SUCCESS

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden sent letters to Howard Lutnick and Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino asking about a loan Tether reportedly made to Lutnick’s family.

*Rates and APYs are subject to change. All information provided here is accurate as of April 30, 2026.

Key takeaways

PenFed is our top pick because the lender doesn’t charge document fees or origination fees, and its annual percentage rates are competitive.
Our list of best auto refinance companies is built on more than 300 cumulative research hours. We evaluated 30+ auto refinance lenders, interviewed 15+ company representatives and reviewed over 30 data points.
Refinancing a car works in two ways: traditional auto refinance and cash-out refinance.
Traditional auto refinance consists of taking out a new loan to pay off the balance on your existing vehicle loan, ideally for a lower rate
With cash-out auto refinance, your new loan covers your existing balance and provides an additional amount of money.

Our Top Picks for Best Auto Refinance Companies of May 2026
The companies listed below stood out after we researched and evaluated the respective merits of more than 15 choices for auto refinancing.

PenFed Credit Union – Best Overall
Gravity Lending – Best for Customer Service
myAutoloan – Best for High Credit Scores
Upstart – Best for Low Credit Scores
Upgrade: Best for Average Savings Claim

Best Auto Refinance Company Reviews

Pros

Relatively low minimum APR

No origination fee

Cons

Higher starting APR for vehicles with 7,501 miles or more

Must be a credit union member (or join)

HIGHLIGHTS

Starting APR
New cars start at 4.19% and used vehicles start at 4.79%*

Minimum Credit Score
Not disclosed

Loan Amounts
Up to $150,000

Loan Terms
36 to 84 months

Why we chose it: PenFed Credit Union takes the title of the best direct lender for auto refinance loans because it doesn’t charge document fees or origination fees, and its annual percentage rates are competitive.
Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) is one of the nation’s largest credit unions, with nearly 3 million members, and anyone can join. Although it has a higher minimum APR for cars with more than 7,500 miles, you can at least refinance a car that has up to 125,000 miles on it. (Other restrictions including vehicle age and mileage may apply.) You an lso refinance up to 125% of your current loan balance.
Many auto refinance marketplaces impose document fees or origination fees, and in return, the company handles the original loan payoff. With PenFed, you’re responsible for this task, as well as changes to the vehicle title. Still, the lack of fees helps cut your total loan repayment.

PenFed Disclaimer
*Actual APR will be determined at the time of disbursement and will be based on application and credit information. Rates quoted assume excellent borrower credit history. Not all applicants will qualify for the lowest rate. Rate depends on term. New vehicles are where you are the original owner and the vehicle is a current 2025 model year or newer and has less than 7,501 miles.
**To receive federally insured products, you must be a PenFed member; the advertised rates are current as of April 30, 2026, depending on credit history, and the actual APR will be determined at disbursement based on your credit information and the loan term, with new vehicles defined as the current 2025 model year or newer with under 7,501 miles.

Pros

High BBB and TrustPilot satisfaction ratings

Large lender marketplace
No document fee

Cons

Not available in Alaska, Rhode Island, Nevada, or Washington, D.C.
Lowest advertised APR is based on an applicant with a 740 credit score

Website lacking in loan details

HIGHLIGHTS

Starting APR
3.89%

Minimum Credit Score
Not provided, but 740 for lowest rates

Loan Amounts
Not provided

Loan Terms
25 to 84 months

Why we chose it: Gravity Lending has high ratings and favorable reviews on multiple third-party review platforms. It is a marketplace, rather than a direct lender, so prospective borrowers can put in their information and receive offers from some of the dozens of lenders in Gravity’s network.
Borrowers who refinance their vehicles with Gravity Lending can save an average of 18% a month, according to the company.
Its minimum APR is a favorable 3.89%, but be aware that only borrowers with high credit will be able to get this rate. Other factors that determine your interest rate include the term of your loan — Gravity offers auto refinance loans from 25 to 84 months, which is relatively standard for the industry — and your income. The age of your car, its mileage and your debt-to-income ratio are all variables that Gravity Lending’s partner network of lenders take into consideration.
Positive customer feedback on third-party review websites highlights the personalized assistance provided by loan officers. Gravity Lending stands out for the high marks it gets from users on TrustPilot as well as the BBB, with a 4.9 (out of 5) on both platforms. The company earned an A+ rating from the BBB, which rates how a business responds to customer complaints.
Customer feedback highlights the personalized assistance provided by loan officers.

