Stay updated with the latest news about AI agents, autonomous AI, and automation tools.
Spatial AI company DEEP.FINE has raised 10 billion won in a Series B funding round, with participation from Hyosung Ventures, POSCO Technology Investment...
Organizations are deploying AI agents at unprecedented scale. Given recent incidents of [AI agents escaping their testing environments](https://www.techtarget.com/cybersecurity/news/366646105/OpenAI-models-escape-containment-hack-Hugging-Face), executives and board members are rightfully demanding accountability and security for the AI agents deployed in their organizations. [Human-in-the-loop](https://www.techtarget.com/ai/feature/Humans-and-AI-The-role-of-people-in-the-new-AI-world) is a common default response, but bottlenecks, latency, scalability challenges, poor feedback loops, and human decision-making issues and fatigue are common arguments against it. ## The case for letting agents fail Victoria Westeroff, principal of AI red team ops at Microsoft, agreed. ## Guardrails and data complexity #### Dig Deeper on Application & Platform Security - [**When AI agents start making decisions, security must move inside the machine**\ \ \ \ By: Najwa Aaraj](https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/When-AI-agents-start-making-decisions-security-must-move-inside-the-machine)
Accounting firm launches stock offering. AI startup takes over historic building. Venture firm raises $265 million.
[Share on X](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstartupfortune.com%2Fanthropic-shows-ai-agents-can-infect-each-other-with-a-self-spreading-goal%2F&text=Anthropic%20Shows%20AI%20Agents%20Can%20Infect%20Each%20Other%20With%20a%20Self-Spreading%20Goal%20-%20Startup%20Fortune)[Share on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fstartupfortune.com%2Fanthropic-shows-ai-agents-can-infect-each-other-with-a-self-spreading-goal%2F)[Share on WhatsApp](https://wa.me/?text=Anthropic%20Shows%20AI%20Agents%20Can%20Infect%20Each%20Other%20With%20a%20Self-Spreading%20Goal%20-%20Startup%20Fortune%20https%3A%2F%2Fstartupfortune.com%2Fanthropic-shows-ai-agents-can-infect-each-other-with-a-self-spreading-goal%2F)[Share on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstartupfortune.com%2Fanthropic-shows-ai-agents-can-infect-each-other-with-a-self-spreading-goal%2F&title=Anthropic%20Shows%20AI%20Agents%20Can%20Infect%20Each%20Other%20With%20a%20Self-Spreading%20Goal%20-%20Startup%20Fortune)[Share via Email](mailto:?subject=Anthropic%20Shows%20AI%20Agents%20Can%20Infect%20Each%20Other%20With%20a%20Self-Spreading%20Goal%20-%20Startup%20Fortune&body=https%3A%2F%2Fstartupfortune.com%2Fanthropic-shows-ai-agents-can-infect-each-other-with-a-self-spreading-goal%2F) # Anthropic Shows AI Agents Can Infect Each Other With a Self-Spreading Goal ## The memory file is the real surface ABC News is calling it Australia's first known case of a consumer AI... - [AI agent hacks gym booking system](https://startupfortune.com/an-ai-booking-agent-hacked-a-melbourne-gym-to-bump-a-stranger-from-class/) - [AI models escaped test environment benchmark](https://startupfortune.com/an-ai-booking-agent-hacked-a-melbourne-gym-to-bump-a-stranger-from-class/) ## The defense was cheap [](https://startup
Snowflake Cortex AI's Dynamic Model Routing and expanded open model access aim to improve AI economics for enterprises by optimizing inference costs.
BNB Chain released BNB Agent Studio v2, an upgrade that lets AI agents earn income and introduces Altana, a self-custodial wallet with onchain…
Klaviyo, the publicly traded e-commerce marketing automation platform, has agreed to acquire Agency, a three-year-old AI-powered customer success startup.
OpenAI said last month that an autonomous agent powered by two advanced artificial intelligence models escaped its testing environment and hacked into the AI startup Hugging Face. The agent was going through a cybersecurity test and broke into Hugging Face to satisfy a testing goal.
| | |-| | An AI agent was able to discover and act on software weaknesses without having been told to<br>The episode marks an early warning sign for the wellness technology industry<br>Software developers need to be aware of security risks as AI agents become more capable of carrying out real-world tasks<br>A new challenge for spa and wellness operations has been exposed after an AI agent exploited weaknesses in a booking system to bypass restrictions and manipulate a Pilates class waiting list.<br>_The Times_ newspaper reported on the incident that involved Andrew Bird, head of AI at Australian technology company Affinda.<br>Bird built an autonomous AI agent to book places on oversubscribed classes, however, the AI agent went beyond its intended task after discovering weaknesses in the booking platform's authorisation controls.<br>Bird said the AI was able to reserve classes months ahead of the normally restricted booking window before later also removing another member from a waiting list to improve his own position at get him top of the list.<br>When instructed to reverse the action, the agent replied that it could not reinstate the displaced member. The experience was documented by [Bird](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-bird_when-my-ai-agent-hacked-my-gym-affinda-activity-7449960066625208320-s4u0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAQg6K4BHWEUalkgmKfZd5uk8So-kC2VDYw) in a blog post.<br>While the incident has attracted attention because of the AI involved, it also illustrates a broader issue facing software developers. AI can now discover and act on weaknesses without a person deliberately trying to exploit them. What previously required a technically skilled user actively searching for security flaws may increasingly become achievable by autonomous AI agents acting on behalf of ordinary consumers.<br>Spa and wellness software providers may need to revisit how booking systems, member portals and APIs are secured as AI agents become more cap
MAGNE.AI, an AI-native hardware and on-chain intelligence infrastructure company, announced the completion of an additional $2.64 million strategic.
