BUSINESS

LeBron James’s agent has told the Los Angeles Lakers that he intends to sign with a new team, according to a new report.

Most enterprise AI deployments so far have focused on coding assistants and customer service bots. Morgan Stanley has deployed agents in one of banking’s most accuracy-critical, deadline-driven workflows instead — profit and loss (P&L) reconciliation — and cut the work in half. The counterintuitive part: it got there by making the system less autonomous, not more.Humans stay tightly in the loop, and their decisions are iteratively turned into repeatable rules the system can apply on its own.“It’s much more like a co-worker than a copilot,” Morgan Stanley Managing Director Todd Johnson said at a recent VB AI Impact event. The internal production agentic system, known as FIXR, goes beyond simple, straightforward “gen AI 1.0” tasks. “We think that’s where the opportunity is to really unlock more complex work in the organization.”FIXR behind the scenesEvery trading day, Morgan Stanley’s trade desks handle the important work around transactions such as cash equities or debt investments. And, at the end of each of those days, controllers must reconcile P&L across the finance giant’s Finance, Risk, Operations, and Trade Capture systems. All that data must come together, and, perhaps not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of attributes frequently fail to match. Typically, this means controllers must manually investigate each mismatch (or “break”), make decisions on adjustments, then ideally sign off before the number goes to the desk. And all of this while working on a hard morning deadline. Previously, this could take up to six hours for a single book. Now, FIXR performs the task in two to three hours, Johnson said. Across the roughly 100 controllers who do this work, that adds up to about 1,500 hours saved per week.After nightly P&L calculations complete, the system automatically analyzes “breaks” and proposes resolutions based on learned rules. Several agents work together: One interprets past guidance to develop start-of-day resolutions.One learns from controller behavior and documents the rules they apply.One converts repeated patterns into durable, automated logic.Over time, the system can auto-clear certain breaks it’s encountered before, suggest solutions for others that may be less familiar, ask for help when it’s unsure, and flag for human investigation. When items are repeatedly resolved through the same method, it can create firm rules. Critically, humans don’t leave the loop, but stay fully in it, he said. They review, approve or correct every recommendation, then feed those decisions back to improve the next run. The agent learns daily from controllers what it gets right and wrong and codifies that knowledge as it iterates. “You still preserve that element of human accountability even as you start to automate,” Johnson said. “Over time you’ll see more and more of those items resolved in an automatic way.”He emphasized that autonomy requires a great deal of trust; enterprises will not see efficiency gains if everyone’s checking everything an agent does. The human–agent feedback loop was critical to addressing the challenge of controlled, measured, and repeatable automation. “We recognized that all that intelligence that’s sitting in the mind of a controller is gonna be difficult to get all into an agent on day one,” Johnson said. Focus on process-first, extensibilityIt was critical to establish processes first, before getting any AI involved, Johnson said. His team ran a “very thorough” process intelligence assessment that mapped and mined workflows to identify where automation would be the most advantageous: Was the answer agents, traditional automation, or simple re-engineering of an inefficient step? “If we can fix that first before we add agents to the problem, then we really will be transforming the opportunity,” he said. The P&L sign-off process was full of manual steps suitable for automation, and agents taking over some of these time-consuming tasks are freeing up controllers for “more value-added analysis” and “deeper risk consideration” work, he said. Extensibility, though, was just as important as time savings. Johnson’s team chose this particular P&L reconciliation use case because hundreds of controllers were doing this work globally across the business (in the Americas, Europe, Asia). So start with a use case, prove it, extend it, “and then ultimately the transformation will be as we roll this out more and more across the organization,” Johnson said. Deterministic by designJohnson said the team also deliberately limited how much of the workflow depended on the model’s judgment at all. “If you have an opportunity to make things very prescribed and repeatable, that’s cheaper in terms of token consumption, it’s more repeatable in terms of controls — and have the LLM do the stuff where you don’t need that kind of deterministic workflow,” he said. As the system sees more controller feedback on a given break type, Morgan Stanley converts that pattern into a fixed rule instead of leaving it to the model.Humans still own the behavior An interesting (and perhaps fundamental) question being raised at the dawn of the agentic era is: Are agents code or digital employees?Johnson argues that “they’re probably a little bit of both,” and, as such, require nuance when it comes to governance and oversight. Technical teams must still be responsible for maintaining protections and guardrails like firewalls or encryption, for instance. But there’s a new dynamic around the “performance element”: Humans using agents are responsible for them because it’s aiding their business work. For instance, if a senior controller is working with a junior controller, they don’t just relinquish responsibility because someone is helping them out, Johnson noted. “One of our strong principles in our AI governance generally is that there always has to be human accountability, even if there’s a degree of automation,” he said. But there typically isn’t “one single one person,” and the process is ultimately continuous. To this point, Johnson joked that one “depressing” thing about agentic AI is that it’s going to require ongoing training because models are ever-changing. “You’re never gonna be able to say: ‘We’ve done all the evaluation and testing that we need to do. Let’s just let it go.’ You’re going to have to have a constant view as it evolves over time.”Morgan Stanley is aiming at real enterprise pain pointsMorgan Stanley’s experience mirrors patterns VentureBeat has uncovered across enterprise AI deployments. In VentureBeat’s recent VB Pulse survey, nearly three-quarters of respondents reported seeing little to no ROI from custom model fine-tuning, describing a “sandbox graveyard” of AI projects that proved too costly to maintain. This suggests that Morgan Stanley’s process-first, buy-and-blend approach may be more sustainable than chasing bespoke models. The survey had 87 respondents and findings should be considered directional. Governance emerged as another common challenge: 38% of respondents cited the lack of a single accountable owner as their biggest barrier to production AI, while only two of the 87 enterprises surveyed had active monitoring and alerting in place to detect model failures. Morgan Stanley’s emphasis on clear process ownership and feedback-loop-plus-human sign-off could provide a counterexample.

