The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates announced its decision to maintain the key rate applicable to the overnight deposit instrument.
The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates announced its decision to maintain the key rate applicable to the overnight deposit instrument.
According to the statement, the central bank decided to keep this base rate at 3.65 percent. This decision was made after the Federal Reserve (Fed) took its actions.
Groundcover has raised $100 million in a new funding round. New investors One Peak and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital participated in this round. Zeev Ventures, Angular Ventures, Heavybit, and Jibe also took part in the financing.
Thanks to this round, the total amount of funds raised by the Tel Aviv-based company Groundcover has reached $160 million. The company announced that it plans to use these funds for global deployment, deepening partnerships with leading cloud service providers, and accelerating and intensifying product innovations.
Over the past year, the company has served more than 250 enterprises, many of which are Fortune 5 companies, as well as fast-growing startups. During this period, Groundcover tripled its revenue and doubled its staff to 130 employees worldwide.
As the volume of workloads utilizing artificial intelligence or functioning as autonomous systems increases, engineering teams require a deeper understanding of infrastructure, applications, and the AI workloads themselves, without compromising costs or ensuring data security and privacy.
Groundcover offers to combine adaptive eBPF sensors with support for the ready-made OpenTelemetry solution to create complete telemetry across infrastructure, applications, and AI workloads, eliminating data sampling. Shahar Azulai, CEO and founder of Groundcover, stated: 'We are entering the AI era, and this requires a new observability model, different from what we have today.' He noted that they use eBPF and BYOC infrastructure to provide clients with a platform capable of serving both engineers and autonomous AI agents operating in production environments.
Unlike traditional observability platforms that reduce or selectively collect telemetry data to control costs, Groundcover captures operational data with full fidelity, keeping it in the customers' own cloud environments. This approach allows organizations to maintain privacy, reduce operational costs, and improve AI-driven decision-making.
The company's Agent Mode feature further extends these capabilities, helping engineering teams automatically detect, troubleshoot, and fix issues in the production environment. By providing complete operational visibility, Groundcover aims to create the data foundation necessary for autonomous software operations.
Venture firm One Peak noted that Groundcover has developed an observability platform specifically designed for AI-centric environments. The investment firm believes that Groundcover's architecture positions it to define the next generation of observability infrastructure as enterprises increasingly rely on AI-based applications.
The platform has gained popularity among organizations seeking greater control over operational data and reducing dependence on outdated monitoring systems that struggle with rapidly growing volumes of telemetry. Groundcover plans to use the new funding to strengthen commercial activities, especially in North America, where it continues to attract clients from established observability vendors. Furthermore, the company intends to enter additional international markets and deepen its co-selling programs with leading cloud providers.
The investments will also support the further development of the product roadmap, including new AI-based features and additional observability use cases. The company's goal is to create a platform that allows engineers and autonomous AI agents to operate more efficiently while maintaining full control over operational data. As enterprises continue to integrate AI into critical business systems, observability is becoming an increasingly vital layer of cloud infrastructure, and Groundcover is positioning itself to capitalize on this shift by offering scalable monitoring, a privacy-first architecture, and AI-powered automation for modern software environments.
InvestiFi has successfully raised $20 million to accelerate the development of its embedded digital investing platform designed for American credit unions and local banks.
This funding round represents the largest investment made in a fintech company that specializes exclusively in providing digital investing capabilities for credit unions and local banks. The investment round was led by Vibe Credit Union, with participation from BankTech Ventures, Idaho Central Credit Union (ICCU), Navari, United Financial Credit Union, Coastal Credit Union, Mid Minnesota Credit Union, Truity Credit Union, and Southpoint Credit Union.
InvestiFi plans to use the secured funds to expand its platform, accelerate new product development, and increase the number of financial institutions aiming to retain client deposits within their own digital banking ecosystems.
The company, founded by CEO Kian Sarreshteh, operates as a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO). It enables financial institutions to integrate investment services directly into their online platforms. This means clients do not need to transfer funds to external brokerage firms or investment applications; they can invest directly from their checking or savings accounts.
The company's technology, which is currently patent pending and named 'Checking Account Investing,' simplifies the investment process and helps financial institutions strengthen customer relationships. Currently, the platform supports fractional share and ETF investing, managed investments, IRAs, cryptocurrency and stablecoin trading, with future releases planned for additional investment products.
A study conducted by Cornerstone Advisors showed that nearly half of Gen Z and millennial consumers actively invest, and 43% have moved money to third-party investment platforms. InvestiFi believes that embedding investing within the ecosystem allows local banks and credit unions to compete more effectively against large financial institutions, fintech companies, and digital brokers.
