NORWALK, Conn., Feb. 18, 2026 — Lifespan Vision Ventures, an investment firm focused on therapeutics that improve human healthspan, today announced that it has co-led Sift Biosciences’ oversubscribed $3.7 million Pre-Seed financing alongside Freeflow Ventures, with participation from Valuence Ventures, Eisai Innovation, SBI US Gateway Fund, and other early investors.

Sift Biosciences is developing a peptide-based immunotherapy platform designed to harness pre-existing immune memory. The company’s approach aims to generate more consistent immune engagement by activating memory T cells that already exist in patients, with potential applications across oncology and autoimmune disease. Sift is initially advancing programs in immunologically “cold” solid tumors, including microsatellite-stable colorectal and ovarian cancers, while also exploring immune disease programs where more selective control of immune responses could be therapeutic.

“This financing will support in vivo efficacy studies, expansion of our AI powered peptide discovery engine, and lead candidate selection,” said Clare Lou, Ph.D., CEO and Cofounder of Sift Biosciences. “We are excited to partner with Lifespan Vision Ventures and this strong investor syndicate as we advance our initial pipeline toward the clinic.”

“We are pleased to support Sift because they are applying a clear immunology insight with a platform built to scale,” said Altar Munis, Ph.D., Associate at Lifespan Vision Ventures. “The platform is designed to engage antigen-experienced memory T cells and tune response magnitude and phenotype, with potential applications beyond oncology in autoimmunity and broader immune dysfunction that increases with age.”

As part of the financing, Altar Munis, Ph.D., Associate at Lifespan Vision Ventures, and Kevin Barrett, Managing Partner at Freeflow Ventures will join Sift Biosciences’ Board of Directors.

About Lifespan Vision Ventures

Lifespan Vision Ventures is a global venture capital firm investing in early-stage biotechnology companies developing breakthrough technologies to prevent and treat age-related diseases. The firm partners with visionary founders advancing science-driven solutions that promote healthy aging and extend human healthspan.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE LifeSpan Vision Ventures

Funding will accelerate Monark’s distribution partnerships and expand its product and asset-class coverage

NEW YORK, Feb. 18, 2026 — Monark Markets, a New York-based fintech company building the rails connecting brokerage firms and wealth platforms to private markets, is announcing $8.1 million in strategic financing. The round is led by F-Prime with participation from The Treasury, Commerce Ventures, Grit Capital Partners, and BBAE Holdings.

Monark’s API-first infrastructure powers major fintech platforms like Apex Fintech Solutions, Altruist Financial, and BBAE, embedding private market investments directly into existing customer accounts and reaching over 30 million retail investors with $450 billion of captive assets. Monark provides access to Pre-IPO companies as well as 40′ act registered evergreen funds from prominent alternative asset managers.

“We believe that retail portfolio allocation to private markets should and will grow to 15-20% over the next decade, mirroring the portfolio allocation of institutional investors and family offices,” says Ben Haber, CEO of Monark Markets. “This structural shift in capital allocation from retail investors will drive trillions of dollars of investment into private markets, fueling demand for innovative investment products, new investment rails, and increased liquidity.”

As private-market demand grows, Monark addresses a core infrastructure gap for brokerage and wealth platforms: many still lack the capabilities to manage the full alternative investment lifecycle – including deal sourcing, subscription processing, custody and reporting, and secondary liquidity – from within their native investor experience. Monark’s embedded API infrastructure enables platforms to natively offer private investments, with full compliance and marketing support. By bringing private-market access directly into existing platforms, Monark supports scalable, low-cost access for issuers to the $27 trillion in private wealth held by mass-affluent and affluent U.S. investors, and a more streamlined investor experience.

“Alternative assets have experienced remarkable growth, growing from $5 trillion in 2011 to nearly $16 trillion today,” said David Jegen, Managing Partner of F-Prime’s Technology Fund. “Asset managers are seeking new retail investors to grow AUM, and financial advisors and a changing regulatory environment are guiding to higher allocations to alternatives. Ben, Paul, and the team at Monark are building the digital rails that will make this expansion possible at scale.”

