Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Friday, May 1, 2026
Microsoft Ships Copilot Cowork and Wave 3, Bringing Long-Running AI Agents to Microsoft 365
Microsoft on Friday shipped Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, its largest agentic platform update since the product launched. The centrepiece is Copilot Cowork, a long-running background agent built in collaboration with Anthropic that can execute multi-step tasks autonomously across Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams. Alongside it, Microsoft made Anthropic's Claude and the latest OpenAI models available directly in the Copilot chat interface. Both Agent 365 — the company's governance and security control plane for AI agents, priced at $15 per user per month — and Microsoft 365 Enterprise 7, which bundles all of the above into a $99 per-user monthly suite, became generally available the same day.
Sources: VentureBeat
Microsoft Warns Ungoverned AI Agents Become Corporate 'Double Agents,' Launches $15/Month Fix
Microsoft warned that enterprises deploying AI agents without centralised governance risk turning them into inadvertent corporate data leaks — or what the company describes as double agents. To address the threat, Microsoft released Agent 365, a $15-per-user monthly product that gives IT and security teams a single interface to observe, audit, and govern every AI agent operating inside an organisation. Paired with the $99-per-user Microsoft 365 Enterprise 7 bundle, Agent 365 targets a newly recognised gap between rapid agentic AI adoption and the security infrastructure needed to keep it in check. The company cited internal data showing ungoverned agents regularly expose confidential employee and customer data.
Sources: VentureBeat
Nvidia Makes First Legal AI Investment, Backing Legora at $5.6B Valuation
Nvidia's corporate venture arm has made its first investment in legal AI, backing Legora as the Swedish startup reached a $5.6 billion valuation in a new funding round. Legora builds an AI-powered legal workspace that automates document review, contract analysis, and research tasks for law firms and in-house legal teams. The Nvidia investment puts Legora ahead of competitor Harvey in a head-to-head valuation comparison and signals that the chipmaker sees legal AI as a significant inference workload opportunity. The round arrives as the legal AI sector rapidly consolidates, with several well-funded players competing for enterprise clients across US and European markets.
Sources: TechCrunch
Meta's Business AI Tools Hit 10 Million Weekly Conversations, Up Tenfold Since January
Meta's business AI tools reached approximately 10 million conversations per week as of late March 2026, the company disclosed Wednesday — a tenfold increase from the roughly one million weekly interactions recorded at the start of the year. The tools, which help small businesses handle customer inquiries and basic operations, are currently offered at no charge as Meta focuses on building scale before monetisation. Meta has not set a public timeline for pricing the products, but executives indicated 2026 as the likely commercial launch window. The growth trajectory suggests significant organic adoption among small businesses already active on WhatsApp and Instagram.
Sources: TechCrunch
SoftBank Spins Out Robotics and Data Centre Company Targeting $100B IPO
SoftBank is spinning out a new company that combines robotics manufacturing with data centre infrastructure, and the unit is already targeting a $100 billion initial public offering. The move reflects a broader thesis that AI-era infrastructure — data centres, power, and the robots that physically build and maintain them — is increasingly inseparable. SoftBank's bet is that owning the full stack, from hardware that trains AI models to robotic systems that operate physical facilities, creates a structural advantage as AI capital expenditure climbs toward projected trillions globally. No specific IPO timeline has been confirmed, but sources indicate investment bankers have been engaged for preliminary conversations.
Sources: TechCrunch
Rivian Cuts DOE Loan to $4.5B, Expands Georgia Factory to Build 10,000 Uber Robotaxis
Rivian has renegotiated its loan with the US Department of Energy, reducing the facility to $4.5 billion from the original $6.6 billion approved under the Biden administration, with the company planning to draw the funds in early 2027. The reworked agreement accompanies an expansion of its Georgia factory's planned capacity from 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles annually — a 50 percent increase the company says will reduce per-unit costs. A portion of that output will fulfil a deal with Uber to produce at least 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis for deployment in San Francisco and Miami beginning in 2028. Rivian reported $1.38 billion in first-quarter 2026 revenue.
Sources: TechCrunch
X Launches AI-Rebuilt Advertising Platform in Bid to Reverse Revenue Decline
X began a phased rollout of a rebuilt advertising platform Wednesday, replacing legacy infrastructure with a system using modern AI-based retrieval and ranking to match ads with relevant audiences. The platform represents X's most significant attempt to reverse a multi-year revenue decline that accelerated following Elon Musk's 2022 acquisition. X described the new system as offering more precise targeting and faster optimisation loops for ad buyers. The company has not disclosed specific revenue projections, but is positioning the rebuilt platform as central to restoring its advertising business. Several major brands that had paused spending on X were invited to preview the system ahead of the full rollout.
Sources: TechCrunch
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-Bench Verified): Claude Opus 4.6 (~82%) | GPT-5.5 (~80%) | Gemini 3.1 Pro (~79%)
Top Open Source Models: Mistral Devstral 2 (72.2%) | Qwen3-Coder-Next (70.6%) | DeepSeek V3.2 (70.2%)
Top Small Models (15–50B): Mistral Devstral Small 2 (68.0%) | Kimi K2.5 (~65%) | Qwen3-32B (~63%)
Top Edge Models (0–15B): Mistral 3 Mini (12B, ~54%) | Gemma 3 9B (~51%) | Phi-4-Mini (~49%)
AI Leaders: NVIDIA ~$5.0T | Microsoft ~$4.0T | Alphabet ~$3.2T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical ~$190B | ABB Robotics ~$30B (est. spin-off) | Fanuc ~$28B
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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