Stay updated with the latest news about AI agents, autonomous AI, and automation tools.
Ryan Williams has raised more than $10 million in seed funding for Ellis to ensure first-time fund managers can operate with confidence.
# General Catalyst leads $1.1B round into 2-month-old River AI This is in order to turn agents into personally trainable assistants, rather than following the trajectory other AI labs are on: human worker replacements.
# AI Agents Beat Chemical Giants’ Chip-Heat Formulations in 90 Days, Startup Says #### Discovered Materials raised $9 million and released first open benchmark for AI on semiconductor materials By[Daniel Butler](https://www.techtimes.com/reporters/daniel-butler) Published: Aug 11 2026, 1:54 PM EDT [Share on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm) [Share on Twitter](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=AI+Agents+Beat+Chemical+Giants%27+Chip-Heat+Formulations+in+90+Days%2C+Startup+Says+https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm) [Share on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techtimes.com%2Farticles%2F323987%2F20260811%2Fai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm&title=AI+Agents+Beat+Chemical+Giants%27+Chip-Heat+Formulations+in+90+Days%2C+Startup+Says) [Share on Reddit](http://reddit.com/submit?url=https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm&title=AI+Agents+Beat+Chemical+Giants%27+Chip-Heat+Formulations+in+90+Days%2C+Startup+Says) [Share on Flipboard](https://flipboard.com/) [Share on Pocket](https://getpocket.com/edit?url=https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm) [Email](mailto:?&subject=AI+Agents+Beat+Chemical+Giants%27+Chip-Heat+Formulations+in+90+Days%2C+Startup+Says&body=https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm) [Move to comment](https://www.techtimes.com/articles/323987/20260811/ai-agents-beat-chemical-giants-chip-heat-formulations-90-days-startup-says.htm#discussion) , the platform supports both commercial off-the-shelf agents and custom agentic frameworks. | **Deployment Category** | **Supported Frameworks & Ecosystems** | |-|-| | **Enterprise SaaS Agents** | Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Google Gemini | The $125 million Series C capital injection will accelerate expansion across Europe and Asia-Pacific, scale Zenity Labs research operations, and expand preventive security controls for enterprise AI deployments. **[Live Webinar] Join Elastic & UnderDefense to learn how small security teams can unify AI visibility and agentic response into one operating model -> [Register Now](https://super.underdefense.com/2027-security-operating-model-webinar?utm_source=cybersecuritynews.com&utm_medium=online_media&utm_campaign=csn_linkedin_newsletter_elastic_webinar_sept3)** - [twitter share](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://cybersecuritynews.com/?p=159038&text=Zenity%20Raises%20%24125%20Million%20Series%20C%20to%20Strengthen%20AI%20Age
Last December, Meta announced it acquired Manus, a developer of general purpose AI agents that was [founded in China](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/30/meta-acquires-singapore-ai-agent-firm-manus-china-butterfly-effect-monicai.html) in 2022 before relocating to Singapore. Last week, Meta [released](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/meta-debuts-muse-code-to-take-on-anthropic-and-openai-.html) its first coding agent, marking its latest attempt to generate revenue from AI.
Now that founding team is just as likely to include [AI](https://www.fastcompany.com/section/artificial-intelligence) agents as it is human employees—and the companies that serve startups are racing to adapt. For Mercury, a popular Silicon Valley banking solution, that shift in team composition has prompted the development of a new feature: AI agent cards, or virtual credit cards that businesses can use to delegate and automate purchasing decisions. Even more telling, Mercury says it onboarded more than twice as many AI startup customers in 2025 as it did the year prior. In addition to AI agent cards, Mercury is launching several other new features in an expanded spend management offering.
BEIJING, Aug 11 (Reuters) - AI startup Manus said on Tuesday it will resume operating as an independent company and some user data will be deleted as part of its separation from U.S. tech giant Meta [(META.O), opens new tab](https://www.reuters.com/markets/companies/META.O).
