As of May 2025, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that Alexa+ had so far reached over 100,000 users, representing only a tiny fraction of the 600 million Alexa devices that had been sold. That number has grown significantly in the weeks since. Alexa+ represents a serious attempt by Amazon to create a generative AI experience for consumers that it can eventually monetize. Alexa+ aims to bring the digital assistant new capabilities. The service allows users to chat with the digital assistant using more natural language, where you can phrase requests your own way. You’ll also more easily be able to create routines, search across your Ring camera footage, interrupt or pivot the conversation with the assistant, and more. The experience is more personalized, too, as it saves your preferences and remembers what you like. With its generative AI component, Alexa can do things like summarize long emails you share with the service, create unique bedtime stories, generate quizzes from study guides, make travel itineraries, provide summaries of your smart home activity, and answer other questions, similar to how an AI chatbot might respond. Plus, the assistant will be able to help you take certain actions — like buying concert tickets, booking a dinner reservation, and notifying you when something you’ve been watching goes on sale, among other things.
Cordial’s AI marketing platform analyzes customer’s historical behavior such as opens, clicks, browses and purchases to predict their purchase intent at different price points, enabling brands to focus efforts on high-opportunity segments
AI marketing platform Cordial is releasing the newest addition to its AI suite: Price Sensitivity. With U.S. profit margins declining 1.6% in 2025 and consumer sentiment at a two-and-a-half-year low, this advancement comes at a critical moment as brands grapple with mounting pressure to preserve margins amid rising costs and global tariff uncertainties. Cordial’s new Price Sensitivity is designed to solve this problem. It analyzes each customer’s historical behavior — such as opens, clicks, browses and purchases — to predict their intent to buy at different price points. This dynamic attribute enables marketers to personalize offers and adjust messaging, deploying discounts only where they drive meaningful impact while preserving margins to each individual shopper. By identifying which customers are truly influenced by price, brands can eliminate unnecessary promotional noise and tune in and focus efforts on high-opportunity segments. For example, marketers might target a high-sensitivity shopper with a personalized coupon or flash sale, while showing a low-sensitivity buyer premium or exclusive items at full price. This level of intent-based personalization not only protects margin but also improves customer experience and retention by listening to behavioral signals and anticipating their needs. The Price Sensitivity feature complements a suite of new Cordial Edge AI dynamic attributes launched this spring, designed to help marketers better understand their customers and increase customer value. These include: Lifetime Value (LTV): Predicts a customer’s future revenue contribution; Average Order Value (AOV): Predicts average spend per transaction; RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary): Classifies buyer loyalty and spending behavior; Engagement Momentum: Measures the trajectory of engagement to prioritize timing; and Frequency Optimization: Applies per-contact email message caps to maximize engagement and reduce fatigue.
Walmart and Target to counter the first ever four day Amazon Prime Day with coinciding Walmart Deals and Target Circle Week
Amazon has announced that its Prime Day 2025 promotion will take place from Tuesday, July 8 – Friday, July 11. This marks the first time Prime Day, which has been a two-day event since 2017, will last four days. Walmart’s Sam’s Club warehouse club subsidiary was the first major retailer to reveal a summer promotion that countered Prime Day. Now Walmart is offering its Walmart Deals event, launched as a digital-only sale in July 2024, for six days spanning Tuesday, July 8 – Sunday, July 13. New in 2025, Walmart Deals will be available both in stores and online. Members of the Walmart+ subscription loyalty program will have exclusive early access to Walmart Deals offers beginning at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, July 7. Target Corp. is also bringing back a summer sales blockbuster it launched in 2024 – Target Circle Week. Running Sunday, July 6 – Saturday, July 12 in stores and online, the event is exclusively available for members of the free Target Circle and enhanced paid Target Circle 360 loyalty programs. Target Circle 360 members will receive early access to Circle Week deals starting Saturday, July 5. The promotion also features a number of special perks for students and teachers, including a one-time 20% off storewide discount for verified college students with Target Circle starting Sunday, June 29; a one-time 20% off storewide discount with Target Circle for teachers from Sunday, July 20 – Saturday, Aug. 30, as well as access to curated classroom sets and wish list tools; and a 50% discount on Target Circle 360 membership through Saturday, Sep. 13. The retailer is also offering students and teachers a number of other special discounts this summer.
