Top Innovations
Vonage’s Agentforce Identity Insights for contact centers flags recent or multiple SIM swaps, validates number type, carrier, caller ID and auto‑verifies leads to prioritize valid accounts and secure interactions
Vonage announced the launch of…
Mastercard’s Merchant Cloud will provide merchants with the capability to conduct agentic payments securely, integrating into Mastercard Agent Pay and implementing the latest agentic payments protocols
Mastercard today announced Merchant Cloud,…
Key News
ExaGrid’s multi-layer Retention Time-Lock for ransomware recovery protects backup data from deletion or encryption by combining a non-network-facing Repository Tier, tiered air gap, delayed delete policy and immutable data objects
ExaGrid announced the release of…
KNEX’s pre-configured low-code Visa Virtual Card Adapter embeds instant supplier payments, automated reconciliation and frictionless onboarding directly into Oracle ERP, eliminating separate accounts payable and banking applications
KNEX, a trusted Oracle partner,…
OpenAI has formed a council to help it define and monitor “what healthy interactions with AI [artificial intelligence] should look like.” The Expert Council on Well-Being and AI is composed of eight researchers and experts focused on how technology affects mental health. OpenAI has consulted with many of these experts in the past, as when the company was developing parental controls and notification language for parents whose teen may be in distress. Moving forward, the council will monitor the company’s approach and will explore topics like how AI should behave in sensitive situations, what kinds of guardrails can support people using ChatGPT, and how ChatGPT can have a positive impact on people’s lives. “Alongside the Expert Council on Well-Being and AI advising on our broader approach to well-being, we’re also working with a multidisciplinary subset of mental health clinicians and researchers within the Global Physician Network to shape our model behavior and policies, and to test how ChatGPT responds in real-world situations. This work spans psychiatry, psychology, pediatrics, and crisis intervention, helping ensure our systems are grounded in clinical understanding and best practices,” the company said.
Ascendo AI announced the launch of the Ascendo AI Knowledge Agent, a Product Intelligence capability that automates enterprise technical documentation and knowledge creation. The Knowledge Agent converts fragmented case notes, knowledge bases, chat transcripts and files into structured, persona-driven documentation, complete with schematic diagrams, flow charts, images, video embeds, rich text and tables, using simple templates and customizable personas. Key features: Template-driven document generation (diagrams, flow charts, media, tables); Persona-driven outputs: Yoda the Teacher (Instructional), Martian the Technical Mark (Technical), Carraway the Summarizer (Key Points), Bourne the Brief (Concise), Spock the Analyst (Analytical); Ingests enterprise sources including case notes, knowledge bases, Slack/Teams transcripts, manuals, files and databases to create searchable knowledge assets; New UI to add Knowledge functionality across enterprise workflows with minimal configuration. Early customer impact – Large telecom customer: ~50% reduction in field service bulletin creation time. Leading AI company: ~80% reduction in knowledge creation time for onboarding and customer documentation. Large healthcare organization: ~70% reduction in training and onboarding time with automatically generated training modules. Day Knowledge Challenge – Ascendo AI is running a 7-Day Knowledge Challenge. Participants who create and publish knowledge using the Knowledge Agent will be spotlighted and eligible for prizes.
