Freehand raises $75M to put AI agents in charge of supply-chain spend

The startup, whose agents negotiate and pay across procurement for the likes of Unilever and Pfizer, is betting enterprises want software that acts, not software that suggests. Freehand, a startup who [...]

Kai-Fu Lee stopped building AI models and started selling enterprise data infrastructure. Now 01.ai is heading for a Hong Kong IPO.

Kai-Fu Lee’s 01.ai is raising a pre-IPO round ahead of a planned Hong Kong listing in 2027, the former Google China chief told Bloomberg at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. The company is unwind [...]

China weighs curbing overseas access to its top AI models

China’s open AI models have been a gift to developers everywhere. Now Beijing may pull them back in. Chinese officials have discussed limiting who outside the country can use the nation’s best AI [...]

Exclusive: Optiak raises €4m to build an orchestration layer for enterprise AI

Optiak, a startup building what it calls a modular operating system for enterprise AI, has come out of stealth with a €4m pre-seed round, about $4.7m, led by Market One Capital, Next Tier Ventures, [...]

Employer of record or entity: choose before someone chooses for you

Almost nobody plans how to employ people abroad. They solve one urgent hire, and three years later that improvised answer has become the company’s international employment structure. Fourteen contra [...]

AI made her a billionaire. Now she’s using it to help creators maximize their earnings

Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo founded Passes to help creators monetize their social media followings. Her real goal is to connect them with deals that will turn up-front cash into long-term equity. [...]

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski reveals his favorite menu item

The fast food chain's chairman and CEO jumped on a social media trend, making some difficult — and questionable — choices along the way [...]

Gradial raises $65M to be the ‘AI glue’ for enterprise marketing

Every software company is racing to bolt an AI agent onto its own product. Gradial is betting the real money is in the gaps between them. The Seattle startup has raised $65mn in Series C funding to bu [...]

Meta says it will invest $600 billion in the US, with AI data centers front and center

Meta said on Friday that it's investing $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs by 2028. Although the announcement is light on specifics (and heavy on standard Big Tech self-congratulation), i [...]