Algebrik AI’s integration with TruStage platform to enable FIs to present lending protection products directly within the digital loan application flow
Algebrik AI announced a partnership with TruStage™, to integrate the education of a broad suite of lending protection offerings from TruStage—including GAP coverage, debt protection, credit insurance, and mechanical repair coverage—directly into Algebrik’s end-to-end digital lending workflows. With this integration, Algebrik enables credit unions and community lenders to present TruStage protection products directly within the digital loan application flow—empowering borrowers to choose coverage that fits their needs without disrupting the journey. Whether for auto loans, personal loans, or other credit products, protection options are embedded natively into Algebrik’s borrower experience and remain easily configurable by loan officers. Key Benefits of the Integration: Comprehensive Coverage Options – Offer GAP coverage, credit insurance, debt protection, and mechanical repair coverage products—all surfaced directly within Algebrik’s LOS. Embedded at the Point of Decision – Borrowers encounter relevant protection choices within the same digital flow, with no need to redirect or re-engage later. Configurable by Loan Type & Member Segment – Institutions can tailor which TruStage products are presented based on loan type, member profile, or risk category. Simplified Operations, Centralized Reporting – Built-in tracking, configuration, and compliance support helps lenders manage enrollment, documentation, and servicing with minimal manual effort.
Spinwheel provides real-time, verified consumer credit data for processing payments via APIs using credentialless technology that requires only phone number and date of birth
Spinwheel is rewiring how consumer credit data is accessed, activated, and embedded into financial workflows, with the closure of its $30 million Series A funding round. Spinwheel’s real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network. The new funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, expand its data sets and product offerings, and scale its go-to-market team as it builds the foundational infrastructure to transform the consumer credit data and payments ecosystem. Spinwheel partners with lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs. The company’s proprietary, credentialless technology requires only two data fields – phone number and date of birth – streamlining and simplifying user actions and delivering a more complete consumer credit profile, empowering financial clients to provide better financial products and a seamless experience for the consumer. Spinwheel’s clients see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased revenue, lower operational and acquisition costs, as well as mitigated risk.
Federal housing regulator to consider the inclusion of crypto assets in the income checks by mortgage lenders as against the current legislation that limits their use only for closing and reserves
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Putle said his department will review how crypto assets might be included in the income checks by entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte owns up to $1 million in cryptocurrency and holds stakes in crypto firm MARA Holdings and Elon Musk’s X. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require that virtual currency only be used for “closing and reserves if it has been exchanged into U.S. dollars and is held in a U.S.- or state-regulated financial institution. There must be sufficient documentation to verify that the funds originated from the borrower’s cryptocurrency account.” Meanwhile, there is a “rise of bitcoin as a form of collateral in loans issued by big banks — used as inputs to determine applicants’ net worth and liquidity, and by extension, loan terms.”
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ordered by FHFA to consider crypto as asset for mortgages
U.S. Federal Housing FHFA Director William J. Pulte has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider cryptocurrency as an asset for single-family mortgage loan risk assessments. Pulte said he ordered the change because cryptocurrency may offer an opportunity to build wealth outside of the stock and bond markets, cryptocurrency has not typically been considered in the mortgage risk assessment process, and the consideration of additional borrower assets in that process “may enable the Enterprises to assess the full spectrum of asset information available for reserves and to facilitate sustainable homeownership to creditworthy borrowers.” The order directs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to each prepare a proposal for making this change to their single-family mortgage loan risk assessments, consider only cryptocurrency assets that are stored on a U.S.-regulated centralized exchange, and consider additional risk mitigators. “Prior to implementing any changes, each Enterprise must submit and receive approval from its Board of Directors prior to submitting to U.S. Federal Housing FHFA for review,” the order said. Pulte said that his department would review whether crypto holdings should affect Americans’ mortgage applications.
