Technology

Imagining the future of banking with agentic AI

September 4, 2025
Agentic AI is coming of age. And with it comes new opportunities in the financial services sector. Banks are increasingly employing agentic AI to optimize processes, navigate complex systems, and sift through vast quantities of unstructured data to make decisions and take actions—with or without human involvement. “With the maturing of agentic AI, it is…

The Download: unnerving AI avatars, and Trump’s climate gift to China

September 4, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Synthesia’s AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they’ll be able to talk back. —Rhiannon Williams Earlier this summer, I visited the AI company Synthesia to give it what it needed to…

Transforming CX with embedded real-time analytics 

September 4, 2025
During Black Friday in 2024, Stripe processed more than $31 billion in transactions, with processing rates peaking at 137,000 transactions per minute, the highest in the company’s history. The financial-services firm had to analyze every transaction in real time to prevent nearly 21 million fraud attempts that could have siphoned more than $910 million from its…

How Trump is helping China extend its massive lead in clean energy 

September 4, 2025
On a spring day in 1954, Bell Labs researchers showed off the first practical solar panels at a press conference in Murray Hill, New Jersey, using sunlight to spin a toy Ferris wheel before a stunned crowd. The solar future looked bright. But in the race to commercialize the technology it invented, the US would…

The Download: sustainable architecture, and DeepSeek’s success

September 3, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Material Cultures looks to the past to build the future Despite decades of green certifications, better material sourcing, and the use of more sustainable materials, the built environment is still responsible for a…

The connected customer

September 3, 2025
As brands compete for increasingly price conscious consumers, customer experience (CX) has become a decisive differentiator. Yet many struggle to deliver, constrained by outdated systems, fragmented data, and organizational silos that limit both agility and consistency. The current wave of artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI that can reason and act across workflows, offers a powerful…

Building the AI-enabled enterprise of the future

September 3, 2025
Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping how the world operates. With its potential to automate repetitive tasks, analyze vast datasets, and augment human capabilities, the use of AI technologies is already driving changes across industries. In health care and pharmaceuticals, machine learning and AI-powered tools are advancing disease diagnosis, reducing drug discovery timelines by as much…