ai agent

Anthropic’s Claude AI became a terrible business owner in experiment that got ‘weird’

AI /

For those of you wondering if AI agents can truly replace human workers, do yourself a favor and read the blog post that documents Anthropic’s “Project Vend.” Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make […]

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Conveyor uses AI to automate the painful process of vendor security reviews and RFPs with AI

Enterprise /

Selling software to companies is such a time-consuming process. Even after customers are convinced a product is right for their organization, they still need to ensure the software meets all their security requirements. Chas Ballew realized just how painfully slow and tedious the vendor security and compliance review process was when he was running Aptible,

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Google rolls out Project Mariner, its web-browsing AI agent

AI /

Google announced during Google I/O 2025 that it’s rolling out Project Mariner, the company’s experimental AI agent that browses and uses websites, to more users and developers. Google also says it’s significantly updated how Project Mariner works, allowing the agent to take on nearly a dozen tasks at a time. U.S. subscribers to Google’s new

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Airbnb is quietly rolling out an AI customer service bot in the US

Apps /

Airbnb started rolling out an AI-powered customer service bot in the U.S. last month, CEO Brian Chesky said during the firm’s first-quarter conference call on Thursday. Chesky said 50% of Airbnb’s U.S. users are already using the AI bot for customer service, adding that the company plans to roll out the feature to all its

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Chinese AI startup Manus reportedly gets funding from Benchmark at $500M valuation

AI /

Chinese startup Manus AI, which works on building tools related to AI agents, has picked up $75 million in a funding round led by Benchmark at a roughly $500 million valuation, according to Bloomberg. The company will use the money to expand to new markets, including the U.S., Japan, and the Middle East, Bloomberg noted,

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Twin’s first AI agent is an invoice retrieval agent for Qonto customers

AI /

When Twin came out of stealth in January 2024, AI agents were more of a theoretical concept than a reality. Today, the Paris-based is releasing an automation agent in partnership with Qonto, the fintech startup that offers business bank accounts to more than 500,000 customers across Europe. If you want to automate repetitive tasks, there

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Outreach founder Manny Medina has a new startup that helps AI agents get paid

AI /

As the year of the AI agent takes shape, a new trend is emerging: startups offering the picks and shovels that help employers build a workforce of bots. Manny Medina, best known as the founder and former CEO of the $4.4 billion valued sales automation company Outreach, just launched one such startup called Paid, he

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Browser Use, the tool making it easier for AI ‘agents’ to navigate websites, raises $17M

AI /

We may not have an agreed-upon definition of AI “agent” yet, but a multitude of startups want to create “agentic” tools to automate various tasks online. One such firm, Browser Use, has attracted a ton of interest from developers and investors thanks to its solution that makes websites more “readable” for AI agents. Browser Use

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A job ad for Y Combinator startup Firecrawl seeks to hire an AI agent for $15K a year

AI /

Last week, an ad from the Y Combinator job board for a tiny startup called Firecrawl went viral on X.  That’s because the ad wasn’t for a human. “Please apply only if you are an AI agent, or if you created an AI agent that can fill this job,” the job posting read.  The seven-person

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