DeFi platform Drift, which lost about $270 million in client assets in a North Korean hack, has raised $147.5 million from Tether and partners. The funding is intended to help repay customers and relaunch the platform with Tether stablecoin at its core.
Finextra ↗The UK Financial Conduct Authority and the Alan Turing Institute have created a synthetic dataset to support innovation in money laundering detection. The project is aimed at helping firms test and improve detection methods without using sensitive real customer data.
Finextra ↗Finextra and FICO released a new global survey report on how AI is changing fraud trends and fraud management tactics. The report is a research publication focused on industry views rather than a regulatory action or enforcement event.
Finextra ↗Danish fintech Spektr has raised $20 million in Series A funding to expand its AI infrastructure platform for compliance in financial services. The company plans to use the capital to develop its product and strengthen its compliance technology offering.
Finextra ↗American Express plans to acquire Hyper, an agentic AI expense management startup. The deal is intended to strengthen AmEx’s AI capabilities, and terms were not disclosed.
Finextra ↗Anthropic plans to make its Mythos cybersecurity product available to top UK financial institutions within the next week. The move highlights continued adoption of AI tools by banks for security and compliance-related use cases.
Finextra ↗The SEC has issued a concept release asking for public comment on the Consolidated Audit Trail and other market audit data sources. The review is intended to assess how these tools are used in regulating U.S. securities markets.
Finextra ↗Charles Schwab announced Schwab Crypto, a spot crypto trading product for retail clients. The rollout will begin in phases over the coming weeks.
Finextra ↗Alkami Technology announced Alkami Code Studio, a new AI-powered development capability for its digital sales and service platform. The release highlights the company’s continued investment in generative AI and open architecture for financial institutions.
Finextra ↗Slash Financial, a business banking fintech founded by Gen Z entrepreneurs, has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round. The funding has pushed the company to unicorn status, highlighting continued investor interest in fintech infrastructure.
Finextra ↗Google Research discusses how to design synthetic datasets that better reflect real-world conditions. The post focuses on mechanism design and first-principles reasoning as ways to improve generative AI training data.
Google Research ↗Factory, a three-year-old startup focused on AI coding tools for enterprises, raised $150 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures. The funding values the company at $1.5 billion and signals continued investor interest in enterprise AI development tools.
TechCrunch ↗Upscale AI is reportedly in talks to raise another funding round at a $2 billion valuation. The AI infrastructure company has already raised twice since launching seven months ago, highlighting rapid investor interest in the sector.
TechCrunch ↗Physical Intelligence says its new model, π0.7, can figure out tasks it was never explicitly taught. The company describes it as an early but meaningful step toward a general-purpose robot brain for robotics.
TechCrunch ↗OpenAI has significantly expanded its Codex agentic coding tool with new capabilities that give it more control over a user’s desktop. The update appears aimed at strengthening OpenAI’s position against Anthropic in the AI coding tools market.
TechCrunch ↗Anthropic’s chief product officer has left Figma’s board after reports that he may launch a competing design product. The move adds to investor concerns that major AI labs could increasingly challenge established software companies.
TechCrunch ↗InsightFinder raised $15 million to help companies identify where AI agents and the broader AI-enabled tech stack fail. The company says the challenge is shifting from monitoring individual models to diagnosing how the full system behaves when AI is embedded in it.
TechCrunch ↗Adobe reports that AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites rose sharply in the first quarter and continued climbing in March. The visitors converted better than non-AI shoppers, generating more revenue for retailers.
TechCrunch ↗Roblox is expanding its AI assistant with new agentic tools that can help creators plan, build, and test games. The update is aimed at supporting the full development workflow for game creation on the platform.
TechCrunch ↗Google says it blocked 8.3 billion ads in 2025 while suspending fewer advertisers. The shift suggests AI is helping the company catch policy-violating ads more precisely without relying as much on account bans.
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