Besides the widget shortcut, Google is making AI Mode faster to access with one-tap search on Android and iOS. Previously, launching AI Mode from the shortcut beneath the Search bar in the Google app or widget would bring you to an introductory homepage. You’d then have to touch the “Ask AI Mode” field before you could start typing. Opening AI Mode now immediately takes you to the input box with the keyboard open. The header just shows the ‘G’ logo (and close button), while the suggested queries carousel disappears after you enter text for a minimalist look. With the previous homepage no longer available, you cannot quickly access conversation history. Google tells us to soon expect direct access from the text field. One-tap AI Mode access is live on both Google for Android and iOS. On the latter platform, Google has introduced a very slick animation. Tapping the AI Mode button will expand the usual Search field to encompass your entire screen as the keyboard pops up. As this occurs, there’s a four-color glow around the expanding perimeter that looks very nice. It fades out just as everything settles, while closing AI Mode also results in a visual effect. There’s no equivalent animation on Android right now, but there are other colorful touches.
VC Lightspeed changes its regulatory status to a RIA, to enable investing more capital into assets beyond direct startup equity including public and secondary shares, as well as cryptocurrencies
Lightspeed Venture Partners, has changed its regulatory status to broaden its range of investments — following similar moves by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst as they shift away from the traditional VC playbook. Lightspeed has completed the process of becoming a registered investment advisor (RIA), according to a US SEC filing. The move is the culmination of a lengthy regulatory process and gives the firm freedom to invest more capital into assets beyond direct startup equity. It’s also a signal that most of the country’s biggest VCs now have ambitions to expand beyond only investing in startups. Lightspeed is one of the last major venture firms to change its regulatory status, as VCs seek to invest in a wider array of assets, including public and secondary shares, as well as cryptocurrencies. Without the RIA designation, VC firms may only allocate up to 20% of their capital to holdings outside traditional startup equity. Lightspeed, which manages $31 billion in assets, is expected to launch new funds totaling $7 billion and has been expanding its investments in areas such as secondary deals and artificial intelligence.
Vanguard’s new GenAI client-ready article summaries produce customizable synopses of its top-read market perspectives tailored by financial acumen, investing life stage, and tone
Vanguard launched its first client-facing GenAI capability that equips financial advisors with efficient and personalized content for client communications. Vanguard’s Client-Ready Article Summaries produce customizable synopses of its top-read market perspectives tailored by financial acumen, investing life stage, and tone. It also generates the necessary disclosures to accompany the article summaries, creating an efficient and seamless information sharing experience for advisors. Sid Ratna, Head of Digital and Analytics for Vanguard Financial Advisor Services said “The best advisors can get even better with AI in their client toolkit, and Vanguard’s Client-Ready Article Summaries help advisors drive personalized and actionable conversations that enhance client relationships over the long-term.” Vanguard Financial Advisor Services provides investment services, portfolio analytics and consulting, and research to over 50,000 advisory firms comprising 150,000 advisors.1 Supporting advisors so they can best service their clients is integral to Vanguard’s mission of giving investors the best chance for investment success. In addition to rolling out the Client-Ready Article Summaries, Vanguard continues to experiment with advanced technologies, including spatial and quantum computing and blockchain, to improve investment outcomes, expand investor access, and deliver personalized experiences.
Agree.com’s AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing generation and payment processing
Agree.com says its AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing and payment processing. That’s why the company might have a shot at tackling the industry Goliath, Docusign. Because the startup makes its money from transaction fees for any money movement facilitated by its platform, Agree.com has made e-signatures free to all users. Agree.com uses AI on top of optimal character recognition (OCR) software so that it can auto-detect and label all of a contract’s input fields and signature blocks. Its technology can also identify and extract “any and all” payment terms to dynamically generate invoices. Because of its multitasking approach, Agree.com can potentially replace traditional e-signature software and invoicing and accounts receivable tools such as Bill.com. Agree extracts every character, indentation, semicolon, and hyphen to not only understand the type of contract being signed, but make it fully editable and collaborative with commenting, redlining, and version control. Agree’s “business model is truly unique: free software, monetized through invoicing and payments.”
