Basis secured $100M in Series B funding at a $1.15B valuation to expand AI agents in tax, audit, and accounting workflows.

Major venture capital firms investing in OpenAI are also backing Anthropic, signaling a decline in investor loyalty as competition in the AI sector intensifies. Firms like BlackRock exemplify this trend, with overlapping investments despite potential conflicts.

{
“summary”: “The article outlines various funding opportunities and competitions at the University of Oxford for students, alumni, and researchers, including grants for entrepreneurship events, startup incubators, and research commercialization support.”,
“why”: “A software developer building AI tools should care because these funding and resource programs can provide critical financial and mentorship support to advance their AI projects from concept to market.”,
“tags”: “funding, entrepreneurship, Oxford”
}
“`

Slang AI secured $36M in Series B funding led by USVP to scale its voice AI platform for restaurants and hospitality venues.

Nimble, a startup focused on AI agents for real-time web data, raised $47 million to enhance its platform, which structures web search results into queryable tables for enterprise use, addressing challenges like hallucinations and unreliable sources in AI outputs.

{
“summary”: “The article outlines a 2026 guide for UK startups to access grants and non-dilutive funding, emphasizing R&D tax relief, innovation grants, and strategic resources like GrantTree’s tools for navigating funding opportunities.”,
“why”: “A software developer building AI tools should care because R&D tax relief and innovation grants provide critical, equity-free funding to support AI development, which is often research-intensive.”,
“tags”: “UK startups, grants, R&D tax relief”
}
“`

Canva acquired Cavalry, an animation startup, and Mango AI, a reinforcement learning-focused ad optimization firm, to expand its creative suite. The move aims to integrate motion editing into Canva’s Affinity platform and enhance ad performance tools, creating a comprehensive Creative OS for professionals.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 offers a platform for tech professionals to gain strategic insights, network with investors, and secure deals, with early registration discounts ending soon.

Anthropic launched a new enterprise agents program with plugins for finance, engineering, and design, aiming to simplify deployment and expand their client base while challenging existing SaaS solutions. The initiative builds on existing tools like Claude Cowork and focuses on controlled data flows and private marketplaces for businesses.

New Relic launched a no-code AI agent platform to help enterprises monitor data and detect issues using pre-built agents and external data integration via MCP. The platform emphasizes collaboration with existing tools rather than competing as a standalone solution.

Google Cloud’s AI leads highlight three key frontiers for model development: raw intelligence, response time, and cost-effectiveness at scale, emphasizing the importance of balancing these factors for enterprise AI deployment.

OpenAI has partnered with consulting giants like BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini to expand its enterprise business through the ‘Frontier Alliances,’ leveraging their expertise to integrate OpenAI’s AI tools, such as the no-code OpenAI Frontier platform, into corporate workflows. This collaboration aims to drive large-scale AI adoption by aligning technology with strategic business processes.