AI Agents
Researchers warn that AI capabilities are increasingly discovered rather than designed, and that the window to understand how these black-box systems reason is closing as their influence grows.
Cisco has launched Cloud Control, a toolset that lets companies build their own armies of defender AI agents, a response to a world where cyberattacks increasingly come from swarms of hostile agents.
Polsia, an AI startup run by a single founder with no employees, has raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation by promising ‘AI that runs your company while you sleep’ — though sceptics question its revenue claims.
Three solo founders — behind Daymaker, OpenClaw and Base44 — have turned Sam Altman’s ‘one-person company’ idea into reality, showing how AI tools now let individuals build and sell businesses at startling speed.
Worldline, ING and Mastercard have run Europe’s first live agentic payment, with an AI agent assembling a purchase the shopper still has to approve — showing agent-led buying can clear existing bank security and authorisation.
A Walmart-backed startup, Eko, is hand-building an “AI-ready” product catalogue — photographing millions of items from every angle — so AI shopping agents like ChatGPT and Gemini can describe and sell them accurately.
Robinhood now lets customers spin up a dedicated account and wallet for AI agents that can analyse portfolios, place trades and — via a new virtual card — make payments, with human approval and spending limits in the loop.
Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model can autonomously discover and exploit software flaws, including Linux kernel vulnerabilities, alarming its own red team and UK government evaluators. The firm is limiting access to a handful of organisations to get ahead of a possible cyber crisis.
China’s 360 Digital Security Group says its AI vulnerability hunter has found close to 1,000 unknown flaws, positioning the firm as a direct rival to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos in the race to weaponise – and defend against – automated bug discovery.
ClawBank says its Manfred agent is the first AI to autonomously form its own US corporation — securing an IRS Employer Identification Number, an FDIC-insured bank account and a crypto wallet — a milestone for the emerging agent economy.
Anthropic’s restricted Claude Mythos Preview model has flagged thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities — including some in every major operating system and web browser — and built working exploits autonomously, as part of a cyber-defence partnership with Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft and 40 others.
The Pentagon is quietly funding Twenty, a stealth startup building autonomous AI agents for offensive cyber operations, as the US-China cyber arms race accelerates.