Pros

Relatively low minimum APR
Compare four loan offers online within minutes
Most customers can prequalify without a hard credit pull
Receive a check within 24 hours

Cons

Sets a minimum annual income ($18,000)

Smaller lender network than some providers

Not available in Alaska or Hawaii

HIGHLIGHTS

Starting APR
4.20%

Minimum Credit Score
Generally 600, but lower scores sometimes qualify, as well

Loan Amounts
Starting at $5,000 for refinance loans

Loan Terms
36 to 84 months

Why we chose it: myAutoloan is our top pick for people with excellent credit who are seeking to refinance their car.
The company — a marketplace that sells products from many different lenders — says its options include a highly favorable minimum APR of 4.20% to those who qualify. Although it requires a higher-than-typical minimum annual income of $18,000, borrowers can refinance cars that are up to 10 years old and have as many as 125,000 miles on their “clock.” Available loan amounts range from $5,000 to $100,000. The company says some borrowers have saved as much as $5,000 by refinancing their auto loan.
Despite the relatively high minimum annual income requirement of $18,000, a company spokesperson says MyAutoLoan can work with people who have credit scores as low as 580 to help them find an auto refinance loan that will meet their needs.
To get an idea of your potential APR, try the company’s Auto Loan Interest Rate Calculator, which doesn’t require personal information. You can also prequalify for an auto refinance loan using an online form. MyAutoloan guarantees up to four offers based on the accuracy of the provided information.
Read our full review of myAutoLoan Auto Refinance>>>

Pros

Can accommodate subprime borrowers

More flexible income requirements than some

No origination, application or prepayment fee

Cons

Minimum APR for auto refinance not publicly available
Car refinance loans not available in Iowa, Maryland, Nevada and West Virginia
$60,000 loan maximum
Not available in Iowa, Maryland, Nevada or West Virginia

HIGHLIGHTS

Minimum APR:
Not disclosed

Loan amounts:
$3,000 to $60,000

Loan terms:
24 to 84 months

Minimum credit score:
Not disclosed

Why we chose it: Upstart is our pick for the best auto refinance company for borrowers with low credit scores.
According to the company, Upstart uses artificial intelligence to factor over 2,000 variables to determine your creditworthiness, including your education and employment, instead of relying solely on your credit score.
Upstart can refinance cars up to 13 years old and with up to 140,000 miles, which are higher numbers than some of its competitors accommodate. It also has a low minimum threshold for refinancing, with refinance loans that start at $3,000, although its maximum loan amount of $60,000 is lower than most in the industry.

Pros

$115 average monthly savings claimed
Can prequalify without need for a hard credit pull

Cons

Need to sign up for autopay for lowest APR
$65,000 loan maximum
Not available in Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, Puerto Rico and West Virginia
Not available for RVs, motorcycles, commercial vehicles, or salvaged vehicles.

HIGHLIGHTS

Minimum APR:
5.54% with autopay

Loan amounts:
$5,000 to $65,000

Loan terms:
36 to 84 months

Minimum credit score:
Not disclosed

Why we chose it: Upgrade offers flexibility and potentially high monthly savings. Borrowers who refinance a car loan through the site save an average of $115 per month, according to the company. You can prequalify for a loan without a hard credit pull, which not all auto refinance options provide.
Upgrade offers an APR range of 5.54%-19.94%, which is in line with many of its competitors. You may qualify for a more favorable interest rate if you sign up for autopay.
Borrowers can refinance loans on cars as old as 10 years, and with up to 130,000 miles (150,000 for trucks). Qualifying car loans must have an outstanding balance of at least $5,000, and you must have made at least three monthly payments towards the current loan.

Other Auto Refinance Companies We Considered
We assessed the following companies, which — while worthy in some ways — fell short of our picks for the reasons we cite. Four other companies did not respond to repeated requests for updated information and so were dropped from consideration: Caribou Lending, Consumers Credit Union, Autopay and OneMain Financial.

Auto Approve
Borrowers approved for auto loan refinance through Auto Approve save an average of $148 monthly, company representatives tell Money. You’re not required to provide your Social Security number to receive a quote.
Why Auto Approve didn’t make the cut: The document fee ($488), and minimum monthly income ($2,000) are both a little higher than what’s charged by other companies.

Bank of America
Bank of America lets you lock in your rate for 30 days so you can shop around. It also offers an interest rate discount to members of its Preferred Rewards program, but its minimum APR of 5.29% is higher than some other lenders.
Why Bank of America didn’t make the cut: Its annual percentage rates are higher and its monthly savings claim ($60) is lower than many other companies in our top picks.

Capital One
Capital One offers potential customers the opportunity to pre-qualify for an auto loan refinance with only a soft credit pull. Capital One also has an app available (called the “Auto Navigator”) for iOS and Android, through which potential customers can shop for cars and financing options.
Why Capital One didn’t make the cut: Auto refinance borrowers may be required to pay down the balance of their current car loan if their payoff amount is higher than the company’s limits.