Pinterest now lets shoppers use a “more expansive visual vocabulary” to ‘describe’ their style ideas.- generating the words they can use to figure out what they like about the image, and then further explore and shop
Pinterest is introducing new features to let users find ideas that match their personal tastes. The new visual search tools will first be available for women’s fashion content in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., eventually moving to more categories. The new tools let users find what they’re searching for without using words, by breaking down and decoding images so users can quickly search and shop for the details of an outfit they like. “Whether it’s an overall aesthetic, a color palette, a specific fit, or product category, when users view a Pin, we’ll now generate the words they can use to figure out what they like about the image, and then further explore and shop,” the company said. To help users identify and select the objects that they want more easily, the company says it has added a new animated glow. Also new is a “refinement bar” to help users narrow down their search results and find things that match their style. The company said the new search options are powered by visual language models (VLMs), a form of generative artificial intelligence (AI), to offer users a “more expansive visual ‘vocabulary’ to ‘describe’ their style ideas.” “Our visual search technology represents a shift in how users interact with and discover inspiration,” Dana Cho, Pinterest vice president of design, said. “We’re not simply delivering search results — we’re curating a personalized journey of discovery that empowers individuals to find their unique style, and shop it too.”
Samsung adds Green Dot’s embedded finance platform to digital wallets- a P2P tool to quickly transfer funds within minutes from Samsung Wallet to other digital wallets or contactless debit cards
Digital bank Green Dot announced a new partnership with Samsung Electronics to add new features and functionality to Samsung Wallet1, the secure, go-everywhere app for conveniently using and organizing daily essentials. Leveraging Green Dot’s comprehensive and configurable embedded finance platform, Arc, Samsung Wallet’s U.S. users will soon have access to Tap to Transfer2, a peer-to-peer (P2P) tool enabling users to quickly transfer funds within minutes3 from Samsung Wallet to other digital wallets or contactless debit cards, with additional features and functionality planned. Arc is the embedded finance platform of services featuring all of Green Dot’s secure banking and money processing capabilities designed to fuel value, loyalty and growth for consumers and businesses. Integrated with Green Dot Bank, Arc provides partners with leading FDIC-insured banking products and tools, plus regulatory and compliance expertise, oversight and support. “Our partnership with Samsung presents an enormous opportunity to bring convenient and instant peer-to-peer payments to Samsung’s vast user base,” said Crystal Bryant-Minter, SVP, Money Movement, Green Dot. “It also exemplifies Arc’s potential to power leading brands with seamless, secure financial experiences that deliver real value to everyday consumers.”
Prudent AI launches one-touch pre-qualification platform especially helpful for processing self-employed, Non-QM borrowers with 24/7 document submissions, real-time insights and loan recommendations
Prudent AI launched Prudent AI Upfront, a one-touch pre-qualification platform designed to improve lender sales funnels. The company claims the product is the mortgage industry’s first of its kind and allows lenders to process more applications, reduce fallout and capture more business. Upfront boosts sales funnel efficiency through three outcomes designed to eliminate manual intervention: 24/7 document submissions, real-time insights and loan recommendations, and evaluating borrower repayment ability in minutes instead of hours. Prudent AI claims that lenders who implemented Upfront reported a 60-70% reduction in document review time while expanding their sales pipelines and a seamless integration into their existing tech stacks. The platform is especially helpful for processing self-employed, Non-QM borrowers, company officials said. “The Non-QM market has long struggled with pre-qualification bottlenecks,” commented Paul Gigliotti, chief growth officer. “Upfront eliminates these barriers. Lenders can confidently serve this multi-trillion-dollar segment with unprecedented efficiency.”