ABC News reported, on August 9, 2026, that an autonomous AI agent had hacked the system of an Australian gym following a user's booking request.
# Claude AI agent hacks gym app in first autonomous AI cyberattack [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fen.cryptonomist.ch%2F2026%2F08%2F11%2Fanthropic-claude-ai-agent-cyberattack%2F) [Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Claude+AI+agent+hacks+gym+app+in+first+autonomous+AI+cyberattack&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.cryptonomist.ch%2F2026%2F08%2F11%2Fanthropic-claude-ai-agent-cyberattack%2F&via=The+Cryptonomist) [Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2026/08/11/anthropic-claude-ai-agent-cyberattack/&media=https://en.cryptonomist.ch/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/anthropic-claude-ai-agent.jpeg&description=Discover%20how%20an%20Anthropic%20Claude%20AI%20agent%20autonomously%20exploited%20a%20gym%20booking%20flaw%20in%20Australia%27s%20first%20documented%20AI%20cyberattack%20scenario.) [WhatsApp](https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=Claude+AI+agent+hacks+gym+app+in+first+autonomous+AI+cyberattack%20%0A%0A%20https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2026/08/11/anthropic-claude-ai-agent-cyberattack/) [](https://en.cryptonomist.ch/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/anthropic-claude-ai-agent.jpeg) Anthropic Claude AI Agent Executes Australia's First Autonomous Cyberattack ## Key takeaways - An AI agent running on **Anthropic’s Claude** autonomously exploited a flaw in a gym’s booking software, without being asked to hack anything. ## First Autonomous AI Cyberattack in Australia Exposed The case marks what ABC News calls the first documented instance of an autonomous AI agent carrying out a cyberattack on Australian soil. It happened on a live booking website, [triggered by an ordinary request](https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2026/08/02/ethereum-etf-inflows-july/) from a frustrated gym-goer. ## FAQ ### What happened in the first autonomous AI cyberattack in Australia? An AI agent autonomously exploited a gym booki
As closed-source models have gotten more expensive, businesses have found workarounds by customizing open-source AI for their specific needs.
### FriskAI launches with $3.6M to show enterprises what their AI agents are doing Runtime intelligence startup [FriskAI Inc.](https://www.friskai.com/) launched today with $3.6 million in pre-seed funding to give enterprises a record of what their artificial intelligence agents actually do once they go into production. Money is moving quickly into the same problem. Israeli startup Zenity Ltd. announced a $125 million round [on Aug. 3](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/03/israeli-startup-zenity-bags-125m-funding-build-security-layer-ai-agents/) to build a security layer for AI agents, and a string of smaller rounds has gone to companies selling visibility into agentic workflows. Wischoff Ventures joined, along with New Enterprise Associates Inc. partner Rick Yang and a group of angel investors. The pre-seed money will go toward engineering and go-to-market hiring, customer deployments and further work on the behavioral analysis side of the product. # Are you AWS customer? Support SiliconANGLE Financially by buying your AWS services from our Marketplace portal page and links. ##### LATEST STORIES [FriskAI launches with $3.6M to show enterprises what their AI agents are doing](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/11/friskai-launches-3-6m-show-enterprises-ai-agents/) [FriskAI launches with $3.6M to show enterprises what their AI agents are doing](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/11/friskai-launches-3-6m-show-enterprises-ai-agents/) [FriskAI launches with $3.6M to show enterprises what their AI agents are doing](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/11/friskai-launches-3-6m-show-enterprises-ai-agents/)
The post-mortems that followed two compromises by rogue AI agents show again that security teams need to focus on guardrails, not the AI model.
# **Menlo Security Named to the 2026 Inc. 5000 as Enterprises Race to Secure AI Agents** Enterprises now govern both human employees and the autonomous AI agents running inside their systems at machine speed.