Navy Federal Credit Union
Navy Federal Credit Union has favorable interest rates — APRs are as low as 3.89% on new cars and 4.79% on used cars — but you need to join the credit union to refinance your vehicle, and eligibility is restricted to people who are members of the military, veterans, Department of Defense employees and family members.
Why Navy Federal Credit Union didn’t make the cut: Navy Federal’s eligibility is restricted, and its average savings claim of $74 is lower than many other companies we evaluated.

PNC Bank
PNC Bank has a user-friendly website and a straightforward application process, but it has a more limited geographic footprint than other providers we evaluated, and its 5.69% minimum APR is on the high side.
Why PNC Bank didn’t make the cut: Compared to other companies in our top picks, starting annual percentage rates for auto loan refinance at PNC Bank are above those of many of its competitors. Cars also cannot be older than eight years or have more than 80,000 miles (100,000 for higher-credit borrowers).

What You Need to Know About Auto Refinance
Refinancing can give access to better interest rates if your credit history has improved since taking out your current auto loan. However, it’s not a decision to be made lightly, as it may mean additional fees and a hit to your credit score.
How does refinancing a car work?
Refinancing a car works in two ways: traditional auto refinance and cash-out refinance.
Traditional auto refinance
Refinancing a car generally means taking out a new loan to pay off the balance on your existing vehicle loan, ideally for a lower rate. Since your original loan is replaced by a new financial obligation, you get a new APR and new term length.
As an added bonus, your car insurance premiums are likely to go down as well. If you’re looking to change insurers, you can also check out our list of the best car insurance companies.
Cash-out auto refinance
A few auto refinance companies also offer cash-out auto refinances, in which your new loan covers your existing balance and provides an additional amount of money. While a cash-out refinance may have lower interest rates than other financing options, such as personal loans or credit cards, your car’s monthly payments will go up.
Auto refinancing pros and cons

Pros

Longer refinancing terms decrease your monthly car payments

Shorter refinancing terms can save you money in the long run

May obtain lower interest rates

No down payment necessary

Most manufacturer warranty policies still apply after refinancing

Cons

Total interest will go up if you extend loan repayment terms

A shorter loan term will increase your monthly payments
Prepayment penalties and refinancing fees can offset any interest rate savings

Lenders may charge an origination fee on the new loan

Auto refinancing requirements
Before beginning the process, it’s important to make sure refinancing is the right solution for you and whether you meet the qualification requirements. Carefully consider the following:

Your existing loan’s prepayment protocol – Check your existing auto loan agreement to find out if you’ll be penalized for paying early. (This is called a prepayment penalty.) If so, crunch the numbers to see whether an auto refinance makes sense.
Loan balance versus your car’s market value -Your loan balance is higher than the car’s market value. If you’re “underwater,” or owe more than the car is worth, many lenders won’t consider you for an auto refinance loan. (You can check your car’s value on Kelley Blue Book.)
Vehicle age and its mileage -Auto refinance lenders have restrictions you’ll have to meet. Many won’t offer loans for cars more than 10 years old or that have over 120,000 miles.
The status of your current loan payments – Your loan payments should be up to date. If you’re behind on payments, many lenders won’t consider you a viable candidate.
The balance of your current loan – Each lender has a maximum and a minimum loan amount they’ll refinance. If your loan’s current balance is too low or too high, you may not qualify. Many loan providers also have minimum loan amounts (and maximums) to consider.
The kind of car you have – Generally, auto refinance companies won’t refinance cars that are “branded,” meaning rebuilt, salvaged or commercial vehicles.

When can you refinance a car loan?
This decision depends on a number of factors. While a refinance is technically possible on a new loan, there are some conditions under which it makes the most sense.
When your current deal isn’t great
Thanks to global shipping issues and high demand, and if you didn’t do some careful comparison shopping between lenders or dealerships when you bought your car, your loan may not have the best repayment terms or rates.
For instance, if your current APR is around 20-25%, you might be able to get a better offer by shopping around. This is particularly true if your loan is two years older or more, as many loans with high APRs charge most of the interest amount during that time period.
When your credit score has gone up
An improved credit score will likely give you access to much better repayment terms and lower interest rates. If your score was 640 when you received your original vehicle loan, your credit score was considered fair by FICO standards, and you likely committed to a high annual percentage rate. However, once you reach good credit (670) status or better, auto loan refinance companies may offer a better annual percentage rate and more favorable repayment terms.
When your current loan payments are too high
An auto loan refinance provides an opportunity to lower your monthly car payment. This is achieved through extending the life of your loan, which means you’ll pay more interest over the long run. But for those who need more room in their monthly budget, a drop in their car payment could be helpful.
For example, consider an original loan for $45,000 with a term length of 60 months at a 6.3% annual percentage rate. The monthly payment for this loan would be $876. If you refinance at 84 months at the same annual percentage rate, your payment drops to $664 — a savings of more than $200 monthly.
However, a longer term means you’ll pay more interest than you would have with the original loan. In the first scenario, the interest total is $14,175. Extending the loan term to seven years as opposed to the original five years means you’ll accrue $19,845 in interest owed — an increase of $5,670.
How to refinance a car loan
Once you’ve weighed your options and decided a refinance of your current loan is the way to go, follow these simple steps.