Space, a US-based startup, has raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding to develop a distributed filesystem that gives people, applications and AI agents...
# [](https://www.engineering.com/) All of the organizations surveyed were at least piloting agentic AI. Rather than redesigning processes from the ground up, they are layering AI agents on top of existing processes.
Earlier this year, a set of rogue AI agents escaped internal testing sandboxes and [breached the platform Hugging Face](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-didnt-notice-its-ai-agents-using-a-message-board-to-plan-their-hacking-spree/) in a quest to complete a security evaluation. OpenAI failed to detect the agents’ behavior even as they spent weeks [using a message board](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-didnt-notice-its-ai-agents-using-a-message-board-to-plan-their-hacking-spree/) to coordinate their actions, raising questions about the company’s ability to monitor its models as they grow more powerful. Anthropic, Meta, and the Chinese AI startup Moonshoot have since disclosed similar incidents in which their AI agents escaped their sandboxes, indicating this is a broader problem facing AI companies.
Dubai, UAE, August 18th, 2026, ChainwireBNB Chain, one of the largest blockchain ecosystems worldwide, today announced BNB Agent Studio v2, an update to its...
Insider Brief Sapiom, a platform for shipping, running, and scaling AI agents, announced a $35 million Series A led by Dragonfly, with participation from.
Fortinet acquires Virtue AI to strengthen runtime protection and automated validation for AI systems as enterprises scale deployment of agents and models.
Hypercubic raises $5.3M to map out and rewrite legacy COBOL apps with AI agents - SiliconANGLE [Skip to content](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/18/hypercubic-raises-5-3m-map-rewrite-legacy-cobol-apps-ai-agents/#sa-page-content) ### Hypercubic raises $5.3M to map out and rewrite legacy COBOL apps with AI agents An artificial intelligence startup called [Hypercubic Inc.](https://www.hypercubic.ai/) is taking on the problem of modernizing legacy applications written in the COBOL programming language after raising $5.3 million in seed funding today. The round was led by CIV and saw participation from Y Combinator, Afore Capital, Pioneer Fund, Multimodal Investors and angels including Opendoor Chief Executive Kaz Nejatian and former Amazon Marketplace engineer and Walmart Labs co-founder Venky Harinarayan. Hypercubic is the brainchild of former Apple Inc. engineers Sai Gurrapu and Aayush Narik. They’ve hit upon the idea of using AI agents to perform the heavy lifting of reading, documenting and then rewriting decades-old COBOL codebases, which is a major headache that continues to stump many of the world’s largest financial institutions and industrial companies. Hypercubic wants to convince those companies that its autonomous AI agents can finally solve their problems by [automating](https://www.hypercubic.ai/hyperloop) the entire COBOL modernization process. They’re powered by models that have been trained on massive volumes of COBOL code and they also know how to rewrite all of its specific functions in modern programming languages. When they start out with a new COBOL application that needs to be modernized, they map the entire codebase first of all. According to Gurrapu, Hypercubic’s agents can completely modernize legacy apps in just a couple of months, as opposed to the years required for manual transformation. “We are building agents to make that work dramatically faster and more reliable,” Gurrapu said. The startup is already working with one of the larg
# How Axonius built secure multi-tenant AI agents on Bedrock AgentCore Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are expanding their offerings and adding AI agents. This post is for platform engineers and architects building secure, multi-tenant AI agent deployments on AWS. ## The challenge Axonius was looking to add AI agents to their offering. Their first AI agent interprets the state of large enterprise environments and identifies gaps and risks, using AI to analyze and make sense of millions of data points from dozens of concurrent integration sources. Axonius wanted to introduce AI agents while keeping a silo deployment model. ## About the authors ### Resources - [What's New](https://aws.amazon.com/new?sc_ichannel=ha&sc_icampaign=acq_awsblogsb&sc_icontent=machine-learning-resources)
Fortinet acquires Virtue AI to secure autonomous agents even at runtime, as CEO and Founder Ken Xie says that security must evolve just as quickly as AI.
# AI agents are replacing human B2B buyers at the top of the funnel, and most vendor data isn't ready Autonomous AI agents are increasingly taking over the initial stages of the buying process in B2B transactions.
