WHAT’S INSIDE

• Tech In The News: Economy shrink, Rally, Hiring Slows Fed holds, Oil lows

• Companies to watch: Meta, Acrisure, Glean, Mach Industries, Cast AI, Supio

• Feature: Visa & Mastercard Unlock The Agentic Commerce Age

• Buzzy Tools: Latest Buzzy tech, AI and financial tools

• Deep Tech: The latest in deep tech, biotech, futurism and more

• Space Tech: Latest news in the space race and aerospace tech

• Crypto: Blockchain and crypto policy and startups or protocols to watch

TECH IN THE NEWS

Economic Dip Not So Dire — The US economy shrank by 0.3% in Q1. But hope of trade talks, strong tech earnings saw Wall Street rally to close green.

Hiring Slowdown — April saw a sharp drop in job creation with only 62K private sector jobs added, the lowest since July 2024.

Fed Holds Steady — The Fed plans to keep interest rates unchanged amid inflation concerns as Core PCE shows stagnation, while consumer spending increases.

Record Trade Deficit — The US goods-trade deficit has surged to a new record, raising concerns about potential weakness in Q1 GDP growth.

Oil Price Plunge — Saudi Arabia signals readiness for a price war by increasing oil production to regain market share, causing prices to hit their lowest since early 2021.

Historic Resource Pact — The US and Ukraine inked a landmark agreement granting the US access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals.

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COMPANIES TO WATCH

Meta — The social media giant reported a Q1 earnings beat but faced challenges with its Reality Labs division. New Llama API leverages a partnership with Cerebras to achieve inference speeds 18x faster than rivals.

Waymo and Toyota — Waymo and Toyota have joined forces to advance self-driving tech for personal vehicles, enhancing driver assistance and autonomy.

Acrisure — The fintech is in talks with Bain Capital for a $2B investment involving preferred equity for prior investors to redeem part of their stake. Acrisure reports ARR over $4.8B.

Glean — The edge computing-focused AI search and knowledge management startup is nearing a financing round led by Wellington Mgmt at a $7B valuation, over 70x its ARR.

Mach Industries — Rising star Defense tech, EVTOL vehicle startup is raising $100M at $470M, with a contract to develop a precision cruise missile for the Army.

Cast AI — The AI workload optimization for GPU and compute startup raised $108M Series C, nearing a $900M valuation. 2,100+ customers, including BMW and Akamai.

Supio — The AI-powered legal analysis platform specializing in automating data collection for legal teams saw a 4x ARR increase and expanding client base. It just raised $60M to boost growth.

 SignalFires — Read the Top signals, Startups + Deals From Last Week

Visa & Mastercard Unlock The Agentic Commerce Age

The agentic AI economy is officially here, and it's being unlocked by the leaders of the legacy economy in partnership with the new AI unicorns.

Happy World Password Day, yep it's a thing, and whether ironically or appropriately, it was the day chosen by a number of tech giants to unveil a new era for online identities. The next step in the evolution of e-commerce is agentic AI commerce, and the next step in digital id is crypto verification. In this age of AI-generated fake news, deepfake videos, financial scams and fake job applicants, proof of humanity is becoming an ever more urgent reality. And it just so happens Sam Altman, the same guy bringing you possibly the worst of all that stuff, is offering a totally trustworthy solution with his Worldcoin project finally launching in the US.

Agentic Commerce

This epochal shift represents the third massive transformation in commerce after the move from physical to online, and online to mobile. The payment rails are now being laid for this revolution by the legacy payments giants with both Visa and Mastercard simultaneously announcing plans to let AI agents purchase items directly for users. The battle for control of your wallet is taking a decisive turn as these payment giants race to build the infrastructure that'll power a new era where autonomous agents handle your shopping, payments, and even financial decisions. For the financial sector, it's no longer about processing transactions; it's about owning the AI layer that orchestrates them.

Mastercard fired the first shot this week with Agent Pay, enabling AI agents to shop and make payments on consumers' behalf. It taps Microsoft's leading AI tech to build a system where your digital assistant can evaluate options, negotiate terms, and complete purchases.

Visa immediately clapped back with its Intelligent Commerce initiative, which opens its payment network to AI agent developers. It is collaborating with AI heavyweights including Anthropic, IBM, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe to enable personalized, secure AI commerce on a global scale.

PayPal has also jumped into the fray with its own agentic commerce initiatives and value-added services, achieving a 4% increase in total payment volume. It focuses on optimized debit routing and fraud protection, boosting active account growth.

Meanwhile Amazon is testing a "Buy for Me" feature (powered by its latest Nova model released yesterday).

Notable names missing from today's news are Apple and Google, so expect them to clap back soon with their own solutions. Although at the rate they are getting hammered for antitrust violations, this might be a bridge too far for now. Another is former PayPal and OpenAI founder, Elon Musk. How far away X payments and identity systems are is unclear, but he's got quite a lot going on too with his DOGE cactivities, Tesla’s poor earnings outlook and even a rumored Tesla shareholder mutiny (which he and Tesla both denied yesterday by the way).

This acceleration is stunning—we're witnessing the rapid evolution from chatbots to autonomous digital assistants with purchasing authority. The market implications are too. According to SNS Insider, the AI in fintech market was valued at USD 12.2B in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 61.6B by 2032, a CAGR of 19.72%. 

