Keyfactor has acquired InfoSec Global and CipherInsights to further expand cryptographic posture management and quantum readiness. The acquisitions enable Keyfactor to deliver deep cryptographic asset discovery, real-time risk monitoring, and seamless transition to quantum-safe standards. With these acquisitions, Keyfactor is addressing the critical gap in cryptographic observability, helping organizations take control of their non-human identities and prepare for the next era of secure infrastructure. Key capabilities include AgileSec Analytics for deep cryptographic visibility, AgileSec Agility for managing and updating cryptography without source code changes, and CipherInsights for real-time passive network monitoring of cryptographic risks. Customers will benefit from enhanced capabilities that will empower security teams to take control of their cryptographic landscape including Comprehensive Visibility; Actionable Intelligence; Risk Remediation.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales to draw seller activity data from revenue intelligence platform Gong to enable sales leaders to prepare reports faster
Gong is partnering with Microsoft to integrate Gong’s revenue AI platform with Microsoft’s trusted productivity applications and Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents ecosystem. The integration will redefine how revenue teams drive growth and efficiency by bringing Gong’s context-rich customer interaction data and AI-powered revenue insights directly into the tools go-to-market teams use every day, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook. Additionally, joint customers will benefit from the ability to create custom agents connected to Gong data which can automate custom workflows within Microsoft 365 Copilot. The integrations announced today will deliver insights and automation capabilities to joint customers, including: Integrated Revenue Insights Across Microsoft 365; and Custom Autonomous Agents via Microsoft Copilot Studio. These capabilities extend the existing Gong and Microsoft integrations, including a new bi-directional data synchronization between Gong and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. It provides enriched context in Dynamics 365 Sales drawn from Gong activity data like calls, emails, next steps, and key discussion points. With seller activity fully synced and enriched in Dynamics 365 Sales, Revenue Operations can run cleaner reports, sales leaders can prepare faster, and it’s easy to spot accounts at risk due to inactivity. For Gong customers, it means their most important customer signals are accessible directly in Dynamics 365 Sales, allowing them to drive revenue motions with confidence in the accuracy and completeness of the data.
Procurify’s spend management platform extends use of AI across the entire spend lifecycle — from extracting data from receipts, contracts, and invoices, to surfacing up-to-date insights
Procurify, the AI-powered spend management platform for the mid-market, announced Spend Insights, a new analytics feature that empowers finance and procurement teams to make faster, smarter decisions by turning spend data into actionable intelligence. By centralizing company-wide spend data and layering in AI-powered analysis, Spend Insights delivers up-to-date visibility into purchasing, expenses, and accounts payable — helping leaders uncover trends, flag anomalies, and control spend with confidence. Spend Insights combines interactive dashboards with a conversational AI assistant, Spend Analyst, allowing users to query and understand their data using natural language prompts. With instant access to spend data across purchasing, expenses, and AP, teams can quickly surface trends, catch anomalies early, and act with greater speed and confidence, without waiting on reports or juggling disconnected tools. “Spend Insights shows what’s possible when you bring AI and analytics together,” said Chad Gaydos, CEO of Procurify. “It extends our use of AI across the entire spend lifecycle — from extracting data from receipts, contracts, and invoices, to surfacing up-to-date insights that drive smarter, faster decisions. This is the future of agile finance — and we’re building it today.”
Apple’s 20th anniversary iPhone to use an OLED driver display chip (DDI) and possibly eliminating the bezel completely
Apple’s 20th-anniversary model of iPhone is in development, with screen and battery changes expected for the milestone model. For its 2027 release, which marks the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, the company has started to make preparations for the special smartphone. One of the major updates Apple is planning is the use of an OLED driver display chip (DDI) based on the FinFET’s 3D structure. The chip, which issues instructions to the pixels of the display, is currently produced using a 28-nanometer planar process, with the FinFET switch using a 16-nanometer method instead. The change will help reduce the amount of power consumed by the display, alongside the use of high-luminous efficiency OLED elements. This all-new design will be more power-efficient. Supply chain talks with LG Display and Samsung Display, Apple’s chief screen supply chain partners, are expected soon to discuss the tech changes. This may not be the only display change, as a source says that four-sided bending display technologies are being developed as well as under-display cameras. If they can be commercialized, they can make a big change to how the displays are made, including eliminating the bezel completely. While the new display should reduce power consumption at a time when on-device AI processing such as Apple Intelligence needs even more, there can be more power changes as well. The use of a pure silicon battery is also a prospect. The idea is that the use of 100% silicon as a cathode instead of graphite could considerably increase the energy density, so it can hold more power in the cell. A secondary benefit is an improvement to battery endurance. A battery that is more hardy and deteriorates at a slower rate than current-gen versions, meaning users will have more usage of the entire capacity for longer.