DeepTempo announced a strategic partnership with Cribl, the Data Engine for IT and Security. Together, the companies are delivering an integrated solution that streamlines telemetry collection and unleashes deep learning-powered detection to stop polymorphic and agentic AI-driven threats. At the core of the offering is Tempo, DeepTempo’s flagship platform. By combining Tempo’s advanced analytics with Cribl’s data collection and management capabilities, customers gain high-fidelity detections, faster investigations, and significant cost savings without the complexity of managing multiple collectors or preprocessing pipelines. Key Benefits for Security Teams: Unified telemetry management: Cribl Stream, Lake, and Search unite the telemetry lifecycle—collecting, routing, tiering, and instantly searching logs, metrics, and events from any source in any format. The product suite enables centralized control, flexible access, and lower costs through seamless object store integration and federated search. Schema-aware enrichment: Cribl’s Copilot Editor automatically maps raw telemetry to industry schemas (OCSF, ECS, UDM, ASIM), while Tempo layers in behavioral enrichment to accelerate time-to-insight. Behavior-first detection: Tempo’s LogLM, built and trained by DeepTempo, identifies subtle deviations from normal activity, from reconnaissance to lateral movement, with false positives under 1% after domain adaptation. The platform is agent-free and optimized for modern data lake and cloud-native environments. Accelerated performance: NVIDIA GPU acceleration and RAPIDS integration enable high-throughput, real-time analysis of massive data volumes without sacrificing accuracy. Faster SOC workflows: Tempo automatically tags sequences with MITRE ATT&CK techniques, builds forensic timelines, and uses vector-based correlation for rapid triage and root-cause analysis. Replay capabilities allow data retrieval from low-cost storage for investigation and model fine-tuning. Cost optimization: Intelligent data routing and reduced false positives can lower SIEM licensing costs by up to 45%.
Seniiors, the comprehensive cloud platform for managing senior-care facilities, announced the global rollout of its AI-powered suite—an innovation that integrates predictive analytics, intelligent automation, and real-time alerts directly into daily caregiving operations. This launch positions Seniiors at the forefront of an accelerating transformation in the global AgeTech market, which is currently valued at $2 trillion. At the heart of Seniiors’ mission is a simple but powerful goal: give time back to caregivers and improve every resident’s quality of life. The platform unites all aspects of care—planning, communication, and oversight—into a single intelligent dashboard. Its new AI suite analyzes resident patterns, predicting risks such as falls or sudden changes in well-being before they happen. Routine tasks, scheduling, and documentation are automated, freeing staff from paperwork to focus on personal interaction and empathy. Dynamic visual dashboards provide instant clarity across an organization—highlighting resident wellness trends, staffing balance, and emerging needs. Integrated sentiment tracking captures both resident mood and caregiver morale, while machine-learning models offer personalized housing or care recommendations. Together, these tools transform care homes from reactive to predictive environments. The upcoming Family Experience App will allow relatives to communicate with staff in real time, review updates, sign documents digitally, and participate in their loved ones’ daily moments from anywhere. Integrations with Apple Watch and Alexa will soon provide continuous wellness insights—heart rate, sleep, mobility—creating a seamless ecosystem of data and compassion.
Redis announced the acquisition of Featureform, a powerful framework for managing, defining, and orchestrating structured data signals. The acquisition helps Redis solve one of the most critical challenges developers face with production AI: getting structured data into models quickly, reliably, and with full observability. Featureform will become a part of Redis’ feature store solution, complementing the fastest benchmarked vector database powered by Redis Query Engine, and the most advanced semantic caching service, Redis LangCache. Featureform will allow developers to: Define features as reusable, versioned pipelines; Unify training and inference workflows across batch and streaming; Maintain point-in-time correctness for offline model training; Serve low-latency features using Redis in production; Detect data drift and monitor changes to feature distributions. Rowan Trollope, CEO of Redis. “By integrating Featureform’s powerful framework into our platform, we’re better enabling developers to deliver context to agents at exactly the right moment, so they reason, act, and interact accurately and intuitively.”
