AI Funding Surge Amid Economic Uncertainty: $27M in New Deals as Layoffs Hit 60,000

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Welcome to today's edition of AI Business Weekly. From PropTech platforms revolutionizing urban living to industrial AI securing $20 million for heavy machinery optimization, today's stories capture AI's expansion into unexpected corners of the economy. As legal operations get their own AI assistant and cybersecurity firms merge human expertise with autonomous testing, we're witnessing AI's integration into professional infrastructure. Yet beneath the funding announcements lies a more sobering reality: with over 60,000 layoffs announced by corporate giants, questions emerge about whether we're experiencing an AI-driven transformation or confronting deeper economic headwinds. Let's dive in.

Wavee AI Secures £1M in Seed Funding to Scale Its Verified Resident App

London — Wavee AI, a PropTech company redefining resident engagement, has raised over £1 million in seed funding from a joint venture and private investors to accelerate expansion across the UK and into international markets. The platform connects residents, concierges, and local businesses in a verified digital environment, offering parcel tracking, visitor management, and neighbourhood networking capabilities. The funding will support the rollout of Wavee's free resident app across London before expanding to new UK cities. By creating a verified digital ecosystem for urban living, Wavee AI addresses the growing complexity of modern residential management while enhancing community connectivity in an increasingly digital world. Read more

Industrial AI Startup Octonomy Raises $20M in Seed Funding

Octonomy AI GmbH, a startup delivering artificial intelligence platforms for companies that operate heavy machinery, has announced a $20 million seed funding round led by Macquarie Capital Venture Capital. The round included participation from German bank NRW.Bank, TechVision Fund, and Capnamic, the latter of which previously led a $5 million round for Octonomy in January. The platform applies advanced AI to optimize heavy machinery operations, addressing efficiency and safety challenges in industrial environments. The substantial seed round reflects growing investor confidence in AI's potential to transform traditional industrial operations, where incremental efficiency gains can translate to significant cost savings and improved safety outcomes across manufacturing, construction, and logistics sectors. Read more

In-House Legal Operations Startup Ruli AI Announces $6M in Seed Funding

Ruli AI, a legal operations startup focused on in-house legal departments, has secured $6 million in seed funding to advance its AI-powered platform for corporate legal teams. The company's technology streamlines legal operations, contract management, and compliance workflows for in-house counsel, addressing the growing complexity and volume of legal work facing corporate legal departments. The funding comes as general counsels increasingly seek AI solutions to manage expanding workloads without proportionally growing headcount. Ruli AI's approach reflects a broader trend of vertical AI applications targeting specific professional workflows, where domain expertise combined with machine learning can deliver immediate productivity gains in specialized fields like corporate legal operations. Read more

Bugcrowd Acquires Mayhem Security to Advance AI-Augmented Offensive Testing

Pittsburgh — Bugcrowd has acquired Mayhem Security, a Pittsburgh-based AI-driven offensive security company, in a strategic move that underscores the convergence of human expertise and artificial intelligence in modern cybersecurity testing. The acquisition brings Mayhem's autonomous testing technology under the Bugcrowd platform, marking a significant step toward unifying AI-driven automation with crowdsourced human insight in vulnerability discovery and security assessment. Mayhem's AI technology can autonomously identify security flaws and potential exploits, complementing Bugcrowd's existing network of human security researchers. The combination aims to deliver more comprehensive security testing by leveraging both AI's ability to rapidly scan for known vulnerability patterns and human researchers' creative problem-solving for novel attack vectors. Read more

AI-Washing and the Massive Layoffs Hitting the Economy

Corporate giants Amazon, UPS, and Target have announced layoffs in recent weeks totaling more than 60,000 jobs cut this year, raising questions about labor market strength amid widespread AI adoption announcements. In the absence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly jobs report, the layoff announcements have sparked concerns about whether the economy is experiencing an AI-driven white-collar recession or facing broader economic headwinds. While some companies investing heavily in artificial intelligence are simultaneously cutting costs elsewhere, experts suggest the layoffs more likely signal concerns about economic conditions and slowing consumer spending rather than direct AI-driven displacement. The timing highlights a critical tension in today's economy: as companies publicly champion AI investments, they're quietly reducing workforces, leaving observers to disentangle genuine AI transformation from economic retrenchment disguised as technological modernization. Read more

📢 AI's Reality Check: Innovation Meets Economic Uncertainty

Today's edition captures AI's contradictory moment. On one hand, we're seeing $27 million flow into specialized AI applications—from PropTech to industrial machinery to legal operations—demonstrating continued investor conviction in vertical AI solutions. Bugcrowd's acquisition of Mayhem Security reinforces the thesis that AI augments rather than replaces human expertise, at least in cybersecurity. Yet the 60,000+ layoffs from Amazon, UPS, and Target cast a shadow over the narrative of seamless AI-driven transformation. The question isn't whether companies are investing in AI—they clearly are—but whether those investments represent genuine productivity enhancements or provide convenient cover for cost-cutting driven by economic anxiety. As funding rounds continue and pink slips multiply, we're witnessing not just AI's integration into the economy, but the messy, uneven reality of technological transition colliding with business cycle dynamics. The AI revolution is real, but so is the recession risk.