The company says the challenges are getting worse as businesses adopt artificial intelligence across daily operations without matching security management.

The data comes from Check Point’s AI Threat Landscape Report covering January to February 2026 which shows that while companies roll out generative and agent-based AI tools, many do so with limited visibility over how these systems handle data or interact with internal platforms.

AI adoption is spreading fast across sectors. In many organisations, staff now rely on several AI tools at the same time for writing, coding, analysis and customer support tasks.

That spread has created what researchers describe as “Shadow AI”, where usage sits outside formal monitoring systems.

Check Point says this trend is increasing exposure to risks such as data leaks, credential theft and weak control over third-party integrations.

The report also notes that AI systems are being used not just as tools, but as semi-autonomous systems that can act within enterprise environments.

Speaking on the findings, Ian van Rensburg, Head of Security Engineering, Africa at Check Point Software Technologies said, “AI transformation is no longer theoretical, it’s happening right now,” said.

“But too many organisations are modernising faster than they are securing. That gap is quickly becoming one of the most serious business risks in the region.”

The report highlights a case where a developer used an AI-powered development setup to generate 88,000 lines of malware code in less than a week. Check Point says this reveals how AI can shorten development cycles for both legitimate and malicious purposes.

It also found that 90% of organisations using generative AI recorded high-risk prompt activity. In addition, one in every 31 prompts carried the risk of exposing sensitive information, including proprietary code and confidential business data.

Employees, on average, now use around 10 AI tools, usually without central approval or oversight. This creates gaps that traditional security systems, built around networks and endpoints, may not detect.

Check Point argues that organisations need to treat AI systems as core assets rather than add-on tools. The company recommends securing models, data flows, application programming interfaces and autonomous agents together, instead of focusing only on surrounding infrastructure.

Hendrik de Bruin said AI adoption requires stronger governance structures. He pointed to the need for clearer risk classification, improved visibility and defined accountability across teams deploying AI systems.

The report also pointed to policymakers as several African countries work on national AI strategies. It suggests that security measures should be built into AI frameworks from the start, rather than added later during implementation.

Check Point adds that fragmented adoption, where teams deploy separate AI tools without central coordination, increases the likelihood of weak points across systems. These gaps can affect both internal operations and supply chains connected to external partners.

The company maintains that traditional cybersecurity approaches are no longer sufficient on their own in environments where AI systems can act with limited human input. It says organisations need prevention-focused models that address threats before they cause disruption.

Organisations balancing innovation with stronger surveillance are more likely to manage risks effectively while maintaining operational trust.

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At the heart of the conference, held at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, was a clear message: Nigeria is ready to shape the future of digital governance through innovation, research, and collaboration.

A Renewed Digital Vision

Guided by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which prioritizes economic reform, infrastructure development, good governance, and digital inclusion, Nigeria used the ICEGOV 2025 platform to reaffirm its commitment to driving a people-centered digital economy.

Leading this charge were Dr. Bosun Tijani, minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, and Kashifu Inuwa, director-general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

Together, they echoed a unified vision: technology must not only fuel economic growth but also build trust, transparency, and efficiency in governance.

Setting the Global Digital Governance Agenda

Co-chaired by Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of the United Nations University and UN Under-Secretary-General, alongside Dr. Tijani, the 18th edition of ICEGOV, themed “Shaping the Future of Digital Governance through Cooperation, Innovation, and Inclusion”, brought together experts from academia, government, and industry to explore how technology can improve public service and social inclusion.

Prof. Marwala, in his keynote, called for the responsible and inclusive development of artificial intelligence (AI), stressing that AI must serve humanity, not divide it.

“Artificial intelligence is shaping many areas of our lives, but it must be designed so that it does not leave anyone behind. AI will remain suboptimal until it works equally for all people, including Africans,” he said.

He urged leaders to democratize AI by ensuring that citizens have not only access to the technology but also a collective voice in deciding its use, a call that resonated strongly with Nigeria’s digital inclusion agenda.

Tijani: Innovation Must Serve Humanity

In his keynote address, Dr. Bosun Tijani described Nigeria as standing at the intersection of innovation, youth, and digital transformation.

“The state of a society reflects the ideas that dominate it. When good ideas strike, nations prosper; when bad ideas prevail, nations decay,” he said.

