Citigroup is preparing to launch a card named “Strata Elite” in the third quarter of the year that “rounds out our family of proprietary rewards cards”. Amex and Chase have long battled it out to offer consumers the credit card with the best travel perks, but now they face a new rival. The swanky new offering with be a direct rival to Chase’s ‘Sapphire Reserve’ card and American Express’s travel-focused ‘Platinum’ card. ‘Part of competing in this space is ensuring we have innovative products that appeal to the needs and interests of our customers,’ Citigroup’s Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said. It marks a return to premium credit cards for the bank after it stopped taking applications for its $495-a-year Prestige card in 2021. The new card will be overseen by exec Pam Habner who previously launched the Sapphire Reserve for Chase in 2016. The popular Sapphire card recently announced that it would be hiking its annual fee to $795 up from $550. The bank said the revamped card will offer more than $2,700 in value, with expanded benefits across travel, dining, and entertainment. That includes a $500 credit at its network of hotels and resorts, a $300 dining credit at select restaurants, and $300 in credits for StubHub or Viagogo purchases. Subscribers will also receive complimentary access to Apple TV+ and Apple Music, valued at $250 annually, plus a new program that doubles the redemption value of points on select travel bookings. High spenders — those who charge $75,000 or more annually — will unlock additional perks, including elite status with Southwest Airlines and IHG Hotels & Resorts. Travel perks remain one of the biggest draws for consumers choosing a credit card. As such American Express is planning its ‘largest investment ever’ into travel-focused cards this year. ‘We’re going to take these cards to a new level, not only in what they offer in travel, dining and lifestyle benefits, but also in how they look and feel,’ Amex boss Howard Grosfield said last month. Its Platinum card, which offers customers access to its global airport lounges, currently costs $695 a year. Meanwhile, a recent report showed how the value of credit card reward points has been gradually falling – as inflation has taken hold. A reward point has long been worth around one cent when used to cover other purchases. But one cent has lost around 20 percent of its purchasing power since 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means a point has also fallen in value by about the same amount. If you built up 50,000 points with a major credit card issuer in 2020 and still have not spent them, they are now worth about 41,300.
Pinnacle and Synovus to merge, to be among the top five banks in ten Southeast markets; creating the largest bank holding company in Georgia and the largest bank in Tennessee
Pinnacle Financial Partners plans to merge with Synovus Financial in a deal that will significantly bolster the combined company’s Southeast footprint and push it firmly over the $100 billion-asset threshold. The proposed all-stock transaction, valued at $8.6 billion, would create a $116 billion-asset company, making it the largest bank holding company in Georgia, the two companies said. The combined entity will operate under the Pinnacle name and brand, and is set to be among the top five banks in 10 Southeast markets. Synovus CEO Kevin Blair, 54, is slated to become president and CEO of the merged bank. Pinnacle President and CEO Terry Turner would serve as chairman, and a slim majority of board members would come from Pinnacle. “We are two high-performing institutions with one powerful future,” said Blair, who was promoted to the role of Synovus CEO in 2021 and later became board chairman, in a statement. “Our belief in the success of this merger is grounded in a decade of strong results and proven execution from both companies, each delivering top-tier earnings and total shareholder returns.” The merger is the latest in a string of bank merger-and-acquisition deals announced in recent weeks. In a research note, Laurie Havener Hunsicker, an analyst at Seaport Research, noted the “substantial pick-up in M&A” during the week of July 15. As part of the deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, Pinnacle Financial, which has $54.8 billion of assets, would relocate its headquarters to Atlanta. Pinnacle Bank, meanwhile, would continue to be based in Nashville. Synovus Financial has about $61 billion of assets. Jamie Gregory, the chief financial officer at Synovus, would continue in that role at the combined company while Rob McCabe, Pinnacle’s chairman, would serve as vice chairman and chief banking officer of the combined bank. The company’s board would be made up of 15 directors, including eight from Pinnacle’s existing board and seven from Synovus’ board, according to the release. Pending regulatory approval, the acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026. The companies said they expect to realize $250 million in cost-savings as a result of the merger. The acquisition announcement comes two days after a news report said that Synovus was engaged in merger talks with at least one rival. Synovus’ stock was down more than 11% Thursday in after-market trading, while Pinnacle’s shares were down nearly 9%. