News/Operations
Clout isn’t headcount: AI-native companies cut GTM teams by 38% while maintaining growth
Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how companies build and scale their go-to-market (GTM) teams—the sales, marketing, and customer success functions that drive revenue growth. New data reveals that AI-native companies are operating with dramatically leaner teams while maintaining competitive growth rates, suggesting a structural shift in how modern businesses approach revenue generation. Companies under $25 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with high AI adoption are running with just 13 GTM full-time employees versus 21 for their traditional SaaS peers—a 38% reduction in headcount. This isn't about cutting costs during economic uncertainty; it's about operational leverage that creates sustainable competitive...
read Jul 10, 2025AWS upgrades SageMaker with observability tools to boost AI development
AWS has unveiled significant upgrades to SageMaker, its machine learning and AI model training platform, adding new observability capabilities, connected coding environments, and GPU cluster performance management. These enhancements aim to solidify AWS's position as the infrastructure backbone for enterprise AI development, even as competition intensifies from Google and Microsoft in the AI acceleration space. What you should know: The SageMaker updates directly address customer pain points in AI model development and deployment. SageMaker HyperPod observability enables engineers to examine various layers of the stack, including compute and networking layers, with real-time alerts and dashboard metrics when performance issues arise....
read Jul 10, 2025Kaya AI emerges from stealth with $5.3M to digitize construction supply chains
Kaya AI has emerged from stealth mode with $5.3 million in pre-seed funding to tackle construction supply chain management through artificial intelligence. The startup's platform promises to reduce procurement management time by 80% and improve lead-time accuracy by 90%, targeting an industry that has remained stubbornly resistant to technology upgrades despite widespread adoption of cloud-based project management tools. What you should know: Kaya's AI-driven platform focuses on mission-critical infrastructure projects like data centers, where tight timelines and demanding schedules create the most challenging procurement environments. The platform includes an AI assistant called Jarvis that centralizes communications, automates ordering tasks, and...
read Jul 9, 2025Linux Foundation adopts Google’s Agent2Agent protocol for AI collaboration
The Linux Foundation announced it will host the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, an open standard initially developed by Google and now supported by more than 100 technology companies for secure communication between AI agents. The adoption addresses one of AI's most pressing challenges: enabling autonomous agents to discover each other, exchange information, and collaborate across different platforms and vendors. What you should know: A2A creates a standardized communication layer that breaks down silos limiting multi-agent AI systems. The protocol uses AgentCards—JSON metadata documents that describe an agent's purpose and provide access instructions via web URLs. A2A leverages widely adopted web standards...
read Jul 9, 2025Apple develops AI assistant for Support app to handle routine inquiries
Apple is reportedly developing a generative AI assistant for its Support app that would automatically handle routine customer service inquiries before escalating complex issues to human agents. This move could significantly reduce wait times and improve customer service efficiency by leveraging AI to address common support questions covered in Apple's documentation. What you should know: The AI-powered "Support Assistant" feature would use generative models to handle basic customer service cases, though Apple appears to be considering third-party AI models rather than its own technology. According to code strings found in the Support app, the assistant "uses generative models," suggesting Apple...
read Jul 9, 2025PayPal launches AI system to block scams before transactions complete
PayPal has launched a new AI-powered scam alert system that can intercept transactions before they're completed, warning users about potential fraud in real-time. The system uses continually learning AI models to detect emerging scam patterns and provides dynamic warnings that vary based on risk levels, from simple alerts to complete payment blocks. How it works: The AI system analyzes billions of data points to identify risk signals and adapts to new scam types without being specifically trained on them. PayPal's models use "continually learning" technology that can detect similarities between known scams and new ones, allowing them to catch previously...
