Latest News | Brian Hanson

Blackstone’s Jas Khaira says fears over AI-buildout debt are overblown

Blackstone’s AI head on why the PE giant isn't panicked by market jitters.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

Meta says Muse has over 10M users, with shopping a top activity

Meta Muse users are adopting the app for shopping and personal productivity, the company said during Q3 earnings. The AI app now has over 10M users.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI

Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

While Amazon blocks AI agents, Walmart rolls out the welcome mat

As Amazon blocks AI agents from shopping on its site, Walmart is taking the opposite approach, introducing new technology that lets AI agents make purchases on customers' behalf, with controls over spending and transaction approvals.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

PHP Armageddon: OpenAI, Google’s Wiz find ancient holes, panicking the internet

This is the kind of security issue that was found and prevented by AI, but is also a high risk because of AI.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

How AT&T is rethinking in-house legal work with OpenAI

AT&T is working with OpenAI to make legal knowledge easier to access. Learn how its LegalEdge team is rethinking intake and scaling legal judgment.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

AI promises productivity, but for managers, it’s mostly a headache for now

More than 50% of managers say they're finding it harder to evaluate employees' work after adopting AI, according to a new survey.

techcrunch.com•Oct 21, 2026

Sales

The 9 best meeting productivity software for customer-facing teams

Customer-facing teams run on meetings. Each successful conversation takes several steps before and after the call. Meeting productivity software can help keep everything organized. The best tools cover scheduling, note-taking, and updates.

blog.hubspot.com•Oct 21, 2026

ChatGPT Ads expands to 26 new countries as over 100,000 advertisers have used the platform

From local businesses to global brands, more advertisers can now reach people as they explore, compare and decide what to buy in ChatGPT.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

OpenAI models are coming to Google Cloud

OpenAI and Google Cloud are bringing frontier models and Codex workflows to Gemini’s Model Garden, available through Google Cloud Marketplace.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

How we built ChatGPT’s novel ad stack for user trust and relevance

Learn how OpenAI built ChatGPT’s LLM-powered ad stack to understand conversational intent, keep ads separate from answers, and deliver relevant ads at scale.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

Patch the Planet: global response coordination as agents uncover critical vulnerabilities

Patch the Planet connects security researchers, maintainers, and incident responders to help address critical vulnerabilities across open source.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

Using thousands of AI agents to uncover new leads in biological data

See how OpenAI, PerturbAI, and Scripps Research used distributed AI agents to uncover promising research leads in data from millions of brain cells.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

Southeast Asia’s digital economy to hit $368 billion

Widespread AI adoption is propelling Southeast Asia's digital economy to a projected $368 billion in 2026 and $1 trillion by 2035.

blog.google•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Google Brings Branding, Finance, and Marketing Under Gemini

Google rolled out Gemini features for small-business owners, including a business landing page with integrations for Google Business Profile, Google Ads, Google Workspace, and third-party tools to support branding, marketing content, finance, and customer insights.

analyticsinsight.net•Oct 21, 2026

Picsart Launches Marketing Studio to Help Businesses Create, Test and Run Google Ads

Picsart launched Marketing Studio, which combines AI-assisted marketing strategy, creative production, testing, and Google Ads campaign creation for solopreneurs and small businesses.

businesswire.com•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Anthropic Unveils Claude Duet AI Agent App

Anthropic unveiled Claude Duet, a waitlisted AI-agent preview for professionals and small-business owners that can handle tasks such as scheduling meetings, building financial forecasts, and creating web apps.

rmb.reuters.com•Oct 21, 2026

Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands

Octane AI launched Phoenix, a Shopify app that lets merchants generate, validate, personalize, and continuously improve customer-quiz funnels, including email opt-in and results pages.

finance.yahoo.com•Oct 21, 2026

Cloudflare links vulnerability discovery to defense with OpenAI

Cloudflare uses OpenAI Daybreak to investigate vulnerabilities and propose fixes for review. Its developers use Codex to build faster and improve code quality.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