Check your credit score – If you have good credit, you’ll likely get a better deal. This may be a good time to ensure there is no incorrect information in your credit report.
Gather all the information about your current auto loan – Having all your information at hand will help speed the application process.
Research new lenders and compare rates – While it may take some time, thoroughly researching auto loan refinance lenders and loan offers to find the best offer can not only help you compare rates, but also identify any potential red flags. You can also see whether your current lender offers a competitive auto loan refinance option, but keep in mind that some lenders will not refinance loans from their own company.
File for prequalification – Getting a pre-approval, when available, presents you as a good candidate for a refinance.
Submit an application – Once you’ve gathered all your documents and have chosen a lender, it’s time to apply. Many lenders offer an online application.
Evaluate the terms – Carefully read the fine print about loan terms. Check whether you can keep your current insurance policy under the new lender’s requirements.
Finalize the loan – Remember to keep making your payments on your existing auto loan until the new auto refinance loan is finalized.

Documents needed to refinance an auto loan
To refinance any kind of loan, some documentation is required. These pertain to personally identifiable information, income, residence and your car’s specifications, among others.
Here’s a detailed list:
☑ Social Security number
☑ Employment information
☑ Residence information
☑ Driver’s license
☑ Car registration and mileage information
☑ Proof of insurance
Does refinancing a car hurt your credit?
Refinancing a car can have a temporary impact on your credit score. When you apply for prequalification to assess potential offers, lenders typically conduct a soft pull, which won’t hurt your credit score. However, when you formally apply for an auto refinance loan, lenders will perform a hard pull, or a hard inquiry, which may lower your credit score.
To mitigate the potential impact on your credit score, make sure to shop for loans within a 14 to 45-day window. Credit bureaus will count these inquiries as a single pull, minimizing the impact. Additionally, the effect of a credit pull typically drops off in about two years.
Note that making on-time payments on your auto refinance loan can actually improve your credit score in the long run; this shows lenders you’re a responsible borrower.
If you’re still unsure about the difference between a hard or soft credit inquiry, check out our explainer on credit inquiries.
How to refinance a car loan with bad credit
You must have a minimum credit score of 640 if you hope to get the lowest rates on an auto refinance loan. However, just like when you seek to get a car loan with bad credit, there are lenders that specialize in auto loan refinance for bad credit borrowers. Here are some cases in which refinancing may still be helpful, even if you have poor credit:

If auto loan rates have gone down – Even with bad credit, you may still be able to find a lower rate or better loan terms if the market has improved since you purchased your original loan.

If your goal is a lower monthly payment – If your main driver in refinancing your auto loan is decreasing your monthly payment, this may mean extending your loan term. The downside is that this will extend the life of the loan, and you’ll therefore pay more in interest as well.

If you’re determined to refinance your car loan despite a spotty credit history, follow the steps outlined above. It may make sense to check out competing offers on an online marketplace of lenders that refinance auto loans, such as LendingTree or RateGenius. You may also be able to get better rates with a lender that allows you to add a co-signer to your loan.
Another option is to consider debt consolidation, which can streamline your loan payoff strategy.
Finally, if you can’t find a good deal, taking steps to fix your credit may end up being your best move in the long run. An improved credit score will affect every area of your finances, not just your auto loan refinance offers. While most credit repair strategies are possible to do yourself, if the time commitment is too high, you may want to check out our list of the best credit repair companies.
Methodology
To create our list of the best auto refinance companies, we conducted more than 300 hours of research and vetted companies according to multiple data points, including:

Annual percentage rates – We search for the most competitive rates in the industry.

Company offerings – Not all auto refinance companies are the same, and so we investigate each company’s offerings independently.

Eligibility requirements – We categorize auto refinance companies based on eligibility requirements, making sure we offer options for a range of financial situations.

Customer experience – We review each company’s complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). We also study third-party review sites for customer feedback.

Financial stability – We consider each company’s financial stability to ensure the company can meet their refinancing obligations.

Although we always try to include accurate and up-to-date information on regulatory and legal actions, we don’t claim this information is complete or fully up to date. Annual percentage rates are subject to change. As always, we recommend you do your own research as well.