read Jul 9, 2025Automation Anywhere saves $350K with 40+ AI agents across finance and support
Automation Anywhere has deployed more than 40 AI agents across its own operations since February 2024, saving several hundred thousand dollars while demonstrating the technology's potential to customers. The process automation vendor's internal "Putting AI Agents to Work" project spans finance, tech support, and marketing functions, earning the company a 2025 CIO 100 Award for IT innovation and leadership. Key financial impact: The company's finance operations alone generated $350,000 in cost savings through 12 targeted AI agent use cases. Agents optimized order-to-cash, record-to-report, and tax operations, delivering 6,000 hours of increased productivity. Cash flow improvements and risk mitigation totaled nearly...
read Jul 8, 2025Shape up or ship out: Microsoft requires employees to use AI tools as workplace competency
Microsoft has made artificial intelligence usage mandatory for its employees, signaling a major shift in corporate expectations around AI literacy in the workplace. The directive, outlined in an internal memo, emphasizes that AI tools like GitHub Copilot are now essential parts of daily workflows rather than optional productivity enhancements. What you should know: The memo represents more than a policy change—it's a clear statement that AI fluency has become a job requirement, not a nice-to-have skill. Microsoft expects employees to treat AI "not as a future concept or a tech curiosity but as an everyday co-worker." The company wants teams...
read Jul 7, 2025AI helps 911 dispatchers make faster, smarter decisions under pressure
Emergency dispatch centers operate under intense pressure, with split-second decisions potentially meaning the difference between life and death. Traditional dispatch operations require human operators to simultaneously manage multiple screens, track emergency units, prioritize incoming calls, and coordinate complex responses—all while maintaining situational awareness across their entire coverage area. Artificial intelligence is now transforming this high-stakes environment, not by replacing human dispatchers but by providing them with powerful analytical tools that enhance decision-making and reduce cognitive burden. These AI systems work behind the scenes to automate routine tasks, analyze real-time data patterns, and surface critical information precisely when dispatchers need it...
read Jul 7, 2025Physical AI helps construction giant predict weather delays and save millions
Brandon Barbello, co-founder of Archetype AI, argues that while artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed office work, the real breakthrough lies in "physical AI" systems that can interpret sensor data from construction sites, manufacturing facilities, and other physical environments. This represents a fundamental shift from text-based AI to systems that can process complex, multimodal data from the real world—potentially unlocking massive value in industries that have been largely untouched by the AI revolution. The big picture: Physical industries like construction, logistics, and manufacturing represent a major portion of the global economy but have captured only a fraction of AI's value, despite...
read Jul 7, 2025Chic meets geek as L’Oréal partners with Nvidia to scale AI across beauty operations
L'Oréal has announced a major partnership with Nvidia to supercharge its generative AI capabilities across its business operations, joining Nvidia's AI Enterprise microservices ecosystem. This collaboration positions the world's largest cosmetics company to leverage AI for everything from 3D product visualizations to personalized marketing, potentially reshaping how beauty brands design, market, and sell their products. What you should know: L'Oréal's partnership with Nvidia will scale its CreAItech Generative AI platform, which creates visualizations and assets from product models to reduce creative team workload. The collaboration enables automated design and rendering of images and 3D models for marketing and research purposes,...
read Jul 7, 2025Australian farmers cagey about complex features, desire straightforward AI automation
Australian farmers are approaching artificial intelligence with cautious pragmatism, expressing skepticism about Silicon Valley's promises while demanding simple, reliable automation tools. A new study involving over 35 interviews with livestock producers reveals that farmers want "more automation, less features" and worry about "shit in, shit out" data quality, challenging the tech industry's vision of agriculture's digital transformation. What farmers actually want: Australian livestock producers favor straightforward automation over complex AI systems with numerous features. The phrase "more automation, less features" captures their preference for technologies that reliably perform specific tasks rather than "everything apps" popular in Silicon Valley. Farmers want...
