Take a wild ride with us, as we use a large language model to convert a Python app to Rust. Also, could Pandas finally compel you to ditch Excel? And, is Python’s native JIT the Python performance booster we’ve all been waiting for? All this and more, in this week’s report. Top picks for Python

For the past few years, I’ve watched a specific story sell itself in boardrooms: “Software will soon be free.” The pitch is simple: Large language models can write code, which is the bulk of what developers do. Therefore, enterprises can shed developers, point an LLM at a backlog, and crank out custom business systems at

When Romy Gai, FIFA’s chief business officer, described the operational challenge of running a 48-team World Cup across Canada, Mexico and the United States, he was not talking about technology. He was talking about complexity. Previous World Cups relied on local organising committees to absorb much of the logistical load. For 2026, FIFA is running operations directly.

Managing the economics of multi-agent AI now dictates the financial viability of modern business automation workflows. Organisations progressing past standard chat interfaces into multi-agent applications face two primary constraints. The first issue is the thinking tax; complex autonomous agents need to reason at each stage, making the reliance on massive architectures for every subtask too

At a glance Problem: Debugging AI agent failures is hard because trajectories are long, stochastic, and often multi-agent, so the true root cause gets buried. Solution: AgentRx (opens in new tab) pinpoints the first unrecoverable (“critical failure”) step by synthesizing guarded, executable constraints from tool schemas and domain policies, then logging evidence-backed violations step-by-step. Benchmark

Xscape Photonics has closed a $37 million funding round, bringing its total Series A investment to $81 million. The round was led by Addition, a new investor in the company, with continued participation from IAG Capital Partners and NVIDIA, among others. The fresh capital doubles the company’s valuation and deepens its runway as it advances

Translucent, an AI platform for healthcare finance, has raised $27 million in a Series A round led by GV, the venture arm of Google. The round also includes continued participation from NEA, Virtue, and FPV Ventures. The raise was preemptive and oversubscribed, closing just months after the company’s $7 million seed round announced in August

Maisa, an enterprise AI infrastructure company focused on auditable “digital workers,” has reported 400% year-on-year growth and a fivefold increase in client adoption over the past year, as organisations deploy AI beyond pilot projects into business-critical production environments. The company was named a Rising Star in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Programme 2026, an annual

BackOps has raised $26 million in Series A funding as it looks to grow its AI platform for supply chain operations. The round was led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Construct Capital, and 10VC. The company said the new capital will help it expand its team and move faster on product development as

Proposed acquisition positions Zendesk to lead the agentic service era, projecting 2026 as the year AI agents will surpass human service  Zendesk expects autonomous AI to handle more service interactions than humans this year, marking a structural shift in customer service. To lead this transition, the company today announced it has entered into a definitive