The AI agent startup scene had big developments this week. Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched its AI agent marketplace at the New York Summit on July 15. This lets businesses easily find and use AI helpers from different companies. Anthropic, which Amazon backs, is a main partner. AWS hopes this marketplace will become popular because many businesses use their cloud services.

Several startups got money to grow their AI agent tools. Asepha, based in Toronto, Canada, raised $4 million to help pharmacies. Their AI agents can read doctors' handwritten prescriptions with 96% accuracy and handle phone calls. This solves staffing problems at 70% of U.S. pharmacies. Abacus in San Francisco received $6.6 million for AI assistants that do tax paperwork for accountants, freeing them for more important work.

In Europe, Oraion from Dublin, Ireland, got €2.9 million to expand its agentic AI platform that helps big companies understand data better. Sweden's Opter AI raised $3 million for tools that help software teams use language models more reliably in business tasks.

Wittify.ai in Saudi Arabia raised $1.5 million to build Arabic-speaking AI assistants. These understand over 25 Arabic dialects and work in call centers or websites. The money will help them grow across the Middle East.

Lyzr AI is trying a new way to raise money. They're using an AI agent named Sam to talk with investors during their $15 million funding round. Sam answers questions about the company and shares documents, making the process more open.

These stories show agentic AI spreading to many fields like healthcare, finance, and customer service. Startups are finding smart ways to make AI helpers more useful and trustworthy for businesses worldwide.