Behind the APIs, Monark works closely with distribution partners to build a curated marketplace of private investment opportunities. This includes sourcing issuers, conducting due diligence, and negotiating distribution economics. This end-to-end support is increasingly critical as retail demand grows for exposure to key engines of economic growth in the private markets, including U.S. reindustrialization and next-generation defense, as well as AI, blockchain, and space exploration.

Monark will use the new capital to scale its distribution network through integrations with additional brokerage and wealth management platforms, as well as to expand access to new products and asset classes, including evergreen funds, fractional real estate, and secondary trading of private securities. 

About Monark Markets, Inc.

Monark Markets, Inc., is a venture-backed, New York-based fintech providing “Alts-As-A-Service” infrastructure to brokerage firms and wealth management platforms. Monark’s b2b APIs enable embedded access to private markets from within partners’ existing trading platforms. https://monark-markets.com

About MMM Securities LLC

MMM Securities LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Monark Markets, Inc., is a FINRA-member broker-dealer authorized to conduct private placements, retail mutual fund sales, and operate an alternative trading system. Investments in private securities and alternative assets involve substantial risks, including illiquidity, loss of principal, limited transparency, and extended holding periods. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The firm is committed to maintaining the highest standards of compliance and meeting the regulatory requirements for its services. Member FINRA/SIPC. Check the background of this firm on FINRA’s BrokerCheck.

Monark Media Contact
[email protected]

SOURCE Monark Markets

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 18, 2026 — Efficient Computer, the company building the world’s most energy-efficient general-purpose processors, today announced a $60 million Series A funding round led by Triatomic Capital with participation from Eclipse, Union Square Ventures, Overlap Holdings, Box Group, RTX Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, and others. The round brings the total amount raised to $76 million. The new capital will be used to accelerate Efficient Computer’s product roadmap and expand its engineering and developer teams, bringing its ultra-efficient architecture to a wide range of use cases.

Energy is the primary constraint on all modern computing hardware. As AI and advanced software move out of the cloud and into the physical world, existing processor architectures struggle to deliver intelligence within power, thermal, battery lifetime, and form-factor limits. Fixed-function accelerators entering the market lack the flexibility required to keep pace with rapidly evolving workloads, and the next iteration of inefficient CPUs or GPUs does nothing to address the energy demands of the world’s most important applications of intelligence and computing.

Efficient Computer is addressing this challenge with the Electron E1, the world’s most energy-efficient general-purpose processor, built on Efficient Computer’s Fabric architecture. The Efficient Fabric architecture is a spatial dataflow architecture designed from the ground up to minimize energy use while executing real, general-purpose programs — including critically important AI, signal processing, and controls workloads — efficiently on a single programmable platform. By eliminating unnecessary data movement and architectural overheads intrinsic to CPU and GPU architectures, the Efficient Fabric architecture delivers dramatic gains in performance per watt The Fabric achieves hardware-accelerator-like efficiency and performance, without sacrificing programmability, like many recent over-specialized hardware products that do not support the full breadth of computation needed for critical applications such as physical AI.

“The industry has responded to rising energy costs by layering many fixed-function accelerators into a typical SoC,” said Brandon Lucia, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Computer. “The specialized hardware approach works to support a narrow slice of today’s workloads, but it breaks down as software, models, and applications continue to change. Efficient was built around a different idea: that the most durable path forward is a truly general-purpose architecture that can evolve with software over time, while providing market-leading energy efficiency for a range of critical intelligence use cases.”

This funding round will enable Efficient Computer to advance its vertically integrated hardware and software platform into embedded high-performance applications and further develop its Efficient Fabric architecture IP across edge, infrastructure, and emerging AI-driven markets.

“As we continue to see AI embedded across the physical world, Efficient’s processors enable intelligence in applications that were previously inaccessible,” said Peter Zhou, general partner at Triatomic Capital. “We see Efficient’s architecture as the missing link in AI’s last-mile distribution problem. We are proud to support the team as they tackle AI’s energy problem from the edge to the data center.” 

