SGR freight up 12.3%, Telegram domain suspended, Nous $1.5B

Nous Research, the company building the Hermes AI agent platform, is in talks for a new funding round that values it at $1.5 billion. The round is led by Robot Ventures with significant participation from Union Square Ventures and aims to raise at least $75 million. That is roughly 30 times the company's valuation from under three months ago, reflecting the market's hunger for agent infrastructure. For developers building on Hermes, the funding means more resources for tools, models, and likely a push toward enterprise sales. The round signals that the space between model providers and end-user applications, the agent orchestration layer, is where investors see the next platform opportunity.

PixVerse, a Singapore-based AI video generation startup, has closed a $439 million Series C extension that pushes its valuation past $2 billion. The company offers text-to-video and image-to-video generation tools and says it will use the capital to expand its world model capabilities and reach more geographies. Co-founded by Jaden Xie and Wang Changhu, the company has raised over $700 million since founding three years ago. The round is evidence that generative AI video remains a category investors are willing to fund at scale, even as the broader market matures. For content teams, the takeaway is that AI video production tools are becoming a funded category with real staying power and increasingly production-ready output.

X has adjusted its recommendation engine to amplify posts from users' mutual followers, meaning the feed will surface more content from accounts that both you and a person you follow also follow. The change is a deliberate departure from the engagement-at-all-costs model that rewarded controversial and polarising content. X says the goal is to give the timeline a more communal feel. For regular users, the feed should feel less like a battleground and more like the old Twitter, with fewer algorithmic pushes into confrontation. The losers are media accounts and power users who built reach on outrage amplification, their impressions will almost certainly drop. The shift signals that X is trying to claw back mainstream users who left during the chaos years.

Microsoft is testing a version of the Windows 11 search menu that strips out recommended content and ads, focusing search on local files, apps, and settings only. The update is rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel. The current search box mixes local results with Bing web suggestions, promoted app placements, and content recommendations, which has drawn criticism from users who just want to find a file. If this test ships broadly, it would mark a rare reversal of Microsoft's strategy of pushing ads and services into core OS surfaces. For Windows users, the practical upgrade is a search bar that actually finds what you are looking for instead of trying to sell you something.

Engineered Performance Technologies (EPT) has acquired Hondata, the legendary Honda and Acura engine tuning software company, continuing a wave of private equity consolidation in the automotive aftermarket. EPT already owns Cobb Tuning, ECUTek, AutoMeter, and other big names in performance parts and software. The acquisition means the three dominant engine management platforms (Cobb, ECUTek, and now Hondata) all answer to the same corporate parent. For enthusiasts, the risk is less competition, higher prices for tuning hardware and software, and potentially more restrictive licensing. For the wider car market, the deal confirms that PE sees consistent cash flow in the aftermarket and will keep buying established brands with loyal customer bases.