Conversion, an AI-powered marketing automation startup founded by UC Berkeley dropouts, has raised a $28 million Series A led by Abstract. The company was conceived when the founders sought to enhance HubSpot with automation features.

The startup's AI-driven approach allows for automating personalized follow-up emails and lead organization, which has attracted midsize businesses looking to replace legacy marketing tools.

With the new funding, Conversion aims to target businesses using older marketing tools, leveraging the growing interest in AI to reach nearly $10 million in ARR over the past two years. The company competes with legacy and AI-native marketing platforms in a crowded market.

Hackers breached Allianz Life and stole customer Social Security numbers along with other personal data.

The breach occurred on July 16 and compromised the customer relationship database through a social engineering attack.

Affected data includes names, dates of birth, postal addresses, and Social Security numbers of a majority of 1.4 million customers.

Allianz Life is notifying affected individuals starting August 1 with specific details about the compromised data.

This breach is part of a recent increase in cyberattacks targeting insurance companies using social engineering tactics.

Germ, a startup, has launched end-to-end encrypted DMs for Bluesky in beta, offering a more secure messaging option than Bluesky's existing DMs.

Germ leverages Messaging Layer Security (MLS) and the AT Protocol, integrating with ATProto to allow users to chat securely with friends on Bluesky and other open social web apps.

Users can control who can initiate chats and block users across Germ, Bluesky, and other ATProto-powered apps.

Germ utilizes Apple's App Clips for quick chats via a 'magic link' in a user's Bluesky bio, allowing immediate conversations without a full app install.

The startup, founded by Tessa Brown and Mark Xue, aims to provide private communication and may introduce a premium subscription with advanced services in the future.

PlayerZero, founded by Animesh Koratana, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Foundation Capital to combat AI-generated bugs in software. The startup's AI agents are trained to identify and fix problems before code reaches production, functioning as an immune system for large codebases. Koratana developed PlayerZero at Stanford DAWN, with early backing from Matei Zaharia (Databricks) and support from investors like Drew Houston (Dropbox) and Guillermo Rauch (Vercel). PlayerZero is gaining traction, including with customers like Zuora, for its focus on safeguarding complex code, especially in billing systems.

Meta has launched Edits, a new video editing app aimed at competing with ByteDance’s CapCut. Edits, initially previewed in January, provides creators with tools for short-form video editing, offering features such as green screen, timeline adjustments, captions, audio library access, and AI-powered animation.

The app is available on both iOS and Android, requiring users to log in with their Instagram account. Edits includes tabs for Ideas, Inspiration, Projects, Record, and Insights, helping creators manage their video creation process. Key features include timeline frame rate selection, alignment guides, beat markers, filters, transitions, teleprompter, restyle, keyframes, cut silences, audio import from files and clip preview.

While both Edits and CapCut are useful for editing short videos, CapCut currently offers more advanced editing options and a more extensive music library. Edits is currently free but may include paid features in the future, as indicated by Instagram head Adam Mosseri. Unlike CapCut, Edits is currently mobile-only.

Ramp, the expense management startup, has secured $500 million in a new funding round, elevating its post-money valuation to $22.5 billion.

The round was led by Iconiq Growth, with participation from Founders Fund and D1 Capital Partners, and arrives only 45 days after a previous $200 million raise that valued the company at $16 billion.

Ramp's CEO, Eric Glyman, envisions an AI-driven future for finance, with Ramp launching its first AI agent and planning more to come.

The company has now raised a total of $1.9 billion and reports being cash-flow positive since earlier this year, with 40,000 customers.

Generative AI applications experienced significant growth in the first half of 2025, according to a Sensor Tower report. Downloads reached 1.7 billion, a notable increase from the 1 billion in the latter half of 2024. In-app revenue doubled, totaling $1.87 billion, compared to $932 million in the previous period.

Users spent over 15.6 billion hours on these apps across 426 billion sessions. Asia emerged as the fastest-growing market, capturing 42.6% of downloads, driven by India and Mainland China. While Latin America showed the highest growth in in-app purchases, North America maintains the lead in market share with 40%.

ChatGPT remains the top app for in-app revenue in most countries, excluding China, where DeepSeek leads in downloads. Users are dedicating more time to AI assistants, with ChatGPT averaging over 12 days of usage per month. The usage patterns of ChatGPT are increasingly resembling those of primary search tools like Google, extending beyond work-related tasks.

The term "AI" is now prevalent in app descriptions, appearing over 100,000 times in both the App Store and Play Store. Apps incorporating AI-related terms have seen a boost in downloads, reflecting the growing interest in AI-powered applications.