Anta didn’t build a brand — it built a portfolio. Here’s why that strategy is eating Western sportswear alive.

I’ve sat on both sides of the SEO sales call for years. Here’s exactly how I’d vet an agency — and the red flags I’d walk away from — if I were the one writing the check.

Investors have poured money into exchange-traded funds at a rapid pace in the first half of 2026, demonstrating an unrelenting appetite for stocks associated with the AI theme.

The crypto wallet is doubling down on perpetual futures after hiring the builders behind one of Hyperliquid’s highest-profile market experiments.

A new study from Ramp found companies making the biggest investments in AI are expanding their workforces, with heavy adopters increasing headcount by about 10% and entry-level hiring by 12%, challenging fears that generative AI is already causing widespread job losses.

Crypto investors had hoped that increased institutional adoption and a crypto-friendly administration could help the largest cryptocurrency avoid the painful cycles it once experienced.

Government scientists warn people to stay indoors this weekend as temperatures in many areas could reach triple digits

At the start of every console cycle, we ask the same question: How much better will the next system be?For Sony, the next cycle could bring a tougher question. How much more will gamers be prepared to pay?The PlayStation 5 remains one of the most vital platforms in gaming, but the console hardware business has changed. Component prices are increasing. Hardware prices are going up. Plus, gamers aren’t chained to the same living-room setting that defined past PlayStation generations.That puts Sony in a tough spot as it designs its next-generation platform, which gamers widely expect to become the PlayStation 6.Sony has not officially unveiled the PS6. It has not announced a pricing, release date, or final hardware design.But Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Hideaki Nishino has just given investors something more meaningful: a clearer look at how Sony is thinking about the next PlayStation era.The answer may thrill players wanting greater flexibility, but that may be a concern for gamers hoping for a cheaper console.“As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses,” Nishino said in Sony’s Game & Network Services Q&A.Sony wants PlayStation to escape the living roomThe PlayStation ecosystem was always easy to enter. You bought the console. You connected it to a television. You played from the couch.Now Sony is trying to expand the boundaries.In the investor Q&A, Sony said PlayStation is long associated with living-room gaming, but more customers are now playing on personal monitors. That change has led the corporation to expand how and where it uses PlayStation.This is important, since Nishino linked the same philosophy directly to the next-generation platform.Sony stated that it did not intend its future platform to be merely an alternative to a PC. Rather, the business is looking to broaden the usage modes of the PlayStation and build a more seamless experience outside of the living room.Related: Sony’s mirrorless camera and lens bundle is cheaper than buying the body alone — only at WalmartSony did not confirm that a PS6 portable is in development. It also did not support a hybrid console like the Nintendo Switch.But the direction is undeniable.The business already has a handheld remote play device called the PlayStation Portal, which offers gamers a way to access PlayStation games away from the main TV. PS Portal has seen significant demand across North America, Europe, and Japan, Nishino said. He added that cloud streaming takes little memory, which makes it even more desirable, since memory prices are growing.That leaves Sony with a few options.It could still release a powerful home console for dedicated players. It could add a handheld companion. It could lean more heavily on cloud streaming. Or, it could build a broader PlayStation family with different price points for different types of users.It’s a dramatic departure from the old console cycle. It