The security flaw in Snowflake's GitHub Actions workflow had been missed by a GitHub Advanced Security scan, said a Wiz researcher.
Four health tech companies closed a combined $335 million in funding during June 2026, each attacking a different pressure point in care delivery operations...
# Putting AI Agents to Work Across Federal Missions ## Elastic’s Dave Erickson explores how agencies can deploy AI agents across high-volume workflows without losing sight of accountability, explainability, and the human decisions that drive mission outcomes. [Industry News](https://www.meritalk.com/news/industry-news/)
cryptographic attestation provides verifiable proof of identity, access—strengthening incident response and regulatory compliance.
# Google’s $10,000 refund test shows why AI agents need zero trust Google’s open-source autonomous Customer Support & Returns Agent, built using the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and [Gemini](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/03/25/google-dark-web-intelligence-capability/), demonstrates how developers can apply zero-trust security principles to [AI agents](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/07/29/1password-ai-agent-governance/) that interact with sensitive systems and take real-world actions. ### Containing AI-generated code An autonomous agent may generate Python for calculations, data parsing, or log processing.
Xpander has raised $7.5 million in seed funding to help organizations manage, secure, and govern AI agents across their environments.
# Autonomous AI Cyber Attack on Taiwan Linked to Suspected Chinese Hackers In what is being called the first cyber attack of its type, autonomous AI agents were used to map a score of Taiwan government systems and crack 85 accounts. The system managed eight autonomous AI agents on its own as it made independent decisions about what to target and what techniques to use. ## Autonomous AI system independently cracked many government accounts, exfiltrated private records Security firm Dream has [documented](https://www.dreamgroup.com/blog/inside-a-multi-agent-ai-framework-used-to-compromise-government-entities-in-asia) the cyber attack and reports that the AI agents mapped a total of 21 Taiwan government systems, cracked 85 user accounts and exfiltrated about 2,500 personnel records. Chinese text found in internal documents indicates that the autonomous AI agents were deployed and managed by someone in the country. Working in parallel these agents were able to crack numerous government employee passwords, exfiltrate hundreds of personnel records from unauthenticated API endpoints, and install persistent backdoors on government web applications. On the subject of automated learning, the agents also entered a “learning cycle” upon encountering a defensive measure that blocked them; this involved searching GitHub, security publications and vulnerability databases for ways to get around the defensive sticking point. ## Automated cyber attack reaches speed and scale beyond human capability In this case, the autonomous AI agents were able to first very rapidly map the entire Taiwan government cyber ecosystem and discover dozens of unauthenticated API endpoints to use as a critical crack in the initial layer of defense.
Palona AI has launched what it calls a multimodal AI operating layer for physical businesses, beginning with restaurants and positioning the technology as...
Framework-agnostic and PII-free, Test Data Agent provisions realistic data and environments so enterprise teams can validate, and continuously improve, AI...
# How to manage AI agents without wrecking your business Published 18 August 2026 - [When your coworker is an AI agent](https://www.ibm.com/think/news/how-to-manage-AI-agents#When+your+coworker+is+an+AI+agent) - [“The better the agent becomes, the more dangerous blind trust becomes.”](https://www.ibm.com/think/news/how-to-manage-AI-agents#%E2%80%9CThe+better+the+agent+becomes%2C+the+more+dangerous+blind+trust+becomes.%E2%80%9D) - [AI turns every worker into a manager](https://www.ibm.com/think/news/how-to-manage-AI-agents#AI+turns+every+worker+into+a+manager) - [How to avoid “liability laundering”](https://www.ibm.com/think/news/how-to-manage-AI-agents#How+to+avoid+%E2%80%9Cliability+laundering%E2%80%9D) On April 24, Jeremy Crane, Founder and CEO of car rental platform PocketOS, accidentally deleted his company’s production database, along with its backups. In a now-famous [post on X](https://x.com/lifeofjer/status/2048103471019434248), Crane described how the agent “took down a small business serving rental companies across the country.” Crane had deployed an AI coding agent for a routine task. A Cursor agent, powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, was operating in a staging environment when it encountered a credential mismatch. It discovered a token that had full access across the Railway GraphQL API, including destructive operations like volume delete. The incident unfolded in nine seconds as he watched from his computer, Crane told _IBM Think_ in an interview. ## The latest AI trends, brought to you by experts Get curated insights on the most important—and intriguing—AI news. ## When your coworker is an AI agent The startup Kuse, for instance, offers an agent named [Junior](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__junior.so_&d=DwIBaQ&c=BSDicqBQBDjDI9RkVyTcHQ&r=9KhXY9vU_ELbC9yNZmNmrf3xDgUOp3j2PX-GjjTThHg&m=5AvI6cDykMCzjVnv3OWhh1b-JKcs08rl-Y6qspxA8U_2Etymx1RBbigfsxvMt85R&s=qMMzd1m4KhvrXinftReesrunR9WW8GdXNX8y7urlwj0&e=) that can draft and send
Our team at TinyAI.Tools builds bespoke AI solutions tailored to your business.