in El Salvador. Adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $11.6 million from $8.5 million as spending on sales, marketing and growth increased. BigBear.ai currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), and its shares have plunged 23.9% over the past six months.

Affirm Holdings is launching a new transformer-based machine learning model for real-time credit underwriting at U.S. checkouts, drawing on 14 years of its own transaction and repayment data to analyze the order and timing of events across a consumer's credit history. In initial testing, the model approved applications the previous system would have declined, including consumers with limited credit histories and no FICO scores, and those incremental approvals produced 3.4% more completed purchases than the control group, with the loans performing better than a comparable expansion under the previous model. Affirm says the model is built to deliver fast and explainable decisions, and the release does not provide a dollar estimate of the financial impact. The company frames the launch as expanding approvals without simply lowering credit standards, with the financial benefit depending on how the early results scale. Affirm shares have risen 58.2% over the past six months compared with the industry's 20.2% growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 4.1X versus the industry average of 4.2X.

Freight Technologies, Inc. announced the launch of AI POD Validation, a new artificial intelligence module within its Fleet Rocket Transportation Management System that automatically reads and verifies proof-of-delivery documents and flags those that do not meet validation requirements. Developed by the company's in-house AI Lab, the module uses computer vision and machine learning to detect signatures and stamps, extracts text through structured optical character recognition, and matches the data against shipment records, returning a verdict of Approved, Review or Rejected along with a confidence score and supporting evidence. The company said the tool reduces the manual workload on every completed shipment, and Chief Executive Officer Javier Selgas described proof-of-delivery review as one of the most repetitive, expensive and error-prone tasks in freight operations. AI POD Validation is available to Fleet Rocket customers as part of the Enterprise version and joins the AI Tendering Bot and the Zayren.ai integration within the platform. Freight Technologies said it expects to extend the same document-intelligence approach to other freight documents, including carrier invoices and bills of lading, as part of its transition to a software-first, SaaS-based business serving the U.S.–Mexico corridor.

Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the company he has led since 1965, and will immediately become chairman emeritus, with his son Howard Buffett replacing him as chairman. In a letter to stakeholders, Buffett said that "Father Time always wins." Separately, AI platform Harvey announced it raised $550 million in fresh funding, a round that gives the company a valuation of $15.5 billion, with its co-founders saying the capital will help it support law firms, in-house legal teams, and professional services through the next wave of the AI transformation. Fintech entrepreneur Bill Harris also launched Evergreen.AI, a platform that uses personalized financial, retirement, investment and tax strategies and can deliver answers in multiple forms, including charts, tables, and side-by-side comparisons.

RELX unit Brightmine said on 17 September 2026 that its HR compliance intelligence can now be embedded in third-party HR platforms. The new capability lets external HR technology vendors integrate Brightmine's expert-maintained guidance, legal research, and AI-driven compliance tools directly into their products. Brightmine is targeting HR technology and service providers that want embedded, up-to-date employment law and policy content inside day-to-day workflows. RELX is a £44.9b professional services group that sells information-based analytics and decision tools to business and professional customers in North America, Europe, and other regions. The company said investors will want to see clear signs that HR tech partners are actually shipping embedded Brightmine tools at scale, such as disclosed counts of active platform integrations or usage metrics in upcoming results and client announcements through 2027.

The European Commission has proposed measures to restrict children's access to social media across the European Union under a draft law called the EU KIDS Act. Children under 13 would be banned from accessing social media, while those aged 13 to 15 would be allowed only limited use through accounts held by their parents or legal guardians. Under the plan, children's accounts would be restricted in their communications with others and limited to no more than one hour of use per day. At the same time, social media platforms, video-sharing services, online video games, artificial intelligence companions and chatbots used by minors would have to be designed to be safe, limiting features that encourage addiction, such as endless scrolling, certain reward mechanisms and notifications sent during sleeping hours. Minors' user accounts would also be set to private by default, with access to location data, cameras and microphones switched off. In addition, artificial intelligence companions and chatbots for minors would be disabled by default, and minors would be barred from using simulated interpersonal relationships in ways that could foster emotional dependence. The proposed restrictions have been submitted to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union for consideration and approval, and enforcement would rely on existing mechanisms under the Digital Services Act and the Artificial Intelligence Act, with violators facing fines of up to 6 percent of annual global revenue.