“Efficient is taking a fundamentally new approach to compute architecture, delivering dramatically greater efficiency and significantly lower power consumption than traditional general-purpose compute,” said Greg Reichow, partner at Eclipse. “As energy becomes the defining constraint for everything from edge devices to data centers, Efficient’s breakthrough enables far more compute within the same energy footprint. We’re excited to support the team as they translate this clean-sheet innovation into real products that can reshape the future of computing.”

“Efficient Computer truly lives up to its name in more ways than one. The company has built a unique, energy-efficient computing architecture and has also done it in a highly capital-efficient manner,” said Justin Stevens, founder and CEO at Overlap Holdings. “To reach this stage of development and commercialization with so little expenditure to date sets them up for unparalleled growth and success going forward.”

“We are excited to partner with Efficient Computer as they build a new class of highly energy-efficient chips. The team’s technical depth and market insight position them to enable new applications that have long been constrained by power,” said Rebecca Kaden, general partner at Union Square Ventures. “The proliferation of sensors and the emergence of an intelligent physical world represent one of the most exciting opportunities in front of us, and Efficient Computer is well positioned to help power what is possible.”

“Efficient’s Electron E1 processor fundamentally changes what’s possible at the edge,” said Alex Hawkinson, founder and CEO of BrightAI. “Efficient has delivered a true leap in energy-efficient computation, and integrating E1 into BrightAI’s Stateful platform allows us to unlock a new sphere of physical AI, bringing real-time observability to the world’s most critical infrastructure.”

About Efficient Computer
Efficient Computer is building the world’s most energy-efficient general-purpose processor by combining ultra-efficient hardware with intuitive, developer-friendly software. This approach delivers extreme efficiency across a wide range of applications — from physical AI in infrastructure and automation, to space and defense, to consumer and industrial wearables. Efficient’s Fabric architecture scales seamlessly from tiny, “beyond the edge” devices to the edge, and all the way to the data center, enabling widespread adoption across industries and positioning Efficient as the solution to computing’s energy challenge. For more information about the company, please visit https://efficient.computer.

SOURCE Efficient Computer

NEW YORK, Feb. 18, 2026 — Fastest-growing sports trading platform applies for DCM license to be available in all 50 states

• Novig operates a commission-free, peer-to-peer exchange designed for sports traders, utilizing an order-book model to provide market-driven odds
• 10X growth in trading volume in 2025
• New funding accelerates product development: more markets, deeper liquidity, and advanced trading tools purpose-built for sports traders

Novig, the fastest growing sports trading platform in America, today announced the close of a $75 million Series B round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Makers Fund, Edge Equity, and existing investors Forerunner, Perceptive Ventures, and NFX. The round brings Novig’s total capital raised to more than $105 million. 

The funding follows a period of growth for the platform, which reported a 10x increase in trading volume during 2025. Novig’s annualized trading volume currently exceeds $4 billion.

Although sports account for the majority of activity on most prediction market platforms, those products are not built with sports traders in mind. Novig, by contrast, is built for sports fans, delivering a fair, transparent, and commission-free trading experience. 

Since launch, the platform has rapidly emerged as the leading sports trading platform in the U.S., proving strong demand for a trader-first alternative to traditional sportsbooks. Novig has officially submitted its application to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to become a licensed Designated Contract Market (DCM), a critical milestone in its transition toward becoming a federally regulated exchange available in all 50 states. 

Unlike sportsbooks that operate an against-the-house model, Novig operates a commission-free, peer-to-peer exchange where traders compete against one another on a level playing field. By eliminating the hidden “vig,” unfair odds, and punitive limits on winning players, Novig has built the industry’s most equitable sports prediction platform.

“Our mission is to democratize and financialize sports markets, and we’re proud of the fact that Novig users are 10 times more likely to win than on traditional sportsbooks,” said Jacob Fortinsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Novig. “We chose to partner with the best crypto venture firms in the world to further accelerate our plans to make Novig the most efficient and liquid sports prediction market in the world. Others are using prediction market technology to financialize new markets with unproven demand. We leverage it to fix broken markets where demand already exists.” “Novig is proving that prediction markets can fundamentally reshape sports betting by removing the exploitative middleman,” says Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner at Pantera Capital. “Their peer-to-peer exchange delivers what traditional sportsbooks can’t: better odds, fairer market structure, and alignment between platform success and user profitability. When 23% of users are profitable compared to 2% on traditional platforms, it’s clear this is a foundational change to the industry. We’re excited to lead this round and support Jacob, Kelechi, and the team as they build a sports prediction market that actually puts bettors first.” “Novig combines the cultural heartbeat of sports with the transparency and efficiency of prediction markets. Most prediction market volume today is on sports, yet those platforms weren’t built with sports or sports bettors in mind. We are delivering a better exchange that is built by sports traders, for sports traders,” said Co-Founder and CTO Kelechi Ukah. 

