George Fraser: AI agents require centralized data for effectiveness, the rise of AI native companies threatens traditional software, and strategies to restrict data access are emerging | AI + a16z

How to set the rules that keep agents effective and out of trouble The post What AI Agents Should Never Do on Their Own appeared first on Towards Data Science.

Base MCP links ChatGPT to on-chain wallets as Bankr halts transfers after 14 wallets were hit. Prompt-injection and overbroad approvals now press on DeFi risk.

Microsoft used its annual Build developer conference to unveil a suite of tools aimed at making AI agents safer, more controllable, and easier to evaluate — a direct response to growing industry alarm over autonomous AI systems operating without adequate oversight. At the centre of the effort is the Agent Control Specification (ACS), an open-source standard that […]

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to production deployments, one challenge is becoming increasingly apparent: AI systems are only as reliable as the business context they operate in. Snowflake is attempting to address that problem with Horizon Context, a new set of semantic and metadata-management capabilities, currently in preview, that it unveiled Tuesday at its annual Snowflake Summit conference. Artin Avanes, head of core data platform at Snowflake, said that the offering, launched as part of Horizon Catalog, the company’s existing data discovery, management and governance suite, collects metadata from across an enterprise’s data estate, enriches it with business definitions, relationships, lineage, and governance information, and makes that context available across AI and analytics systems. These capabilities, according to Avanes, build on Snowflake’s acquisition last year of Select Star, a metadata management startup known for its integrations with database systems such

Microsoft just announced "Project Solara," a new OS designed for gadgets that run AI agents, at Build 2026. The company is calling it "a new platform built from the ground up to power agent-driven experiences." It's built on Android, not Windows. Microsoft demonstrated two concept Project Solara devices at Build today: Desk concept and badge concept. The desk concept is an Amazon Echo Show-like device that unlocks with facial recognition and provides access to AI agents. The badge concept is a wearable, the type of badge you'd typically use to access a work building. It has a camera and a fingerprint scanner, which can wake an AI agent wi … Read the full story at The Verge.

Crossmint launched a Visa powered API that lets developers enable AI agents to make card payments with tokenized credentials. The post Crossmint launches Visa powered card payments API for AI agents appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

DeFi APIs sit underneath every wallet, dashboard, and trading bot in on-chain finance. They feed the prices users see and the positions wallets track. They also drive the routing logic behind swap aggregators. AI agents executing trades in 2026 rely on the same data layer.

Our 2026 State of AI for Business Report surveyed more than 2,100 business professionals — 86% of whom are B2B marketers — and asked what AI training they want most.