Harvard Business School is offering entrepreneurs access to AI versions of seven faculty members through an eight-week online bootcamp priced at $699. The program, run under HBS Foundry, lets participants rehearse investor pitches, sales calls, and board presentations as many times as they want before facing real mentors or investors. According to the report, graduates may also get a chance to compete for a $100,000 investment, and 760 entrepreneurs have already taken part. The project started in 2024 and was initially built as a text-based adviser similar to ChatGPT. After a trial launch in October 2025, the team rebuilt it into a structured simulation format based on user feedback, then officially launched it in April this year. The AI avatars span venture capital, business model design, board governance, and startup strategy. One of them is Jeff Bussgang, co-founder of Flybridge Capital and a senior lecturer at HBS. HBS says the bootcamp is not a degree program and carries no academic credit. The school frames it as a way to extend entrepreneurial support to people who may never study at Harvard or gain access to elite innovation networks. Still, the report notes clear limits: AI can repeat explanations and answer endless questions, but it cannot truly know a student in the way a human professor can.

PANews’ weekly roundup showed that blockchain funding stayed subdued from July 27 to Aug. 2, with six disclosed deals totaling $41.5 million, while capital in the broader private market continued to cluster around AI, robotics and computing infrastructure. In crypto, funding was concentrated in security, execution infrastructure and AI-related Web3 projects. V12 raised a $10 million seed round led by Electric Capital, Birdai Labs secured $4 million for onchain execution infrastructure, and Axis Robotics closed a $12 million seed round led by Hack VC. Perceptron Network and ALPHEA also announced financing tied to decentralized AI data and distributed AI infrastructure. Outside crypto, the biggest checks went to major AI model companies and robotics platforms. Amazon disclosed that it had completed a total of $50 billion in investment in OpenAI and separately invested $11.3 billion in Anthropic and $13.7 billion in OpenAI during the second quarter. Moonshot AI reportedly raised $3.5 billion at a $35 billion valuation. Simile, Fish Audio, Modus and Pangram all announced new rounds, while Standard Bots, Enigma and Quantum Dynamics highlighted continued investor appetite for physical AI and robotics deployment. The period also saw M&A activity from Metaplanet and Fanatics, alongside fresh financing in nuclear power, bot detection and AI-focused funds.

A broad set of crypto and AI developments landed over the past day, spanning regulation, market structure, fundraising, protocol upgrades and security incidents. Kenya cut the paid-in capital requirement for stablecoin issuers by 40% to about $2.32 million while keeping strict reserve and redemption rules in place. Russia’s central bank published its first draft framework for organized trading in digital assets, and Myanmar passed a cybercrime law that allows life sentences for crypto-related fraud. In the U.S., Senate Republicans are still trying to move the Clarity Act before the August recess, though ethics provisions and bank lobbying remain major obstacles. On the corporate side, PayPal posted better-than-expected second-quarter results and did not address a previously reported buyout approach. Luno and Visa both outlined layoffs tied to restructuring and capital allocation, while Morgan Stanley Investment Management rolled out exchange-traded products tied to Ethereum and Solana. Zcash activated its Ironwood NU6.3 upgrade, Layer 2 TVL on Ethereum fell to its lowest level since 2023, and Bitcoin briefly dropped below $63,000 as AI and semiconductor weakness spilled into crypto. Security reports also stayed in focus, with Blockaid saying crypto losses from hacks topped $1 billion in the first half of 2026 and several fresh token incidents reported across the market.

HeyGen has launched Avatar V, an AI video tool that builds a photorealistic digital twin from a 15-second recording and supports lip-synced output in 175 languages across its paid plans.

Google has introduced Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS with Audio Tags, giving developers natural-language control over pacing, tone, and accent. The model supports more than 70 languages and is now available across Gemini API, Google AI Studio, Vertex AI, and Google Vids.