NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Can AI Fix Bad Sales Pitches?

Most AI tools for sales focus on Zoom calls and CRMs. But what about the reps actually out in the field—pitching products, handling objections, and closing deals face-to-face?

These are field salespeople; selling products like tools and kitchen appliances, going out into the real world to land deals. And so far, they’ve mostly been left out of the AI revolution.

That’s the gap Siro is trying to fill. And it just raised $50 million to do it.

Here’s how it started:

• Founder Jake Cronin knows the challenge firsthand. In college, he sold kitchen knives door-to-door.

• When he hired a team to help him out, he realized he had no way to coach them in real time.

• The work was high stakes, but invisible. No recordings, no feedback, no way to improve.

He built Siro to change that:

• Reps use the app to record in-person meetings.

• Siro’s AI transcribes the conversation, highlights what went well, and surfaces the best calls across the company.

• It also gives feedback on soft skills — like how someone builds trust or handles a tough “no.”

The company describes it as capturing the “dark matter” of sales—all those offline conversations that used to disappear, now turned into something teams can learn from.

This raises questions about privacy. Siro has features in place to promote transparency (like prompting reps to get consent before recording), but it’s still up to each business to make sure they’re using the app in a legal and ethical way.

📺 Watch this 1-min video on how Siro makes it easy for salespeople to track their pitches.

The UAE’s Big Leap into “Sovereign AI”

OpenAI is partnering with Cisco, Oracle, Nvidia, and others to build a huge data center cluster in Abu Dhabi. It’s called Stargate United Arab Emirates—and it will be OpenAI’s largest outside the US.

This isn’t just any server farm. At full capacity, it would draw 1 gigawatt of power. That’s roughly the output of an entire nuclear power plant (enough to power almost a million homes for a year).

This is the first project under OpenAI’s “OpenAI for Countries” program, which is meant to help governments build their own AI infrastructure—what’s often called “sovereign AI.” In this case, the UAE will work with OpenAI and US partners to launch and manage the systems.

The partnership means United Arab Emirates will also become the first country to offer ChatGPT Pro for free nationwide—that is, everyone there will have direct access to OpenAI’s best models.

Why now? AI is becoming a strategic resource, not just a software feature. Countries are realizing that whoever controls the infrastructure behind AI also shapes how it's used, what data it runs on, and who benefits.

OpenAI’s new initiative is meant to give governments a way to build their own AI capabilities—while also keeping its systems aligned with US partnerships and values.

📺 Watch this 4-min video on OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar’s take on the project.

Should Robots Have Emotions Like Humans?

Traditional robots follow commands, but they don’t give off subtle signals the way people do. That makes them harder to predict and trust.

That’s why Intempus, a new robotics startup founded by 19-year-old Teddy Warner, is working on a system to give robots something called a “physiological state.”

What’s a physiological state? It’s how the body reacts between sensing and acting—like leg shaking when you’re nervous. Subtle cues we notice in people (and even pets), but never expect from a machine.

Intempus wants robots to move with human-like emotion. Warner began by collecting data like heart rate and body temp to track how we physically respond to emotions — now he’s using it to train AI that mimics those responses in robots.

Some see it as a practical step toward making robots easier to work with. Others are a little freaked out by the idea of robots acting human. What do you think?

AI Around The World

Naver, the company behind South Korea’s leading search engine (the “Google of South Korea”), is entering Thailand’s AI market. It’s partnering with local firm SIAM.AI to build a Thai language model and tourism chatbot, with support from Nvidia. The goal: help countries build their own AI systems instead of relying on US or Chinese models.

AI is coming for jobs—and women’s roles are in the crosshairs. A United Nations report finds women in high-income countries are nearly three times more likely than men to hold jobs at risk of AI automation, especially in clerical work. Yet women are engaging with AI tools far less, raising fears that the tech could widen gender gaps rather than close them.

Microsoft’s Aurora AI could redefine weather forecasting. Trained on over a million hours of global data, Aurora can predict typhoons, sandstorms, and air quality more accurately than traditional models. It called Typhoon Doksuri’s landfall days in advance, runs in seconds, and is already being integrated into MSN Weather for real-time forecasts.