Bardeen’s work intelligence platform securely observes task-level behavior across all tools, and automates entire workflows with agentic AI
Bardeen, a provider of AI agents capable of automating repetitive knowledge work using a natural language interface, unveiled its Work Intelligence Platform—a new system of AI agents that learn how work actually happens, then executes and improves it without any hand-holding. True operational intelligence is capable of identifying how top performers work and scaling that knowledge across an organization. With its Work Intelligence Platform, Bardeen is bringing that level of understanding to the broader market, making go-to-market execution consistent and scalable. The new platform is underscored by Bardeen’s belief that automation should interpret before it acts, and that the next generation of AI should understand how work happens and improves it in real-time. Bardeen’s Work Intelligence Platform: Securely observes task-level behavior across all tools, including Salesforce, LinkedIn, Salesloft, and HubSpot, and reveals how individuals and teams actually work; Surfaces hidden workflows, exposes time sinks and inefficiencies, and highlights high-leverage patterns that drive performance; Automates entire workflows with AI-generated automation agents tailored to the way teams already work
DarkBench is the first benchmark designed specifically to detect and categorize LLM dark patterns, AI sycophancy, brand bias or emotional mirroring
Esben Kran, founder of AI safety research firm Apart Research, and his team approach large language models (LLMs) much like psychologists studying human behavior. Their early “black box psychology” projects analyzed models as if they were human subjects, identifying recurring traits and tendencies in their interactions with users. “We saw that there were very clear indications that models could be analyzed in this frame, and it was very valuable to do so, because you end up getting a lot of valid feedback from how they behave towards users,” said Kran. Among the most alarming: sycophancy and what the researchers now call LLM dark patterns. Kran describes the ChatGPT-4o incident as an early warning. As AI developers chase profit and user engagement, they may be incentivized to introduce or tolerate behaviors like sycophancy, brand bias or emotional mirroring—features that make chatbots more persuasive and more manipulative. To combat the threat of manipulative AIs, Kran and a collective of AI safety researchers have developed DarkBench, the first benchmark designed specifically to detect and categorize LLM dark patterns. Their research uncovered a range of manipulative and untruthful behaviors across the following six categories: Brand Bias, User Retention, Sycophancy, Anthropomorphism, Harmful Content Generation, and Sneaking. On average, the researchers found the Claude 3 family the safest for users to interact with. And interestingly—despite its recent disastrous update—GPT-4o exhibited the lowest rate of sycophancy. This underscores how model behavior can shift dramatically even between minor updates, a reminder that each deployment must be assessed individually. A crucial DarkBench contribution is its precise categorization of LLM dark patterns, enabling clear distinctions between hallucinations and strategic manipulation. Labeling everything as a hallucination lets AI developers off the hook. Now, with a framework in place, stakeholders can demand transparency and accountability when models behave in ways that benefit their creators, intentionally or not.
BlockFills on-chain execution platform to enhance its automated DeFi trade execution capabilities on behalf of institutional and VC clients
BlockFills has deployed Definitive’s advanced on-chain execution platform to enhance its automated trade execution capabilities on behalf of institutional and venture capital (VC) clients and expand the variety of tokens BlockFills can trade on behalf of its clients. The partnership brings new benefits to clients of both firms. Patrick Zielbauer, Managing Director of Sales at BlockFills, said: “Definitive’s platform gives us an incredibly powerful tool to offer clients – including asset managers, hedge funds and VC firms – the ability to smoothly and efficiently enter or exit an altcoin position or token while protecting their anonymity and minimizing market impact. As a result of the partnership, we’re finding that even in the weeks since we deployed the platform, clients have brought more order flow to us, enabling them to take or exit from a significant position in even the most illiquid tokens, memecoins or other assets generally considered difficult to trade in nontrivial sizes.” Jai Prasad, Co-Founder of Definitive, said “Our platform uses sophisticated trade algorithms that aggregate liquidity across liquidity pools on multiple chains and optimize trades to leverage the deepest liquidity, minimize price impact and achieve superior execution for on-chain transactions. While our platform is enhancing BlockFills’ capabilities offered to its clients, our clients and prospects that require access to deep OTC liquidity in the spot, derivatives* and lending markets can turn to BlockFills to augment and enhance their on-chain trading activities.”