# FriskAI raises $3.6M from MaC Venture Capital to watch what AI agents do Enterprises have spent the past year handing AI agents access to their databases, internal tools, and customer systems. Almost none of them can say with confidence what those agents actually did with it. [FriskAI](https://www.friskai.com/) wants to close that gap, and it has raised $3.6 million in pre-seed funding to build the tooling to do so. MaC Venture Capital, which has backed companies including Pipe, Blavity and IronVest, led the round, joined by Wischoff Ventures, NEA partner [Rick Yang](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickcyang) and a group of strategic angel investors. ## Making AI agents visible in production Jason Moore, a staff software engineer at Sana Benefits, is already using it. FriskAI is a small player in a field that’s filling up fast. [Manifold](https://techfundingnews.com/8m-for-aidr-platform-manifold-to-tackle-the-hidden-risks-of-autonomous-ai-agents/) raised $8 million to secure agents at the endpoint. [Geordie AI](https://techfundingnews.com/geordie-raises-30m-series-a-led-by-balderton-to-become-the-security-layer-enterprises-need-as-ai-agents-take-over-their-infrastructure/) closed a $30 million Series A for agent governance. [NeuralTrust](https://techfundingnews.com/neuraltrust-20m-europe-largest-cybersecurity-seed-ai-agents/), which _TFN_ covered when it announced what it calls Europe’s largest cybersecurity seed round, raised $20 million for a similar control layer. [Oasis Security](https://techfundingnews.com/accel-and-sequoia-back-oasis-securitys-120m-series-b-for-secure-ai-agents/) took in $120 million for machine-identity management, and [InfiniteWatch](https://techfundingnews.com/infinitewatch-4m-ai-agent-observability/), another company _TFN_ broke the news on, raised $4 million for agent observability aimed at customer interactions. ## Funding the infrastructure behind AI [Marlon Nichols](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marloncnichols/), managing partner at M
Alvys introduced Alvys Foundry on Tuesday, an agentic AI platform that lets carriers, brokers and hybrid carrier-brokers build and deploy freight AI agents inside the [transportation management system](https://getfreightdata.com/wiki/terms/transportation-management-system?utm_source=fw_article&utm_medium=tooltip&utm_content=transportation-management-system) they already run.
Learn how NVIDIA NeMo Switchyard routes AI agent workloads across models using tuning-free and tunable routers that balance model capability, cost,...
- Firms including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock say they see the potential to make money by raising funds from their institutional investors to fund the AI infrastructure build-out. Together, those firms say they’re willing to raise $500 billion, and potentially more, for the construction and build-out of new AI factories, as chipmakers and hyperscalers race to meet seemingly endless demand. That investment [never materialized](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/03/nvidia-openai-stalled-on-their-mega-deal-ai-giants-need-each-other.html), but Nvidia contributed $30 billion to the [record-breaking funding round](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/31/openai-funding-round-ipo.html) that OpenAI closed earlier this year. ## ‘These are real assets’ So far this year, [Alphabet](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/GOOGL/), [Amazon](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/AMZN/), [Meta](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/META/), [Microsoft](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/MSFT/) and [Oracle](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/ORCL/) have raised well over $150 billion combined by selling debt and equity to build data centers and fund the development of new AI models and support the explosion of AI agents. [Intel](https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/INTC/) just announced a [$15 billion stock offering](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/10/intel-intc-stock-offering-ai.html), then upsized it to $20 billion.
Australia's fitness industry is being urged to take a fresh look at the security of its digital booking platforms after an autonomous AI assistant exploited...
# Exclusive: Fonio.ai hits $10M ARR after a year of 30% monthly growth The company creates AI voice agents for handling customer calls and works with small and medium-sized businesses. You won’t find a more natural-sounding phone agent than fonio,” says Keinrath, co-founder and CEO of fonio.ai, to _TFN_. ## [Report: Apple sacks 600 employees in California post EV project cancellation](https://techfundingnews.com/layoffs-apple-sacks-600-employees-in-california-post-ev-project-cancellation/) - [Startups News](https://techfundingnews.com/category/startups/)
Cloudflare has entered the agent commerce race with a two-tier wallet architecture designed to give developers programmable control over how AI agents spend...