Anthropic announces preview of Claude Duet, a personal AI agent to take on Muse, Dots

Anthropic previewed Claude Duet, an always-on AI agent for professionals and small businesses that can provide daily briefs, monitor connected apps, schedule meetings, build dashboards, and create financial forecasts.

cnbc.com•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Change Agents Launches Beacon Agentic AI Search Platform, Targeting 5.6 Million U.S. Small Businesses and a New Recurring Revenue Opportunity

Change Agents announced the planned October 28 launch of Beacon, which is designed to analyze a small business’s online presence, reviews, and visibility across major AI assistants and provide optimization recommendations.

finance.yahoo.com•Oct 21, 2026

Democratic governance of frontier AI, part II: Empowering cyber defenders

OpenAI outlines a blueprint for empowering cyber defenders with frontier AI, stronger safeguards, modernized cybersecurity, and more resilient public institutions.

openai.com•Oct 21, 2026

Google rolls out new Gemini tools to help small businesses manage marketing, finances

Google announced new Gemini small-business tools for marketing, financial analysis, and customer insights, with connections to services including Google Business Profile, Google Ads, Google Workspace, Shopify, Wix, Zoho, and Xero.

bignewsnetwork.com•Oct 21, 2026

Scaling agentic AI across the enterprise with Amazon Quick

AWS announced that PwC is helping customers deploy Amazon Quick as an enterprise agentic-orchestration solution and as an everyday productivity tool for knowledge workers.

press.aboutamazon.com•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Crexendo at LD Micro Conference: AI and Growth Drive Outlook

Crexendo highlighted its CAIRO AI receptionist, which can answer calls, schedule appointments, triage customer requests, and help diagnose technical problems for businesses.

ca.investing.com•Oct 21, 2026

Asuri.ai Launches Multi-Agent AI Platform for Persistent Business Workflows

Asuri launched a multi-agent platform that lets nontechnical teams configure persistent business workflows, including customer-intelligence workflows that consolidate business-system data and alert employees to significant developments.

prnewswire.com•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Google Gemini Launches AI Tools for Small Business Owners

Google introduced Gemini tools for small-business owners that generate brand-specific marketing visuals, connect with business and commerce services, and provide financial and operational insights.

theoutpost.ai•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Stevin.AI uit Breda wil marketing en sales voor mkb overnemen met AI-platform

Stevin.AI, a Breda-based startup, launched an AI platform for small and medium-sized businesses that connects advertising, analytics, SEO, CRM, website, and telephony data to monitor campaigns and budgets.

dutchstartup.ai•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Change Agents to launch AI search visibility platform

Change Agents announced Beacon, a planned $20-per-month platform that will audit and monitor how AI assistants recommend small businesses and provide suggestions for improving AI-search visibility.

ca.investing.com•Oct 21, 2026

Marketing

Bloomreach Opens Its Platform to the Agentic Era: More Than 200 Agents Have Already Been Built on Loomi Connect by Marketers, Ecommerce Teams, and Technology Partners Worldwide

Bloomreach announced Loomi Connect, which lets compatible AI agents use its analytics, search, segmentation, and campaign capabilities within existing marketing and commerce workflows.

lasvegassun.com•Oct 21, 2026

AI Rich Studio Launches AI Champion Development Program to Build Organizations That Continue Improving Operations

AI Rich Studio announced a three-month AI Champion program that trains company leaders and managers to identify workflow improvements, build AI agents, test them in operations, and establish ongoing usage practices.

jiji.com•Oct 21, 2026

Anthropic pitches AI safety bill that may block a model if 50+ people could be killed

The proposed policy seems to offer protections against AI run amok but actually forbids federal agencies from blocking a model's release without the permission of a judge.

techcrunch.com•Oct 20, 2026

Anthropic’s cloud partnerships are getting messy

Anthropic is reportedly struggling to secure enough compute from cloud providers that increasingly view it as a competitor, even as its infrastructure spending balloons ahead of a planned November IPO.

techcrunch.com•Oct 20, 2026