Ackman Bets on Microsoft's AI Upside as Stock Slides

Capital One built a multi-agent AI platform centered on customized open-weight models rather than relying on off-the-shelf frontier models. The bank fine-tunes open models with proprietary data and uses a specialized multi-agent orchestration system called MACAW to handle complex workflows like fraud detection and customer service. This approach leverages Capital One's data advantage while enabling extensibility across the enterprise.

Microsoft is consolidating its consumer and commercial Copilot AI assistants into a single unified app called Microsoft Copilot, eliminating the need for separate applications in the taskbar. Both personal and work accounts will migrate to the new interface, which combines chat, image creation, and Microsoft 365 integration. The move reduces UI clutter while centralizing access to Copilot functionality across consumer and enterprise use cases.

A MIT Technology Review Insights report based on a survey of 300 data and technology executives finds that legacy data systems are a major blocker to AI agent adoption and effectiveness. Organizations with mature data infrastructure, termed 'data leaders,' report significantly higher trust in agent decisions and fewer scaling constraints than 'data laggards.' The research suggests that without modernizing data systems, enterprises will struggle to realize ROI from agentic AI despite widespread adoption plans.

Thrive Holdings, an OpenAI-backed enterprise AI company, has raised $2 billion in Series funding at a $12 billion valuation. The round was led by investors including SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners, and Altimeter Capital. The funding reflects growing investor appetite for AI applications targeting business customers rather than consumer markets.