Auto Refinance Companies FAQs
When can I refinance my car?
You can refinance your car loan as soon as two months after closing on the original auto loan. However, if your financial situation hasn’t improved or interest rates haven’t changed, it’s unlikely you’ll see any savings.
Can I get a loan with bad credit?
You can get a car loan with bad credit, but it will be more challenging. Lenders use credit scores to evaluate a borrower’s risk, so the best car refinance rates tend to go to those with good-to-excellent FICO scores (670 or higher). People with lower scores will have higher rates than those with a good or excellent credit score. Some lenders specialize in loans for customers with fair to poor credit, such as Auto Credit Express.
How many times can you refinance a car?
Legally, you can refinance a car as many times as you want if you find a different lender willing to extend you a new loan. Auto lenders may be apprehensive about refinancing if they see multiple past refinances on your vehicle and even if you get approved, there are other financial risks to consider.
Repeated refinances and longer loan terms increase the risk of going “upside-down” on your loan, which means your loan balance is greater than the market value of your car. You may also end up paying more than the original loan amount, just in interest rates.
How to transfer a car loan to another person?
You can transfer your car loan to someone else if the new lender allows it. Loan transfers may come with a transferring and/or merchant fee, and lenders always check that the transferee has good credit and income, to prevent loan defaults. The transfer won’t be approved if the person’s creditworthiness and income aren’t up to par.
How soon can you refinance an auto loan?
Some auto refinance companies will work with auto loans as fresh as 30 days from origination. This varies by lender, though, so be sure to check the company’s requirements.

