AI Benchmarks | Rocky Mountain Madman LLC

Cartoon illustration of a robot agent presenting a passport-style ID card to a shopkeeper at a storefront checkout while a scanner glows.

Your AI agent is about to walk into a store. Meta and Sierra want to make sure it knows how to knock.

On October 6, at Sierra Summit in San Francisco, Sierra and Meta announced the Personal Agent Protocol — PAP, an open standard for how a person's AI agent signs in to a business and gets a task done there. Sierra co-founders Bret Taylor, the former Salesforce co-CEO, and Clay Bavor published the announcement with founding partners Walmart, Stripe, Shopify, Genesys, Rocket, and Instinct.

Read more about Meta and Sierra Draft the Personal Agent Protocol, an Open Sign-In Standard for Agents

Cartoon illustration of a robot head with glowing number dials and probability meters instead of a mouth, tossing speech bubbles aside.

Every few months, venture capital finds a new reason to throw a fortune at a company that is barely a year old. This week's reason: a model that refuses to talk.

Read more about Jev's Maker Hits $7.5B: TypeSafe AI Raises $870M for a Model That Doesn't Talk

Cartoon illustration of a friendly robot concierge juggling envelopes, documents, spreadsheets, and chat bubbles while directing tiny robot assistants.

Google just made its boldest move in the race to sell AI that does work, not chat: a single universal agent for the workplace, announced at its Gemini at Work 2026 event on October 8.

Read more about Google's Gemini Agent: One Universal Workplace Agent, Now in Private Preview