Over the past two years, InvestiFi has demonstrated significant growth in its client base. The company increased its number of clients from four in 2024 to over 60 signed financial institutions by July 2026, reflecting the growing demand for integrated digital investing services. Sarreshteh noted that the latest funding confirms both the viability of the platform and the company's long-term mission. He emphasized that many investors are existing clients, which indicates confidence in InvestiFi's technology and its ability to help local financial institutions compete in an increasingly digital financial landscape.
Vibe Credit Union stated that this investment aligns with its goal of supporting members at every stage of their financial journey, viewing digital wealth accumulation services as an essential addition to traditional banking products. BankTech Ventures also highlighted InvestiFi's rapid client growth and the expanding market opportunity, noting that the company solves a critical problem facing local financial institutions in an era where digital investing is becoming an expected consumer feature.
The new capital will be directed towards platform expansion, product innovation, and broader deployment across the United States. InvestiFi aims to increase adoption among existing partner financial institutions while attracting additional banks and credit unions interested in embedded investing opportunities. As digital investing continues to become a standard feature in financial services, InvestiFi positions itself as the technology partner enabling smaller financial organizations to offer investment services without requiring clients to leave their trusted banking platforms.
Microsoft released financial results for the last quarter that exceeded market projections, with the cloud computing platform Azure being the main driver of this success. Following the announcement, the company's shares rose by approximately 3% at market close.
Microsoft's total revenue in the quarter ending June 30 reached US$ 90 billion (equivalent to R$ 461.5 billion), surpassing the estimate of US$ 87.6 billion (R$ 449.2 billion) provided by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share was US$ 4.74 (R$ 24.30), above the forecast of US$ 4.24 (R$ 21.74).
Compared to the same period last year, revenue increased by about 18%. Net income reached US$ 35.7 billion (R$ 183.4 billion), corresponding to US$ 4.81 (R$ 24.66) per share, contrasting with the US$ 27.2 billion (R$ 140 billion) or US$ 3.65 (R$ 18.72) recorded a year earlier.
Microsoft attributed the good performance to a gain of US$ 3.2 billion (R$ 16.4 billion) from investment in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, combined with lower-than-expected expenses related to its first voluntary retirement program. On the other hand, the Xbox division reported an accounting impairment loss.
Azure was the highlight of the quarter. The Intelligent Cloud division, responsible for the cloud service, generated US$ 39.3 billion (R$ 201.6 billion) in revenue, representing a 31.6% growth compared to last year and exceeding the expectation of US$ 38.1 billion (R$ 195.7 billion) from analysts consulted by StreetAccount. Azure demonstrated a 43% expansion, accelerating from the 40% seen in the previous quarter, while the market predicted around 40% growth.
Additionally, Microsoft announced that Azure surpassed the US$ 100 billion (R$ 512.8 billion) revenue mark during the 2026 fiscal year, reaching this level for the first time. Although it has advanced, the platform is still behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) but maintains a higher position than Google Cloud, which belongs to Alphabet.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, the AI assistant integrated into the Office suite, also showed significant progress, surpassing 30 million paid licenses, a number higher than the more than 20 million registered in July.
The Productivity and Business Processes division, which includes products such as Office, Dynamics, and LinkedIn, achieved revenue of US$ 37.8 billion (R$ 194 billion), representing a 14.3% annual increase and exceeding the projection of US$ 37.1 billion (R$ 190.7 billion).
The More Personal Computing area, which includes Windows, Bing, Surface, and Xbox, recorded revenue of US$ 12.8 billion (R$ 65.9 billion), marking a 4.4% drop compared to the previous year. Despite this contraction, the result remained above the market forecast of US$ 12.1 billion (R$ 62.4 billion).
Microsoft reported that sales of Surface devices and Windows licenses for computer manufacturers decreased by 7% in the quarter. Gartner consultancy estimated that global PC shipments declined by 4.2% in the same period.
Despite the positive results, investors are monitoring Microsoft's AI strategy. Analysts at Deutsche Bank recently pointed to a 'certain concentration risk' in the partnership with OpenAI, especially considering the progress of open-source models.
In January, Microsoft had stated that about 45% of its remaining US$ 625 billion (R$ 3.2 billion) in commercial performance obligations were linked to OpenAI. In the analyzed quarter, this indicator—which reflects contracted revenues not yet recognized—rose to US$ 678 billion (R$ 3.5 billion), an 8% increase from the previous quarter. The company justified this growth mainly due to contracts signed with customers who do not develop AI models.
During the fourth fiscal quarter, Microsoft also launched an AI model focused on programming with the goal of reducing costs and appointed Dan Shapero, a LinkedIn executive, to lead the professional social network. Furthermore, price cuts were implemented for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. The company's executives plan to detail the financial results and present future outlooks in a conference call with analysts.