read Jul 7, 2025Amazon deploys 1M warehouse robots with new AI traffic controller
Amazon has reached a major milestone with over one million warehouse robots deployed across more than 300 fulfillment centers, while unveiling DeepFleet, a new AI foundation model that acts as a traffic controller for its robotic fleet. The achievement marks Amazon's evolution from testing a handful of shelf-moving robots in 2012 to operating a massive automated workforce that the company says creates more jobs rather than eliminating them. The big picture: Amazon's robotics strategy centers on helping human workers access inventory more efficiently rather than replacing them entirely. CEO Andy Jassy recently tweeted the company's north star question: "How can...
read Jul 7, 2025Hertz car rental gives keys to AI fleet management system in 160 countries
Hertz has deployed an AI-powered fleet management system called Hertz Connected Fleet OS, built on Palantir Foundry and Palantir AIP, to streamline operations across its 500,000-vehicle fleet and 11,000 locations. The system orchestrates vehicle turnaround, workforce allocation, and customer matching to ensure "the right car, at the right place, at the right time" for the global rental company's operations in 160 countries. How it works: The AI system replaces Hertz's historically low-tech operations that relied on two-way radios and manual coordination across vehicle processing stages. Employees use a lightweight Android app to log their progress through each stage of vehicle...
read Jul 7, 2025Retrenchment reversal as companies hire expensive AI cleanup specialists after cost-cutting backfires
Companies that rushed to replace human workers with AI are now paying premium rates to hire specialists who can fix the technology's mistakes. This unexpected reversal is creating a lucrative niche market for writers and coders who specialize in cleaning up AI-generated work, often costing businesses more than if they had used human expertise from the start. What you should know: The AI cost-cutting strategy is backfiring as companies discover that fixing AI mistakes requires expensive human intervention. Sarah Skidd, an American product marketing manager, spent 20 hours completely rewriting AI-generated copy at $100 per hour, costing the client $2,000...
read Jul 2, 2025Atlassian, Intuit, and AWS rebuild APIs for AI agents replacing humans
Enterprise giants Atlassian, Intuit, and AWS are fundamentally rethinking API architecture to accommodate AI agents that will soon replace humans as the primary consumers of enterprise software interfaces. This shift represents a critical infrastructure transformation, as current APIs were designed for human interaction rather than the multi-modal, autonomous systems that will drive the next generation of business automation. What you should know: The transition to agent-first APIs requires companies to rebuild their fundamental software architecture from the ground up. "We need to build the kind of APIs that will work well with agents, because agents are the ones that are...
read Jul 1, 2025United Launch Alliance, er, launches RocketGPT AI assistant for aerospace operations
United Launch Alliance has quietly launched "RocketGPT," an ITAR-compliant AI assistant built on Microsoft Azure's secure government cloud, alongside its recent Atlas V mission carrying Amazon's Kuiper satellites. The pilot program serves roughly 150 ULA staff across engineering, legal, finance, and proposal teams, positioning the aerospace company to leverage AI for operational efficiency as it transitions from Atlas V to its next-generation Vulcan rocket. What you should know: RocketGPT represents ULA's strategic embrace of AI-enhanced processes while maintaining human oversight and accountability. CEO Tory Bruno described it as a "tool to help with drudgery and tedious, time‑consuming things," from drafting...
read Jun 30, 2025Smaller AI models slash enterprise costs by up to 100X
Enterprises are embracing smaller, task-specific AI models to dramatically reduce operational costs, with some companies reporting 100X cost reductions compared to large language models. This shift toward "model minimalism" is helping businesses achieve better ROI on AI investments while maintaining performance for specific use cases, as organizations realize that flagship LLMs are often overkill for targeted applications. The big picture: Companies are discovering that right-sizing AI models to specific tasks can slash infrastructure costs without sacrificing performance, fundamentally changing how enterprises approach AI deployment strategies. Key cost savings: Smaller models require significantly less compute power and memory, directly translating to...