The new capital accelerates Novig’s next phase of growth, including onboarding more institutional liquidity. Novig will utilize the investment to deepen product innovation and growth loops, launching first-of-its-kind functionality that combines the best innovation of financial markets with the excitement of live sports.

To support its next phase of growth, Novig has expanded its team to more than 50 personnel, including operators, engineers, and traders focused on developing the platform’s prediction market infrastructure and transparency features.

About Novig:

Novig is a sweepstakes-based sports prediction market, and the only platform to offer commission-free, peer-to-peer trading on sports. By eliminating the traditional sportsbook model, Novig delivers better pricing, full transparency, and a more efficient market structure for users.

For more information, users can visit Novig.com or follow Novig on X or LinkedIn.

Contact
Michelle Isaacs
Novig
[email protected]

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2915870/Series_B_Novig.jpg

SOURCE Novig

Firm accelerates growth with fourth fund and expanded platform capabilities; welcomes fifth cohort to FCV Collective, its industry‑defining healthcare leadership network

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Feb. 18, 2026 — Frist Cressey Ventures (FCV) announced today that it has closed an oversubscribed $425 million Fund IV, bringing total assets under management to nearly $1 billion. The new fund reflects strong demand from strategic partners and confidence in the firm’s approach, and will expand FCV’s platform and founder-support capabilities through its differentiated healthcare network, hands-on leadership support, and healthcare policy expertise. Fund IV will also continue to drive the firm’s focus on early-stage healthcare companies transforming care delivery with technology and tech-enabled services, including AI-native business models.

“This milestone reflects the clarity of purpose, conviction, and deep commitment of our team, investors, and portfolio companies, all united by a shared mission to advance innovation in healthcare that improves lives and keeps patients at the center of everything we do,” said Sen. Bill Frist, MD, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Frist Cressey Ventures. “As we enter this next chapter, we’re excited to build strong, transformative, and enduring partnerships – and to serve as a trusted partner to the leaders and companies shaping the future of patient-centered care.”

The close of this oversubscribed fund caps a decade of momentum for FCV, coinciding with the firm’s ten-year anniversary and building on the strength of its previous funds. With 44 total investments and 14 successful exits, the firm has a track record of successfully investing across both value-based delivery and transformational AI technologies. Fund I and Fund II rank in the top 5% of all venture capital funds for their respective vintages and have emerged as market leaders across key benchmarks.

This successful track record makes the firm a partner of choice for founders. “Frist Cressey Ventures believed in Thyme Care’s model early, before the category was clearly defined, and has stayed committed as we have grown into a category-defining leader in specialty care management,” said Robin Shah, chief executive officer and co-founder of Thyme Care. “The firm has been a close partner and mentor throughout that journey, and its perspective has shaped how we think about scaling patient-centered care to help more people with cancer in more meaningful ways.”

“FCV brings a rare combination of healthcare experience and long-term strategic thinking,” said Justin Norden, chief executive officer and co-founder of Qualified Health. “As we build the operating layer that enables health systems to deploy governed AI across the enterprise, their support has been grounded in a clear understanding of both the urgency and complexity of this moment in healthcare.”

Fund IV continues FCV’s established success in partnering with leading healthcare organizations, including The Cigna Group Ventures, MedStar Health, and OhioHealth – an element integral to FCV’s model. FCV’s strategic LPs provide healthcare to more than 50% of the U.S. population, giving them expansive reach and underscoring their strong alignment with FCV’s mission. This LP base also reflects significant confidence in FCV as both an investor and a collaborative partner; 25% of the firm’s portfolio companies include at least one investor from among its strategic partners.