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been unanimously approved by both companies’ boards, shares in Synovus and Pinnacle would be converted into shares of a new Pinnacle parent company, based on a fixed exchange ratio of 0.5237 Synovus shares per Pinnacle share. After the deal closes, Synovus shareholders would own about 48.5% of the combined company, while Pinnacle shareholders will own slightly more, about 51.5%. The transaction is expected to be approximately 21% accretive to Pinnacle’s estimated operating earnings per share in 2027, with a tangible book value per share earnback period of 2.6 years. During a conference call to discuss the deal, Turner called it “one of most compelling bank transactions that I’ve seen in a long time” and said that he’s long admired Blair and his team. “We are completely aligned,” Turner said. “Let me repeat, we are completely aligned.” Local market leadership will remain intact, Blair said on the call. Executives said they are making “significant employment commitments” in Nashville, Columbus and Atlanta. Synovus has recently been focused on hiring more bankers in certain Southeast metropolitan areas in order to support its commercial and middle-market lending and private wealth. Those areas include Atlanta; Miami; Birmingham, Alabama; and Charleston, South Carolina. “To me, this is so much more compelling than continuing to grow the bank organically,” Blair said on the call. Pinnacle Financial was named American Banker’s 2024 Best Bank to Work For, among banks with more than $10 billion of assets. Economic and population growth in the Sun Belt has attracted large regional banks including PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Fifth Third Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares to open branches across the Southeast. Synovus, headquartered in Columbus, Georgia, has approximately $61bn in assets and operates 244 branches across Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. It offers a variety of commercial and consumer banking services, along with specialised products such as wealth management and international banking. This merger is expected to create the largest bank holding company in Georgia and the largest bank in Tennessee.
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SandboxAQ report shows only 6% of organizations have implemented a comprehensive, AI-native security strategy across both IT and AI systems while 79% are already using AI in production environments
SandboxAQ released its inaugural AI Security Benchmark Report, revealing a significant disconnect between enterprise AI adoption and cybersecurity readiness. While 79% of organizations are already using AI in production environments, only 6% have implemented a comprehensive, AI-native security strategy, leaving the vast majority of enterprises vulnerable to threats they are not yet equipped to detect or mitigate. The report highlights widespread concern about the risks AI introduces, from model manipulation and data leakage to adversarial attacks and the misuse of non-human identities (NHIs). Yet despite growing anxiety among CISOs, only 28% of organizations have conducted a full AI-specific security assessment, and most are still relying on traditional, rule-based tools that were never designed to address dynamic, machine-speed systems. Only 6% of organizations have implemented AI-native security protections across both IT and AI systems. 74% of security leaders are highly concerned about AI-enhanced cyberattacks, and 69% are highly concerned about AI uncovering new vulnerabilities in their environments. Just 10% of companies have a dedicated AI security team; in most organizations, responsibility falls to traditional IT or security teams. Marc Manzano, General Manager of the Cybersecurity Group at SandboxAQ said, ” This report highlights a growing recognition among security leaders that defending against evolving threats requires new assumptions and approaches, not just new layers or patches to current tooling.”
A stablecoin is a blockchain token backed 1:1 by cash or cash-like assets, used as a substitute for fiat in on-chain trade with use cases in trade settlement, remittances and online purchases, whereas tokenized deposits are bank-issued tokens backed by dollars held in client accounts
With the GENIUS Act now law, U.S. banks are expected to increasingly explore issuing blockchain-based assets. While many tout stablecoins for faster, cheaper payments, most banks are actually eyeing tokenized deposits — not stablecoins — as the more viable product. Though both are digital tokens tied to fiat value, their nature and implications differ greatly. Stablecoins (like USDC) are backed 1:1 by cash or equivalents, circulate on public blockchains, and are used broadly as money for trade, savings, and remittances. Tokenized deposits, by contrast, are representations of client bank deposits, issued and moved within a bank’s private network, with value transfers still tied to bank-controlled ledgers. Unlike stablecoins, they’re non-fungible across institutions and don’t circulate freely. Their purpose is to modernize existing bank services, not create new monetary systems. The difference lies in function and intent: stablecoins are a new form of money, while deposit tokens are tools for enhancing traditional banking. As banks increasingly mention blockchain innovations, it’s vital to distinguish between the two.
Survey: Consumers are ‘shopping with intention’ ahead of new tariffs; over 70% believe tariffs will make their financial situation worse.