DAOL Securities (Thailand) has launched "DAOLSEC AI Smart Agent," an artificial intelligence tool developed to support the work of its foreign securities investment analyst team, under an AI Transformation concept aimed at integrating technology into the organisation's workflows. The system comprises two intelligent assistants: ONNI, which serves as a Research & Knowledge Assistant for analysts and investment advisers, helping to search, summarise and link information from the team's research archive, and OPPA, which serves as a Market Intelligence Assistant, helping to gather and summarise news, market movements, key issues and earnings data. A highlight of the system is its linkage to the analyst team's research and knowledge archive, along with source and date labelling of information so it can be verified before use. Dr. Chatpong Wattanachirat, Deputy Managing Director of the Strategy and Product Development Division, said the company designed the AI to be part of actual work so the team can focus on tasks requiring expertise and in-depth analysis. Meanwhile, Nattapong Na Ranong, Chief Executive Officer, said DAOL Securities' AI Transformation is not aimed merely at adopting new technology, but at reshaping the way work is done so that AI becomes part of every process, in line with its goal of developing into a One-Stop Financial Service.

Two U.S. senators have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate shopping-assistant AI from Amazon.com and Walmart. In a letter to the FTC, Senators Tammy Baldwin and Rick Scott said Amazon's Alexa for Shopping and Walmart's Sparky may exclude American-made products from what they display or fail to detect false labeling, undermining U.S. manufacturing and misleading consumers. The senators cited research from a think tank led by former FTC Chair Lina Khan, which found that these AIs provide information about products made in China and other countries while suppressing information about American-made goods. The letter cites that research and notes that when Alexa was asked why there was no made-in-USA filter, it replied that doing so would "take away considerable sales from our largest seller base" and referred to overseas manufacturers. An Amazon spokesperson said the claim that the company deliberately withholds country-of-origin information is fundamentally wrong, and explained that Alexa for Shopping is a service that is continuously improving and that, to prioritize accuracy, it currently directs customers who ask about country of origin to the product detail page. The FTC declined to comment, and Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

The Practical Solution Public Company Limited, or TPS, has launched the TALLI platform under the concept of unlocking AI for organizations, enabling them to quickly search, analyze, and access both internal and external data through natural-language conversation or commands. CEO Boonsom Kijkasetthaporn said the platform supports enterprise-grade usage requiring real-time data access and features six core capabilities: Unified Knowledge Gateway, NLP to SQL, Graph Generation, Smart AI Memory & Voice Activated Control, Human in the Loop, and Admin Portal. Organizations can begin using TALLI by connecting it to their existing data and systems without waiting for an enterprise-wide data transformation, as the system supports an automated data pipeline that automatically feeds data into the AI database. TPS sees the growing trend of AI adoption in the business sector as an opportunity to expand its core IT Solutions business, and the company has already begun using TALLI for back-office and internal service work before further developing it and opening the service to all customer groups.

OpenAI released Astra for Law on the 17th, a version of its latest AI model, GPT-6 Astra, tailored to the legal industry. It is designed to help law firms and legal software providers conduct research, draft advice, and build custom applications for lawyers. According to OpenAI, the new product combines Astra with an index of legal materials such as U.S. case law, statutes, and regulations, and adds specialized instructions for legal analysis and document drafting. Technology companies are competing to win over law firms and in-house legal departments as customers; Google last month expanded the legal-industry capabilities of its enterprise AI platform Gemini Enterprise, and Anthropic has released tools for lawyers built on its Claude AI assistant since January.

