RP1, a leader in spatial computing software and infrastructure, has unveiled the world’s first Metaverse Browser, a gateway to the first open ecosystem for 3D content. The future of the spatial internet will consist of persistent 3D content and millions of real-time, third-party services, transforming how people interact and businesses operate. RP1’s 3D Browser connects the entire global population with 3D content within a single, persistent XR ecosystem, spanning education, commerce, entertainment, digital twins, smart cities, work, transportation, and even space exploration. This marks the first real software foundation for the spatial internet, featuring industry-first technologies. Major players like Apple, Meta, Google, and Samsung are racing to develop AR glasses that will eventually replace smartphones. Breakthrough Innovations Behind RP1’s Metaverse Browser: Unprecedented Scalability to connect the entire world’s population (vs. 40 users per instance/server in current 3D platforms like Roblox or Meta Horizon Worlds) in a single unsharded architecture with full spatial audio and 6DOF, making it seamless to connect with anyone, at any time, and with any content. Unlimited Map that includes a fully-continuous, 1:1 scale digital twin of Earth, our solar system, and the farthest reaches of the universe, for frictionless discovery and navigation of augmented and virtual spatial content. Real-time API that enables any real-time third-party service, including AI, payments, games, and businesses (stores, hotels, etc.) to easily connect to the 3D browser across both augmented and virtual environments. Decentralized Hosting for businesses to run their own worlds and services on their own servers, not inside a closed platform like Roblox or Meta.
Conferma’s partnership with JP Morgan Payments Network to enable businesses to issue virtual cards and make multi-currency payments via API that integrates directly with ERP, procurement, and expense management platforms
Conferma has expanded its strategic membership in the J.P. Morgan Payments Partner Network to include J.P. Morgan Payments’ virtual card solutions as part of its European offerings. This expansion offers European-based businesses the opportunity to issue and manage virtual cards effortlessly, unlocking multi-currency capabilities and providing greater flexibility to streamline payments across the region. J.P. Morgan Payments’ virtual card services offer businesses in Europe the opportunity to access virtual card services and benefit from trusted payment capabilities—simplifying procurement, boosting cash flow, and enhancing security. What this means for businesses: Expanded payment freedom: Corporates can issue virtual cards, eliminating international barriers and empowering businesses with greater global agility. Multi-currency efficiency: Virtual cards enable payment in local currencies, reducing FX costs and improving payment efficiency. Seamless integration: Conferma’s API technology integrates directly with ERP, procurement, and expense management platforms, making adoption effortless and quick. Stronger financial oversight: Businesses gain more visibility, control, and fraud protection, enhancing compliance and security. By combining J. P. Morgan Payments’ virtual card solutions through the J.P. Morgan Payments Partner Network with Conferma’s seamless technology, businesses can accelerate payments, enhance security, and cut operational costs.
Solution combines Deluxe’s merchant processing tech and Chargent’s Salesforce-native tools to enable businesses to automate billing, accept payments, and gain real-time transaction insights natively without leaving the Salesforce environment
Deluxe and Chargent announced a strategic partnership to deliver seamless, end-to-end payment integration within Salesforce. This collaboration allows businesses to automate billing, accept payments, and gain real-time transaction insights—all without leaving the Salesforce environment. By combining Chargent’s powerful, Salesforce-native tools with the secure and scalable merchant processing infrastructure at Deluxe, the new offering helps businesses accelerate cash flow, reduce manual work, and improve financial visibility. “This partnership enhances the way our customers manage payments—simplifying operations and supporting revenue growth,” said Bryan Van Meter, Head of GTM at Chargent. “Deluxe brings credibility, scale, and decades of payments expertise that our customers can trust.” “Partnering with Chargent allows us to bring the robust payment infrastructure at Deluxe directly into the Salesforce ecosystem,” said Brian Mahony, President of Merchant Services at Deluxe. “This integration gives businesses a secure, efficient way to manage payments within the platform they already rely on—helping them streamline operations, improve cash flow, and support long-term growth.”
