Prime Intellect lands $130M to help enterprises build their own AI agents

Microsoft announced an upgrade to Copilot that grants the AI system access to local files on PCs and the ability to take actions across Windows. The company is framing this as part of 'Hybrid Intelligence,' an approach that combines local and cloud-based AI models to handle tasks more efficiently. The demonstration included Autopilot assisting with tax filing by accessing emails and retrieving information from an accountant.

Nous Research, developer of the Hermes Agent AI system, confirmed a $1.5 billion valuation after closing a $90 million Series B funding round. The company is launching AI agents designed for business users, marking an expansion beyond its research focus. The funding and product launch position Nous as a competitor in the growing market for enterprise-focused AI agent tools.

NVIDIA and Microsoft announced RTX Spark, a new AI hardware and software platform designed to run AI agents locally on Windows PCs. RTX Spark combines NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU with Grace CPU, offering up to 128GB unified memory and one petaflop of FP4 AI performance. Laptop preorders begin today with availability on October 16, while compact desktops launch in November. Microsoft also released Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) as OS-level infrastructure to run agents securely in the background.

Manus, an AI agent startup that recently separated from Meta Platforms, has raised more than $500 million in new funding led by Boyu Capital and other new investors. The funding round was announced by Butterfly Effect, Manus's parent company, via a WeChat post. The capital raise follows the startup's unwinding of its relationship with Meta, signaling continued investor confidence in the AI agent space despite the separation.