On September 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and eight other ministries jointly released the 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Pharmaceutical Industry, proposing that by 2030, operating revenue of pharmaceutical enterprises above designated size will exceed 3.5 trillion yuan, with the innovative drug industry scale growing at an average annual rate of over 20%, and the number of products with global annual sales exceeding 1 billion US dollars reaching more than five. Boosted by this news, the A-share innovative drug sector rose at the open, with Hongbo Pharmaceutical hitting the 20% daily limit, Biopuxaisi rising more than 12%, and Zhendong Pharmaceutical, Baike Biotech, Hualan Co., and Chengdu Lead following higher. On the same day, the AI pharmaceutical concept strengthened again, with Berry Genomics and Hefu China hitting the daily limit, after Novo Nordisk and Anthropic announced a partnership to use Anthropic's AI models and Claude Science to support drug discovery and development. The power grid equipment sector moved higher, with Sun Cable, Zhongdian Xinlong, and Zhongchao Holdings quickly hitting the daily limit; market analysts noted that improving power industry conditions are driving demand for upstream power equipment, and expanding grid infrastructure orders are supporting steady growth in demand for transmission and distribution and smart distribution equipment. The CPO concept fluctuated higher, with Mingpu Guangci hitting the daily limit, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said chip sales are expected to double from current annual levels by 2027; the tourism concept also strengthened, with Shaanxi Tourism hitting the daily limit, as tourism platform data showed flight bookings for this year's Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day period rose 44% year-on-year.

Meta Platforms rolled out Muse, an AI agent that can autonomously send emails, sell a car, and book travel on a person's behalf, Reuters reported on September 9, 2026. The agent, modeled on the open-source system OpenClaw, is available initially only in the U.S. through a dedicated app or WhatsApp, and is designed to access apps across email, calendar, payments, health, shopping, and smart-home categories as the centerpiece of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "personal superintelligence" strategy. Meta launched Muse with a free tier and $20 and $100 monthly subscription options for heavier users, positioning the product as a new revenue stream beyond advertising. The launch follows a delay from April to improve security, and Meta added an autonomous safety agent that monitors Muse's actions, though internal testing uncovered an incident in which Muse exposed private iCloud photos and employees reported repeated logouts, monitoring failures, and inconsistent performance. Meta expects AI infrastructure spending to exceed $130 billion this year and has seen a 40% increase in technical and security incidents linked to AI, while its hedge fund holder count slipped to 254 in the second quarter from 262 in the first even as combined position value rose to $43.75 billion from $41.70 billion.

Presentations.AI announced programmatic access to its Presentation Agent through the Presentations.AI API and Model Context Protocol, letting software applications and compatible AI agents generate, brand and update business presentations inside their own workflows. The REST API, which supports OAuth 2.0 authentication, role-based access control and webhook triggers, returns a native, editable Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to the calling system, while the presentation MCP server offers an agent-native interface for creating, revising, branding, personalizing, refreshing and exporting decks. The company, an AI-native presentation platform backed by Accel Partners and Together Fund and used by more than 12 million people worldwide, said the Presentation Agent is being built as a common intelligence layer rather than separate presentation-generation products for each interface. Presentations.AI connects to sources and systems including Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Google Sheets, Tableau, Looker, Mixpanel, Snowflake and BigQuery, and its patented Presentation Refresh technology allows regeneration to be scheduled daily, weekly or monthly, initiated on demand, or activated by qualifying triggers. Its proprietary Brand Sync technology applies a company's logo, fonts and colors during generation, with white-label output available at the Growth tier and above. Founded in 2018, Presentations.AI reached one million users within 84 days of its 2023 public beta.

Cisco Systems pushed Splunk AI deeper into tightly controlled enterprise environments with a new AI POD built for on-premises, private-cloud and air-gapped deployments. The validated setup brings together Cisco infrastructure, Nvidia accelerated computing and Kubernetes-based software, letting enterprises run AI workloads without sending sensitive information outside their own environments. Splunk AI Assistant is available now, while Agent Launchpad is scheduled for later this year, and customers can host selected models from Google, OpenAI and Cisco, with Nvidia models expected to follow. Splunk is also adding Tokenomics, a capability designed to track token spending across AI agents and coding tools while estimating future consumption. Cisco shares climbed nearly 3.3% to $111.255 Thursday, though GuruFocus shows the stock trading 49.36% above its GF Value of $74.49, with product pricing and committed customer volumes still undisclosed.

