Following the web redesign and other changes, Google is introducing a new prompt bar for the Gemini app on Android and iOS. Gemini is going from a pill-shaped text field to a rounded rectangle (even before you enter text). Underneath the “Ask Gemini” field, you get a row of actions, starting with the ‘plus’ menu that’s now much shorter. You just get Camera, Gallery, Files, and Drive in this bottom sheet. Next up are pill-shaped buttons for “Research” and “Canvas.” Tap the three-dot icon in a circle to see those items in list form with brief descriptions, as well as “Video” (Veo 2 generation). Chips will stay highlighted upon tap. Deep Research: Get in-depth reports; Canvas: Create docs and code; Video: Generate with Veo. If you open the model picker, Google has removed Deep Research and Veo 2 (for Advanced subscribers). They are better thought of as Gemini capabilities than general-purpose models, with the new chips having the benefit of being always visible. As such, the menu is now down to four models: 2.0 Flash: Fast all-around help; 2.5 Flash (preview): Our next reasoning model built for speed; 2.5 Pro (preview): Reasoning, math & code; Personalization (preview): Based on your Search history. The voice input microphone and Gemini Live button round out this prompt bar redesign. Overall, it’s not as minimalist as before, but allows Google to introduce more features and matches the web UI. It’s also rolling out to the Gemini app for iPhone and iPad. Google is using this redesign to switch to standard iOS menus.
Onboarding metrics- Time To First Value, Onboarding CSAT, Customer Outcome Achievement, and Onboarding Risks, should regularly be reported in leadership meetings and board decks
Onboarding is a critical metric in software companies, often overlooked in discussions about annual recurring revenue (ARR), churn, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and customer lifetime value (LTV). It is the first step in the customer journey and defines every subsequent experience. A great onboarding experience can reinforce customers’ decisions, while a confusing one can erode trust. Great onboarding creates upstream value, as it leads to expansion, retention, and referrals. Positive customer metrics are often downstream of onboarding, such as expansion, retention, and referrals. Companies should regularly report onboarding performance in leadership meetings and board decks, as it is an important leading indicator of customer health, revenue growth, and operational efficiency. Some onboarding metrics suggested by the author include Time To First Value, Onboarding Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Outcome Achievement, and Onboarding Risks. These metrics are not vanity metrics but early warning systems for potential issues. Onboarding should be a cross-functional effort that spans product, sales, marketing, and leadership. Product needs to ensure an intuitive experience, sales set realistic expectations, marketing supports post-sale engagement, and leadership invests in tools, processes, and people to make it work at scale. Ignoring onboarding can lead to wasted CAC, delayed launches, and dissatisfied customers. Companies that nail onboarding often see faster time to revenue recognition, higher net retention, new champions, and use cases. Treating onboarding like a mirror can help companies identify misalignment, friction, and missed opportunities. By investing in onboarding, companies can become growth engines and revenue levers, leading to better financial outcomes.
Siro’s AI-driven coaching for in-person sales teams offers real-time transcription, performance analytics, and industry-specific training models
Startup Siro has secured $50 million in a Series B round led by SignalFire with participation from Dick Costolo and Adam Bain’s VC firm 01 Advisors. Siro transcribes sales meetings via an app. Features include a company-wide dashboard where sales folks can submit successful calls and sort them by engagement from peers, allowing other reps to listen to top calls and get insights about improving on-ground sales visits. Siro trains models for specific industry verticals — for example, for HVAC sales coaching. The company also uses a general-purpose model to gauge how a salesperson is building rapport and handling rejections. Wayne Hu, a partner at SignalFire, said that the VC firm always wants to invest in companies that have a strong business advantage in data for particular segments. “Siro’s solution is helping digitize the ‘dark matter’ of offline conversations comprising field sales engagements, which has broad extensibility across verticals and depth in downstream actions that can be instrumented from this data, such as customer and product insights,” he told.
Qualified unveils Spotlight: The industry’s first observation layer for agentic B2B marketing- understanding each lead—who they are, which role they hold, and where they are in the buying journey
Qualified, the agentic marketing platform with the world’s leading AI SDR agent, will unveil Spotlight, the industry’s first observation layer for agentic marketing. Spotlight offers customers a new contextual view of Piper the AI SDR Agent. B2B marketers can now see AI transparency in action, including how Piper thinks, reasons, and strategizes for every unique buyer, as she autonomously generates pipeline at scale. This innovation ensures trust and confidence as marketers integrate AI agents into their teams and workflows. No two user Spotlights are the same—Piper formulates a unique game plan for every buyer, executing hundreds of thousands of strategies simultaneously to maximize conversion. Qualified’s first-of-its-kind Agentic Marketing Platform helps marketers leverage agents to drive scalable pipeline generation. At its center sits Piper the AI SDR Agent, who engages with and converts all qualified leads, autonomously and at scale. With Spotlight, marketers can observe: Lead Context: Piper the AI SDR Agent understands each lead—who they are, which role they hold, and where they are in the buying journey—informing tailored selling experiences. Account Context: Piper understands key account data—their segment, buying committee, and level of intent—delivering an account-based sales motion; Piper rolls lead and account data into one unified view, helping her sell to the whole buyer versus separate leads and accounts. Behavior Monitoring: Piper tracks how buyers are engaging across the website, email inbox, and online, and adjusts her strategy accordingly. Goals and Guardrails: Piper operates toward specific goals for each unique buyer and within the guardrails outlined by marketing, working towards targets of meetings booked and pipeline generated.
