Technology & innovation
Rogo Technologies, founded in 2021 by three former Wall Street analysts frustrated with late-night Excel and PowerPoint work, just raised $160 million at a valuation that has nearly tripled in three months.
Rogo's platform can build slide decks, design corporate restructurings, and produce research that would take an analyst dozens of hours to do manually.
The company has more than 35,000 users and counts JPMorgan, Bank of America, Lazard, and Wells Fargo among its 250-plus clients.
Its valuation jumped from $750 million to $2 billion in three months, with the latest round led by Kleiner Perkins and backed by Sequoia, Thrive Capital, and JPMorgan's Growth Equity Partners.
The founders say AI will free junior bankers for more meaningful work earlier in their careers. Others on Wall Street worry it will simply reduce how many junior bankers get hired.
Read more via Bloomberg
Walmart says it plans to equip every employee, from its tech team to in-store greeters, with AI skills over the next few years, with a focus on agentic tools that reduce friction in day-to-day work.
Walmart has built four agent platforms using a mix of custom and external large language models, and offers role-specific AI certifications through an internal platform called Squiggly.
For front-line workers, practical applications include faster inventory lookup and real-time translation for customers who speak different languages.
Donna Morris, Walmart's Chief People Officer, said the company has the same number of employees it did six years ago but is generating significantly higher revenue.
Morris said the goal is creating more time for face-to-face customer work, not headcount reduction.
It’s a form of literacy in many ways, and so we really want to make sure that our associates feel literate and capable of using AI.”
Read more via HR Dive
As companies accelerate AI investment, a growing body of research suggests the people responsible for overseeing it are largely unprepared, and the reputational and financial consequences are starting to show.
Only 39% of Fortune 100 boards have any form of AI oversight, according to McKinsey. Just 13% of S&P 500 companies have at least one director with AI-related expertise, and 66% of directors say their boards have "limited to no knowledge or experience" with AI.
Boards with AI-literate directors outperform peers by 10.9 percentage points in return on equity, according to an MIT study.
CEOs are planning to roughly double AI spending in 2026, from 0.8% to about 1.7% of revenues, according to BCG, but many believe their jobs could be at risk if the investment doesn't pay off.
A separate white paper from law firm Pinsent Masons warns that reputational damage from AI-driven decisions perceived as unfair or discriminatory can be as damaging as formal regulatory action.
Read more via Axios, Forbes, Pinsent Masons
Taylor Swift is trying to trademark her voice to fight AI fakes: Swift's team filed trademark applications last week for two phrases, "Hey, it's Taylor Swift" and "Hey, it's Taylor," along with a photo of the singer, in what legal experts say could be a tool to fight AI imitation. Copyright law protects songs but not voices, leaving artists to find creative workarounds; trademarks could allow Swift to challenge not just exact copies but imitations that are "confusingly similar," according to one IP attorney. Legal experts are skeptical the applications will hold up, however. (The Verge)
Researchers invented a fake disease to trick AI. It worked a little too well: A University of Gothenburg team uploaded two fabricated studies about a fictional skin condition called "bixonimania" to a preprint server in 2024. Within weeks, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot were all describing it as real. The fake papers even started appearing as citations in peer-reviewed academic literature. The experiment underscores how quickly AI can launder misinformation into something that looks like established fact. (Futurism)
Alabama Supreme Court fines lawyer $17,000 for AI-generated fake citations: The Alabama Supreme Court dismissed an appeal and ordered Mobile attorney W. Perry Hall to pay $17,200 in fees and costs after his briefs were found to contain citations to nonexistent cases that the court described as AI "hallucinations." The court referred Hall to the state bar for potential discipline and barred him from filing anything with the court unless a licensed attorney co-signs. (AL.com)
Hundreds of AI-generated pro-Trump influencer accounts have emerged on social media ahead of the midterms: The New York Times identified at least 304 accounts on TikTok alone featuring AI-generated avatars posting at high volume about conservative politics, with some accounts already exceeding 35,000 followers and individual posts topping half a million views. President Trump reposted content from at least one of the accounts. Researchers say the avatars are becoming easier and cheaper to create at scale. (The New York Times)
Delaware bans AI from holding medical licenses: A new Delaware law signed by Gov. Matt Meyer on April 23 bars "nonhuman entities," including AI agents, from being licensed as nurses, physicians, or physician assistants in the state. The law took effect immediately. (Delaware Online)
