VoiceRun, a startup developing voice agents, raised $5.5 million in seed funding led by Flybridge, with participation from RRE Ventures and Link Ventures. The company, initially known as Prim AI, launched VoiceRun to address the gap between low-quality no-code tools and resource-intensive specialised solutions by enabling developers and coding
AI research lab Anthropic announced on 9th January 2026 a partnership with Munich-based insurance conglomerate Allianz to deploy responsible AI across the insurer's global operations, marking its first enterprise deal of 2026. Anthropic holds 40% of enterprise AI market share according to a December survey from investor Menlo
Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol on 11th January 2026 at the National Retail Federation's annual conference, introducing an open standard for agentic commerce spanning the entire shopping journey from discovery and buying to post-purchase support. The protocol was co-developed with industry leaders including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target
Meta Platforms announced on 30th of December that it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents, in a deal valued at more than $2 billion. Manus, founded in China before relocating to Singapore, introduced its first AI agent in March this year, which can execute complex tasks
Perplexity and Harvard researchers have published the first large-scale study examining real-world AI agent usage, analysing hundreds of millions of queries from Perplexity AI's browser and digital assistant, Comet, which launched in July 2025. The research found that 36 per cent of all tasks assigned to AI agents
On 11th December 2025, global energy technology company SLB signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Shell to develop digital and AI solutions that drive measurable performance and efficiency gains across upstream operations. The collaboration aims to develop agentic AI-powered solutions that will accelerate and amplify the capabilities of technical experts
On 11th December 2025, Google released a reimagined version of its research agent, Gemini Deep Research, based on its foundation model, Gemini 3 Pro. For the first time, developers can embed Google's Deep Research tool into their own apps, whilst the agent is available through a new application
Perplexity has released BrowseSafe, an open research benchmark and content detection model designed to protect users as AI agents integrate into web browsers. Prompt injection has emerged as a critical attack vector for web agents, yet its real-world impact remains insufficiently understood. This release addresses a significant gap in AI