may also be necessary.Sony’s PlayStation price problem is getting harderSony’s risk is not that gamers hate PlayStation; it’s that the hardware math is becoming worse.Sony raised U.S. prices for PS5 hardware in April. The standard PS5 moved to $649.99, the PS5 Digital Edition to $599.99, and the PS5 Pro to $899.99, according to PlayStation Blog. Sony cited continued pressure in the global economy.More Tech:Microsoft CEO sends a blunt warning on AI and the tech ecosystemAmazon CEO just made things uncomfortable for AnthropicMicrosoft has bad news for a key AI partnerThat pricing move impacted the PS6 discussion.A company that is already offering a PS5 Pro for about $900 has little room to surprise gamers with a significantly more expensive next-gen system. But Sony also made plain that it will not just absorb any rise in costs to keep hardware prices lower.Microsoft (MSFT) is not immune to the pressure.Xbox is hiking console prices globally Aug. 1, with 512 GB units climbing $100 and 1 TB versions increasing $150. Microsoft also indicated that console storage and memory prices had risen more than 2.5 times and could double again by fall 2027.Key takeaways for Sony and PlayStationSony has not officially announced the PlayStation 6.Sony says its next-generation platform should expand how and where people play.The company says it does not intend to sell hardware at significant losses.PS5 prices have already moved higher in the U.S.Microsoft’s Xbox price increase shows that component pressure is hitting the broader console market.Historically, consoles have been priced inexpensively so platform owners could generate money later via games, subscriptions, and digital sales. But that paradigm becomes difficult as memory and storage costs rise and consumers already demonstrate reluctance to increasing charges.The recent U.S. sales data show the resistance is real. PS5 spending was down 43% in May, and unit sales were down 58%, the lowest May unit-sales total for PlayStation gear since 2000, TechRadar reported, citing Circana.

Sony hints at a bold PlayStation 6 move as costs surge.KAZUHIRO NOGI / Getty Images

Sony must protect PlayStation margins without losing gamersThe actual PlayStation narrative for investors is that Sony is not merely attempting to sell another box.It’s trying to defend the profitability of one of its most important ecosystems while stopping gamers from moving to PC, Nintendo, or Xbox. Sony also said PlayStation 5 has an installed base of more than 93 million units as of March 31, 2026, with 125 million monthly active PlayStation users.It’s clear that although hardware gets you in the ecosystem, Sony’s longer-term profitability is more reliant on software, subscriptions, add-on content, digital transactions, and engagement. In the same Q&A, Sony stated that content and services remain essential drivers, since they generate recurring revenue and touchpoints with gamers.That’s why Sony may be ready to rethink the next PlayStation.A single expensive PS6 might be enough to satisfy the most ardent gamers, but could also price out many casual users. A cheaper device in the cloud could increase access, but may not be enough for users who want full local performance. A handheld or hybrid device could broaden the audience, but might also pose problems regarding power, battery life, and development expenses.There is no one best response to that. Still, Nishino’s statements suggest Sony is getting ready for a more flexible PlayStation business, not just a more powerful console.That could be the way to go, since the console industry is getting more expensive at a time when consumers are more discriminating. Sony has to convince players that the next PlayStation is worth the cost, and investors must believe the business won’t sacrifice margins to win the next hardware cycle.That’s a hard line to walk.The next PlayStation could offer users more opportunities to play than ever before. It could also test how much people want to spend to stay within the Sony ecosystem.Related: Xbox fans waiting on Project Helix get unexpected news from Wedbush