Starburst announced at AI & Datanova, a new set of capabilities designed to operationalize the Agentic Workforce—a paradigm where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly across workflows to reason, decide, and act faster and with confidence. With new, built-in support for model-to-data architectures, multi-agent interoperability, and an open vector store on Iceberg, Starburst delivers the first lakehouse platform that empowers AI agents, with unified enterprise data, governed data products, and metadata, empowering humans and AI to reason, act, and decide faster while ensuring trust and control. To further strengthen enterprise confidence in AI, Starburst is introducing advanced observability and visualization features for its agent framework. Organizations can now monitor usage of LLM interactions, set guardrails with usage limits, and view activity through intuitive dashboards. In addition, Starburst’s agent can visualize responses into charts and graphs giving teams not only accurate answers but also clear, actionable insights. These capabilities provide a new level of transparency, governance, and usability as enterprises scale AI adoption. Starburst’s new AI capabilities are built upon the core principle of flexibility, giving organizations the freedom to choose between model-to-data and data-to-model architectures. This approach enables enterprises to scale AI securely, while preserving sovereignty, reducing infrastructure costs, and ensuring compliance. These enhancements include: Multi-Agent Ready Infrastructure: A new MCP server and agent API allows enterprises to create, manage, and orchestrate multiple AI agents along-side the Starburst agent. This enables customers to develop multi-agent and AI application solutions that are geared to complete tasks of growing complexity. Open & Interoperable Vector Access: Starburst unifies access to vector stores, enabling retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and search tasks across Iceberg, PostgreSQL + PGVector, Elasticsearch and more. Enterprises gain flexibility to choose the right vector solution for each workload without lock-in or fragmentation. Model Usage Monitoring & Control: Starburst offers enterprise-grade AI model monitoring and governance. Teams can track, audit, and control AI usage across agents and workloads with dashboards, preventing cost overruns and ensuring compliance for confident, scalable AI adoption. Deeper Insights & Visualization: An extension of Starburst’s conversational analytics agent enables users to ask questions across different data product domains and provide back a natural language response in natural language, a visualization, or combination of the two. The agent is able to understand the user intent and question to do data discovery to find the right data before query processing to answer the question.
ASAPP Financial Technology has announced the availability of the bank.io OXP® | Omnichannel Experience Platform Version 1 for the U.S. market. Version 1 of bank.io OXP® combines retail account and member origination, unsecured retail lending origination, CRM, ECM, and data warehouse / opportunity analysis feature sets and capabilities into a single, platform-based experience designed to streamline operations, enhance member engagement, and enable data-driven growth. Version 1 of bank.io OXP® provides: • End-to-end origination flows for deposit accounts and unsecured lending products, including loans and lines of credit. • The Platform supports multi-product applications, as well as new member onboarding, KYC, and AML requirements within a single, integrated process.
• The Platform supports both new and existing member applications, ensuring frictionless onboarding and faster decisioning. • bank.io OXP contains multilingual content management support allowing credit unions to deliver origination journeys for new and existing members in their language of preference. • Custom promotional pages allow external digital / mobile ads, social media campaigns, emails, and credit union website links to land on separate branded pages for each product or product combination, driving visual and U/X consistency and higher application completion rates. • Integrated Docusign e-signature capabilities enable any editable pdf to be labeled within the Platform and documents to be completed and signed digitally. • Deep core-banking integration minimizes data re-entry and allows direct account provisioning. A centralized member-dashboard lets members track application status and open additional accounts quickly and easily. • The bank.io OXP Opportunity Engine aggregates data from core banking data extracts, platform application history (account and lending origination), and member engagement interactions to drive proactive, data-informed outreach. • Financial institutions can identify and target member segments using over 150 member and product-level attributes. •The Opportunity Engine supports growth strategies such as renewals, next-best-product recommendations, and product up-selling opportunities. • It also enables early concern management by identifying late payments or delinquencies and prompting timely member engagement. •The Platform’s experience tracking features help institutions schedule proactive outreach and maintain consistent member touchpoints.
Walmart announced a new partnership with OpenAI that will start with allowing customers and members to soon shop Walmart through ChatGPT using Instant Checkout. Whether planning meals, restocking household essentials, or finding something new, customers can simply chat and buy, and Walmart will handle the rest. Walmart described the collaboration as an example of “agentic commerce,” where AI shifts from a reactive tool to a proactive system that learns, plans and predicts, helping customers anticipate their needs before they do. The concept aligns with OpenAI’s goal of enabling agents to assist users across everyday tasks from organizing information to completing purchases all within one interface. This partnership builds on the multiple ways Walmart and Sam’s Club are already using AI, like enhancing product catalogs, improving customer care resolution times and promoting AI literacy among associates. From enhancing the product catalog to reduce fashion production timelines by up to 18 weeks, to ensuring a more seamless shopping journey and cutting customer care resolution times by up to 40%, the company is applying AI so every shopping experience is more convenient and more rewarding. As Walmart defines what’s next for retail, its approach remains the same: people-led and tech-powered, helping people save money and live better.
