AI productivity skepticism, German funding for Flatpak, and other tech news
An NBER survey finding 89 percent of executives see no productivity effect from AI, Germanys investment in Flatpak, and the KDE Gear 26.08 release — this weeks notable stories.
AI
NBER: 89 percent of executives see no productivity effect from AI
The National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed roughly 750 CFOs. While 69 percent of firms had adopted AI, 89 percent reported no change in productivity or employment. Executives used AI an average of 1.5 hours per week. Expected productivity gains over the next three years averaged 1.4 percent.
Efficiency improvements executives perceive are not showing up in revenue data. The gap is attributed to the time it takes for efficiency to convert into revenue. Adoption rates were higher among younger firms and high-productivity firms.
It is notable data amid multi-billion-dollar AI investment. That real-world results at companies remain small shows the distance between expectation and reality. Usage at 1.5 hours a week suggests adoption is still shallow.
AccuKnox launches AgentZ for AI agent governance
AccuKnox launched AgentZ, an integrated platform for building, running, and auditing AI agents. It is model-agnostic and combines sandboxing, role-based access control, and audit trails. It deploys to SaaS, on-premises, and air-gapped environments.
It also injects credentials securely at runtime, minimizing agent privileges on a zero-trust architecture. The target is the security and governance bottleneck that shows up when agents move from experiment to production.
As agent adoption accelerates, demand for governance tooling grows with it. The moment has arrived where an integrated platform beats configuring execution environments, permissions, and auditing separately. AgentZ is one of the early entrants in that market.
Startups
Yardstik raises $30M Series B for workforce trust
Yardstik raised a $30 million Series B led by Harbert Growth Partners, bringing total funding to $65 million. Existing investors including Rally Ventures and MissionOG all participated. Revenue grew 149 percent year over year.
The platform combines background checks, fraud detection, and continuous monitoring, with automatic alerts when a driver’s license, insurance policy, or certification expires. Customers include Gopuff, TaskRabbit, Liveops, and HUNGRY. The core pitch is closing the trust blind spot that opens after someone is hired.
The gig economy and remote work have increased demand for post-hire verification, and identity fraud using AI deepfakes is rising. The shift from one-time background checks to continuous monitoring is what underpins Yardstik’s growth.
Open Source
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency invests €508,640 in Flatpak
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency is investing €508,640 in Flatpak through the Sovereign Tech Fund. The two-year project is organized by Modal Collective, with Para-Real Ltd. participating as a supporting organization.
The central task is strengthening app sandboxing. Speaker and microphone access permissions will be separated on top of PipeWire. Network isolation and a VPN-only portal are also being developed. The goal is bringing Android- and iOS-level granular permission management to Linux.
Flatpak is a mature project but has gaps in its security model, and limited maintainer capacity had slowed development in some areas. Since Flatpak is the primary app distribution mechanism on image-based systems like Fedora Silverblue and SteamOS, the effects of this investment should be wide-reaching.
KDE Gear 26.08 released
KDE Gear 26.08 was released after four months of development, covering 171 packages. The kdominate library and the KeepSecret password manager are new additions. Source tarballs and Flatpak updates are available immediately.
Kdenlive, the video editor, saw the largest changes, with GSoC contributions substantially improving effect widgets and the timeline. Okular’s PDF viewer gained stronger signing support and a consolidated settings dialog. Dolphin’s KDE Connect integration was improved.
The KDE ecosystem continues to ship stable quarterly releases. Distribution packages for this release roll out over the following weeks. Adding KeepSecret shows KDE extending its own ecosystem into security tooling.