He introduced a thought-provoking model, the Source Balance Ratio, explaining how diverse ideas from government, civil society, academia, and the private sector must align to create effective digital policies.

Dr. Tijani emphasized that technology should always be guided by ethics and research rather than politics or profit.

“If our ideas are driven solely by short-term gains, we end up with regulations that react to innovation rather than guide it,” he cautioned.

NITDA’s Commitment to Digital Skills and Public Infrastructure

Echoing the Minister’s vision, Kashifu Inuwa described ICEGOV 2025 as a milestone in Nigeria’s journey to becoming a digital governance powerhouse.

He highlighted several ongoing initiatives under the Ministry’s strategic roadmap, Accelerating the Nation’s Collective Prosperity through Technical Efficiency, built on five pillars: Knowledge, Policy, Infrastructure, Trade, and Innovation.

Among the achievements he cited:

• National Digital Literacy Framework: to equip every Nigerian with digital skills from early education to adulthood.
• Collaboration with the Ministry of Education: to integrate digital literacy into school curricula by next year.
• 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) Programme: training Nigerians in high-demand digital skills.
• Civil Service Digital Training Initiative: with over 24,000 public servants already enrolled.
• Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI): development of a national data exchange platform and a Centre of Excellence for DPI to promote trust, transparency, and interoperability in governance.

“Digital transformation is not just about technology; it’s about improving how we serve citizens. Governance must meet people where they are, online,” Inuwa remarked.

Collaborating for Africa’s Digital Future

The conference drew a distinguished lineup of dignitaries, including Prof. Suwaiba Said Ahmad, Minister of State for Education; Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack, Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (represented by Mrs. Fatima S.T. Mahmood); Senator Shuaibu Afolabi Salisu, chairman, Senate Committee on ICT & Cybersecurity; and Stanley Adedeji, chairman, House Committee on ICT.

They commended the Federal Government’s leadership in advancing digital governance, AI ethics, and innovation ecosystems, noting that sustained progress will depend on multilateral collaboration, institutional capacity-building, and stronger digital public infrastructure.

Nigeria’s Leadership on the Global Stage

As ICEGOV 2025 concluded, one message rang clear: Nigeria’s digital reform agenda is not a local ambition, it’s a continental mission.

With its growing investment in digital literacy, AI policy frameworks, and public sector innovation, Nigeria is positioning itself as a key player in shaping the future of electronic governance in Africa.

In the words of Dr. Tijani:

“Digital technologies are no longer just economic tools; they reshape our societies and our citizenship. Our responsibility is to ensure that innovation is guided by ethics, inclusivity, and the public interest.”

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The agreement, still subject to regulatory approval, also secures the nonprofit a stake in the PBC valued at more than $100 billion.

The two companies confirmed they have signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding (MOU) to revise their partnership. “Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership,” they said in a joint statement. “We are actively working to finalise contractual terms in a definitive agreement.”

The unusual structure allows OpenAI to operate as a commercial enterprise while maintaining its nonprofit mission at the core.

This setup has impacted the company since its creation and famously led to the removal, and swift reinstatement, of CEO Sam Altman in 2023. With the new arrangement, OpenAI’s nonprofit will hold more financial influence than ever before.

Alongside the restructuring, the nonprofit has launched a $50 million grant initiative to support AI literacy, community-driven innovation, and economic opportunity.

Board chairman Bret Taylor said the recapitalisation “would enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission—and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Microsoft remains OpenAI’s largest backer and cloud partner, but the company has been actively reducing its dependency. It recently signed a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle, set to begin in 2027, and partnered with SoftBank on the Stargate data centre project. These moves point to OpenAI building a more independent, multi-cloud future.

The negotiations between OpenAI and Microsoft have not been without challenges. Reports reveal disagreements over intellectual property linked to Windsurf, a coding startup OpenAI once sought to acquire. The deal collapsed, with Windsurf’s team joining Google and Cognition instead.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI continues to challenge the company’s for-profit transition, accusing it of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. Earlier this year, Musk offered a $97 billion takeover bid, which the board rejected. Ironically, the nonprofit’s stake in the PBC under the new arrangement is worth more than Musk’s proposal.

Other nonprofits, including Encode and The Midas Project, have also criticised the transition, claiming it weakens OpenAI’s founding ideals. The company has responded by issuing subpoenas and alleging its critics are financed by competitors such as Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, allegations strongly denied by the groups.