Vonage announced the launch of Vonage Agentforce Identity Insights and Fraud Detection, which provides insights for contact center agents, leveraging AI to help detect fraud risks, verify customers and validate effective communications channels in real time. With Identity Insights, including SIM Swap check powered by Vonage’s Network APIs, Vonage Agentforce Identity Insights and Fraud Detection helps users mitigate fraud across a number of use cases, such as identifying and flagging numbers that have had their SIM recently swapped as potentially fraudulent; validating mobile numbers before sending outbound SMS or making voice calls; and auto verifying phone numbers during lead creation to ensure lead quality. With this solution, organizations can simplify customer engagement and outreach by ensuring number validity so they can prioritize valid accounts, as well as verify number type to target customers with the most effective channel for communications. This rich phone intelligence – including number type, carrier, validity, caller ID name, and SIM swap status – enables contact centers to: Flag potential fraud risks by detecting numbers with recent or multiple SIM swaps and escalating suspicious transactions; Verify customer identities seamlessly by matching caller ID against CRM records, and securing interactions without added friction; Optimize outbound engagement by automating SMS/WhatsApp for mobile devices, while specialist sales teams call landline-only customers; Enhance lead quality by verifying numbers at lead creation to eliminate invalid or outdated details; Deliver proactive notifications by triggering reminders and alerts only on verified numbers, improving engagement rates
Obligo has launched its end-to-end deposit management solution. Obligo’s API-first platform integrates seamlessly with property management and financial systems, earning recognition for its scalability, security, and flexibility. Cash deposit handling has long been a costly and cumbersome process for property managers. Traditional manual steps – from certified checks to ledger updates and refund compliance – drive up operational costs, increase compliance risk, and provide an antiquated renter experience. Obligo renters enjoy a seamless move-in with digital payments and refunds – no checks, no snail mail. Alongside the full deposit option, renters can choose from Obligo’s existing products to best fit their financial needs, including No Deposit, Reduced Deposit™ or Deposits-in-Installments. “Deposit management solutions are not a new concept, but they’ve always come with a clear compromise,” said Roey Dor, CEO of Obligo. “It’s understandably difficult for property managers to trust new entrants in the deposit space – especially when those solutions aren’t embedded into their property management systems. Our approach delivers what the industry has been waiting for: a fully embedded, flexible, and trusted solution that truly rids both properties and renters of the burden of security deposits.”
Zilch has launched two product innovations, Zilch Intelligent Commerce and Zilch Pay, marking the next phase of its rapid, data-driven growth, to gain full visibility across the customer journey, both online and offline. Leveraging one of the most comprehensive sets of first-party spend data in the market, the platform transforms customer engagement into actionable, real-time insights. Customers interact with the Zilch app more than 25 times a month and make payments almost 60 times a year, providing retailers with a rich and continuous flow of data. By harnessing this insight, Zilch Intelligent Commerce allows brands to target the right customers at the right time with personalised offers, dramatically improving Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) while reducing wasted media spend. Early results from the platform’s beta launch have demonstrated its transformative potential, with one major grocer reporting a 55% increase in average customer spend, another retailer growing market share by more than 15% in just 30 days, and a global travel brand achieving nearly 52% of new-customer conversions powered by Zilch, almost meeting its annual acquisition targets in six months. Across participating brands, the platform has driven 20 to 50% improvements in ROAS, all automatically optimised by Zilch’s AI agents. Alongside this intelligence platform, Zilch is preparing to launch Zilch Pay in the first half of 2026, offering a seamless one-click checkout that integrates the app, digital wallet, and card. The innovation is designed to enhance the consumer experience, reduce friction at payment, and improve conversion rates while lowering cart abandonment for retailers, ensuring a smoother and more efficient path from engagement to transaction.