Starbucks is rolling out OpenAI-powered gen AI assistant to help baristas with quick and accurate answers to questions such as making an iced shaken espresso or troubleshooting equipment errors
Starbucks is set to roll out a generative artificial intelligence assistant, “Green Dot Assist,” to 35 locations in the US and Canada as part of its strategy to simplify baristas’ jobs and speed up service in its cafes. The technology, developed with Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI platform, will be used by baristas to answer questions such as making an iced shaken espresso or troubleshooting equipment errors. The company’s CEO, Brian Niccol, has emphasized the importance of quick, accurate answers to barista questions to help revive its sluggish US sales. Starbucks is expanding its relationship with Microsoft after the tech giant’s CEO, Satya Nadella, stepped down from the board of directors. The company’s partnership with Microsoft includes a grounding engine to ensure the accuracy of the information provided. Other restaurant companies have also been exploring AI to simplify their workers’ jobs and improve operations, such as Yum Brands partnering with Nvidia for AI order-taking and restaurant performance assessments.
Starling Bank’s Gemini-powered AI tool allows customers to use natural language in-app to directly interact with their spending data; transactions are listed by retailer and automatically sorted into over 50 customizable categories
Starling Bank launched an AI tool which helps customers better understand their spending habits. The first-of-its-kind feature, called ‘Spending Intelligence’, allows customers to ask questions about their money. This is the first time a bank has given customers the opportunity to use AI and natural language in-app to directly interact with their spending data. It’s the first phase of Starling’s wider plans to implement AI across customer touch points. “Customers can use AI to feed their natural curiosity about their finances so that they can make informed decisions about their budgeting, and better utilise Starling’s suite of money management tools, ” said Harriet Rees, CIO of Starling Bank. “By leveraging the power of Gemini and the secure, scalable infrastructure of Google Cloud, Starling is creating tangible value for its customers and empowering them with greater financial understanding. This is a brilliant example of how AI can be applied responsibly and effectively in the financial services sector,” said Graham Dury, Director, FSI, Google Cloud in the UK and Ireland. Transactions are listed by retailer and automatically sorted into over 50 customizable categories such as bills, transport, and groceries, making it easy to track spending patterns over time. For example, you can see how much you’ve spent at a specific retailer or on a category like dining out. A graph and detailed analytics show spending habits, breaking down individual payments within each category. This addresses a common limitation in banking apps where payments are visible but not easily analyzed.
Amazon’s AI security agents can simulate both attackers and defenders, identify the attacks, extract the signatures from the attacks and build news in minutes for proactive threat detection
Amazon is leveraging AI not just to automate tasks, but to actively defend systems, with AI agents harnessed to simulate both attackers and defenders. Defensive agents train protocols for proactive threat detection, generate digital signatures and respond in minutes — far faster than traditional methods, according to Steve Schmidt, senior vice president and chief security officer at Amazon. Amazon.com Inc. is redefining security at the intersection of AI, physical safety and public-private collaboration. Its evolving strategy blends digital resilience with real-world safeguards to counter the speed and complexity of today’s threat landscape. “We also build tools that are defenders — their job is to identify the attacks and to extract from the attacks the signatures, which our systems can use to prevent access in the future,” he said. “What we measure now is, instead of situations where it used to take days, weeks or months to build new signatures for attacks, these agents can do it in minutes — and it’s really transformative for our ability to defend systems.” While AI unlocks accuracy and expediency, a human in the loop is still critical for validating actions before deployment. Eventually, some agents could become fully autonomous in low-risk environments, but high-stakes systems will continue to require human oversight, Schmidt added.
