Follow the developments that change your market view.

Microsoft Reveals AI-Centric Windows Plans for Agents

The Pragmatic Engineer interviews Microsoft Windows team executives about their strategy to integrate AI and agentic capabilities into the operating system. Key features include agent identity via Entra ID, a registry for MCP tools (ODR), an isolation mechanism for agent tools (MXC), a new hardware abstraction layer for local AI models (Windows ML), and embedded small language models (SLMs). Microsoft aims to win back developers by addressing past criticisms and supporting Linux via WSL. The article includes market share data showing Windows declining among developers, and highlights partnerships with NVIDIA for on-device AI performance.

• •Microsoft plans native agent identification using Entra ID and an On-Device Agent Registry (ODR) for MCP tools.
• •Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) provide cross-platform isolation for agent tools with configurable containment policies.
• •Windows ML is a new hardware-agnostic layer for running local AI models across GPU, NPU, and CPU, based on ONNX runtime.

Meta's Muse AI agent sees rapid adoption, shifts AI trade focus

Meta Platforms' new AI agent, Muse, has achieved rapid early adoption with over 2.5 million global downloads in its first two weeks, surpassing competitors like Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. According to UBS, it is also outpacing OpenAI's ChatGPT in iOS mobile downloads. This success is shifting Wall Street's focus from enterprise AI to consumer AI agents, with analysts like Morgan Stanley highlighting a potential $30 trillion in digitizable consumer spending. The rise of Muse has also created friction, as Amazon reportedly blocked the agent on its platform. Analysts suggest it could increase subscription cancellations, impacting services like The New York Times. Meta's cloud business plans may be affected as the company prioritizes consumer AI.

• •Meta's AI agent Muse surpassed 2.5 million global downloads in two weeks, beating Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini.
• •Muse surpassed OpenAI's ChatGPT in iOS downloads, per UBS citing Apptopia.
• •Amazon blocked Muse from operating on its website, requesting Meta remove Amazon from the experience.

Health AI Startup Heidi Raises $340M at $900M Valuation

Australian health AI startup Heidi has closed a Series C round of $100 million, led by Blackbird, with participation from Phoenix Court, Point72 Private Investments, and Headline, valuing the company at $900 million. In parallel, Heidi secured $240 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, a revenue-based instrument that covers sales and customer acquisition costs. Combined, these deals provide $340 million in fresh capital. The company has raised $436.6 million to date. Heidi, founded in Melbourne, started as an AI scribe for clinical documentation and now positions itself as an 'AI care partner'. It reports 2.8 million patient encounters per week across 190 countries. The funding will support regulatory work for advanced clinical features in Europe and the UK, and expansion in the DACH region.

• •Heidi closed a Series C round of $100 million, led by Blackbird, at a $900 million valuation.
• •Heidi secured $240 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund.
• •The combined funding of $340 million brings Heidi's total capital raised to $436.6 million.

Meta and Shopify Link Muse AI to Shop Pay

Meta and Shopify are advancing agentic commerce by enabling Meta's AI assistant, Muse, to make purchases at participating Shopify merchants via Shop Pay. This integration, announced by Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, allows Muse to handle product search, comparison, and transactions after user approval. For Shopify, this aligns with its strategy to open its commerce infrastructure to AI agents, positioning itself as a backend for agent-driven purchases. Meanwhile, Amazon has blocked Muse from executing purchases on its platform, reflecting different strategic approaches. The partnership highlights the growing importance of standardized checkout and integrated payment solutions in the emerging agentic commerce landscape.

• •Meta's AI assistant Muse will be integrated with Shopify's Shop Pay to enable purchases at participating merchants.
• •The integration was announced by Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke on X.
• •Meta had previously announced an integration with Stripe's Link for payments.

Nscale's IPO tests Wall Street's appetite for concentrated AI bets

British neocloud Nscale is preparing for an IPO on the NYSE, aiming for a $35 billion valuation and raising $3 billion. The company, spun out of Arkon Energy two years ago, has amassed over $103 billion in contracts, but 85% of that is tied to two customers: Microsoft ($43.8 billion) and Anthropic ($44.6 billion). Anthropic's deal is contingent on Nscale securing financing and meeting stringent milestones. Nscale reported revenue of $140.6 million for H1 2026, with net losses of $1.02 billion. The IPO will test investor appetite for companies with high customer concentration, a trend highlighted by a Sona Asset Management paper. Competitors include CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda, and Crusoe.

• •Nscale plans to list on NYSE with a target valuation of $35 billion.
• •The company seeks to raise $3 billion in its IPO.
• •Nscale has $103 billion in contracts, with 85% from Microsoft and Anthropic.