read Jun 27, 2025IAG’s AI system cuts aircraft maintenance planning from weeks to minutes
International Airlines Group (IAG) has developed an in-house AI-powered Engine Optimisation System that dynamically reschedules aircraft engine maintenance by running millions of "what-if" scenarios daily. The system, initially implemented with Aer Lingus and set to roll out across IAG's other airlines by year's end, addresses the complex challenge of balancing regulatory requirements, parts availability, labor constraints, and operational continuity while potentially saving the industry millions in maintenance costs. What you should know: IAG's AI system transforms weeks of manual maintenance planning into minutes of automated optimization, helping airlines avoid costly Aircraft On Ground emergencies and passenger delays. The system was...
read Jun 27, 2025PromptOps emerges as AI costs spiral out of control
As artificial intelligence models grow more sophisticated, they're also becoming more expensive to operate. The latest large language models (LLMs) can process vast amounts of information and deliver increasingly nuanced responses, but this enhanced capability comes with a hidden cost: dramatically higher computational expenses that can quickly spiral out of control. This challenge has sparked the emergence of "prompt ops," a new discipline focused on optimizing how businesses interact with AI systems to maximize efficiency and minimize costs. Unlike prompt engineering, which focuses on crafting effective AI queries, prompt ops treats AI interactions as an ongoing operational challenge requiring continuous...
read Jun 27, 202591% of orgs boost AI spending but 54% can’t deploy logistics tools
A new study from AI logistics company Pando and supply chain consulting firm JBF reveals that while 91% of organizations have increased AI spending over the past two years, 54% still haven't figured out how to actually deploy these tools in their logistics operations. This disconnect highlights a critical gap between AI investment enthusiasm and practical implementation in supply chain management, where companies are struggling with data quality issues and change management challenges despite recognizing AI's potential to navigate increasingly complex global logistics networks. The big picture: Companies are caught in an AI investment paradox where financial commitment far outpaces...
read Jun 27, 2025ThredUp uses AI to sort 80K daily items while cutting teams to just 4 (humans)
ThredUp, one of the world's largest online apparel resale platforms, is using artificial intelligence to manage the 70,000 to 80,000 items that flow through its platform daily. The company has moved beyond basic analytics to deploy generative AI across both customer-facing features and backend operations, demonstrating how even digital-native companies must evolve their AI strategies as they scale. The big picture: ThredUp processes over 100 million unique SKUs and has been using machine learning in production since 2015, but generative AI has transformed how the company handles both search functionality and operational sorting. How it works: The company overhauled its...
read Jun 27, 2025Arrive AI rings Nasdaq bell as smart mailboxes expand to India
Arrive AI is hitting multiple milestones simultaneously, from ringing the Nasdaq opening bell to securing new patents and launching an international partnership with India's Skye Air Mobility. The autonomous delivery company's momentum signals its evolution from a startup founded on a napkin sketch in 2014 to a comprehensive infrastructure provider targeting the last-mile logistics market. What you should know: Arrive AI's smart mailboxes, called Arrive Points, go far beyond simple package drop-offs with AI-powered features designed for secure, climate-controlled deliveries. The mailboxes offer temperature control, anti-theft mechanisms, hazardous material detection, UV/ozone disinfection, and facial recognition capabilities. They integrate with real-time...
read Jun 26, 2025How Walmart built one of the world’s largest enterprise AI operations
Walmart has quietly assembled one of the world's most sophisticated enterprise AI operations, managing thousands of use cases across its 4,700 stores and 255 million weekly customers. Rather than deploying AI as an experimental add-on, the retail giant has fundamentally restructured how it approaches artificial intelligence—treating trust not as a compliance afterthought, but as a core engineering requirement. During VB Transform 2025, Desirée Gosby, Walmart's VP of Emerging Technology, revealed how the company operationalizes AI at unprecedented scale. Her insights offer a rare glimpse into how enterprises can move beyond pilot programs to achieve meaningful AI transformation. "We see this...
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