Writer, the enterprise AI agent platform backed by Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, and Insight Partners, today launched event-based triggers for its Writer Agent platform, enabling AI agents to autonomously detect business signals across Gmail, Gong, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, and Slack — and execute complex multi-step workflows without any human initiating the process.The release, which also includes a new Adobe Experience Manager connector and a suite of enhanced governance controls such as bring-your-own encryption keys and a Datadog observability plugin, represents Writer’s most aggressive bet yet on fully autonomous enterprise AI. It arrives at a moment when AWS, Salesforce, and Microsoft are all racing to establish their own agentic platforms, and when the question of how much autonomy enterprises will actually hand to AI agents remains deeply unresolved.”We are launching a series of event triggers that power and drive our playbooks to be more proactively called,” Doris Jwo, Writer’s VP of Product Management, told VentureBeat ahead of the announcement. “We’re building on the ecosystem to actually for these connectors, such as SharePoint, Google Drive, Gong, Gmail, Google Calendar, actually listen for events happening in those platforms, so that the agent can practically know that something happened externally, and then, where relevant, call a certain playbook to be actually run live in real time, without any sort of human intervention required.”The shift from reactive to proactive AI agents marks a critical inflection point for enterprise software. Until now, most AI assistants — including Writer’s own platform — required a human to initiate every interaction. A marketer had to open a chat window and ask for help. A salesperson had to prompt a research brief. The new event-based triggers flip that dynamic entirely: the system watches for business events and acts on its own.Why Writer decided humans were the weakest link in enterprise AI workflowsWriter’s push toward autonomous triggers stems from a practical observation its product team made as enterprise customers scaled their use of the platform’s playbooks — the reusable, natural-language workflows that Writer introduced in November 2025 to let business users automate recurring tasks without writing code.”What we found is, as playbooks continue to get integrated into enterprise workflows, it’s actually humans that become the bottleneck in making sure that playbooks get triggered,” Jwo said. “This really kind of solves that problem, to make sure that that sort of always-on, proactive, autonomous nature of that agent has continued to be built on.”The mechanics work like this: Writer’s connectors, which already provided read and write access to third-party enterprise tools, now also listen for specific events — an email arriving in Gmail, a sales call completing in Gong, a new file landing in a Google Drive folder, a meeting starting or ending on Google Calendar, a message posted in Slack. When the system detects a qualifying event, it triggers a predefined playbook that executes a multi-step workflow autonomously.Consider the use case Jwo described for marketing teams already running on Writer’s platform. An email campaign workflow typically begins when a creative brief lands in a Google Drive folder. From there, multiple team members coordinate through Slack to assemble research, build assets, draft copy, review graphics, and package everything for a campaign management tool. Writer’s event-based triggers collapse much of that chain: the moment a brief hits the designated folder, the system automatically fires a cascade of playbooks that assemble the research, generate the assets, and prepare deliverables for human review.”All the playbooks that our customers have been building with us to build all those each individual pieces now just get automatically triggered the minute that initial brief kind of hits the Google Drive folder,” Jwo said. “That’s, I think, a very common workflow for most of these marketing sort of, like, content-heavy use cases, where it’s multiple parties involved, it’s a lot of assets coming together in a cascade.”How Writer’s AI reasoning engine separates it from simple automation tools like ZapierThe comparison to Zapier — the popular automation tool that connects thousands of apps through if-this-then-that logic — is inevitable, and Jwo addressed it directly.”It’s more than just an LLM in the middle,” she said. “It is an agent with reasoning and then access to a really powerful set of tools that includes connectors, that includes its own virtual sandbox, which enables it to do things like write and execute code on the fly and create those assets.”The distinction matters for understanding where Writer sits in an increasingly crowded landscape. Zapier and similar workflow automation tools require users to manually define rigid logic paths, specifying exact conditions and actions in a deterministic sequence. Writer’s approach uses its Palmyra-powered reasoning engine to process event context and make real-time execution decisions. Users describe their goals in natural language rather than dragging around boxes and defining conditional branches.”It’s not quite Zapier, because I think it requires a lot more — it’s more rigid,” Jwo said of traditional automation tools. “It requires more manual kind of setup to define the logic and the roles and the conditions for which a workflow has to be run.” Writer’s playbooks, by contrast, allow “a simple idea to turn into something that’s actually executable and repeatable,” she added, noting that builds take “hours and days, not weeks and months.”This natural-language accessibility has been central to Writer’s strategy since it introduced the Agent platform and playbooks last November. The company has consistently positioned itself as a platform that puts power in the hands of business users — marketers, sales teams, operations leads — rather than requiring engineering resources to build and maintain AI workflows. Writer CEO May Habib made this case forcefully at Davos earlier this year, arguing that the leaders pulling ahead are those entering what she called “rebuild mode” — stripping workflows down to outcomes and eliminating what she described as the “coordination tax” of endless handoffs, status meetings, and alignment emails.The event-based triggers extend that philosophy to its logical conclusion. If business users can build playbooks in natural language, and those playbooks can now fire automatically based on real-world business events, then the entire loop from signal to action can operate with minimal human involvement.Inside the governance controls Writer built to make autonomous AI agents safe for regulated enterprisesThat level of autonomy raises obvious concerns, and Writer appears to understand that governance is the linchpin of the entire strategy. The company paired its trigger launch with a substantial expansion of its administrative controls — a combination that suggests Writer views enterprise trust as its primary competitive weapon.The new governance features include Connector Profiles, which allow administrators to configure multiple versions of the same connector with different permissions per team; Writer Agent Profiles for deploying customized agent configurations with specific capability toggles and security settings; AI Studio Observability for auditable tracking of every agent interaction; a Datadog Logs Plugin that forwards every LLM request and response as structured log events; and bring-your-own encryption key support through AWS, Azure, or GCP key management services.”A really important part of that, and a baseline, sort of foundation for everything that we roll out, is our observability and governance platform,” Jwo told VentureBeat. “When connectors are set up, admins have full control over connector access, what is set up, who has access, which teams exactly are those access granted to, as well as individually, which exact tools do teams are able to call.”The observability story extends to the individual user level as well. Jwo described Writer Agent’s user experience as built around progressive disclosure — clean initial views that users can expand to inspect the full chain of reasoning behind any agent action. “You can drill down to the actual tool call level,” she