LTTS launches AgenticIQ, an end-to-end Agentic AI platform enabling autonomous workflows across engineering, manufacturing.
# Barclays on AI testing, telemetry and kill switches Autonomous AI agents are now forcing them to rethink that discipline.
# AI powered market research startup Echovane pulls in $1 million as it announces first funding round **Echovane has secured $1 million in funding in a round co-led by Titan Capital and Neon fund to expand what is pitched as “a permanently done for you research service where clients provide the business question and the company’s AI agents execute the study through to a completed, decision ready outcome”.** The cash will support the expansion of Echovane’s [AI](https://retailtechinnovationhub.com/rtih-ai-in-retail-awards-faqs) agent infrastructure, multimodal research capabilities, and global participant network. “This funding allows us to deepen the agent infrastructure behind Echovane, expand our multimodal capabilities, and strengthen the global participant network required to deliver increasingly complex studies with consistency,” adds Nair. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”
# NEC’s new department staffed only by AI agents by [David Manners](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/author/david-manners/) [11th August 2026](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/nec-has-new-department-staffed-only-by-ai-agents-2026-08/) in [Business](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/) [0](https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/nec-has-new-department-staffed-only-by-ai-agents-2026-08/#respond)  On August 1st NEC opened a new department called thev “Corporate AI & Workforce Division” staffed solely by AI agents. Dynamically generating and assigning new AI “employees” (agents) matched to each task, then managing their execution. Learning missing skills and updating themselves continuously. The underdog agents have their steps verified by multiple other agents to prevent errors. The top dog agent reports to human bosses with discussion and decision-making processes. [Share](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronicsweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2Fnec-has-new-department-staffed-only-by-ai-agents-2026-08%2F) [Tweet](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=NEC%E2%80%99s%20new%20department%20staffed%20only%20by%20AI%20agents&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronicsweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2Fnec-has-new-department-staffed-only-by-ai-agents-2026-08%2F) [Share](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronicsweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2Fnec-has-new-department-staffed-only-by-ai-agents-2026-08%2F&title=NEC%E2%80%99s%20new%20department%20staffed%20only%20by%20AI%20agents) [Pin](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/bookmarklet/?pinFave=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.electronicsweekly.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2Fnec-has-new-department-sta
# OpenClaw AI agent asked to book gym class ends up hacking system: What went wrong? ## The hacking incident comes amid concerns over next-generation AI agents emerging as a serious cybersecurity risk by behaving in unexpected ways. OpenClaw, an open-source agentic framework, has drawn growing interest from developers, companies, and regulators amid rising security concerns. In the latest bizarre incident of autonomous AI agents taking unwanted actions on behalf of their users, an Australian man who used his personal AI agent to book a spot in a gym’s popular morning classes found himself facing an unexpected problem. These agents powered by cutting-edge large language models (LLMs) from tech companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Moonshot AI have demonstrated in the past few weeks that they can autonomously break out of their safety contaminants and hack into other companies’ servers. ## OpenClaw security concerns The open-source platform spawned an ecosystem of autonomous AI agents or ‘claws’, which can further spin up their own sub-agents to autonomously execute specialised tasks with access to local file systems and data.
# Perplexity blocks Time’s ads served to AI agents, calling them ‘deceptive’ Less than two weeks after Digiday reported that Time [had started serving ads](https://digiday.com/media/time-has-started-serving-ads-to-ai-agents/) inside the markdown versions of its webpages, aimed at AI agents rather than human readers, Perplexity confirmed that it blocked those ads from influencing its own search index.
Lucrative AI Inc. has launched its enterprise revenue engine, backed by a $500,000 incubation investment from Mountainise Inc. The platform uses Model...
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