Money has evolved into far more than the cash in your wallet or your bank account. And at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, we're devoting an entire stage to that progression. The brand-new Smart Money Stage will be where fintech, payments, and AI collide. From October 13'15 in San Francisco's Moscone Center, you can join leaders from Circle, Robinhood, American Express, Plaid, Airwallex, and many more as they dig into the details of how money is changing. We're talking about how stablecoins and instant payments are reshaping money movement, the ways in which AI agents are being entrusted (or not) with financial decisions, and what it takes to create regulated financial infrastructure built for a global market. We're closing in on the end of our current pricing window ' your chance to save on the best Disrupt prices is ending soon ' so check out our ticket options right here. And if you still need some convincing, let's dive into the Smart Money Stage's programming: Stablecoins and instant payments are changing how money moves around the world. This session looks at how these new payment systems compare to traditional banking infrastructure, where FedNow and private networks fit in, and how regulatory and market changes could shape the future of payments. Hear where these new systems are gaining traction, and which challenges remain....

Microsoft on Monday launched its first cybersecurity-specialized model alongside a new AI cybersecurity platform at a small event in San Francisco, taking a big swipe at major players in the space ' namely Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. The company describes MAI-Cyber-1-Flash as a model that's built 'to find challenging vulnerabilities in complex codebases.' The model is built to animate MDASH, Microsoft's harness dedicated to software vulnerability identification and remediation. The new security platform is dubbed Perception, and it's designed to deploy teams of agents to assist with and automate various security workflows, including identifying and remediating bugs. The platform can also integrate with MDASH. 'We're very very excited to announce our results,' said Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and current CEO of Microsoft AI. 'We have MAI-1 Cyber Flash binded [sic] with GPT 5.4 inside of the MDASH harness ' which beats out Gemini, GPT 5.5 Cyber, GPT 5.6 Sol, and Mythos 5 on Cyber Gym, which is the primary benchmark that we all use. The golden benchmark.'...

Good morning & happy Monday! Today, we're diving into payments giant Stripe, which is now in talks to buy OpenRouter for a whopping $10 billion (what this M&A is all about, why it's very strategic for Stripe, & how it differs from Ramp's LLM routing approach + bonus deep dive into the AI Monopoly Playbook, and How to Build an Agentic OS with Claude Fable 5 inside), and Revolut that's now officially worth $115 billion, thus making it the 8th most valuable bank in Europe (why it matters, where's the biggest risk & opportunity for Revolut + bonus deep dives into Revolut, Monzo, and Starling's latest financials, and Revolut's Foundation AI Model inside). So let's jump straight into the fascinating stuff '' The BIG News ' FinTech giant Stripe is currently in talks to buy OpenRouter for around $10 billion, roughly eight times the $1.3 billion valuation the AI model marketplace carried in May ' And everyone who covered the deal so far framed it as a payments company buying the routing layer for AI. OpenRouter's own pricing page says otherwise....

That is the challenge facing sites run by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which funds the Diamond Light Source ' the national synchrotron facility in Harwell ' as well as other scientific instruments and labs. The remodelling comes amid an overhaul to UK public research funding in line with the government's strategic priorities, and during a rocky period for UK science. The country's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has merged the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology into a larger Department of Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. Patrick Vallance, a clinical scientist popular among research leaders, resigned as science minister on 20 July. Chemical engineer Chris McDonald, a member of the UK parliament who had a prior career in industry research, was appointed to the role on 24 July. The Labour government, led by former prime minister Keir Starmer until 20 July, promised that the budget for the country's main research funder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), would grow from '8.8 billion in 2025'26 to '10 billion in 2029'30. But under this plan, cash for 'curiosity-driven research' ' meaning mostly that led by individual researchers through grants ' would stay roughly flat. By contrast, spending on strategic government priorities, such as artificial intelligence, supporting businesses and investing in talent and infrastructure, including computing resources, would receive most of the increase. AI is slated to get more than '1.6 billion over four years....