This year’s action RPG Stellar Blade has been a solid win for Sony as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. Developer Shift Up revealed in a recent quarterly earnings that sales “have remained steady even as the initial surge has calmed” following its spring launch. But there may be a second boost coming for the game, because the studio is planning a PC port of Stellar Blade some time next year.

“Given recent trends like Steam’s growing presence in the AAA games market and the global success of Black Myth: Wukong, we are expecting the PC version to perform even better than the console version,” the Korean company when asked about their PC plans during the presentation.

The title referenced, Black Myth: Wukong, was able to for concurrent players in a single-player game on Steam when it launched on the platform in August. That’s a lofty goal for any game to reach, so we’ll have to see how successful Shift Up can be in reaching an international audience on PC.

Agentic AI continues to grow as enterprises explore its potential. However, there can be pitfalls when building an AI agent workflow. 

May Habib, co-founder and CEO of full-stack AI platform Writer, said there are four things enterprises should consider when thinking about autonomous AI and the automated workflows that AI agents enable. 

“If you don’t focus on the capabilities that are right for you to create self-sufficiency, you’ll never get to a generative AI program that is scaling,” Habib said. 

For Habib, enterprises need to think about these four things when approaching AI workflows that offer value to them:

1. Understanding your use cases and the mission-critical business logic connected to those use cases
2. Knowing your data and the ability to keep the data associated with business cases fresh
3. Learn who the people that can build those use cases in the team
4. Managing the capacity of your organization to absorb change

Know your process and build a pipeline

When it comes to understanding use cases, Habib said many enterprises don’t need an AI that will tell them how to grow their business. They need AI that streamlines the work they already do and supports the processes they already have. Granted, of course, the organizations are aware of what these processes are. 

“Never forget that the nodes of the workflow are the hardest part, and not to get overly excited about the hype of agentic until you’ve nailed that workflow, because you are just moving inaccurate information or bad outputs from the system,” Habib said. 

Business processes cannot work without good data, but Habib said businesses should also build a data pipeline to bring fresh data related to the specific business use case. 

Habib said it’s equally important to know who can build the AI applications in an organization and the people who understand the workflows involved in the use cases best. She said AI does not dictate processes; the enterprises dictate the processes AI should follow. All of these culminate in the fourth tenet of effective generative AI: knowing how much change the organization can take and understanding how the actual users of the applications can find value in the technology. 

Envisioning automated AI workflows

Writer has built AI agents and other applications on its full-stack AI platform. That includes its Palmyra family of models that are specifically designed for enterprises. Its latest model release, Palmyra X 004, excels in function calling and workflow execution, which helps build AI agents. Its AI models also proved very successful for healthcare and finance use cases. Writer also offers RAG frameworks for enterprises. 

Habib said Writer wants to bring more of its vision of agentic AI — though she personally does not like the word agents because it means too many different things — that involves “AI that is able to respond to a command and then go use Writer apps, know how to interact with each other and use third-party applications.” 

Writer’s agentic AI workflow framework relies on a series of Writer apps embedded in enterprise workflows. For example, suppose a customer wants to bring a product to market. In that case, a user can tell their catalog platform running on Writer’s models and applications to pull up the specific product they want, say it needs to be posted on e-commerce sites like Amazon and Macy’s, and include other product information. The agentic workflow will then pull up the product, connect to Amazon and Macy’s APIs and post the product for sale. 

“If it has a GUI, if it has a UI, AI will become a power agent. To us, agentic AI is the ability for AI to use AI plus third-party software and be able to reason its way through,” she said. 

Moving agentic AI forward

To help facilitate the expansion of its agentic AI vision, Writer announced it raised $200 million in series C funding, bringing its valuation to $1.9 billion. 

Premiji Invest, Radical Ventures and IOCNIQ Growth led the funding round. Other investors included Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures and Workday Ventures, along with existing investors in the company. 

Habib said the new round allows it to continue building on Writer’s existing work with design partners and other customers to bring the automated workflows to life. 

Shares of Swiggy dropped 4% to 401 rupees on Wednesday as the food delivery and quick commerce startup concluded India’s second-largest IPO this year, in a closely watched debut that puts it in direct comparison with what analysts have long considered the benchmark Indian internet stock: Zomato.

The listing of the 10-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered firm marks a milestone for India’s startup ecosystem, where several firms are eyeing similarly large public offerings in the next 24 months. It also delivers a major liquidity event for Swiggy’s backers, including Prosus, whose paper returns have already reached $2 billion, as well as SoftBank and Accel. Some 5,000 employees stand to collectively reap about $1 billion in wealth.

