Google Gives Gemini 50+ Finance Skills as AI Agents Go Vertical

In partnership with

The CX Architects: Designing the Future of Customer Experience

Running a CX team used to mean following established playbooks. AI changed that overnight, transforming the role before our eyes. In this Career Transformation conversation, host Deepina Kapila talks with three leaders who shaped what came next: Kayla Arp (PrizePicks), Chris Rule (Turno), and Amy Harvey (TrueCommerce), on what changed, the challenges they faced, and where CX is headed. Watch the recording on-demand now.

Watch now

Google packages Gemini agents for law and finance

Google launched preview editions of Gemini Enterprise for Legal and Financial Services. Legal agents handle contracts, research, regulatory scans and DSARs, while the Financial Research agent ships with 50+ specialized skills, citations, confidence scores and audit snapshots. MCP and A2A integrations connect industry systems including iManage, DocuSign, Everlaw and CourtListener.

The strategic shift: Hyperscalers are turning horizontal agent platforms into governed, industry-specific operating systems.

Perplexity brings private agents onto local NVIDIA hardware

Perplexity’s Portable Computer runs its model, files, conversations and agent harness locally on NVIDIA DGX Spark and Linux RTX machines, with no token charges for local tasks. Its PPLX 27B model scored 85.4% on Perplexity’s 53-task knowledge-work benchmark, versus 82.6% for Qwen and 77.6% for Pi. Cloud escalation requires permission.

The strategic shift: Capable knowledge-work agents are moving from cloud-only subscriptions toward private, fixed-cost edge infrastructure.

Claude gives chat and Cowork a shared memory

Anthropic enabled memory across Claude chat and Cowork, letting conversations and agentic work share editable “Topics.” Sensitive areas such as health and personal beliefs are excluded unless users opt in. Memory is on by default for Free, Pro and Max users, but off by default for Team and Enterprise.

The strategic shift: Persistent context is becoming the bridge between conversational assistants and agents that can execute ongoing work.

OpenAI pushes WebMCP with a $30,000 builder challenge

OpenAI launched a 10-day challenge around WebMCP, an experimental open standard through which websites expose structured tools directly to agents. Google Chrome, Cloudflare, Shopify, Vercel, Render and Netlify are supporting the initiative. The top 10 projects receive $3,000 each, with submissions due September 3.

The strategic shift: The web is being redesigned for machine-operable interfaces, reducing agents’ dependence on brittle browser automation.

Meta’s consumer agent “Hatch” reportedly nears launch

According to internal documents reviewed by The Information, Meta is preparing an OpenClaw-style consumer agent called Hatch, potentially with a premium tier costing up to $199.99 per month. Reported integrations include DoorDash, Etsy, Reddit, Yelp and Outlook, with third-party agents also planned for WhatsApp.

The strategic shift: Meta could use Instagram and WhatsApp distribution to push autonomous consumer agents into the mainstream while testing unusually high subscription pricing.

Keenable raises $26M to rebuild search for agents

The Accel-backed startup emerged from stealth with a $26 million seed round and an index exceeding 100 billion documents. Its search API is already running in production at AI labs and inference providers. The 15-person engineering team plans to double in size.

The strategic shift: Search infrastructure is being rebuilt around machine reasoning and retrieval, rather than pages designed for human browsing.

Alice raises $140M as agent safety becomes big business

AI safety company Alice raised $140 million, bringing total funding to $280 million. It is approaching $100 million in ARR, says its AI business grew more than 500% in two years and works with eight of the ten largest AI labs. Its platform tests agentic tasks, jailbreaks, prompt injection and production guardrails.

The strategic shift: Agent autonomy is creating a major market for continuous testing, monitoring and runtime defense.

AI Insights. Real Growth. Higher GMV, Better Profits

The difference between growing stores and stagnant ones isn't more effort. It's better insights. StoreClaw analyzes your Shopify and Amazon data, surfaces your biggest growth opportunities, and helps you increase GMV while protecting profit. Start free with bonus tokens. No credit card required.

Try it FREE today

🗺️ The Map of AI Agents (Live & Growing)

We’re charting the entire AI agent ecosystem — thousands of options across categories.
Your next agent is already on the map.

👉 Explore the Landscape Map →