One of the largest lead generation datasets ever compiled has been found exposed online, containing 4.3 billion professional records in a 16 terabyte unsecured database.
By 2027 the race to become the first cosmic CEO is moving from science fiction to strategy. Starcloud has already trained an AI model in orbit on an Nvidia H100, while Google prepares Project Suncatcher. What remains missing is not ambition, but clear pricing and proof orbital compute can pay.
Melbourne-based broker ThinkMarkets has been hit by the Chaos ransomware group, which stole 512GB of data. The breach includes employee passports and customer KYC records, posing a major risk to the Australian financial services firm and its clients worldwide.
Abu Dhabi-based Kingpin has secured US$3.5 million in seed funding to scale its AI-native SaaS platform for global B2B retail distribution. The investment will fuel expansion into Europe and North America, targeting entrenched inefficiencies in wholesale trade with intelligent automation.
Abu Dhabi-based Kingpin has raised US$3.5 million in a seed funding round to advance its AI-powered platform for global retail distribution.
Kingpin develops infrastructure to connect brands, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers through a unified ecosystem. The company, founded by third-generation industry operators, aims to replace fragmented, manual workflows with an intelligent, connected platform.
The Update: Abu Dhabi-based Kingpin, an AI-native SaaS company, has secured US$3.5 million in seed funding to accelerate its global B2B distribution platform. The round was backed by US and UAE investors, including Infinity Ventures, Red Swan Ventures, Mu Ventures, COTU, and Outliers, with support from Abu Dhabi's Hub71 ecosystem. The capital is earmarked for expanding its engineering and product teams, strengthening its AI capabilities, and supporting market entry into Europe and North America.
Founded by Harsh Sajnani and Guilherme Soares, who have multi-generational family experience in retail and distribution, Kingpin was built to address long-standing industry inefficiencies. The platform currently serves over 300 brands and distributors across beauty, fashion, and sports, reporting up to 20% revenue growth and 85% shorter sales cycles for its customers.
"We've lived the pain points across three generations," said CEO Harsh Sajnani, highlighting the company's deep-rooted industry expertise.
Why it Matters: Kingpin's funding highlights a critical shift toward automating the global B2B retail sector, an industry traditionally reliant on manual processes and fragmented systems. As noted by lead investor Infinity Ventures, the company is "bringing AI-native infrastructure to one of the largest and least-automated sectors of the global economy." By integrating product discovery, sales, pricing, and fulfilment into a single intelligent system, the platform addresses deep-seated inefficiencies that slow down trade and inhibit growth. This move signifies a broader trend of applying AI not just to consumer-facing products, but to the foundational mechanics of commerce, promising more resilient and efficient supply chains.
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New York-based AI One has raised $11M to scale its Enterprise Context Management platform, helping AI agents understand complex business environments without costly data migrations. The funding will fuel Fortune 500 expansion across finance, healthcare, and energy.
Berlin-based Peec AI has raised a $21M Series A to scale its marketing platform for the AI search era. As consumers shift from Google to ChatGPT, Peec helps brands analyse and improve their visibility in AI-generated answers, pioneering the new field of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
Parallel Web Systems, the AI startup from former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has secured $100 million in a Series A round co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures. The company is building a new layer of web infrastructure designed for AI agents to search and interact with live, accurate data.
Australia is entering the age of agentic intelligence as startups like Firmus Technologies and Sharon AI build sovereign compute, renewable powered data infrastructure and AI platforms. Infrastructure is accelerating while enterprise adoption remains slow, creating a widening national gap.
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