iOS 26 to allow reporting spam voicemails by tapping on new “Report Spam” button for voicemail from an unknown number
iOS 26 has an updated Phone app with several new functions. When you tap into a voicemail from an unknown number, you’ll see a new “Report Spam” button that you can tap if it is a spam call. Tapping on option sends the voicemail to Apple, and you can either report the message as spam and keep it, or report it and delete it. The Call Screening option in iOS 26 intercepts calls from numbers that are not saved in your contacts list, and asks the caller for more information like a name and reason for calling before forwarding the call along to you. The Messages app also has a refined spam reporting workflow in iOS 26. Messages that Apple detects are spam are sent to a specific Spam folder, which is now distinct from the Unknown Senders folder. Messages from numbers that aren’t in your contacts, such as 2FA messages, go in Unknown Senders. Scam messages are sent to the spam folder. Messages from unknown senders and spam messages are both silenced and you won’t get a notification for them, but you will see a badge at the top of the Messages app. You can disable these features in the Messages section of the Settings app, if desired. There is no automatic filtering of spam voicemails, but that is a feature that Apple could use in the future after receiving enough voicemails that people flag as spam.
Databricks unveiled Agent Bricks, a unified workspace that automates agent building and optimization; includes automated “judges” to prevent situations like an agent recommending a rival’s product
Databricks unveiled Agent Bricks, a unified workspace that automates agent building and optimization using customers’ enterprise data and synthetic equivalents. A key part of the release involves the use of large language model automated “judges” that generate questions and expected answers to assess model performance. This is presumably to resolve situations such as the one described by Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and chief executive, where one automaker expressed concern to him about an agent that was recommending a competitor’s cars. The company also released Lakebase, a managed Postgres database built for AI, added an operational layer to the firm’s Data Intelligence Platform. Lakebase builds on the company’s acquisition of Neon Inc. Neon’s serverless PostgreSQL platform allows developers to add support for data structures where AI models keep information. Another offering called Lakeflow Designer, is a no-code capability allows users to author production data pipelines by using a drag-and-drop interface and a natural language generative AI assistant. It’s the latest entry in the field of “vibe coding.” Through tools such as Agent Bricks and Lakebase, Databricks is building the infrastructure to support this change in how software is created and deployed.
Databricks brings data insights to every business worker with AI-powered BI- generating the required SQL code itself, and executes it on the customer’s data warehouse, abstracting the complexity away from the user
Databricks is trying to bring the power of big data analytics to every business worker with the launch of its new AI-powered business intelligence tool, Databricks One. Its simplified allows users to describe the type of data analysis they want to perform. Then, an LLM performs the necessary technical work to get that analysis done. It can take actions such as deploying AI agents into data pipelines and databases to perform extremely specific and detailed analysis. It generates the required SQL code itself, and executes it on the customer’s data warehouse, abstracting the complexity away from the user. Once the analysis is done, Databricks One will show the results via suitable visualizations that appear directly in its interface. Users can then dig into these visualizations with an “AI/BI Genie,” and ask more detailed questions using natural language. The use cases are varied. For instance, marketing professionals might want to perform some analytics to see how effective their latest campaign has been, while legal professionals might want to review any overlapping business contracts that could conflict with one another. Salespeople could use it to gather every piece of information they need ahead of a meeting with a new lead.
Matera and Circle enable the first native integration between a real-time banking infrastructure and a fully-reserved, transparent stablecoin allowing s financial institutions to offer seamless multi-currency account experiences
Matera has announced a commercial partnership with Circle. This alliance marks the region’s first native integration between a real-time banking infrastructure and a fully-reserved, transparent stablecoin, positioning Matera’s Digital Twin realtime ledger at the forefront of interoperability between local currency balances and digital dollars. The integration between Matera’s Digital Twin and Circle’s Platform allows financial institutions to offer seamless multi-currency account experiences, where BRL, USD, and USDC balances coexist and operate in real time. These scenarios become viable without requiring institutions to build complex infrastructure from scratch. The integration natively connects local payment rails (like PIX) to global liquidity in USDC, unlocking faster, cheaper, and more transparent global payment operations. With Circle’s technology, Matera’s clients will be able to offer USDC as a balance option in their platforms. This allows people to send, receive, and pay with USDC around the world — just like using local currency. The collaboration between Matera and Circle advances the concept of a “stablecoin-ready banking platform” building bridges between traditional and digital money. More than just innovation, this is the foundation of a new global financial architecture—interoperable, inclusive, and readily available.