In the run-up to the IPO, Swiggy set its valuation at $11.3 billion, a notably conservative figure given rival Zomato’s recent $29 billion market capitalization. In an interview, Swiggy co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety said the firm wanted to make the offering exciting for new investors. Shares of Zomato is also down 8% this month as foreign institutional investors continue to sell billions in Indian shares.

“One of the things I am most excited about is that Swiggy itself is happening at an incredible time,” he said in a speech Wednesday. “When we look at the next one to two decades, I think it’s India’s next two decades. There’s so much economic growth in front of us. The Indian pride is at an all-time high.”

Swiggy enters public markets at a pivotal moment in India’s digital commerce landscape. While it has established itself as India’s second-largest food delivery platform with 14 million monthly active users, it trails market leader Zomato across key metrics. Its annualized gross order value of $3.3 billion in food delivery lags about 25% behind Zomato’s, according to Macquarie research.

The gap widens further in quick commerce – the rapid delivery segment promising grocery deliveries in 10 minutes. Swiggy’s Instamart service, operating through a network of over 550 dark stores, has 5.2 million monthly users compared to 7.6 million for Zomato’s Blinkit. More concerning for potential investors is that while Blinkit has reached adjusted EBITDA breakeven, Instamart remains loss-making even at the contribution margin level.

“We believe each of Swiggy’s business segments deserve to get lower target valuation multiple compared to that of Zomato’s due to poor execution in the past, which has led to widening of the market share gap,” JMFinancial analysts said Wednesday.

Yet the opportunity ahead is substantial. Morgan Stanley estimates India’s quick commerce market could reach $42 billion by 2030, representing over 18% of the country’s total ecommerce market. The sector has already grown at a blistering 77% annually since its pandemic-era inception, far outpacing traditional retail’s 14% growth.

JPMorgan reports that quick commerce platforms have already captured 56% of online grocery delivery from traditional e-commerce players.

However, competitive pressures are intensifying. Traditional retail giants like Flipkart and Reliance’s JioMart are launching their own rapid delivery services. Questions persist about the viability of the quick-commerce model beyond major urban centers, given its reliance on dense networks of small warehouses.

I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.

It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of “DOGE” for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.

I look forward to Elon and Vivek making changes to the Federal Bureaucracy with an eye on efficiency and, at the same time, making life better for all Americans. Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 Trillion Dollars of Government Spending. They will work together to liberate our Economy, and make the U.S. Government accountable to “WE THE PEOPLE.” Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026 – A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!

• Improvements are rolling out now for Chrome for iOS
• Google Lens gets improved searches
• Tighter integrations with other Google apps

If you’re using Google Chrome on your iPhone, you’ll be interested in the four upgrades that have just been announced. They’re improving Google Lens search, online shopping, and integrations with Google Drive, Google Photos, and Google Maps.

First, as outlined in the official Google blog post, we’ve got an upgrade for Google Lens. You can already run Google Lens searches inside Chrome for iOS using a photo from the camera or your gallery – just tap the search box, then the Google Lens icon – and the new update lets you refine those searches with extra text.

It just got much easier to take a robotaxi ride in Los Angeles. Waymo announced on Tuesday that anyone in the Californian city can now take fully autonomous rides, removing the need to join a wait list.

Alphabet-owned Waymo started offering paid robotaxi rides in Los Angeles earlier this year via its Waymo One app, but strong demand resulted in a waitlist of nearly 300,000 people to join the service.

But now anyone can download the app and book a ride using self-driving Waymo car.

“Now is an exciting time to welcome everyone in Los Angeles along for the ride,” Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO, Waymo, said in a post on Waymo’s website. “Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving.”

Waymo riders can now criss-cross nearly 80 square miles of LA County, with the company planning to expand its service area over time to cover more of the city.

To date, driverless Waymo cars have taken care of hundreds of thousands of paid trips throughout the city, with riders rating the experience at 4.7/5 on average. Also, a recent survey by Waymo of Los Angeles riders found that 98% were satisfied with the service.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the company in recent months. Earlier this year, the U.S. government’s highway safety agency launched an investigation into crashes and alleged traffic violations involving Waymo’s autonomous cars, which besides Los Angeles also operate in San Francisco and Phoenix. And there was also the recent case of Waymo cars keeping residents awake at night as they honked their horns incessantly for no apparent reason. Waymo has since implemented a fix.