impact 4
Manus Seeks $500 Million Round as Asia's AI Agent Market Splinters
Manus is in advanced discussions for a $500 million funding round at a $4 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg, following Beijing's NDRC blocking of Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the firm in April 2026. Co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned and barred from leaving China, forcing the company to pivot from a potential US acquisition target into a cornerstone of the domestic Chinese AI ecosystem, though the round is not yet closed and terms remain subject to change. In Seoul, Enhans, which raised a $38 million Series C confirmed in a September 17, 2026 press release, is embedding its AgentOS into Korean manufacturing and finance, with the round co-led by TIMEFOLIO Asset Management and Stonebridge Ventures and strategic participation from POSCO Investment, LG CNS, and Lotte Ventures, whose chaebol groups already run the technology in live production. Huawei, meanwhile, launched its AI Cluster Service and agent-specific tools including Agentic MaaS and the AgentArts platform at HUAWEI CONNECT 2026, with Dr. Peter Zhou emphasizing that infrastructure must evolve to support secure, reliable agent workloads in production; the Agentic Infra paradigm already serves over 3,500 customers, and while AICS is available in China starting September 30, global availability is not slated until November 30. Together these moves signal that the agent market is splitting along regional lines of data structuring, compute hosting, and regulatory oversight, leaving open whether these silos will converge through open standards or harden into permanent, incompatible zones.
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Salesforce launches AIforce at Dreamforce 2026 as Benioff takes aim at Microsoft Copilot
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff unveiled AIforce, an AI connectivity layer that lets employees access Salesforce data and run complex workflows inside third-party AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude and Slack, at Dreamforce 2026, using the stage to directly criticize Microsoft. AIforce launched with three integrations: Claudeforce, built in partnership with Anthropic, brings Salesforce data directly into Claude; Slackforce connects that same data to conversations in Slack; and AgentforceCoworker operates inside Salesforce's own Lightning interface. Benioff framed AIforce as the answer to what he calls the "Fantasyland" problem, arguing that rival AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot lack the reliable business data layer required to safely power a business, extending a public rivalry that dates to Dreamforce 2024, when he compared Copilot to "Clippy." Salesforce generated $11.35 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations on both earnings and revenue, and CRM stock has rallied about 34% over the past month after falling as much as 37% earlier in 2026, closing at $255.65 on Sept. 15. On the same day as the Dreamforce announcement, Salesforce suffered a global service disruption that locked some customers out of their systems, and investors are watching Agentforce and Data 360 adoption numbers in the next quarterly report, where combined annual recurring revenue already exceeds $2.9 billion, more than 200% growth from a year ago.
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Nokia Expands Microsoft AI Telecom Partnership as Cramer Calls NOK a Buy
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%.
Salesforce.com Inc
Alphabet Inc Class C
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Class A Common Stock