Worldcoin and Identity Management

Meanwhile, Sam Altman's controversial World (formerly Worldcoin) project has launched in the US with a radically different approach. The company will deploy 7,500 eye-scanning "orbs" in cities across America by year-end, starting with Atlanta, Austin, LA, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco. Those who submit to the iris scan receive a World ID and cryptocurrency tokens, plus access to a new World-linked Visa debit card for spending their tokens. World predicts over ½ the US population will have access to one by the end of 2025. Optimistic much?

World also announced a partnership with both Visa and Tinder. Good news for avoiding catfishing, but it may force those unwilling to comply for privacy reasons off the platform and on to other services.

So, are we all getting our eyeballs scanned then? The problem is you have to implicitly trust the organization you commit that data to. Worldcoin has gotten a chilly reception in crypto circles, partly because its eyeball-scanning orb looks like surveillance tech straight out of Minority Report, but also because many just don't trust the company or its founders. World has faced criticism for how it captures and stores users’ biometric data. But the company claims all data is decentralized, making it impossible to reverse-engineer.

It will be interesting to see the uptake in the US. In order to get crypto natives on board, it may take a more decentralized approach, but convenience is one heck of a motivator as past tech innovation has shown.

Identity Authentication Alternatives

As AI agents gain... agency in commerce, a critical question emerges: how do we verify who's really behind the transaction? This has catalyzed explosive growth in the digital identity verification space. We basically have three options for who to trust with this: a government, a corporation, or a decentralized crypto protocol. Choose your evil.

One other startup benefiting from this is San Fran ID verification and cybersecurity startup, Persona, which just secured $200M in Series D funding at a $2B valuation co-led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital. Persona's platform aims to build what it describes as the "verified identity layer" for an increasingly AI-driven internet.

The Security and Privacy Reckoning

The rapid advancement of agentic commerce is creating an urgent rethinking of security and privacy frameworks. Both Mastercard and Visa are implementing sophisticated safeguards for their agent systems. Mastercard's system will require trusted AI agents to be registered and verified before they can make secure payments, with consumers having complete control over what agents can purchase. Visa's approach includes AI-Ready Cards that replace card details with tokenized digital credentials, enhancing security for consumers and simplifying payment processes for developers. The system will confirm that a consumer's chosen agent is authorized to act on their behalf and bring identity verification to AI commerce.

What This Means For Investors

The strategic implications for the financial sector are profound. Payment networks are evolving from transaction processors to AI commerce enablers. The companies that control the infrastructure for agentic commerce stand to capture massive value in the rapidly expanding market. This high-stakes competition represents the fourth wave of financial transformation—from physical to digital, from manual to automated, from human to agent-orchestrated. For investors who can identify the infrastructure winners powering this shift, the opportunity is unprecedented. The companies that build the rails for agentic commerce won't just process transactions—they'll orchestrate the future of how money moves.

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BUZZY TOOLS

Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

Nova Premier — Amazon advanced AI model for text, images, videos.

Meta — Llama API launches + new AI security tools for threat detection, privacy.

Anthropic — Claude integrates apps like Jira for project management, research.

Writer — Palmyra X5 LLM offers near GPT-4.1 performance at 75% lower cost.

Grok 3.5 — Musk reveals beta reasoning model for complex technical questions.

F Lite — O-S model by Freepik and Fal for generating copyright-safe images.

BUZZY TECH

The Latest Deep Technology & Trends To Watch

Unitree Firefighting Robots — Quadruped robots shoot water 60m in China.

Soft Robot Nematode — Georgia Tech's elastic energy robot jumps 10 feet.

AI in Visual Effects — AI empowers artists, blending tradition with new tech.

Glowing Crystal Core — Scientists use crystal core to capture dark matter.

Wandercraft — AI exoskeleton aids mobility, anticipates FDA clearance.

Housework Robots — New AI model allows robots to perform home tasks.

CRYPTO WATCH

Arizona Bitcoin Reserve — Arizona lawmakers approved a state Bitcoin reserve, supported by 31 and 37 reps.

World Liberty Financial — Donald Trump's stablecoin, USD1, soared to $2.1B in market value after a $2B investment by an Abu Dhabi firm in Binance.

World Project Launch — Sam Altman's World project debuts in the U.S., offering WLD tokens for identity verification. It plans a Visa card for digital asset spending and a Tinder pilot for profile verification, aiming for 1 billion users.

BlackRock's Digital Leap — BlackRock plans to offer $150B in tokenized shares of its Treasury Trust via BNY Mellon, with a $3M investment minimum.

SEC Ends PayPal Probe — The SEC has concluded its investigation into PayPal's PYUSD. They emphasized the importance of conducting independent research.

Ripple's Circle Bid — Ripple attempted a $4-5B acquisition of Circle, issuer of USDC, but was rejected. Despite this, Ripple remains interested in Circle, which has a $60B+ market cap, compared to Ripple's RLUSD at $300M.

Robinhood Surges — Robinhood exceeded Q1 expectations with a 77% rise in transaction revenue and doubled crypto revenue, driven by record net deposits.

SPACE_RACE

World's Largest Telescope_reveals sunspots' magnetic activity, solar weather.

ISS Evasive Maneuver_Thruster burn avoids Chinese Long March rocket debris.

Amazon Project Kuiper_launches 27 satellites to challenge Starlink broadband.

Orbital Carrier_US Space Force plans spacecraft launch hub for orbital defense.

Firefly Alpha Rocket — FAA grounds due to launch failure for investigation.

Kosmos 482_Soviet satellite may survive reentry, posing minimal threat.

Chinese Astronauts_set records with quantum simulations, three EVAs in 6-mths

MEMETICS

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