Walmart is testing the use of dark stores (smaller warehouses that are closed to the public) to provide faster delivery amid improvement in batch density and increased penetration of paid expedited delivery orders
Walmart is reportedly testing the use of dark stores to provide faster delivery to customers. The company has opened a dark store in Dallas, plans to add one in Bentonville, Arkansas, and is considering adding more locations. Dark stores are smaller warehouses that are closed to the public and carry popular items in order to support a wider delivery radius and faster deliveries to customers. Walmart opened a few such stores in the mid-2010s but closed them after the pandemic. The company said in November that consumers were showing resilience while prioritizing delivery speed and convenience. Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that the company’s eCommerce margins were benefiting from its delivery densification, increased penetration of paid expedited delivery orders, and automation of the supply chain. “As we scale our store-fulfilled delivery business, we’ve seen significant improvement in batch density with orders per delivery up 20%,” Rainey said. “In addition, the popularity of expedited delivery has resulted in more than 30% of orders coming from customers and members that elected to pay a convenience fee to receive their delivery in less than one hour or less than three hours.”
Birdeye’s AI Publishing Agent auto-generates and auto-schedules brand-aligned and industry-specific content across all locations for weeks by drawing on insights from top-performing posts, competitors’ social activity, and upcoming local holidays and events
Birdeye unveiled its Social AI Publishing Agent, a first-of-its-kind innovation built for Hyperlocal brands ready to dominate on social media. Powered by BirdAI, including the newly launched Brand AI and Industry AI engines, this intelligent agent doesn’t just assist with content planning — it does the job. While traditional tools leave marketers staring at blank calendars and scrambling to create and schedule posts, Birdeye’s Social AI Agent auto-generates and auto-schedules brand-aligned content across all locations for weeks, before you even log in. specific content, your competitors’ social activity, and upcoming local holidays and events, the publishing agent auto-generates weeks worth of social content right on your social calendar. The publishing agent offers businesses multiple configuration options, including post frequency, theme, channel selection, and post time. Depending on the organization’s preference, the agent can share posts as drafts on the calendar, send for approval, or publish autonomously. Brand AI ensures every post reflects the brand’s unique voice, tone, compliance guardrails and visual identity. Industry AI tailors content to the specific nuances of each company’s vertical, local trends, and audience preferences. Together, these proprietary models enable Social AI to auto-generate and schedule content that’s not only on-brand, but also highly relevant and effective. With Birdeye’s AI Agent, marketing teams can finally: Eliminate hours of manual planning; Keep every location’s social feed fresh and consistent; Scale brand engagement without scaling headcount.
Web3 developer Gelato partners a DeFi protocol Morpho for embedded crypto-backed loans that allow borrowing stablecoins using crypto assets as collateral through a fully non-custodial and onchain flow
Gelato, a web3 developer cloud platform, has partnered with Morpho, a decentralized lending protocol, to launch Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans. This partnership allows Wallets, Brokers, and Fintech Apps to instantly borrow stablecoins like USDC using crypto assets as collateral. The borrowing flow is simple, Web2-like, non-custodial, and fully onchain. The platform uses Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK and Morpho’s permissionless lending markets to provide a secure borrowing flow. Crypto-backed loans are fully non-custodial and onchain, governed by smart contracts. Gelato’s Smart Wallet SDK handles account abstraction, one-click onboarding, and gas sponsorship, enabling modern, web2-style user experiences. Gelato plans to introduce new security and recovery features later this year, including passkey authentication, multi-signer two-factor approvals, and onchain recovery modules tied to email or social logins. Embedded Crypto-Backed Loans are now available in beta on Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Scroll, with support for Katana coming soon.