Vercel’s AI model enables creating independent, scalable web-based checkout systems on developers’ own domains by offering customisable template with frontend components through API
The team behind Vercel’s V0, an AI-powered platform for web creation, has developed an AI model it claims excels at certain website development tasks. Available through an API, the model, called “v0-1.0-md,” can be prompted with text or images, and was “optimized for front-end and full-stack web development,” the Vercel team says. Currently in beta, it requires a V0 Premium plan ($20 per month) or Team plan ($30 per user per month) with usage-based billing enabled. Vercel’s model can “auto-fix” common coding issues, the Vercel team says, and it’s compatible with tools and SDKs that support OpenAI’s API format. Evaluated on web development frameworks like Next.js, the model can ingest up to 128,000 tokens in one go. The launch of V0’s model comes as more developers and companies look to adopt AI-powered tools for programming.
Korl’s AI agent for sales teams creates customized presentations for customers by understanding the strengths and outcomes of each product, and then matching this understanding with the needs of each customer
Customer success software startup Korl is on a mission to help businesses of all sizes unlock more revenue growth opportunities after raising $5 million in seed funding to coincide with the general availability of its platform. The startup is leveraging AI to help companies better communicate the value of their products and services to customers, so they can use whatever insights it pulls up to increase sales. To do this, it has built a novel “presentation agent” that creates customized presentations for customers at critical milestones, such as executive business reviews and renewal conversations. The agent works by crafting a presentation that addresses each customer’s top concerns, highlighting how the company’s products and services can make a difference. In some ways, it can be thought of as a bridge between a company’s internal tools and its communication strategy, guiding the way it talks to customers. It attempts to understand the strengths of each product and the outcomes it can generate, and then matches this understanding with the needs of each customer. For instance, it will assess the customer’s business priorities, usage history and lifecycle stage, so companies can better understand how they’re able to help them.
Google Pay’s redesign of the pay sheet to now display rich card art and names to make cards more easily identifiable and speed up selection
Google I/O recently announced several updates to its Google Pay payment service, including a redesign of the pay sheet, which appears when transactions are made with stored cards in third-party apps. The pay sheet now displays rich card art and names, enhancing card identification and speeding up selection. The UI has also been optimized for dark mode. Additionally, Pay will now work on Android WebViews, allowing purchases to be made in in-app browsers starting with Chrome version 136. Google Wallet also introduced a new Nearby Passes notification feature, notifying users about tickets or passes when they’re close to a relevant location.
Nord Quantique’s multimode encoding uses bosonic qubit technology that detect leakage errors to remove the qubit from the encoding space to enable building fault-tolerant quantum computers at utility scale
Nord Quantique has successfully developed bosonic qubit technology with multimode encoding, outlining a path to a significant reduction in the number of qubits required for quantum error correction. This provides the system protection against many common types of errors, including bit flips, phase flips, and control errors. Another key advantage over single-mode encoding is that leakage errors, which remove the qubit from the encoding space, can now be detected and corrected. The Tesseract code allows for increased error detection, and it is expected that this will translate into additional quantum error correction benefits as more modes are added. These results are therefore a key stepping stone in the development of this hardware-efficient approach. The core concept of the multimode approach centres on simultaneously using multiple quantum modes to encode individual qubits. Each mode represents a different resonance frequency inside an aluminium cavity and offers additional redundancy, which protects quantum information.
Shopify imagines an interface “where you can quickly shift between talking, typing, clicking, and even drawing to instruct software, like moving around a whiteboard in a dynamic conversation”
Shopify’s new chief design officer Carl Rivera believes that, in the very near future, the e-commerce platform’s user experience is going to feel like sci-fi and designers are at the center of it. His new position directly responds to industry skepticism about design’s relevance in an AI-driven landscape. “Imagine an interface where you can quickly shift between talking, typing, clicking, and even drawing to instruct software, like moving around a whiteboard in a dynamic conversation,” Carl Rivera says. An experience in which users are not presented with a barrage of nested menus, but with a blank canvas that invites creativity aided by an artificial intelligence that knows everything there is to know about online and brick-and-mortar retail and marketing. A fluid interface that adapts and anticipates your needs, automating tasks and recommending actions like the most brilliant partner you could dream of.
CSI partners digital engagement provider WaveCX to enable banks to deliver tailored marketing, tutorials and educational experiences based on user behavior directly within their banking apps
WaveCX, provider of personalized, digital product engagement solutions for financial institutions, announced a strategic partnership with CSI, provider of end-to-end financial software and technology. Through this integration, CSI clients using the NuPoint® and Meridian® core platforms are equipped to increase digital adoption and deliver more dynamic customer experiences directly within their banking applications. The partnership opens new possibilities for customer engagement within digital banking environments, allowing financial institutions to go beyond traditional marketing channels. With WaveCX, CSI clients can now: Deliver tailored in-app marketing and educational experiences based on user behavior; Promote awareness and adoption of underutilized digital features; Proactively guide users with contextual messages, tutorials and announcements at the point of need. Jon Tvrdik, CEO of WaveCX “By reaching users directly inside the app, banks and credit unions can increase adoption, improve education, and ultimately drive stronger engagement and loyalty.”