Edition, Thu, 08 Oct 2026.

Nous Research confirms $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business

The maker of the open source Hermes Agent raised a $90M Series B led by Robot Ventures, with participation from Nvidia and 1789 Capital.

The maker of the open source Hermes Agent raised a $90M Series B led by Robot Ventures, with participation from Nvidia and 1789 Capital.

Nous Research, the startup behind the open source Hermes Agent, confirmed a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, bringing its total funding to $158 million. The round was led by Robot Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung, and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.

The capital funds a push into the enterprise with "Hermes for Businesses," letting companies deploy customized AI agents for multi-step workflows while keeping data private. Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and drives roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage, and the company had about $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026, with The Wall Street Journal reporting it expects to pass $100 million before year end.

Anthropic ships Claude Haiku 5.5 at GPT-6 Luna's price

The new fast model undercuts the previous Haiku tenfold and matches OpenAI's pricing for the first time.

The new fast model undercuts the previous Haiku tenfold and matches OpenAI's pricing for the first time.

Anthropic launched Claude Haiku 5.5, billed as its fastest and most affordable model yet, at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100k tokens, exactly matching GPT-6 Luna's sticker price. That is a steep drop from Haiku 4.5's $1/$5 pricing, and the model reports higher benchmark scores than GPT-6 Luna for sub-100k-token workloads.

There is a hidden cost in the fine print: Haiku 5.5 uses a less generous tokenizer, consuming about 1.25x more tokens for the same prompt than Haiku 4.5, and its reasoning cannot be disabled, with a default effort level of medium. Anthropic also introduced monthly API credits for Claude subscribers ($100 for Max 5x, $200 for Max 20x, up to $500 pooled for Team) and halved Sonnet 5.5 cache read prices.

ChatGPT's "Intelligent UI" fills responses with pictures, charts, and buttons

OpenAI is rolling the feature out to all users alongside GPT-6, which was trained to decide when visuals beat text.

OpenAI is rolling the feature out to all users alongside GPT-6, which was trained to decide when visuals beat text.

OpenAI is launching an "Intelligent UI" feature in ChatGPT that lets the chatbot pair its text answers with interactive visuals: diagrams, charts, forms, and tappable buttons. In OpenAI's examples, asking about the design of a seven-speed bicycle returns an annotated diagram with buttons that highlight different parts, and the model can generate tools inline, such as a retirement savings calculator, retro game, or bill splitter.

OpenAI says it trained GPT-6 to judge when to generate interactive visuals over text and how to format them. The update rolls out globally to Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers starting today, with Go and free tiers gaining access on Thursday; higher tiers get the mid-range GPT-6 Sol model while Go and free users get the more efficient GPT-6 Luna.

Microsoft gives Copilot control over Windows files with "Hybrid Intelligence"

The upgrade gives the agent access to local files and the ability to take actions across the OS, mixing local and cloud models.

The upgrade gives the agent access to local files and the ability to take actions across the OS, mixing local and cloud models.

At its Windows and Surface event in San Francisco, Microsoft previewed an upgrade to Copilot that gives it access to local files on your PC and the ability to take actions across the operating system. The company calls the approach "Hybrid Intelligence," in which apps and tools rely on a mix of local and cloud AI models to accomplish tasks efficiently.

In an onstage demo, Microsoft EVP of Copilot Jacob Andreou asked its Autopilot tool to handle an email from his accountant asking for tax documents. Autopilot searched across folders, renamed the files, zipped them, and drafted a reply email with the archive attached. Hybrid Intelligence features are coming to Copilot over the next couple of months, and the event also showed a revamped Windows search with quick actions like adjusting volume or sending a text, arriving this fall on Windows 11.

Joe Rogan and Spotify renew a roughly $250M podcast deal

The world's number-one show is locking in another multi-year agreement.

The world's number-one show is locking in another multi-year agreement.

Spotify has renewed its licensing agreement with Joe Rogan, whose The Joe Rogan Experience remains the number one show on the platform and, per the company, in the world. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the multi-year deal is valued at around $250 million and keeps new JRE episodes appearing on Spotify and other platforms each week.

The renewal extends a relationship that began in 2020 with an exclusive streaming agreement and later expanded to YouTube and Apple under a 2024 deal. Spotify said the show "remains a defining show on Spotify, with a massive global audience and a format built around the wide-ranging, long-form conversations that have become its signature," six years after the original partnership.

ServiceNow launches AI Workflow Factory and Autonomous Engineer in India

the company unveiled a new agentic AI platform designed to turn enterprise AI from isolated pilots into continuously improving, governed business workflows.

the company unveiled a new agentic AI platform designed to turn enterprise AI from isolated pilots into continuously improving, governed business workflows.

ServiceNow announced AI Workflow Factory and Autonomous Engineer at the World Forum Mumbai on October 6, positioning the products as the answer to the "AI execution gap" that many enterprises face. The AI Workflow Factory creates a continuous improvement loop that ties Process Mining to the Autonomous Engineer (which performs autonomous planning, building, and testing via "unattended coding") and to the App Engine that runs the new workflows at scale. All operations are governed by the ServiceNow AI Control Tower, which provides a single auditable view of AI assets, workflows, decisions, and agent actions.

The launch is a major strategic signal: ServiceNow is moving beyond AI copilots that assist humans toward AI agents that autonomously execute cross-system business processes. Indian enterprises have grown their AI investment 119% in a single year, according to ServiceNow's 2026 Enterprise AI Maturity Index, making India a key market for the rollout. AI Workflow Factory is globally available now; Autonomous Engineer is available via an early-access program.

ServiceNow schedules Q3 2026 earnings for October 28

the company will release third-quarter financial results after market close on Wednesday, with a conference call and live webcast to follow.

the company will release third-quarter financial results after market close on Wednesday, with a conference call and live webcast to follow.

The earnings call will begin at 2 p.m. Pacific (21:00 GMT) on October 28, 2026. Dial-in numbers and a webcast link will be available through the ServiceNow investor relations page. The quarter closed September 30, 2026. Analysts will be watching closely for how recent acquisitions (Armis, Veza, and Moveworks) are affecting margins and how AI ACV is tracking against the company's $1.5 billion 2026 target.

Wall Street's outlier target puts ServiceNow at 82% upside despite 25% crash

Bernstein set a $248 price target on NOW, far above consensus, betting on AI monetization and platform consolidation even as the stock trades down 25% year-over-year.

Bernstein set a $248 price target on NOW, far above consensus, betting on AI monetization and platform consolidation even as the stock trades down 25% year-over-year.

ServiceNow shares are trading around $136 after shedding more than a quarter of their value in the past 12 months, dragged by fears that generative AI could commoditize SaaS, margin compression from recent acquisitions, and a federal revenue pull-forward that makes the Q3 comparison tough. Operating income fell 55% year-over-year in Q2, and GAAP subscription gross margin slipped to 73.5% from 80%. Yet Bernstein's Peter Weed sees a path to $248, based on three theses: AI copilots generating significant revenue across IT, customer service, and HR workflows; CIOs consolidating more software onto the Now Platform; and 20%+ ACV growth with expanding margins. AI ACV alone already exceeded $1 billion in the latest quarter, and the company is on track for $1.5 billion by year-end. Agentic AI adoption has grown 9x over nine months across the customer base. Of the 49 analysts covering NOW, 45 recommend Buy or Outperform.