Mastercard and MoonPay team to promote stablecoin payments in an API-driven implementation letting businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently
Mastercard has launched a stablecoin-focused partnership with cryptocurrency payments FinTech MoonPay. The collaboration will allow consumers and businesses to send and receive stablecoin payments across global markets. Companies and FinTechs will be able to employ Mastercard-branded cards linked to users’ stablecoin balances, allowing cardholders to spend their stablecoins, which will simultaneously be converted to fiat currency, at more than 150 million locations where Mastercard is accepted around the world. “By providing solutions that unlock stablecoin utility and ubiquity, we are redefining how money moves globally and driving a shift in payments as we know it,” Scott Abrahams, executive vice president, Global Partnerships at Mastercard, said. T he partnership will leverage the API-driven stablecoin infrastructure from Iron, acquired by MoonPay in March, to facilitate stablecoin transactions, turning “crypto wallets into new digital bank accounts for seamless global transactions.” This will let businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently, improving cross-border money transfers, and help businesses offer stablecoin-based payouts to gig workers, contractors and creators.
Allvue Agentic AI Platform supports alternatives industry for system navigation product documentation, querying portfolio data, interpreting compliance rules, surfacing trade and research insights, and creating investment tear sheets
Allvue Systems launched Allvue Agentic AI Platform, the first agentic AI platform purpose-built for the alternatives market. Designed to transform how investment professionals interact with technology, the Allvue Agentic AI Platform blends intelligent workflow automation with relevant context to deliver faster, smarter, and more intuitive decision-making across the investment lifecycle to help firms scale and deliver optimized returns to GPs. Allvue’s Agentic AI Platform is developed with the highest standards of enterprise security, data privacy, and model governance. Key protections include: Data Privacy & Isolation, Model Isolation; and Secure API & Access Controls. Allvue is also launching Andi, Allvue’s AI assistant, a browser-based knowledge agent that provides on-demand product guidance and navigation support across Allvue’s Credit Front Office suite. Initially focused on system navigation and product documentation, the Andi AI assistant will evolve to support more advanced use cases—such as querying portfolio data, interpreting compliance rules, surfacing trade and research insights, and creating investment tear sheets. Embedded directly into product headers and browser environments, the Andi AI assistant enables users to query product documentation, navigate complex workflows, and surface critical insights using natural language in a contextual, secure and seamless experience. Core Andi AI capabilities include: Seamless Installation, Flexible Interface, Context-Aware Intelligence, Guided Discovery, Continuous Learning, Data Querying (Upcoming).
Acorns acquires EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform that allows families and friends to gift investments to children while preserving memories through a digital time capsule
Savings and investing startup Acorns has acquired EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform for families. As part of the acquisition, EarlyBird will shut down, and all customer accounts will officially close on June 23. Customers’ funds will be returned to the bank account connected to their account. EarlyBird’s app allowed families and friends to gift investments to children while preserving memories through a digital time capsule. The investments would become the child’s once they turned 18, and they could use funds for things like paying for college, paying a down payment on a home, or seeding their first business. Acorns Early offers a debit card designed for kids and teens to help them develop financial literacy and manage their money. The company launched Acorns Early following its acquisition of GoHenry, a startup focused on providing money management and financial education services to 6- to 18-year-olds. Existing EarlyBird customers will be offered a free one-year subscription to “Acorns Gold,” a plan that offers access to all Acorns products, including Acorns Early. Customers will receive an email detailing the sign-up process. EarlyBird users will not be able to transfer their EarlyBird funds over to Acorns Early. If users want to continue their investing journey with Acorns, they need to withdraw their funds from EarlyBird and open a new account with Acorns. The company plans to integrate EarlyBird’s digital time capsule feature into the Acorns Early app at a later date. On EarlyBird, the feature allowed users to build out time capsules by recording videos at memorable moments in their lives.