The business of tech stories our desk judged worth your time, written so anyone can follow them.
Guidewire, an insurance software maker, will pay $1.7 billion in cash for Hyperexponential, whose AI helps insurers decide risk and set prices.
Read more: Guidewire to buy AI insurance pricing firm Hyperexponential for $1.7BRed Pocket, Boost, Tello and Ultra Mobile each sell phone service for about $10 a month, but data limits, short promos and prepaying change the real cost.
Read more: Four cell plans cost $10 a month, but each has a catchMod AI has launched Mod Seller IQ, which sends homeowners value reports and shows agents who opens them, so expect more of these emails if you own a home.
Read more: New tool helps real estate agents find future home sellers in their contactsCredit Saison says its ChatGPT Enterprise pilot returned 954%, but the number comes from OpenAI's own post and the math is not shown.
Read more: Japanese lender says its ChatGPT trial paid back 954%About six million small businesses may change owners by 2035 as owners retire, and many could close without a plan for who takes over.
Read more: Six million small businesses may change hands as owners retire by 2035Google moved a tool called AppFunctions to beta, letting AI assistants run actions inside Android apps. Businesses with booking or ordering apps should take note.
Read more: Google lets AI assistants use your phone's apps directly, in betaAdobe's new Marketing Campaign Analytics tool aims to show which marketing actually drove sales, but it depends on clean data and has no announced price.
Read more: Adobe's new tool shows which ads actually brought in salesFedEx and Stripe plan to use your shipping activity to help judge small business funding requests, with a first product due in early 2027.
Read more: FedEx and Stripe Plan Loans Based on Your Shipping ActivityMicrosoft is offering voluntary severance to about 60,000 employees, a quarter of its staff, while it keeps spending heavily on AI.
Read more: Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 workers, a quarter of its staffOpenAI will train its models on Daybreak Blue session data from November 29, even for users who had switched training off. A separate opt-out is promised.
Read more: OpenAI will start training on a security tool's data it once excludedMeta and Chinese robotics firm Fourier built a 106-pound humanoid prototype, and a second version is underway as Meta aims for robots in people's homes.
Read more: Meta built a humanoid robot with a Chinese company, eyeing the homeAI company Sierra passed $400M in yearly recurring revenue as ServiceNow stock fell 26.9% in a day. Software pricing is shifting from per user to per result.
Read more: A young AI company added $150M in sales in three monthsAnthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, has filed to go public, and the filing leaves open questions about its business and the wider AI sector.
Read more: Anthropic's stock market filing raises questions about its businessVaani AI Research has opened a self-serve tool for building voice agents that answer calls in many languages, though its claims are untested by outsiders.
Read more: Vaani AI Launches a Tool to Build Phone Agents That Speak Many LanguagesDataline raised $10.6 million for a network that scores data for reliability before AI tools act on it, which matters if AI starts handling money.
Read more: Startup raises $10.6M to help AI tools check their data firstMicrosoft 365 Family now gives the whole household a shared 2TB instead of up to 6TB, at the same price. Heavy OneDrive users may need to act.
Read more: Microsoft 365 Family plan cuts shared storage to 2TB, same priceA Fast Company piece argues business AI may still be missing its defining breakthrough, the way search needed Google, so today's tools may not last.
Read more: Business AI may still be waiting for its Google-style breakthroughApple has passed Nvidia as the world's most valuable company, as investors look for safer bets while worries grow over AI spending.
Read more: Apple is once again the world's most valuable companyAsana CEO Dan Rogers uses AI agents to sort his email, check his calendar and watch rivals. His main lesson: they only help once you give clear instructions.
Read more: This CEO has AI helpers run his inbox, calendar and rival watchingMore than 10 million people have turned on Meta's Muse, but big companies say it sends them very few orders so far. Here is what that means if you shop or sell online.
Read more: Meta's AI shopping helper Muse is barely moving sales so farAnthropic's filing for a big stock offering leans hard on medicine, but no AI-designed drug has won FDA approval yet, so the promise is still unproven.
Read more: Anthropic, the maker of Claude, is betting its future on medicineFactory's Droid 1.0 lets an AI coding helper batch its steps into one script, which the company says cuts tokens, cost and wait time. The tests are unverified.
Read more: Factory's Droid 1.0 AI coding helper does the same work with far lessSamsung's first AI glasses go on sale in Korea and the US in mid-December. They translate and give directions by voice, but the price is still unknown.
Read more: Samsung will sell its first AI smart glasses in mid-DecemberGPT Image 2 powers ChatGPT Images 2.0, but a newer model has already replaced it. Anyone paying for AI images should check which version they are using.
Read more: ChatGPT Images 2.0: what it does, what it costs, what came next
