Amjad Masad

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.