“Advancing a simpler, more connected health care experience requires a shared commitment to collaboration and continuous innovation across the industry,” said Craig Cimini, head of The Cigna Group Ventures. “Our collaboration with Frist Cressey will help advance solutions that drive better health outcomes, affordability, and experiences for the people we serve.”

“We have a greater opportunity than ever to use tech to address some of the most complex challenges in healthcare. Frist Cressey helps us identify real innovations, and advises on where we should be spending our time and capital,” said Bill Sheahan, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of MedStar Health and Executive Director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation.

“We are growing our partnership and engagement with Frist Cressey because of its proven combination of meaningful strategic value while generating top decile investment returns,” said Jesse Longoria, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy & Growth Officer of OhioHealth. “The collaboration with Frist Cressey will help us see around corners and bring innovative opportunities to our organization.”

Fifth Class of the FCV Collective
In tandem, Frist Cressey is announcing the fifth class of the FCV Collective, a curated group of 16 executives from diverse segments of the healthcare industry united by a commitment to durable systems-level change. The Collective meets throughout the year, both virtually and in person, to discuss the most pressing topics facing our system, learn from each other, and build relationships with peers across the country. FCV also leverages its deep policy connectivity through key activities, including a visit to Washington D.C. to meet with policymakers and administration officials to better understand healthcare policy priorities and agenda-setting. Click here for the complete Collective 2026 cohort.

Frist Cressey Ventures’ Fund IV will serve as a catalyst towards building with the healthcare industry, providing backing and partnership to companies that improve millions of lives.

About Frist Cressey Ventures
Founded by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD and Bryan Cressey, Frist Cressey Ventures (FCV) is a healthcare venture capital firm with $846M AUM focused on accelerating the growth of high potential healthcare companies through a differentiated healthcare network, hands-on leadership support, and healthcare policy expertise. Our mission is simple: to transform healthcare to improve lives. Our strategic partners, including The Cigna Group, MedStar Health and OhioHealth, provide healthcare to more than 50% of the U.S. population. We invest in early-stage startups that build technology or tech-enabled services to advance quality of care, system integration, patient outcomes, affordability, and access. To learn more about Frist Cressey Ventures, visit our website at www.fcventures.com.

Media Contact: 
Elena Riecke 
[email protected] 
917-485-1994

SOURCE Frist Cressey Ventures, LLC

Backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Greylock, Cogent builds agentic systems to fight off escalating AI threats

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 18, 2026 — Cogent Security today announced $42 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investor Greylock Partners and Definition. Founders and executives from OpenAI, Abnormal Security, and Datadog invested personally. The financing brings Cogent’s total funding to $53 million, just six months after the company’s official launch.

Why Attackers Are Winning

In 2025, over 48,000 new software vulnerabilities known as CVEs were published. That’s 162 percent higher than five years ago. Every enterprise software system has them, and new ones appear constantly as code changes and new threats emerge. Meanwhile, the time needed for hackers to figure out how to exploit new vulnerabilities has collapsed.

Attackers and security teams now operate at completely different speeds. Hackers using AI begin probing enterprises for vulnerabilities minutes after they’re first published. Fixing one on the defensive side still takes days or weeks. Security teams hunt down system owners through outdated directories and Slack threads. Developers field tickets without knowing which systems are affected or why this particular issue matters more than the hundreds of others in their queue.

Security backlogs grow faster than teams can clear them. Banks, hospitals, retailers, manufacturers, energy companies—they all face the same problem.

Finding vulnerabilities isn’t the hard part. Modern scanning tools handle discovery. The hard part is everything after: figuring out who owns what, understanding real-world risk, coordinating fixes across teams, proving the work was completed. It’s slow. It’s manual. And the threats now move at machine speed.

“Security teams are drowning in coordination work: chasing down system owners, writing tickets, proving fixes happened. We built AI agents that handle that work end-to-end, so security teams can finally keep pace with attackers,” said Vineet Edupuganti, CEO and co-founder of Cogent.