Grok 4.7 Launch: SpaceXAI Enhances Coding, Safety

SpaceXAI has released Grok 4.7, a new AI model focused on software development, knowledge work, and long-horizon tasks. Built on a larger foundation than Grok 4.6 and refined through extended reinforcement learning, it improves context management and output verification. Grok 4.7 scores 46 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, ranking fourth among frontier labs, and surpasses GPT-5.6 Sol on the Coding Agent Index. It also achieves strong results on CursorBench, DeepSWE, Terminal-Bench, and shows a 111 Elo improvement on AA-Briefcase. The model uses 125% more tokens per task, increasing compute costs. New safety features include a new safety stack that allows only 3.3% risky dual-use requests on HackerBench v0.3, improved malicious request rejection, and invite-only red-team access for cybersecurity partners. Grok 4.7 is available via Cursor, Grok Build, and the Grok API at unchanged pricing, with a faster variant exclusive to Cursor and Grok Build at double the cost.

• •Grok 4.7 scores 46 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing SpaceXAI 4th among AI labs.
• •It surpasses GPT-5.6 Sol on the Coding Agent Index with a score of 56 and shows a 111 Elo improvement over Grok 4.6 on AA-Briefcase.
• •Token usage per Intelligence Index task is ~81,000, up 125% from Grok 4.6, increasing compute costs.

Meta's Muse AI Agent Drives Stock Surge, Boosting Zuckerberg's Wealth by $25B

Meta's AI assistant 'Muse' has achieved rapid consumer adoption since its launch, surpassing ChatGPT in downloads with over 2.5 million total downloads within days. The success has driven Meta's stock up 11% to a new high, increasing founder Mark Zuckerberg's net worth by approximately $25 billion in a single day, crossing the $250 billion mark. Muse tops the US app store charts, outperforming competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Analysts see high monetization potential, which also boosted chip suppliers like ARM Holdings, Intel, and AMD.

• •Meta's AI assistant Muse surpassed ChatGPT with over 2.5 million downloads within days of launch.
• •Meta's stock rose 11% to $742, the highest level in 11 months, increasing Zuckerberg's wealth by about $25 billion.
• •Muse is the top free app in the US Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Sorrell's S4S Ventures Invests in AI Video Startup Higgsfield

S4S Ventures, co-founded by Sir Martin Sorrell, has invested in Higgsfield, an AI startup that enables users to create AI images and videos. Higgsfield recently closed a $400 million Series B round at a $5.4 billion valuation, led by DST Global with participation from Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Valor Capital, and Tribe Capital. S4S co-founder Sanja Partalo highlighted Higgsfield's potential to address brands' need for high-volume, fast content production. The investment underscores the growing interest in AI-driven content creation tools for marketing and advertising applications.

• •S4S Ventures, co-founded by Sir Martin Sorrell, invested in Higgsfield.
• •Higgsfield closed a $400 million Series B at a $5.4 billion valuation.
• •The Series B round was led by DST Global.

Tuning out the global noise and focusing on operations: Business leaders opt for pragmatism

New insight article published on 22 Sep 2026 discussing how business leaders are focusing on operations amid global noise.

Release 151: Epom Ad Server Now Sells Through Header Bidding

Epom Ad Server now sells your inventory through Prebid, ahead of Google Ad Manager. One line item, one script, five ways to integrate.

Verda Raises $189M to Expand AI Cloud and Compute Capacity

European AI cloud company Verda, formerly DataCrunch, has raised $189 million (€164.8 million) in Series B funding, propelling it to unicorn status with a valuation over $1 billion. The oversubscribed round was led by Emergence Capital, with participation from MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, Varma, Lifeline Ventures, 6 Degrees Capital, byFounders, Tesi, and angel investors including Ola Tørudbakken and Mark Saroufim. This brings Verda's total funding to over $450 million (€392.3 million). The company plans to scale its full-stack AI cloud, accelerate product development, multiply compute capacity, and expand internationally, including deploying Nvidia's upcoming VR200 NVL72 generation. Verda's renewable-powered data centres in Finland support its operations across Europe, the US, and Asia. The company reported an annualized revenue run rate of $165 million (€143.85 million) in July 2026, serving customers in over 50 countries.

• •Verda raised $189 million (€164.8 million) in Series B funding led by Emergence Capital.
• •The funding values Verda at over $1 billion, making it Europe's latest unicorn, with total funding exceeding $450 million (€392.3 million).
• •Investors include MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, Varma, Lifeline Ventures, 6 Degrees Capital, byFounders, Tesi, and angel investors.

AI Won’t Replace Marketers, But It Will Change What They Do

New blog post featuring Scott Brinker discussing how AI will change the role of marketers, published on 22/09/2026.

Axis's Anastasia Skliarenko Shortlisted for ExchangeWire's Ad Tech Rising Star 2026

Axis's Anastasia Skliarenko has been shortlisted for ExchangeWire's Ad Tech Rising Star 2026, as announced in a new press release on the company's newsroom.