A new federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins marks a pivotal moment for digital assets in the United States by establishing a legal definition and oversight by banking regulators that may enable commercial scaling. The new GENIUS framework provides several pathways for institutions to become issuers, with regulatory oversight based on the issuer’s legal entity structure. It will create opportunities for a wider range of issuers in the U.S., including non-banks. The requirements generally take effect in late 2026 or early 2027, depending in part on when regulators issue implementation guidance. The GENIUS Act’s requirements will affect not only banks, but also non-bank issuers, payment processors, digital asset service providers, corporates, and customers. Each group faces unique operational, compliance, and business model decisions as they navigate the new framework and position themselves in the evolving stablecoin market. Each group also needs to consider risks in areas such as operations, cybersecurity, fraud, tax, regulation, and reputation. Subsidiaries of federally and state-chartered banks, non-bank entities, and uninsured national banks are among the entities eligible to become payment stablecoin issuers under the new regulatory framework. Issuers will be required to comply with prudential standards similar to those for traditional banks and to maintain one-to-one reserves of high-quality liquid assets, publish monthly attestation reports, and adhere to rigorous risk management and compliance measures. The act prohibits payment stablecoins from paying interest, although rewards may be offered by other parties. The requirements of the GENIUS Act will likely drive strategic decisions, significant operational changes, and new compliance processes regarding whether and how to participate in the stablecoin market. Companies that facilitate the transfer, settlement, or processing of payments also face strategic decisions about whether, when, and how to begin or scale payment stablecoin transactions. After evaluating the risks and opportunities, companies can take proactive measures to comply with the new regulatory framework now that payment stablecoins have been legitimized for use by financial institutions. Exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers will need to adjust their operations to meet the new regulatory standards, particularly related to risk management, reporting, and customer protection. They should prepare for the transition period by updating their compliance and risk management frameworks so that they only support or list stablecoins issued by entities that meet the new law’s standards. These providers should also monitor regulatory developments and adapt their offerings to remain compliant and competitive.
Wedmont Private Capital increased its holding in the fund by acquiring 80,721 additional shares during Q3 2025. The estimated trade value, based on the quarterly average price, was $6.25 million. This brought the fund’s total position to 1,083,517 shares, worth $84.80 million. This buy increased the VTC stake to 3.2% of Wedmont’s reportable portfolio. Top holdings after this filing:
- VEA (Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF): $238,887,044 (8.9% of AUM)
- VWO (Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF): $154,227,148 (5.7% of AUM)
- VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF): $130,832,882 (4.9% of AUM)
- VOO (Vanguard S&P 500): $105.17 million (3.9% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30
- IEFA (iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF): $99.44 million (3.7% of AUM) as of 2025-09-30
As of October 7, 2025, shares were priced at $78.26, up 0.23% over the past year, underperforming the S&P 500 by 12.04 percentage points. The fund reported an annualized dividend yield of 4.68% as of October 8, 2025, and closed 0.94% below its 52-week high. Vanguard Total Corporate Bond ETF (VTC) is gaining attention as yields stay high and investors look to add balance after a volatile year for equities. The ETF tracks investment-grade corporate bonds, while offering exposure to major U.S issuers across industrial, utility and financial sectors. With a dividend yield of near 4.7%, VTC provides meaningful income at a time when bonds are finally paying investors to wait. The Fed’s policy remains tight which created an environment where quality bonds can deliver solid returns without taking on excessive credit risk. For investors, the combination of steady income and potential price recovery makes VTC a valuable portfolio anchor in a diversified portfolio. If rates start to decline in 2026, today’s yields could look even more attractive in hindsight. In that scenario, high quality bond funds may once again play a leading role in portfolio performance.
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