Cogent Security: AI Agents That Automate Remediation

Traditional security tools stop at detection, surfacing findings and leaving humans to handle the rest. Cogent’s AI agents investigate vulnerabilities, determine system ownership, assess real-world risk based on the environment, and generate remediation steps ready for engineers to implement. The agents then track fixes through to verified completion. Customers using Cogent have reduced exposure windows for critical risks by an average of 97 percent.

Cogent is built for enterprise governance. Every agent action is traceable and reproducible. The platform integrates directly into existing security and engineering workflows and operates under configurable approval gates and policy enforcement. Organizations can deploy autonomous AI agents without sacrificing control, auditability, or human oversight.

CSC is the leading AI-driven consolidator in commerce, having acquired Backcountry.com and four other brands in the past year alone. “Given the pace of our M&A activity, Cogent is central to our cybersecurity strategy—autonomously managing risk without slowing us down so we can stay focused on deploying AI,” said Justin Yoshimura, CEO of CSC Generation. “Cogent has become a meaningful competitive advantage for us.”

The Team

Cogent was founded by operators who have spent their careers both finding vulnerabilities and fixing them. Co-founders Vineet Edupuganti (CEO) and Geng Sng (CTO) came from Abnormal Security. Vineet led product strategy for a product loved by security teams. Geng built the ML fraud detection system now protecting half of the Fortune 500. Co-founder Thanos Baskous led infrastructure at Coinbase, where he ran large-scale vulnerability remediation.

The team also includes AI researchers from Google DeepMind who helped develop the transformer architectures behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Investment and Company Traction

Since launching in July 2025, Cogent is already working with dozens of Fortune 1000 companies. With the new funding, Cogent plans to accelerate product development, expand enterprise deployments, and continue building agentic security systems designed for governed, trustworthy execution at scale.

“The enterprise security landscape has reached a clear inflection point. The volume of vulnerabilities has outpaced what traditional, human-driven coordination can handle,” said Enrique Salem, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. “Cogent’s AI enables teams to accomplish five times more with the same resources. This represents a fundamental reset of what’s possible in security operations, and we’re proud to partner with this team as they continue to push the boundaries.”

“Cogent represents a new generation of security companies built natively for AI agents as first-class operators,” said Saam Motamedi, partner at Greylock Partners. “Vineet, Geng, and Thanos understand that securing AI agents requires a fundamentally new operating model, which allows them to move faster and deliver measurable customer value early. The technical depth of the team combined with that execution speed makes the customer signal impossible to ignore.”

About Cogent Security

Cogent is an applied AI lab building autonomous agents that close the execution gap in cybersecurity, the window between discovering vulnerabilities and actually fixing them. While attackers use AI to exploit flaws in minutes, defenders remain constrained by manual coordination that takes days or weeks. Cogent’s AI agents automate the time-intensive work of investigation, prioritization, and remediation, helping Fortune 500 companies achieve a 97 percent reduction in exposure windows for critical risks. Built by researchers and operators from Google DeepMind, Abnormal Security, and Coinbase, Cogent is backed by Greylock Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Learn more at cogent.com.

SOURCE Cogent Security

Backed by Mindset Ventures and leading security investors to bring a “Cursor moment” to reverse engineering and make software researchers significantly more productive

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 18, 2026 — Zenyard, a company building the first purpose-built AI agent for software reverse engineering, today announced its emergence from stealth following a pre-seed funding round led by Mindset Ventures, with participation from TAU Ventures, Zuk Avraham, Raanan Raz, and additional investors.

Reverse engineering remains a critical capability across security research, vulnerability assessment, malware analysis, and threat intelligence. Yet it is considered one of the most difficult disciplines in cybersecurity and is practiced by only a small portion of cybersecurity engineers. The workflows researchers rely on today are manual, slow, and increasingly misaligned with the scale and complexity of modern software. Researchers often lose days reconstructing context, reaching dead ends, or skipping relevant code sections entirely because the time cost is simply too high.

Recently, generic AI tools and DIY MCP-based workarounds have entered the reverse engineering space. However, in real-world research environments, they frequently fall short. These approaches are limited to partial analysis, lack full binary context, and often produce inaccurate or hallucinated conclusions. As a result, many researchers remain skeptical of AI reverse engineering solutions that promise speed without reliability.