A federal judge has ordered X and SpaceXAI to hand over their agreement with Apple, turning a closed antitrust fight into a new transparency battle, according to Reuters. Apple shares gained approximately 0.2% to $333.09, and the stock trades 16.41% above its $286.14 GF Value. OpenAI is seeking the agreement as it defends the claims still standing against the company, a dispute that traces back to Apple's decision to integrate ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, though Apple has maintained its OpenAI arrangement was never exclusive. No payment structure, operating concession or continuing obligation tied to the agreement has yet been publicly established. The disclosure could carry more weight because Apple's Services segment generated $30.74 billion, roughly 28.1% of Apple's latest $109.4 billion quarter, and any change to default positioning, AI distribution rights or access for competing models would give investors another clue about how Apple intends to defend control of its ecosystem.

Alphabet opened its Google Home smart-home ecosystem to rival AI agents, turning the platform into a broader distribution channel rather than a Gemini-only service. The company's Home MCP server now lets compatible third-party agents such as Claude and OpenClaw inspect connected devices, track their status, execute commands and work with historical household events. The service sits behind Google's Premium Advanced plan, priced at $20 per month or $200 annually, and also requires a Google Cloud project. Google has placed limits around higher-risk actions such as unlocking doors, though opening the system to outside agents introduces a new security variable. Alphabet shares gained approximately 1.5% to $347.91 Thursday, with the stock trading 35.37% above its GF Value estimate of $257.01.

ManticAI, a London-based start-up that claims to have built an AI system capable of predicting global events, has raised over $20m in a funding round jointly led by Balderton and Radical Ventures, with Microsoft's ventures arm M12 also participating. The round was raised at a valuation of close to $90m, or £67.4m, according to one source, and a major news organisation is also said to be an investor. ManticAI, whose founders Toby Shevlane and Ben Day include a former Google DeepMind engineer, emerged from stealth just over a year ago and made headlines by beating a number of human forecasters in a competition to predict events ranging from hostilities between Donald Trump and Elon Musk to Kemi Badenoch being removed from the Conservative party leadership. The company previously raised a smaller seed funding round that included capital from Episode1 Ventures, and its founders have also persuaded high-profile angel investors from companies such as Anthropic to back them. Mantic has been approached for comment.

F5 announced it has been positioned by Gartner in the Market Shapers quadrant of the September 2026 Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security, one of only two vendors recognized in that position. The Emerging Market Quadrant evaluates vendors on two axes: potential for market disruption and potential to execute. Chief Marketing Officer John Maddison said more than 40 vendors are competing to secure enterprise AI and most are solving only one slice of the problem, adding that F5 secures AI where enterprises actually run it. F5 cited its 2026 State of Application Strategy Report finding that 88% of organizations have already encountered at least one AI-related operational or security challenge and 98% are preparing for agentic AI. The company said F5 AI Guardrails demonstrated up to 98.4% security efficacy in independent testing, while F5 AI Red Team stress-tests AI systems against more than 140,000 attack patterns. In its third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings results, F5 reported that the number of customers purchasing F5 solutions for AI security doubled quarter-over-quarter.

Nokia disclosed an expanded partnership with Microsoft to launch an AI-powered telecom network automation platform integrating Nokia Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric, news reported by Barron's and the Wall Street Journal, sending shares up 3.8% intraday Thursday. The deal came a day after Jim Cramer told a caller on the September 16 Lightning Round of Mad Money that he would be a buyer of Nokia right here, right now. Nokia's Q2 2026 report showed revenue of $5.49 billion beating estimates by 13.79% and EPS of $0.0799 beating the $0.0682 consensus, while AI and Cloud customer revenue more than doubled year over year to $508.96 million with order intake of EUR 2.8 billion in the segment. Reported operating income was a loss of $57 million after $445.05 million in accelerated restructuring charges, free cash flow ran negative $835 million, and net income dropped 94.44% year over year. The ADR is up 132.81% over the past 12 months and 65.14% year to date, trading around $10.53 with a market capitalization near $58.95 billion, and management guided Q3 sequential net sales growth of 3% to 7%.