There is always an abundance of AI technology announcements, here are some interesting ones that can aid the channel.
In an all-cash deal worth $270m, Ciena is acquiring Nubis Communications, which specialises in high-performance, ultra-compact, low-power optical and electrical interconnects tailored to support AI workloads in data centres.
The Nubis portfolio includes two key technologies:
-Co-Packaged Optics (CPO)/Near Packaged Optics (NPO): Nubis’ compact, high-density optical modules deliver ultra-fast data transfer using light instead of traditional electrical signals. Supporting up to 6.4 Tb/s full-duplex bandwidth, these modules are optimised for low-latency, low-power operation, making them ideal for scaling AI systems. Combined with Ciena’s high-speed SerDes, Nubis’ optical engines enable differentiated CPO solutions to address high-performance connectivity needs inside and between racks.
-Electrical ACC: Nubis’ advanced analogue electronics enable Active Copper Cables (ACC) to support high-speed data transmission, allowing data to travel up to four metres at speeds of 200 Gb/s per lane. This low-power, low-latency solution helps customers connect more AI accelerators across racks without the limitations of traditional copper or DSP-based solutions.
In addition, the acquisition will strengthen Ciena’s expertise inside the data centre, with the addition of over 50 engineers with deep technical expertise.
“The acquisition of Nubis represents a significant step forward in Ciena’s strategy to address the rapidly growing demand for scalable, high-performance connectivity inside the data centre, driven by the explosive growth of AI-related traffic,” said David Rothenstein, chief strategy officer at Ciena.
-MongoDB has unveiled MongoDB AMP, an AI-powered application modernisation platform that helps enterprises “quickly transform legacy applications into modern, scalable services”. MongoDB AMP helps customers modernise through the fusion of an AI-powered software platform, a proven delivery framework, and experienced AMP delivery engineers who oversee and guide the implementation process - a “powerful combination of tools, techniques, and talent”, said the firm.
Enterprises across industries are weighed down by legacy applications critical to their operations, but which are also expensive to maintain and difficult to adapt to modern use cases like generative AI. Built around rigid data foundations and outdated tech stacks, these complex legacy applications can hinder innovation while posing security and compliance risks.
According to the Consortium for Information & Software Quality, the cost of technical debt in the US, as measured by “poor software quality”, software failures, lost developer time, and systems maintenance, has been estimated at almost $4 trillion dollars.
As AMP’s foundation, MongoDB gives customers the “flexibility of the document model and an architecture built for continuous change”. By combining AMP tooling with MongoDB’s proven, repeatable framework, customers have seen tasks like code transformation sped up by “10x or more”, we are told, with overall modernisation projects sped up “2–3 times”.
“Enterprises are increasingly grappling with the burden of complex legacy applications, constrained by rigid data foundations and outdated architectures that stifle innovation,” said Rachel Stephens, research director at RedMonk. “While traditionally recognised for its database capabilities, MongoDB’s strategic expansion into an AI-powered application modernisation platform highlights a critical understanding: the data layer remains an indispensable foundation for truly modern, scalable services. AMP empowers organisations to go beyond incremental 'lift and shift' migrations, instead focusing on full-stack transformation from the data up.”
-FloQast, an “accounting transformation” platform, “created by accountants for accountants”, has announced a slew of new AI-powered product and program innovations.
The advancements are designed to empower accountants to “lead the future of the profession” by harnessing artificial intelligence “as a tool for strategic change”.
Mike Whitmire, co-founder and CEO of FloQast, said: “Our mission is not to displace accountants, but to empower them. It’s about ensuring accountants own this transformation, lead the charge, and bridge the talent gap. This is how, together, we create the future of accounting we all want and need.”
Central to this is the ability to build custom AI agents within FloQast Transform with the AI Agent Builder tool. Teams can create and manage their own custom AI agents using natural language, with no coding required. This gives accountants the power to automate specific, unique workflows that address their team’s distinct needs and challenges.
The offering also includes:
-AI Detections: Continuously monitoring general ledger (GL) transactions and flagging errors ahead of the close, using custom or AI-suggested rules
-AI Testing: AI that intelligently reads and adds annotations to supporting documentation, and provides a first pass on pass/fail conclusions for internal audits
-AI Variance Analysis: AI automatically detects and explains material variances in real-time, then traces them back to source transactions for flexible, dimensional reporting
-IONOS, the European hosting provider and cloud enabler, has expanded its AI Model Hub portfolio with the addition of the entry-level model Mistral NeMo.
The model aims to provide small- and medium-sized businesses with “easy and secure access” to powerful, European AI, developed and operated under European standards.
French AI pioneer Mistral regularly publishes new models, including powerful large language models, multimodal architectures and specialised solutions for document processing.
Developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, its Mistral NeMo model is one of the larger language models in its class, with 12 billion parameters and processes input with up to 128,000 tokens.
Its strengths lie in logical reasoning, factual knowledge and code generation. Which is particularly useful for long texts, complex analyses and programming tasks. The model can be easily integrated into existing systems, such as a replacement for Mistral 7B or Llama 3.1 7B from Meta.
With its clear positioning against “non-transparent practices of non-European cloud and AI providers”, the collaboration with IONOS offers practical solutions, with open standards, European data protection, and sovereign hosting in European data centres.
Mistral NeMo is the prelude to the integration of further Mistral models into the AI Model Hub, with more powerful LLMs and specialised applications planned for the future, said IONOS.
-For decades, software assumed humans would log in to use applications. The next wave will be AI agents invoking business apps and APIs, on behalf of users or autonomously. Identity and access systems now have to prove who those agents are and what they’re allowed to do.
To address this shift, Scalekit has launched an authentication stack purpose-built for agentic apps, and announced a $5.5m seed round led by Together Fund and Z47, with additional angel backing.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 25% of enterprise breaches will be traced to compromised AI agents. Yet today's identity systems still assume a human logs in through a browser and manually clicks “log out”. That model breaks when agents spin up, complete a task, and vanish, forcing developers to over-privilege agents or build brittle workarounds.
"For years, software focused on blocking bots. Now business apps must let authenticated agents in and decide exactly what data they can read or write," said Satya Devarakonda, Scalekit co-founder and CEO. "Scalekit sits at that intersection of verifying every agent's identity and enforcing precise, least-privilege access through a single drop-in toolkit."
Scalekit secures both sides of agentic flows, incoming authentication for MCP servers and outgoing agent actions to third-party tools. Teams building Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers can add a turnkey OAuth 2.1 authorisation server “in minutes”.
And agent builders can plug in an encrypted token vault and a tool-calling layer that lets agents act on a user’s behalf in Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, and Notion, without custom token plumbing.
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