Respond.io raises $62.5M to expand AI customer service platform

Salesforce is acquiring Fin, a customer AI agent startup formerly known as Intercom, for $3.6 billion. The deal represents an 80% premium over Fin's last $2 billion valuation and signals Salesforce's push to strengthen its enterprise AI capabilities. The acquisition aims to help Salesforce compete for customer adoption of its own AI offerings.

An Ivanti survey of 3,900 employees across six countries reveals a critical governance gap in enterprise AI deployment: 85% of IT professionals claim every AI agent has a named owner, but only 42% say ownership is actually clear. Meanwhile, organizational leaders hide AI use at nearly twice the rate of other employees (42% versus 23%), often citing competitive advantage. Security leaders report detecting thousands of shadow AI applications operating across enterprise infrastructure, with inadequate controls and governance frameworks unable to keep pace.

Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup, launched Sakana Marlin, an autonomous research agent that generates 100-page strategy reports over 8 hours rather than seconds. The product targets enterprises, financial institutions, and think tanks with a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Marlin represents a shift in enterprise AI from speed-focused generation to deep, methodical reasoning using the company's Adaptive Branching Monte Carlo Tree Search technology.

NewCore has raised $66M to build identity and security infrastructure for AI agents operating as enterprise employees. The startup argues that managing AI agents, rather than people, will become the primary enterprise security challenge. The funding reflects growing recognition that AI systems need formal identity frameworks as they take on autonomous workplace roles.