Visa invests in Stablecoin infrastructure platform BVNK that processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd
Stabelcoin infrastructure platform BVNK received an investment from Visa. The new capital comes on the heels of a $50 million Series B funding round in December. “We’re proud to support BVNK as they help accelerate global adoption of stablecoin payments,” Rubail Birwadker, head of growth products and partnerships at Visa, said. “Stablecoins are fast becoming a part of global payment flows, and Visa invests in new technologies and builders like BVNK, staying at the forefront of what’s next in commerce to better serve our clients and partners.” There was $27 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume globally across 1.25 billion transactions in 2024, per Visa Onchain Analytics. BVNK processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd. “We’re experiencing a once-in-a-generation shift to a new foundational payment technology, powered by stablecoins,” BVNK co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson Struthers said. “At BVNK, we’re building the infrastructure to make these new rails accessible to businesses, empowering them to operate at the speed of today’s economy.”
Nvidia has launched Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that can transcribe 60 minutes of audio in 1 second with an average “Word Error Rate” of just 6.05%
Nvidia has launched Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that can, “transcribe 60 minutes of audio in 1 second [mind blown emoji].” This version two is so powerful, it currently tops the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard with an average “Word Error Rate” (times the model incorrectly transcribes a spoken word) of just 6.05% (out of 100). To put that in perspective, it nears proprietary transcription models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o-transcribe (with a WER of 2.46% in English) and ElevenLabs Scribe (3.3%). The model boasts 600 million parameters and leverages a combination of the FastConformer encoder and TDT decoder architectures. It can transcribe an hour of audio in just one second, provided it’s running on Nvidia’s GPU-accelerated hardware. The performance benchmark is measured at an RTFx (Real-Time Factor) of 3386.02 with a batch size of 128, placing it at the top of current ASR benchmarks maintained by Hugging Face. Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2 is aimed at developers, researchers, and industry teams building applications such as transcription services, voice assistants, subtitle generators, and conversational AI platforms. The model supports punctuation, capitalization, and detailed word-level timestamping, offering a full transcription package for a wide range of speech-to-text needs. Developers can deploy the model using Nvidia’s NeMo toolkit. The setup process is compatible with Python and PyTorch, and the model can be used directly or fine-tuned for domain-specific tasks. The open-source license (CC-BY-4.0) also allows for commercial use, making it appealing to startups and enterprises alike. Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2 is optimized for Nvidia GPU environments, supporting hardware such as the A100, H100, T4, and V100 boards. While high-end GPUs maximize performance, the model can still be loaded on systems with as little as 2GB of RAM, allowing for broader deployment scenarios.
Stripe launches stablecoin accounts and AI foundation model to improve fraud detection and authorization rates trained on “subtle signals” per payment, which specialized models cannot capture
Among these, the company debuted an AI foundation model to improve fraud detection and authorization rates. Dubbed the Payments Foundation Model, it is trained on tens of billions of transactions and incorporates hundreds of “subtle signals” per payment, which it said specialized models cannot capture. The technology firm plans to deploy this model across its payments suite to improve performance in ways that were previously unattainable. Stripe stated that early results indicate the model’s effectiveness, particularly against card testing attacks, where it increased detection rates beyond the 80% reduction achieved over two years with previous models. By applying the new foundation model, Stripe increased its detection rate for attacks on large businesses by 64% practically overnight. In parallel, Stripe expanded its money management offerings with the launch of Stablecoin Financial Accounts, powered by stablecoins. Businesses using these accounts can hold balances in stablecoins, receive payments via both crypto and traditional fiat rails such as ACH and SEPA, and send stablecoins to most markets globally. These accounts are designed to be accessible to businesses in 101 countries. Initially, the accounts will support stablecoins USDC and Bridge’s USDB, with plans to incorporate additional currencies over time. Stripe also announced a deeper partnership with NVIDIA, which completed the fastest-ever migration to Stripe Billing.