Zenyard is taking a different approach. The company is building the industry’s first AI agent designed specifically for reverse engineering workflows, created by reverse engineers. Instead of operating on snippets, the Zenyard agent understands entire binaries, handles the heavy lifting of decompiled code analysis, and provides explainability so researchers can trust the results. Zenyard integrates directly into the decompilers researchers already use, allowing them to move straight to meaningful insights with confidence without changing how they work.

“We built Zenyard out of our own experience working closely with security researchers and seeing the same bottlenecks repeat over and over,” said Yuval Luria, Co-Founder and CEO of Zenyard. “Even the best researchers spend too much time analyzing decompiled code with outdated tools instead of focusing on meaningful insight. Reverse engineering has not kept up with the pace of modern software. We’ve built Zenyard with the mission to help researchers focus on insight, not reconstruction, and give them AI they can actually trust on real, complex binaries.”

“We see a strong parallel between what tools like Cursor and Codex did for developers and what Zenyard is doing for reverse engineering,” said Boaz Albaraness, Managing Partner at Mindset Ventures. “As software complexity continues to grow, researchers need a fundamentally new way to understand binaries. Zenyard is creating a new category with a purpose-built AI agent, and the team’s firsthand experience with real-world reversing challenges, combined with deep security and AI expertise, uniquely positions them to lead this shift.”

Zenyard is already deployed across leading research teams in security and threat intelligence organizations, integrating directly into their existing workflows. The company’s research and development efforts are focused on expanding its multi-agent architecture to significantly accelerate expert researchers while empowering SOC and security analysts to investigate software and malware independently without requiring deep reverse engineering experience.

About Zenyard

Zenyard is building the first AI Agent for reverse engineering, created by reverse engineers. Designed to scale one of security’s scarcest skills – software understanding, Zenyard helps security researchers analyze complex binaries faster, avoid wrong turns, and focus on high-value analysis instead of manual reconstruction. With accurate and explainable results researchers can trust, Zenyard enables security teams to uncover vulnerabilities and mitigate threats with greater speed and confidence. For more information visit:www.zenyard.ai

SOURCE Zenyard

HOUSTON, Feb. 18, 2026 — Bayou City Hemp Company (BCH), a leading vertically integrated producer of hemp-derived THC beverages, today announced it is launching a funding round to accelerate expansion in core markets, scale its sales team, and bolster advocacy for responsible federal regulation. The round builds on recent insider-led investments in 2025, positioning BCH to capitalize on surging consumer demand and navigate evolving regulatory landscapes in the fast-growing THC beverage category.

BCH’s three-tier distribution model, leveraging established wine, spirits, and beer networks, provides a sustainable edge over DTC-focused competitors, enabling scalable growth amid regulatory shifts.

In just over two years since launching distribution, BCH has achieved 8x growth in distribution revenue, with 114% year-over-year growth despite regulatory headwinds. Operating in 15 states with 27 distributors, BCH is expanding to 40 in 2026, including MillerCoors network partnerships covering ~80% of Texas, its keystone market. This has driven rapid retail and on-premise penetration, with placements in over 4,000 accounts at major chains including Spec’s, Total Wine & More, Sprouts, Toot’n Totum, Circle K, Winn Dixie, Lowe’s, and others. Multi-year exclusive venue deals with White Oak Music Hall and ten additional nationwide locations underscore BCH’s mainstream traction.

“This funding round comes at a pivotal moment as the hemp-derived THC category transitions from uncertainty to regulated growth,” said Ben Meggs, CEO of BCH. “We’ve built a market-leading position through compliance, innovation, and a retail-first strategy that delivers velocity, selling over 2.5 million products in 2025, with 99% through three-tier distribution and over 40% on-premise, powered by proven, stable draft/keg formats and premium spirits like Ocho Verde. As federal restrictions loom in November 2026, we’re leading advocacy for extensions like the Hemp Planting Predictability Act (H.R. 7024) and the bipartisan HEMP Act to ensure consumer protection and industry sustainability. This capital will deepen our dominance in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Illinois while turning regulatory challenges into opportunities.”

