Listen to today’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silk-logic-small-business-daily/id1841930957
Small Business Daily Podcast 01/24/2026
Today’s podcast episode was created from the following stories:
PayPal to Acquire Cymbio in Push for AI-Driven E-Commerce
By Vidhya Edwards Munnangi —
PayPal agreed to acquire Cymbio, an Israel-based platform that orchestrates brand listings across marketplaces, retailers, social commerce, and AI shopping tools. Cymbio’s tech will fold into PayPal’s Store Sync to make merchants’ catalogs discoverable on AI surfaces like Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity while keeping order processing in existing systems. The deal, expected to close in H1 2026 pending approvals, advances PayPal’s agentic commerce push and sets up broader support for ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
‘Navigating The ChatGPT Shortcut’: Flipkart, Myntra Veterans Launch AI-First EdTech Venture
By NDTV Profit Desk —
Fermi.ai, launched by ex-Flipkart CTO Peeyush Ranjan and Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal, aims to curb copy-paste AI habits by guiding high school STEM students through step-by-step problem solving. With a stylus-first, canvas interface, the platform analyzes a student’s logic to expose conceptual gaps and uses multiple LLMs chosen per task. The company emphasizes data privacy, keeping school materials proprietary to institutions.
Crowdstrike and Nord Security partnership nests Falcon Go and Falcon Enterprise directly through NordLayer – combined enterprise-grade protection with VPN and ZTNA for SMBs
By Benedict Collins —
CrowdStrike is integrating Falcon Go and Falcon Enterprise directly into NordLayer, pairing AI-powered threat detection with Nord’s VPN and zero-trust network access for SMBs. With only 42% of SMBs providing regular security training and just 11% using AI security tools, the bundle targets a widening risk gap. Device control across endpoints and mobile protection help small IT teams harden access and reduce breach exposure.
Intelligent cloud infrastructure startup Railway gets $100M to simplify application deployment
By Mike Wheatley —
Railway raised $100M led by TQ Ventures to expand its “intelligent cloud” that abstracts away deployment complexity for developers in an AI-accelerated world. The company claims Zero-Ops hosting across its own compute, storage, and orchestration stack, citing resilience during major AWS and Microsoft outages and up to 65% cost savings. With 2M+ users and rapid growth, funding will scale data centers, team, and tools for both enterprises and AI startups.
OpenAI is coming for those sweet enterprise dollars in 2026
By Rebecca Szkutak —
OpenAI tapped Barret Zoph to lead its enterprise push as it works to regain ground in business LLM usage, which fell from 50% in 2023 to 27% by end-2025 per Menlo Ventures. Despite claiming 5M business users for ChatGPT Enterprise, competitive pressure from Anthropic and Google is intensifying. Enterprise growth is a 2026 priority alongside an expanded partnership with ServiceNow to bring OpenAI models to more workflows.
Former Sequoia partner’s new startup uses AI to negotiate your calendar for you
By Marina Temkin —
Blockit raised a $5M seed led by Sequoia to launch AI agents that negotiate meeting times directly between participants’ calendars—no link sharing or back-and-forth emails. Users set preferences, and the agent coordinates via email or Slack, learning priorities down to message tone cues. Already in use at 200+ organizations, Blockit is priced at $1,000/year per user or $5,000/year for teams.
Ex-Flipkart CTO Peeyush Ranjan launches edtech startup Fermi.ai
By Jessica Rajan —
Fermi.ai will roll out as a free trial in the US and India, starting with math, physics, and chemistry and expanding to JEE, AP, and college-level skill courses. A three-month pilot showed notable gains, with average scores climbing from 2/10 to 6.7/10 and from 5/10 to nearly 8/10. Incubated at Mukesh Bansal’s Meraki Labs, the venture plans to refine product-market fit and pricing before seeking external capital.
Kite: Production-Ready Agentic AI Framework
By Not listed —
Kite is an open-source framework for building production AI agents with built-in safety (circuit breakers, idempotency), advanced memory (Vector and Graph RAG), and observability. It supports multiple model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, local) with a simple API and performance-first, lazy-loaded architecture. Designed for real-world deployment, it offers HITL workflows, monitoring, and a roadmap for multi-agent orchestration.