With new Aug. 1 tariffs on imported goods looming, many consumers are taking actions to avoid overspending in the future. Shoppers are tightening their spending this summer in a number of ways. according to a new consumer survey from RetailMeNot. Dining out and takeout (50%), clothing and accessories (49%) and electronics (45%) are the three most popular categories for cutbacks, followed by travel (42%), groceries (29%) and home improvement (28%). Only 9% of consumers said they weren’t planning to make any cutbacks at all, meaning that over 90% are adjusting their personal finances in some way. In other findings, more than half (55%) of shoppers said they are feeling increased pressure on their household budgets. Over 70% believe tariffs will make their financial situation worse. Forty percent expect their household finances to be “slightly worse” over the next six months due to tariffs, while 31% expect it to be “much worse.” With potential price hikes looming, a majority (60%) of consumers surveyed say they’re starting holiday gift shopping early this year. Thirty-seven percent are already planning for back-to-school, 30% are thinking ahead to Thanksgiving, and 27% are prepping for Halloween. RetailMeNot says that shoppers are acting early because they don’t want to be caught off guard later by increased prices.
New AI architecture delivers 100x faster reasoning than LLMs with just 1,000 training examples
AI startup Sapient Intelligence has developed a new AI architecture that can match, and in some cases vastly outperform, LLMs on complex reasoning tasks, all while being significantly smaller and more data-efficient. The architecture, known as the Hierarchical Reasoning Model (HRM), is inspired by how the human brain utilizes distinct systems for slow, deliberate planning and fast, intuitive computation. The model achieves impressive results with a fraction of the data and memory required by current LLMs. This efficiency could have important implications for real-world enterprise AI applications where data is scarce and computational resources are limited. According to the paper, “This process allows the HRM to perform a sequence of distinct, stable, nested computations, where the H-module directs the overall problem-solving strategy and the L-module executes the intensive search or refinement required for each step.” This nested-loop design allows the model to reason deeply in its latent space without needing long CoT prompts or huge amounts of data. Guan Wang, Founder and CEO of Sapient Intelligence, further explains that the model’s internal processes can be decoded and visualized, similar to how CoT provides a window into a model’s thinking. For the enterprise, the architecture’s efficiency translates directly to the bottom line. Instead of the serial, token-by-token generation of CoT, HRM’s parallel processing allows for what Wang estimates could be a “100x speedup in task completion time.” This means lower inference latency and the ability to run powerful reasoning on edge devices. The cost savings are also substantial. “Specialized reasoning engines such as HRM offer a more promising alternative for specific complex reasoning tasks compared to large, costly, and latency-intensive API-based models,” Wang said. To put the efficiency into perspective, he noted that training the model for professional-level Sudoku takes roughly two GPU hours, and for the complex ARC-AGI benchmark, between 50 and 200 GPU hours—a fraction of the resources needed for massive foundation models. This opens a path to solving specialized business problems, from logistics optimization to complex system diagnostics, where both data and budget are finite.
Gartner report reveals out of thousands of AI agent systems touted by vendors, only 130 are real and more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 due to high costs, unclear business value and weak risk controls
Most of the AI agent systems being sold today are not truly agentic, according to a report from business research and insights firm Gartner. According to the report, out of thousands of AI agent systems touted by vendors, only 130 are real. Gartner predicted that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 due to high costs, unclear business value and weak risk controls brought on by AI systems incorrectly marketed as agentic. “True AI agents are defined by goal-driven autonomy — the ability to work dynamically and proactively, with self-determination, to pursue long-term business goals,” Sagi Eliyahu, co-founder and CEO of the tech orchestration platform Tonkean, told. “A true agentic AI system orchestrates agents across every relevant piece of technology or team environment. If the ‘agent’ only handles discrete tasks that are defined by the user, if it only works inside its own system, or if it’s only accessible through chat, it may in fact be an AI capability, but it’s not an agent — it’s an automation or it’s a chatbot.” Akhil Sahai, chief product officer at Kanverse.ai, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that companies need to ask the following questions to identify whether an AI system is truly agentic: Can the system operate without constant human input? Does it pursue goals autonomously rather than follow scripted tasks? Can it reason, plan and improve with experience? “If the answer to any of these is ‘no,’ it’s not an AI agent,” Sahai said.
