StrictlyVC returns to NYC on Sept 10 at Ideal Glass Studios with $180 tickets, riding a clear momentum in NYC seed funding: ~240 startups raised $1.13B in H1 2026, averaging seed rounds around $6.64M and totaling $16B across the year’s first half.
A broad TechCrunch roundup shows AI agents moving into production with massive funding, big enterprise deals, and cloud infrastructure shifts, underpinned by Cognition’s $1B raise at a $26B valuation, Anthropic and Snowflake mega-deals, and regulatory/privacy considerations around new agent-enabled tools.
Visa backs Replit to enable agentic payments for developers, exploring Visa Intelligent Commerce and Trusted Agent Protocol integration; investment amount undisclosed and no joint product yet.
The piece interrogates RSI (recursive self-improvement) as the next AI frontier, outlining key players, tangible funding/valuation signals, and the regulatory/public-policy debate, while highlighting concrete metrics from the ecosystem and ongoing progress gaps.
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