Visa and Mastercard unveil AI shopping

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Wednesday.

Visa and Mastercard are launching AI agents that can shop and make purchases for consumers based on their preferences, signaling a major push into “agentic commerce.”

Visa’s Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard’s Agent Pay aim to integrate payments directly into AI-powered recommendations, partnering with companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and IBM to bring personalized, automated shopping to mainstream users.

Visa’s new AI tagline: Enabling AI agents to buy securely and seamlessly

OK let’s keep going ↓

Here’s what you should know:

• BBC is using AI to create writing classes by Agatha Christie

  She died in 1976. This is a wild story, read more on my LinkedIn post.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns China is 'not behind' in AI

  “China is right behind us,” Huang said. “We are very close. Remember this is a long-term, infinite race.”

• Duolingo launches 148 new courses created with AI

  “Developing our first 100 courses took about 12 years, and now, in about a year, we’re able to create and launch nearly 150 new courses. This is a great example of how generative AI can directly benefit our learners,” said Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of Duolingo.

• Google hopes to reach Gemini deal with Apple this year

  CEO Sundar Pichai said in testimony at an antitrust trial in Washington on Wednesday.

• Gemini gets upgraded image creation tools

  This update lets you modify both uploaded and generated images with ease.

• Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI

  If you’re interested in AI’s impact on science…you could spend hours here.

The numbers:

• Cast AI, a startup optimizing cloud workloads and GPU usage for AI applications, raised a $108M Series C co-led by G2 Venture Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund 2

• Utilidata, a startup building AI technology for the edge, raised a $60.3M Series C led by Renown Capital Partners

• Supio, an AI platform automating document analysis for legal teams, raised a $60M round led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Mayfield and Thomson Reuters Ventures

• Rogo, a startup building an AI-powered Wall Street analyst, raised a $50M Series B to advance autonomous financial reasoning tools.

• VSORA, a French provider of AI inference chips, raised a $46M round led by Otium and a French family office

• Gruve.ai, a startup using AI agents to modernize IT services and replace traditional consultants, raised a $20M Series A led by Mayfield with participation from Cisco Investments

• Sennos, an AI platform to improve brewing and biomanufacturing, raised a $15M round led by TomEnterprise

• Basil Systems, an AI-powered product lifecycle intelligence platform for the life sciences industry, raised $11.5M in funding led by Golden Ventures

Thought starters:

• Consciousness, Reasoning and the Philosophy of AI with Murray Shanahan

• How to Build an 'Artificial Scientist'

Meme of the day:

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

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