Waymo partners rental car company Avis to handle general depot operations, including charging and maintenance of its fleet of all-electric autonomous vehicles as it plans to launch robotaxi service in Dallas
Waymo plans to launch a robotaxi service next year in Dallas. Waymo is partnering with Avis Budget Group to manage its fleet of all-electric autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles. Avis will handle general depot operations, including charging and maintaining the vehicles. Users will be able to hail a robotaxi through the Waymo app. Avis is the first rental car company to help Waymo manage its fleet. And it’s a partnership that will likely extend to other cities in the future. Avis will play a large in role helping the company scale its technology to new markets faster and more cost-effectively. Waymo and Avis Budget Group intend to expand to more cities together over time. Waymo took one of its “road trips” to Dallas, where the company used its sensor-laden vehicles to map the city and conduct initial testing. Waymo has started testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads with a human safety operator behind the wheel. As it has in every other city it has launched in, Waymo will progress to fully autonomous testing once its tech has been further validated on Dallas streets. Avis Budget Group CEO Brian Choi said the partnership marks a “pivotal milestone in its evolution, from a rental car company to a provider of fleet management, infrastructure and operations to the broader mobility ecosystem.”
AI might make workers faster but productivity is not ensured- reinventing the work by streamlining processes is key to realizing productivity improvements from AI
Chee Wee Ang, the chief AI officer at Singapore’s Home Team Science and Tech Agency, a government agency that develops tech capabilities for national security, said AI has helped improve processes significantly. “Some of the information extraction … we see like 200% [improvement]. So that’s a significant improvement in terms of ROI,” Ang said. Yet Ang also pointed out that beyond improving productivity, AI advancements are allowing Singapore’s Home Team to do things that it couldn’t do before, like responding to new kinds of crime or emergency situations. Singapore’s Home Team has 10 departments, including the police force, emergency services, and immigration authorities. Ramine Tinati, the lead at Accenture’s APAC Center for Advanced AI said, “If you give employees a tool to do things faster, they do it faster. But are they more productive? Probably not, because they do it faster and then go for coffee breaks,” Tinati explained. Instead, “if you reinvent the work, then suddenly those coffee breaks don’t become meaningful anymore, because you’re doing something else,” Tinati said, adding that some companies in Asia may be slower to adopt AI because “they don’t think about reinventing the work.” May Yap, chief information officer at manufacturing solutions provider Jabil, said that her company had been using automation and AI to augment their so-called Golden Eye, the army of workers inspecting phones for scratches and blemishes. Golden Eye workers spend eight hours a day on inspections, and working that long means that “errors will creep in,” Yap said. AI helped to augment the inspection process to account for possible mistakes from human workers.
Startup E2B building a dedicated open-source infrastructure stack for AI agents hosted in secure sandboxed environments in the cloud with access to computer, browser, a file system and other tools to enable rapid scaling of agentic workflows
Agentic cloud infrastructure startup E2B has raised $21 million in early-stage funding to build out an entirely new, open-source infrastructure for running artificial intelligence agents securely in the cloud. E2B’s vision is to provide businesses with a dedicated, open-source cloud infrastructure stack for AI agents. It believes that the best place for AI agents to be hosted is in secure sandboxed environments in the cloud, where it will provide them with safe computer and browser-use features to automate various complex business tasks. Co-founder and Chief Executive Vasek Mlejnsky explained that enterprises have massive expectations for AI agents due to all the hype around them, but he believes that they won’t easily scale if they’re built on legacy infrastructure that’s not designed to be used by them. “E2B solves this by equipping AI agents with safe, scalable and highly-performant cloud infrastructure, as well as tools that help agents to scale in production,” he added. With E2B’s sandboxed cloud environments, AI agents get access to the same computational capabilities as human workers do, meaning their own computer plus a browser and other tools that enable them to retrieve information, as well as a file system to store that data, and compute platforms for executing AI-generated code. Companies can quickly spin up and shut down these sandboxed cloud environments as needed, and they can scale rapidly to millions of virtual personal computers, allowing enterprises to unleash armies of agents that can work even more efficiently than humans do. It’s all hosted in a simple and secure runtime that enables reinforcement loops for AI training and agentic workflows to run rapidly. E2B aims to position its open-source sandbox protocol as the universal standard for AI agents, and has plans to add additional functionality such as “secrets vaults” and orchestration tools for managing fleets of AI agents from a single console.