said. “You’d actually have the ability to look at specifically what web search results were pulled, what connector was called, what tool called, what succeeded, what failed, how did the agent divert its path to fulfill your goal.”This transparency architecture reflects a broader conviction Writer has articulated through what it calls “The Agentic Compact” — a framework the company published for responsible AI that emphasizes foundational transparency, auditability, and human oversight. Dan Bikel, Writer’s head of AI, has argued publicly that the industry’s obsession with model scale has created what he calls a “transparency paradox,” leaving businesses with powerful tools they cannot fully understand or control. Writer’s governance-first approach to autonomous triggers represents the operational expression of that philosophy.Writer also introduced its agent supervision suite in December 2025, offering centralized monitoring, agent approval workflows, global guardrails, and integrations with external observability and security platforms like Datadog, Noma, and Lakera. The event-based triggers now extend that governance framework to cover actions initiated without any human in the loop — a meaningfully harder problem.Writer takes aim at AWS, Salesforce, and Microsoft in the escalating agentic platform warsThe timing of Writer’s announcement is not accidental. The enterprise agentic AI market has entered a period of intense platform competition, with the largest technology companies in the world staking claims to the same territory Writer occupies.Jwo acknowledged the pressure directly when asked why a CIO would choose Writer over established vendor relationships with AWS, Salesforce, or Microsoft — all of which have announced agentic platforms of their own.”At the baseline, I think we have all the pieces to be fully enterprise-grade and ready,” Jwo said. But she argued that Writer’s real advantage lies in accessibility for non-technical users. “A lot of the challenge has been: how do we get business users to actually be able to build these powerful workflows in a way that maybe a technical user, using coding agents, can do very quickly and well, but the typical business user is not accustomed to anything beyond typical prompting to actually create?”That positioning — enterprise-grade capabilities wrapped in a business-user-friendly interface — has been Writer’s core differentiation since the company’s founding in 2020. It is also the reason Writer has attracted strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures and Adobe Ventures, both of which are building their own AI platforms but apparently see value in Writer’s approach to the business-user segment.The company’s March 2026 release of Skills — reusable building blocks that encode a team’s specific methodologies, quality standards, and decision frameworks into the Agent platform — reinforced this direction. Skills allow marketing teams, for instance, to capture exactly how their best strategist structures competitive analysis or formats campaign briefs, then make that expertise available to every team member and every playbook across the organization. Combined with event-based triggers, the result is a system where institutional knowledge executes automatically in response to real-world business events.Writer’s 2026 AI adoption survey, conducted with Workplace Intelligence and covering 2,400 global executives, found that 79% of enterprises face AI adoption challenges despite high investment — and that organizations with strong change management programs are six times more likely to reach production. Writer CMO Diego Lomanto has argued that the real barrier to AI adoption is not technology but trust, writing that “they treat resistance as a training problem when it’s actually a trust problem.” The governance-heavy approach to event-based triggers appears designed to address exactly that dynamic.Salesforce, SAP, and Workday triggers are next as Writer expands its connector roadmapWriter’s initial event trigger support covers Gmail, Gong, Google Calendar, Google Drive, SharePoint, and Slack — tools that Jwo described as “generally the most applicable to every end user.” But the company has its eye on deeper enterprise system integration.When asked about CRM and ERP triggers for systems like Salesforce, SAP, and Workday, Jwo confirmed these are within the scope of the roadmap. “You can imagine, you know, a Salesforce opportunity is created that may trigger a cascade of events that happens,” she said. “You might want to set up the right assets, maybe the right customer environment, all sorts of things can kind of cascade from that.”The connector ecosystem has been a strategic priority since Writer launched its MCP (Model Context Protocol) gateway in November 2025, providing governed agent access across enterprise systems including Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Gong, PitchBook, FactSet, and others. The addition of Adobe Experience Manager in this release gives marketing teams direct read/write access to pages, fragments, and digital assets in Adobe’s content management system — a connector that closes the gap between AI-generated content and published output.Jwo clarified that in most integration scenarios, Writer Agent delivers content in a draft state rather than publishing it directly. “Writer Agent basically accomplishes the majority of the workload — pulling together the assets, making the changes and presenting — and then hopefully a person just has to go through the last three or so final steps to get it out,” she said.The real question enterprise AI must answer: how much autonomy is too much autonomyThe degree of autonomy enterprises are comfortable granting their AI agents remains one of the most consequential open questions in the industry. Jwo acknowledged that most customers still maintain human checkpoints in their workflows.”You can also build in instructions into our playbooks to say, ‘Hey, before you move on to a next playbook, make sure that you check with me. I want to take a look, and then if I hit go, then you’re good to go,'” she said. The agent can also be designed with self-QA capabilities, validating outputs against known pitfalls before proceeding.Writer plans to expand these checkpoint capabilities in the coming quarter, adding the ability to specify not just that a checkpoint is required but which specific person must respond and what types of responses are expected — essentially building a formal approval workflow into the autonomous trigger chain.Jwo characterized the current system as a hybrid: the platform listens deterministically for predefined events, but the agent applies reasoning to decide what action to take — or whether to act at all. “The agent has the ability to process what happened, understand the context of it, and understand the intent of what you want to do, so it can make that decision,” she said. “You’re just saying, like, ‘Hey, the goal might be feedback is coming in, and we want to triage that in real time. And some things we might not want to action on, some things we do.’ You basically just explain that to the agent.”She views this release as a stepping stone toward a future where agents are “even more mission-driven, and less governed by even like a set of instructions or roles” — a future where the AI doesn’t just respond to triggers but proactively identifies when action is needed based on broader organizational goals.For now, Writer is betting that the combination of autonomous triggers, robust governance, and business-user accessibility will be enough to carve out defensible territory in an enterprise AI market where the biggest technology companies in the world are all converging on the same set of capabilities. The company’s argument is that having the foundational pieces is not enough — what matters is making those pieces work together in a way that non-technical business users can build, manage, and trust.It is, in other words, the same wager Writer has been making since 2020 — that the future of enterprise AI belongs not to the platform with the most powerful model, but to the one that can get an entire organization to actually use it. The difference now is that the agents don’t wait to be asked.Event-based triggers, new connectors, and enhanced governance controls are available immediately to Writer enterprise customers.