Xiaomi MiMo-V2.6-Pro tops open-weight AI models

Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi released its MiMo-V2.6 series of open-weight AI models under the MIT license on Hugging Face. The flagship MiMo-V2.6-Pro scored 46 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, making it the highest-ranked open-weight model globally, surpassing GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3. It trails only proprietary models like Claude and GPT-6, ranking sixth overall. The model features a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with 1.02 trillion total parameters (42 billion active), supports text, image, speech, and video input, and offers a one-million-token context window. Xiaomi trained the models using scaled reinforcement learning, live-streaming the production run and releasing weights, technical reports, and training code. The series also includes MiMo-V2.6-Flash and a faster UltraSpeed variant. API pricing remains unchanged from the previous generation.

• •Xiaomi released MiMo-V2.6-Pro, the top open-weight AI model with 46 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
• •The model has 1.02 trillion parameters (42 billion active), a 1 million token context window, and multimodal input.
• •Xiaomi trained the models using reinforcement learning over 750,000 trajectories in under six days.

Xiaomi MiMo-V2.6-Pro tops open weights, trained for $3M

Xiaomi released MiMo-V2.6-Pro, a natively omnimodal open-weights model with 1.02T total / 42B active parameters, trained for $3M (about 130 hours and 75B tokens). It debuts as the top open-weights model on Artificial Analysis' Intelligence Index (46) with cost efficiency at $0.435/M input and $0.87/M output tokens, under an MIT license. Xiaomi also open-sourced the RL training environment code and recipes, but not the full 7k+ task datasets, signaling an emphasis on transparency in RL training.

• •Xiaomi released MiMo-V2.6-Pro and MiMo-V2.6-Flash, natively omnimodal open-weights models.
• •MiMo-V2.6-Pro has 1.02T total / 42B active parameters and tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at 46.
• •RL training run cost $2.6M, used 75B tokens over 130 hours.

Cautious optimism for late-night economy after closures slow

New press release added: 'Cautious optimism for late-night economy after closures slow' dated 22 September 2026.

EU Cyber Defense Partly Effective, Auditors Report

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) released Special Report 19/2026, assessing the EU's cybersecurity cooperation framework for 2022-2025. The audit found that while progress has been made, the framework only partially facilitates detection of and response to serious cyber incidents. Key issues include limited information sharing between member states, underreporting of incidents, and significant implementation delays, particularly of the NIS2 directive, with only two member states meeting the October 2024 deadline. Cross-border incident reporting remains sparse, with only 14 reported in 2025 and none classified as 'large-scale' since 2016. The Collins Aerospace ransomware attack highlighted systemic failures, as it was not treated as significant. The ECA also criticized the underutilization of the EU Cyber Reserve, non-operational cyber shield hubs, and duplication of efforts in the Commission's cyber situational centre. Five recommendations were issued, with target dates from 2026 to 2028.

• •EU member states reported 1,276 incidents to ENISA in 2024, while ENISA identified ~4,800 from public sources.
• •Only 14 significant cross-border incidents were reported by seven member states in 2025; no incidents have been classified as 'large-scale' since 2016.
• •Only two member states met the NIS2 transposition deadline of October 2024.

Alibaba unveils Zhenwu V900 AI chip, expands data centers

Shares of Alibaba jumped about 3% in Hong Kong after the company unveiled its next-generation AI chip, the Zhenwu V900, and announced plans to expand its global data center capacity to over 20 gigawatts by 2032. The announcements were made at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, highlighting Alibaba's intensified investment in AI infrastructure. The new chip delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890, and is scheduled for mass production in Q1 2027. Alibaba also revealed that its Qwen 4 model is in training, with future Qwen 4.5 and 5 series planned. The move aligns with similar AI infrastructure investments by Nvidia, Meta, and Huawei, underscoring the global race for computing power.

• •Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 AI chip with three times the performance of its predecessor.
• •Alibaba plans to expand Alibaba Cloud's global data center capacity to over 20 gigawatts by 2032.
• •The Zhenwu V900 chip is scheduled for mass production and commercial release in Q1 2027.

Google's ad tech remedies arrive as platform battle moves to AI

Google has been ordered by a federal judge to implement behavioral remedies to its ad tech business, avoiding a forced divestiture of its ad exchange (AdX) and publisher ad server (DoubleClick for Publishers). The six-year regime requires Google to integrate more closely with Prebid, allow AdX to bid on competing ad servers, facilitate publisher data portability, and limit preferential treatment of its own ad tech. This comes as the antitrust focus shifts toward AI-powered advertising platforms. The article is paywalled and provides limited substantive detail beyond the headline and initial paragraphs.

• •Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a remedies opinion in the Google ad tech antitrust case.
• •Google will retain AdX and DoubleClick for Publishers under a six-year behavioral regime.
• •Google must integrate its technology more closely with Prebid and allow AdX to bid into competing publisher ad servers.