If regulators approve the deal, OpenAI will stand in rare territory, a company attempting to balance the pursuit of profit with the governance of a mission-driven nonprofit, armed with one of the most valuable stakes in the tech industry.

The post Microsoft Backs OpenAI For-Profit Transition as Startup Shifts to Public Benefit Model appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

As adoption spreads from the bottom-up, companies are losing control over how sensitive information is being handled, what models are being used, and who has access to what.

Unbound Security AI has raised $4 million to fix this. The oversubscribed seed round was led by Race Capital, with participation from Wayfinder Ventures, Y Combinator, Massive Tech Ventures and others including notable angel investors.

Unbound gives IT teams the visibility and controls they need to safely introduce and manage AI tools in the enterprise. Its AI Gateway plugs into commonly used tools, like Cursor, Roo, Cline or internal document copilots, and provides real-time protection, model routing, and usage analytics. 

From blocking sensitive information leakage to managing model costs and performance, Unbound helps organisations roll out AI on their own terms.

The founding team brings deep experience in both enterprise security and infrastructure. CEO and co-founder Rajaram Srinivasan previously led data security products at Palo Alto Networks and Imperva, and earlier worked on SaaS security at the onset of the AI wave. 

He teamed up with Vignesh Subbiah, a seasoned engineer and former founding team member at Tophatter and Shogun, who scaled engineering teams and platforms from seed to growth stage. 

After working together at Adobe, the two reconnected to build a system that could meet the urgent security gaps emerging in the new AI stack.

The need became clear quickly. In the early days of GPT-3.5, teams were already sending sensitive prompts into AI tools without oversight, leaking secrets, exposing PII, and consuming costly licenses with no guardrails. Existing DLP tools either blocked the tool altogether or failed to adapt to newer AI workflows.

Unbound takes a different approach. It has already prevented the leakage of 100s of secret credentials, including passwords, API keys, and connection strings, as well as more than 500 instances of personally identifiable information such as customer names, phone numbers, and patient records. 

Rather than simply blocking prompts, Unbound redacts sensitive content in real-time and reroutes high-risk requests to internal, open-source models hosted in the organisation’s cloud. This ensures employees get their answers without ever seeing a security speed bump.

The platform also gives companies fine-grained control over model access and cost. Rather than buying a one-size-fits-all license, teams can allocate premium model access to high-stakes workflows, like engineers building core infrastructure, while routing lighter tasks, like content editing, to smaller open-source models. 

Mid-market customers using Unbound have already saved more than $10,000 annually on unnecessary AI seat licenses. And when new models outperform old ones, as with Gemini 2.5 recently overtaking Claude Sonnet for certain coding tasks, Unbound allows IT to roll them out incrementally, test their effectiveness, and swap them in without breaking employee workflows.

The product is already being used by a growing base of mid-market and enterprise customers across sectors including tech and healthcare. One customer, a leading tech company, recently used Unbound to safely introduce Gemini 2.5 into production AI tools for more than 100 engineers within the same week.

“As AI tools become mainstream, enterprises are turning to flexibility and control,” said Rajaram Srinivasan, co-founder and CEO of Unbound. “They want visibility into what’s being used, assurance that their data is protected, and the ability to swap in better models as the space evolves. Unbound is the bridge that makes that possible.”

Reflecting on Unbound’s early days, CTO and co-founder Vignesh Subbiah said, “Defaulting to blanket bans on AI tools is like being in the times of GPT 3.5. Unbound enables surgical security controls into every AI request so teams can innovate freely without putting corporate secrets at risk.” 

He added, “In just a few months, our customers have prevented over 7,000 potential data leaks and cut AI tooling costs by nearly 70 percent.”

The market is shifting fast. What started as shadow IT is quickly becoming mission-critical infrastructure. Generative AI is embedded in everything from customer support to software engineering, but the tooling around it is still stuck in early-stage chaos.

CIOs and CISOs are looking for ways to support AI adoption without compromising security or governance. Unbound is building that foundation. 

“At THG Ingenuity, we see the security team as an enabler, not a blocker. Unbound empowers us to roll out AI tools to employees with confidence. Unbound AI Gateway’s data protection controls and intelligent routing have been instrumental in safeguarding sensitive data while helping us optimize costs,” says Abraham Ingersoll, chief information security officer (CISO) of The Hut Group (THG), a customer of Unbound.

