READY moves to expand mid-sized business customer base, targets 7% revenue growth this year

A Gartner survey of 1,004 U.S. consumers conducted in August 2026 found that 34% are very or extremely willing to use GenAI-backed tools or chatbots for holiday gift recommendations. Traditional channels remain dominant, with 77% of consumers planning to shop in stores and 75% planning to shop on Amazon, while retailer websites, internet searches and friends' and family wishlists remain the most common sources of inspiration. Consumers who use AI for holiday shopping inspiration consult an average of 4.48 sources, compared with 3.24 among those who do not, indicating AI is adding a layer to product discovery rather than replacing established behaviors. Emily Weiss, a senior principal analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, said marketers should not treat AI shopping tools as a standalone channel and should prepare for more fragmented discovery journeys. Gartner clients can read more in the report 2026 Holiday Advertising and Consumer Trends Marketing Must Address.

International Business Machines Corporation introduced a self-hosted deployment option for IBM Bob, its agentic software development platform, letting enterprises adopt AI-powered software development and modernization tools while retaining greater control over sensitive data, source code and development environments. The offering can be deployed across on-premises, private-cloud, sovereign-cloud and air-gapped infrastructure, making it particularly relevant for organizations with stringent security, regulatory and data-residency requirements. IBM is seeking to address growing enterprise demand for secure and governed AI adoption by enabling customers to run supported AI models within controlled environments or connect to external models through hybrid configurations. The enhancement complements IBM's broader hybrid cloud and AI strategy, alongside its watsonx platform and the HashiCorp buyout that augmented its hybrid multi-cloud capabilities. IBM has plummeted 23.6% over the past year against the industry's growth of 155.8%, while earnings estimates for 2026 have moved up 2.5% to $12.33 and for 2027 have increased 3% to $13.19. The company faces stiff competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and a potent threat from Anthropic, whose Claude Code tool can modernize legacy COBOL systems embedded in IBM's mainframe ecosystem.

Roblox Corp shares fell as much as 8% in pre-market trading Wednesday and were recently down about 5% after Google and Unity Software Inc announced a partnership to build an AI-powered game creation platform. The companies said in a press release they will develop an integrated gaming platform featuring AI-powered tools that allow users to create games without coding experience, representing potential competition for Roblox in the user-generated gaming market. Google launched an experimental platform called Playground, now available to users aged 18 and older, which lets users generate and customize playable games using natural language prompts. The companies plan to introduce Unity Spark later this year, a product built on Playground that will offer advanced capabilities including professional-level mechanics, high-fidelity 3D features, and access to the Unity runtime, and the platform will integrate with Google Play Games, providing leaderboards, multiplayer matchmaking, and community features. On September 28, Jefferies downgraded Roblox to Underperform from Hold and maintained its $38 price target, implying 18% downside, with analyst James Heaney saying the stock's 30% rally since second-quarter results reflects overly optimistic expectations for bookings over the next 12 months.

Unity Software shares rose 5% Wednesday morning after the company announced a strategic partnership with Google to develop a new AI-powered gaming platform. The partnership will combine Google's artificial intelligence technology with Unity's game engine to create tools that let users generate and customize playable games using natural language prompts without coding. Google introduced an experimental platform called Playground, available today for users 18 and older, which allows game creation through text prompts. Later this year, Google and Unity will launch Unity Spark, a new product designed to offer both accessible interfaces for beginners and professional-level mechanics for advanced creators, featuring high-fidelity 3D capabilities and the Unity runtime. The platform will leverage Google's consumer ecosystem for distribution, with Google planning to showcase selected Playground creations across its network, and it integrates with Google Play Games profiles for built-in leaderboards, multiplayer matchmaking, and community features. Roblox shares fell 7.8% following the announcement, as the new Google-Unity platform represents potential competition in the user-generated gaming space.

ThinkingAI, which builds autonomous growth software for consumer and gaming companies, has opened its analytics, engagement and agent stack to game studios that buy software with a card instead of a procurement cycle, offering four self-serve plans priced from $0 to $999 a month. The Free tier costs $0 and includes 2 million events a month, 1 project, 1 seat, 12 months of data retention and $10 in Agent Credits for the first month, with no credit card required. Starter costs $199 a month for 5 million events, 2 projects, 5 seats, 24 months of retention and $25 a month in Agent Credits, while Pro costs $399 a month for 10 million events, 2 projects, 10 seats, 48 months of retention and $50 a month in Agent Credits. Team costs $999 a month for 30 million events, 3 projects, 15 seats, 60 months of retention and $100 a month in Agent Credits, and an Enterprise tier is sold by agreement with sales for larger studios with compliance or data residency requirements. Annual billing saves 20%, paid plans are billed through Stripe and can be cancelled at any time, and a studio that outgrows its event allowance moves up a plan inside the product with no re-instrumentation and no migration. The plans follow ThinkingAI's Sept. 16 launch of the Agentic Engine and draw on 10 years of behavioral data across more than 1,500 enterprises and 8,000 applications, including Sega, Krafton, Habby, Century Games, Xiaomi, Yostar, TCL and FunPlus, and are being announced at the ThinkingAI Agentic Game Growth Summit in Istanbul, co-hosted with Mobidictum.