The impending federal amendments, setting a 0.4mg total THC per container limit effective November 2026, restrict many intoxicating hemp products, but BCH is positioned as a compliant leader collaborating with Congress, Senate leaders, and coalitions to advocate for sensible policies. Industry momentum is strong: At the WSWA Access Live event, Total Wine & More founder David Trone and Breakthru co-chairman Charles Merinoff urged regulation over prohibition, noting the category’s broad appeal across demographics including seniors and veterans, its $1.1 billion current size, and $30 billion potential. BCH’s depth-focused strategy, concentrating on key states and scaling its sales team, supports forecasted 200% year-over-year revenue growth in 2026.

Founded in Houston in 2019 as one of Texas’s original seed-to-sale hemp processors, BCH features vertical integration, including 8th Wonder Brewery ownership and proprietary nanoemulsion technology for superior bioavailability, purity, and consistency. This enables fast-acting, low-dose products that appeal to consumers seeking mindful alcohol alternatives. The portfolio includes:

Howdy – Texas-inspired THC seltzers in flavors like Ranch Water Lime, Paloma Grapefruit, Sweet Tea, and Lemonade.

Beach Break – Low-calorie, flavorful THC seltzers designed for relaxed moments.

Wonder Water – Zero-calorie, zero-sugar sparkling waters with refreshing profiles.

Ocho Verde – Premium THC spirits in eight varieties, including agave, original, and espresso.

The Patriot – All-natural THC seltzers honoring veterans with patriotic flavors.

“Texas alone represents massive, untapped potential, with 60,000 TABC-licensed outlets and our coverage jumping from 20% to over 80% recently,” said Jeremy McKnight, Chief Growth Officer at BCH. “We’ve proven that adding doors and distributors drives immediate velocity, as seen in 2025, with new convenience and grocery chains scaling similarly. With this funding, we’re expanding our sales team to saturate core markets, fund chain expansions, and lead on regulation, ensuring we capture category dominance as hemp beverages go mainstream.”

About Bayou City Hemp Company

BCH is a Houston-based, vertically integrated leader controlling the supply chain from extraction to manufacturing. It leverages advanced supercritical CO₂ extraction and proprietary nanoemulsion technology to produce high-purity hemp-derived THC beverages and edibles (seltzers, draft, spirits, shots) with fast-acting effects and exceptional taste. Bolstered by 8th Wonder Brewery ownership and major distributor partnerships in core markets like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Illinois, its model drives compliant scaling and growth. Learn more at www.bayoucityhemp.com.

Contact: Victor Wang, [email protected]

SOURCE Bayou City Hemp Company

EAST LANSING, Mich., Feb. 18, 2026 — Iaso Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company redefining infectious disease prevention with its novel synthetic vaccine platform, today announced that it will present at the 2026 World Vaccine Congress in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 31. President and CEO Robert Forgey, MS, MBA, will provide an overview of Iaso’s technology and commercial strategy during his live presentation at the Innovator Showcase.

2026 World Vaccine Congress
Date: Tuesday, March 31
Time: 1:30 p.m. ET
Session: Innovator Showcase
Location: Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.

The presentation will showcase how Iaso’s synthetic vaccine platform delivers the broad protection and scalable production needed to combat infectious diseases, including the escalating threat of antimicrobial resistance, to transform global health.

In addition to the presentation, Iaso will host meetings with industry stakeholders, including investors and strategic partners, at Booth 589 in the Emerging Business Zone.

About Iaso Therapeutics
Headquartered in East Lansing, Michigan, Iaso Therapeutics is redefining infectious disease prevention with its novel synthetic vaccine technology designed to combat the escalating threat of antimicrobial resistance. The mQβ platform combines synthetic antigens with an engineered conjugate carrier to deliver broad-spectrum vaccines with unmatched potency, room-temperature stability, and global scalability. With a growing preclinical pipeline leveraging the platform’s multi-target capability, Iaso’s leading vaccine candidates are positioned for rapid translation to human trials. For more information, visit IasoTherapeutics.com.

Company Contact
Robert Forgey, MS, MBA
[email protected]
+1 773-437-0274

SOURCE Iaso Therapeutics, Inc.