“AI is projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value for the enterprise by 2033 globally — but without proper guardrails, that value is at risk. From shadow models to data leaks, the dangers of unmanaged AI are very real.  

“We are excited to back Rajaram Vignesh and the Unbound Security team as they create a new category of AI infrastructure: one built for safety, observability and cost discipline from day one,” said Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital. 

“We’re proud to back Rajaram, Vignesh, and the team building a new category of AI infrastructure, one that makes enterprise adoption safe, observable, and cost-efficient from day one.”

Unbound is just getting started. The team plans to expand integrations across the AI ecosystem, deepen model routing capabilities, and support internal model orchestration for enterprises adopting open-source LLMs. Their mission is simple: to ensure every organisation can embrace AI without losing control in the process.

Other investors in the round included Alpha Square Group, Northside Ventures, Liquid2, Pioneer Fund, Scale Asia Ventures, SBXI and notable angels including Ram Shriram (founding board member at Google), Dr Trishan Panch (CSO LuminHealth), Dr John Brownstein (chief innovation officer, Boston Children’s Hospital), Taro Fukuyama (CEO, Fond), Eli Brown (CEO, Guilded, acquired by Roblox), Chris Siakos (CEO Sinefa, acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Joe Vadakkan (CISO, Ex- CRO), Zain Rizavi (Cloudflare, Ridge VC), Finbarr Taylor (CEO, Shogun) alongside other silicon valley and cybersecurity veterans.

The post YC-Backed Unbound Raises $4M to Help Enterprises Embrace, Control AI appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The decision comes after weeks of pressure from regulators, civic actors, and the legal threat caused by co-founder Elon Musk.

In a sharp reversal, OpenAI confirmed on Monday that its nonprofit parent will remain fully in charge of the for-profit entity responsible for developing and monetising its artificial intelligence products. That’s the same entity behind ChatGPT.

OpenAI had previously planned to become a Public Benefit Corporation—a move that would allow it to raise billions in capital while distancing itself from the nonprofit board.

That idea is now off the table. Instead, OpenAI says the nonprofit remains in charge, though it will take a larger shareholder position within the for-profit operation.

Bret Taylor, OpenAI’s board chair, gave the clearest explanation yet. “We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware,” he wrote.

This pivot was inevitable. The December plan to hand more power to the for-profit raised red flags across Silicon Valley. It threatened to weaken the nonprofit’s oversight and led to fears about whether OpenAI still prioritised the public good over commercial gain. The company’s leadership clearly heard those fears—and acted.

Sam Altman tried to frame the change as a reasonable compromise that satisfies all parties. “This works well enough for investors that they’re happy to continue to fund us to a degree we think we will need,” he said. “We believe this is well over the bar of what we need to be able to fundraise.”

OpenAI still intends to change the structure of its for-profit to allow more capital inflow. The nonprofit board will remain in charge of strategic oversight, but the company plans to move ahead with lifting profit caps for investors. The goal? To compete for capital in a global AI arms pursuit.

Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest backer, hasn’t publicly commented on the change. Neither has SoftBank, which was preparing to lead a funding round worth up to $40 billion. That deal is still on the table, according to Altman. But it was initially contingent on OpenAI’s shift to a PBC model. Whether SoftBank proceeds without that restructuring remains to be seen.

In the background, Elon Musk’s lawsuit continues to gather steam. Filed earlier this year, it accuses OpenAI of betraying its founding principles. Musk says the startup was created to develop AI for humanity—not shareholders.

The case, now scheduled for trial in March 2026, is not going away. Musk’s legal team responded to the recent announcement. “The announcement obscures critical details about the supposed ‘non-profit control’ arrangement, and particularly the sharply reduced ownership stake the non-profit will receive in Altman’s for-profit enterprise—where the non-profit currently holds majority equity.”

Musk’s team argues that the nonprofit’s control, while still technically intact, has been diluted behind closed doors. And critics like Page Hedley, a former OpenAI policy adviser, aren’t reassured.

“Will OpenAI’s commercial goals continue to be legally subordinate to its charitable mission? Who will own the technology that OpenAI develops?” Hedley asked, raising alarms over the opaque restructuring.

“The 2019 restructuring announcement made the primacy of the mission very clear, but so far, these statements have not.”

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