Olivia Rodrigo has announced “The Unraveled Tour,” and tickets are expected to be in high demand. Here’s what to know about presale and general sale details, tour dates, pricing and more.

Minted said that it doubled its profitability, achieved double-digit year-over-year growth, and is poised to reach $300 million in revenue in 2026.

Models show it’s not so much what’s happening in the market as what you do about it.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is still lower than it was a year ago.

Alphabet (GOOGL) has the most popular search engine, is a hyperscaler, and one of the best-positioned companies in the artificial intelligence race. The company classifies its two revenue streams as Google Cloud and Google Services.The stock is up about 17.8% year to date, at the time of writing, Thursday morning, April 30, according to Yahoo Finance. Meanwhile, the SPDR S&P 500 index (SPY) is up about 4.5% in the same period.Following a very strong Q1 report on April 29, which beat Wall Street consensus estimates, the stock is soaring 5.5% and trading near $369.3.Other key news for the stock:Google has signed a deal to provide the Pentagon with its AI models for classified work, reported The New York Times.On April 22 at Google Cloud Next, the company unveiled its eighth generation of custom Tensor Processor Units (TPU).Alphabet said it will invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic, reported Reuters.Key facts from Google’s earnings reportAlphabet revenue grew 22% year over year to $109.9 billion. However, revenue fell approximately 3.4% quarter over quarter, from $113.8 billion in Q4 2025.Google Ceo Sundar Pichai touted strong subscription sales during the earnings call.“Gemini Enterprise is seeing tremendous momentum with 40% growth quarter-over-quarter in paid monthly active users. In subscriptions, this was our strongest quarter ever for our consumer AI plans, primarily driven by adoption of the Gemini app. The number of paid subscriptions has now reached 350 million, with YouTube and Google One being the key drivers.”More Tech Stocks:Morgan Stanley revamps Oracle stock price targetBank of America reassesses Nvidia stock, sets new forecastBank of America resets Intel stock price target after earningsOn top of this, the revenue backlog has nearly doubled, and according to FORM 10-Q, it is at $467.6 billion of remaining performance obligations (RPO), with most of those ($462.3 billion) coming from Google Cloud.The caveat is as stated in the form: “We expect to recognize just over 50% of the revenue backlog as revenues over the next 24 months, with the remainder to be recognized thereafter.”10-Q is clear about deferred revenue being significantly smaller than RPO: “Total deferred revenue as of December 31, 2025, was $8.6 billion, of which $3.5 billion was recognized as revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2026. Total deferred revenue as of March 31, 2026, was $9.8 billion.”

Bank of America believes that AI tailwinds for Search are still in an early phase.Sarah b/Unsplash

Bank of America raises Google stock price targetFollowing the report’s release in a research note shared with me, Bank of America analyst Justin Post and his team updated their opinion on Google stock.Analysts said that revenue (with Traffic Acquisition Costs subtracted) and EPS of $94.7 billion and $5.11, respectively, beat Wall Street consensus estimates of $91.7 billion and $2.73.The team noted that the Q1 operating margin at 41.9% beat the Wall Street consensus at 39.6%.Post raised his 2026 revenue estimate by 4% to $424 billion and EPS by 26% to $14.43. For 2027, he raised revenue estimates by 10% to $522 billion, and EPS by 12% to $14.49. He also raised 2027 capex estimate by 25% to $257 billion.Related: Bank of America reassesses Nvidia stock, sets new forecast“Another quarter of strong revenues and margins reinforces our view that Google is a top AI play, with increasing search usage, improving ad targeting, durable Cloud advantages from Gemini/TPUs, and growing subscription revenues from Gemini,” Post wrote in the note.The team said they believe AI tailwinds for Search are still in an early phase, and future LLM enhancements will lead to durable growth.Post reiterated a buy rating for Alphabet stock and raised the price target to $430 from $370, based on a 28 multiple of his estimate for core Google GAAP EPS for 2027 plus cash per share.Analysts noted downside risks for Alphabet stock:Loss of search traffic to AI tools from competitorsLLM integration in search that takes longer than expectedRevenue pressure from compliance with the EU Digital Markets ActPotential for increasing capex and lower FCF, given AI investmentsRelated: Morgan Stanley revamps Oracle stock price target

The incident shows that as more real-world outcomes become tradable, the real bottleneck is not trading itself, but the integrity and certification of the data used for settlement, argues Hallali.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss’ crypto exchange now holds licenses allowing it to expand into regulated derivatives and prediction markets, the fastest-growing sectors in crypto.