AI Chatbot Shares Fragment Beyond ChatGPT, Comscore Data Shows

Comscore's Q2 2026 AI Intelligence Report reveals that AI chatbot usage is diversifying, with ChatGPT's share of prompts dropping from 70% to 50% between January and June 2026. Gemini's share nearly doubled to 30%, while Claude rose to 11%. Despite fragmentation, overall AI assistant usage is growing, with 35% of desktop users visiting an AI assistant in June 2026, up from 25% in January 2025. Google AI Overviews are also expanding, appearing in 39.4% of desktop searches in June 2026, up from 25.8% a year earlier. This shift compels publishers and marketers to adopt multi-platform GEO strategies, measuring visibility and citations across various AI assistants. The report highlights that being sourced by AI doesn't guarantee visibility, as seen with Tripadvisor being sourced 61% for travel but cited only 21%.

• •ChatGPT's share of prompt volume fell from 70% to 50% between January and June 2026.
• •Gemini's share grew from 17% to 30%, and Claude's from 2% to 11% in the same period.
• •Google AI Overviews appeared in 39.4% of desktop searches in June 2026, up from 25.8% in July 2025.

Gartner Raises AI Spending Forecast; Infrastructure Remains Largest Segment

Gartner projects global AI spending to reach approximately $2.67 trillion in 2026, a 49.5% increase year-over-year, revising up from its May forecast of $2.59 trillion. Infrastructure remains the dominant category, expected to account for about $1.48 trillion (56% of total). AI services and software are forecasted to reach $576 billion and $462 billion respectively. Spending on AI agents and assistants is set to grow to $29.2 billion in 2026 and over $65 billion by 2027. Generative AI model spending is projected at $28.3 billion, with growth expectations raised to 117%. The firm also forecasts 2027 AI spending to reach $3.64 trillion, more than doubling from 2025 levels.

• •Gartner forecasts global AI spending to reach $2.67 trillion in 2026, a 49.5% increase year-over-year.
• •Infrastructure is the largest AI spending segment in 2026 at $1.48 trillion, representing 56% of total.
• •AI services spending is projected at $576 billion, and AI software at $462 billion in 2026.

Clarivate to Report Third Quarter 2026 Results on November 3, 2026

Clarivate announced it will report third quarter 2026 results on November 3, 2026. Additionally, the company commenced an offer to purchase for cash certain of its outstanding debt securities, and revealed the 2026 Citation Laureates.

Equativ Brings ChatGPT Ads to Brands as Advertising Partner

Equativ announces partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT ads to brands as an advertising partner.

SiteMinder unveils Dynamic Commerce Engine to close the ‘execution gap’ in hotel distribution

SiteMinder has announced the launch of its Dynamic Commerce Engine, a new product aimed at closing the 'execution gap' in hotel distribution. The announcement was made on 22 September 2026, and the news is featured prominently on the company's news page.

SiteMinder unveils Dynamic Commerce Engine to close the ‘execution gap’ in hotel distribution

SiteMinder has announced the launch of its Dynamic Commerce Engine, a new product aimed at closing the 'execution gap' in hotel distribution. This appears to be a significant product launch for the company.

Equativ Brings ChatGPT Ads to Brands as Advertising Partner

Equativ announces partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT ads to brands as an advertising partner.

Meet a Didomian: James Ensor, Global Lead - Server-Side

Learn about James, his career path, his take on the server-side tagging landscape, and what's coming next for him and his team.

IAB Tech Lab Introduces AAMP 3.0 to Standardize the RFP-to-Buy Process for Agentic Advertising

IAB Tech Lab Introduces AAMP 3.0 to Standardize the RFP-to-Buy Process for Agentic Advertising (September 22, 2026) and IAB Tech Lab's Programmatic Standard Practices Available for Public Comment (September 16, 2026). The IAB Tech Lab announced AAMP 3.0, introducing 'OpenProposal,' a specification to standardize the negotiation phase between an advertiser's brief and a buying commitment, enabling AI agents to discover, compare, and negotiate media proposals. Additionally, IAB released the Measurement Services Addendum v1.0, a contractual framework for advertising measurement, verification, attribution, and analytics services, part of a broader modular legal framework. Both initiatives are open for public comment until October 22, 2026, and aim to improve efficiency and standardization in programmatic media buying and measurement across the digital advertising industry.

• •IAB Tech Lab announced AAMP 3.0 with OpenProposal specification for agentic media buying.
• •OpenProposal standardizes machine-readable description of ad products and responses to briefs.
• •IAB released Measurement Services Addendum v1.0 for measurement, verification, attribution, and analytics contracts.

Equativ Brings ChatGPT Ads to Brands as Advertising Partner

Equativ announces partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT ads to brands, as highlighted in the latest press release on September 22, 2026.