#fintech

Taktile raises $110M to put AI in charge of bank decisions

Taktile, a Berlin-and-New-York startup, has raised $110M in a Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, bringing total funding to $184M. The company sells an Agentic Decision Platform that blends AI agents, hard rules, data, and human oversight to automate high-stakes financial decisions — including loan underwriting, insurance claims, customer onboarding, and anti-money-laundering checks. Clients include Mercury, Monzo, Faire, and Pleo. Taktile claims customers have achieved 95% automation in B2B underwriting and a 75% reduction in AML false positives. The company argues general-purpose AI is insufficient for regulated financial decisions where errors cost millions, positioning its platform as auditable and steerable by business owners, not just engineers. The funding will go toward expanding in the US, Europe, and Latin America, including a new São Paulo office.

Google Finance gets a dedicated app for Android

Google has launched a dedicated Android app for Google Finance, offering watchlists, real-time market data, live financial news, and an AI-powered 'Key Moments' feature that explains stock movements. An iOS version is planned for later. The move puts Google in direct competition with Yahoo Finance and Robinhood. Alongside the app, Google is rolling out portfolio tracking globally on the web, letting users view holdings in a single dashboard and interact with an AI research tool using natural-language queries. New AI task features allow users to set up automated briefings and performance summaries based on their watchlists or portfolios.

Airwallex raises $320M at an $11bn valuation

Airwallex has closed a $320M Series H round at an $11bn valuation, up from $8bn just six months prior, led by Addition with participation from Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price, Amex Ventures, and others. The company is pivoting beyond payments infrastructure toward 'autonomous finance,' unveiling two new products: T:0, an AI-native platform that automates a company's entire finance function (bookkeeping, taxes, compliance, forecasting) currently in private beta, and Airi, an agentic consumer wallet designed to serve as payment infrastructure for AI agents transacting on users' behalf. Airwallex reported $1.3bn in annualised revenue (up 74% YoY) and $287bn in annualised transaction volume (up 120%). The company argues its decade-long investment in 85 regulatory licenses and local settlement rails gives it a compliance edge in the emerging agentic payments race, where Stripe, OpenAI/Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are also competing.

How to Build a Credit Scoring Grid From a Logistic Regression Model

Bài viết hướng dẫn chi tiết cách chuyển đổi hệ số từ mô hình logistic regression thành điểm tín dụng 0–1000, sau đó phân nhóm điểm thành sáu lớp rủi ro. Quá trình bao gồm tính điểm cho từng hạng mục biến dựa trên công thức hệ số, tổng điểm cho mỗi khách hàng, đo lường đóng góp của biến (loan_percent_income chiếm 35%), và kiểm định sự phân tách giữa khách vỡ nợ và không vỡ nợ. Cuối cùng, xây dựng bảng rủi ro bằng vingtiles và xác nhận tính ổn định của phân nhóm trên các tập dữ liệu train, test và out-of-time.

Lập trình viên nên đọc bài này để hiểu cách chuyển đổi mô hình phân loại logistic thành hệ thống đánh giá tín dụng thực tế, giúp tự động hóa và tối ưu hóa quy trình phân loại rủi ro khách hàng một cách khoa học và hiệu quả.

FirstQFM Reports Quantum Forecasting Results Using NVIDIA CUDA-Q FirstQFM Reports Quantum Forecasting Results Using NVIDIA CUDA-Q

FirstQFM announced at ISC 2026 that its Quantum Reservoir Computing (QRC) system achieved a 56.1% series-level win rate against leading classical foundation-model baselines in zero-shot financial time-series forecasting. Built on proprietary Quantum Foundation Models and powered by NVIDIA CUDA-Q, cuQuantum, and cuTensorNet, the system was scaled on the Leonardo Supercomputer. The company claims to outperform AI forecasting models from Google, Salesforce, and Amazon on NISQ-era hardware, with plans for both cloud and on-premises enterprise deployments using NVIDIA NVQLink.

AI loses out to human wealth managers when the money actually moves, HSBC finds

An HSBC survey of nearly 10,000 affluent and high-net-worth investors across 10 markets finds that while 73% use AI for finance research, only 12% name it as their primary decision-making influence. Most investors use AI early in the process to compare options and summarize research, then defer to human advisers for the final call. HSBC frames this as a 'Human-AI Advantage' and has launched its own LLM-based platform called Wealth Intelligence, built with Google Cloud, to equip relationship managers with AI-generated briefings before client meetings. The survey's commercial angle is noted — a finding that clients want both AI and human advisers conveniently supports HSBC's product offering.

Investec deploying AI tools to every employee

Investec has rolled out Microsoft Copilot to all 8,000 employees across South Africa, the UK, and other markets, claiming to be the first South African organisation to publicly announce a full-workforce AI deployment. The bank reports over 800 AI agents in active use, collectively freeing up more than 350,000 staff hours annually. Investec frames the deployment as augmenting rather than replacing workers, emphasising a 'human-first' philosophy. The freed capacity is described as being reinvested into client service and advisory work, though the bank did not disclose how time savings are measured or any impact on headcount.

Meta’s new prediction market app Arena could bring betting to 3 billion users

Mark Zuckerberg has directed a small Meta team to build a prediction market app called Arena, which would initially use a points-based system rather than real money to sidestep CFTC oversight. The news sent shares of DraftKings, Flutter Entertainment, and Robinhood lower, reflecting the competitive threat Meta's 3 billion monthly active users pose to existing platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. Arena would operate independently from Facebook and Instagram. Meta has not ruled out real-money betting in the future, which would require regulatory approval. The announcement comes as the CFTC is actively rewriting prediction market rules, and existing platforms are already grappling with insider trading scandals and monetization challenges.

SpaceX draws $89 billion in demand for its debut bond sale, one of the largest US offerings this year

SpaceX attracted $89 billion in investor demand for its debut investment-grade bond sale, seeking to raise $20–25 billion across five tranches to refinance a $20 billion bridge loan. The bridge loan had earlier been used to retire high-interest junk debt from X and xAI. All three major credit rating agencies assigned SpaceX investment-grade ratings, citing Starlink's 12 million subscribers and dominant launch position, while flagging AI expansion risks and governance concerns. The bond sale follows SpaceX's record-breaking $75 billion IPO two weeks prior, meaning the company could raise roughly $100 billion from public markets in under a month — an unprecedented feat. SpaceX reported $101 billion in cash but also a net loss of nearly $5 billion in 2025 and negative free cash flow of $14 billion, driven largely by AI division spending. The company also recently acquired AI coding startup Anysphere, maker of Cursor, in a $60 billion all-stock deal.