SHENZHEN, Chine, 23 avril 2026 — Pudu Robotics, leader mondial de la robotique de service commerciale, a annoncé aujourd’hui avoir levé près de 150 millions USD dans le cadre d’un nouveau tour de table de financement. À l’issue de ce tour de table, l’évaluation de la société a dépassé 1,5 milliard USD, signe de la grande confiance du marché des capitaux dans les avantages technologies difficiles à imiter, l’évolutivité commerciale et le leadership mondial de Pudu. Avec cette dernière levée de fonds, le financement cumulé de Pudu dépasse désormais 300 millions USD.

Les produits du financement seront stratégiquement déployés pour accélérer le développement des technologies d’IA intégrées, élargir le portefeuille de produits de l’entreprise, approfondir l’expansion du marché mondial, augmenter la capacité de fabrication et renforcer les capacités de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Ces initiatives visent à renforcer le leadership de l’entreprise dans le secteur en pleine évolution de la robotique de service commerciale et à poser des fondations solides pour les futures étapes de financement.

Pudu Robotics s’est imposée comme l’une des entreprises à la croissance la plus rapide dans le secteur de la robotique de service commercial, avec un portefeuille diversifié couvrant la prestation de services, le nettoyage commercial, la livraison industrielle et la robotique d’IA incarnée en général. Cette approche multisectorielle a engendré une augmentation remarquable de 100 % des recettes en glissement annuel en 2025. En particulier, le segment du nettoyage commercial de l’entreprise représente aujourd’hui plus de 70 % du chiffre d’affaires total, tandis que ses robots de livraison industrielle ont été rapidement adoptés, avec plus de 4 000 unités expédiées moins d’un an après leur lancement sur le marché.

Ce succès commercial est également validé par l’importante présence mondiale de Pudu, dont les solutions ont été largement adoptées par des marques mondiales de premier plan telles que Carrefour, Walmart et EDEKA. Selon l’étude « Market Research on Global Commercial Service Robotics (2023) » de Frost & Sullivan, Pudu Robotics détient 23 % du marché international, se classant au premier rang mondial et conservant la position de leader du secteur dans les déploiements internationaux.

Basée à Shenzhen et disposant de centres de recherche et développement dédiés à Chengdu et Hong Kong, l’entreprise continue de repousser les limites techniques grâce au développement complet de composants de base, notamment les algorithmes de navigation, la programmation multi-robots, les contrôleurs de mouvement et les modules d’articulation intégrés.

Felix Zhang, fondateur et PDG de Pudu Robotics, a déclaré : « Cette étape de financement est une validation éclatante du leadership industriel de Pudu, de la force de ses produits et de sa technologie, de sa marque mondiale et de son infrastructure commerciale. Soutenue par nos investisseurs stratégiques et nos partenaires industriels, Pudu continuera de repousser les limites de l’IA incarnée et de la robotique de service commerciale. Nous restons déterminés à innover avec l’esprit d’un inventeur et à tirer parti d’une vision mondiale pour accélérer l’adoption des robots, en élevant l’industrie à de nouveaux sommets dans la chaîne de valeur mondiale. »

À propos de Pudu Robotics

Pudu Robotics, leader mondial dans le secteur de la robotique de service commercial, a vocation à faciliter le travail et la vie grâce à l’IA et à la robotique, avec l’ambition de construire une infrastructure robotique intelligente mondiale au service de 10 milliards de personnes dans le monde.

S’appuyant sur trois technologies de base – la mobilité, la manipulation et l’interaction – Pudu Robotics a été le pionnier d’une architecture « Un cerveau, des incarnations multiples », établissant un portefeuille de produits complet qui comprend des robots spécialisés, semi-humanoïdes et humanoïdes.

Actuellement, Pudu propose quatre grandes lignes de produits : la prestation de services, le nettoyage commercial, la livraison industrielle et l’IA incarnée en général. Ses solutions sont largement déployées dans des secteurs tels que la vente au détail, l’hôtellerie, la fabrication et les installations industrielles, l’alimentation et les boissons, les services immobiliers, les soins de santé, le divertissement et le sport, l’éducation et les services publics.

Forte d’une présence dans plus de 80 pays et régions du monde, Pudu Robotics a expédié à ce jour plus de 120 000 unités dans le monde.

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SHENZHEN, China, 23 de abril de 2026 — Pudu Robotics, líder mundial en robótica de servicio comercial, anunció hoy que ha recaudado cerca de 150 millones de dólares en una nueva ronda de financiación. Tras esta ronda, la valoración de la compañía supera los 1.500 millones de dólares, lo que refleja la gran confianza del mercado de capitales en las barreras técnicas, la escalabilidad comercial y el liderazgo global de Pudu. Con esta última ronda, la financiación acumulada de Pudu supera ya los 300 millones de dólares.

Los fondos obtenidos mediante esta financiación se destinarán estratégicamente a acelerar el desarrollo de tecnologías de IA integradas, ampliar la cartera de productos de la empresa, consolidar su expansión en el mercado global, aumentar la capacidad de fabricación y fortalecer aún más la cadena de suministro. Estas iniciativas buscan reforzar el liderazgo de la empresa en el sector de la robótica de servicios comerciales, un sector en rápida evolución, y sentar bases sólidas para futuros logros en el mercado de capitales.

Pudu Robotics se ha consolidado como una de las empresas de más rápido crecimiento en el sector de la robótica para servicios comerciales, con una cartera diversificada que abarca la prestación de servicios, la limpieza comercial, la entrega industrial y la robótica con inteligencia artificial integrada. Este enfoque multisectorial se tradujo en un notable aumento interanual del 100% en los ingresos de 2025. Cabe destacar que el segmento de limpieza comercial de la compañía ha crecido hasta representar más del 70% de los ingresos totales, mientras que sus robots de entrega industrial han experimentado una rápida adopción, con más de 4.000 unidades enviadas en tan solo un año desde su lanzamiento al mercado.

Este éxito comercial se ve reforzado por la amplia presencia global de Pudu, cuyas soluciones son ampliamente adoptadas por marcas líderes a nivel mundial, como Carrefour, Walmart y EDEKA. Según el informe “Market Research on Global Commercial Service Robotics (2023)” de Frost & Sullivan, Pudu Robotics ostenta una cuota de mercado global del 23%, ocupando el primer puesto a nivel mundial y manteniendo la posición de liderazgo del sector en implementaciones internacionales.

Con sede en Shenzhen y centros de I+D propios en Chengdu y Hong Kong, la empresa sigue ampliando los límites técnicos mediante el desarrollo integral de componentes clave, incluidos algoritmos de navegación, programación de múltiples robots, controladores de movimiento y módulos de articulación integrados.

Felix Zhang, fundador y consejero delegado de Pudu Robotics, declaró: “Este hito financiero es una poderosa confirmación del liderazgo de Pudu en la industria, la solidez de sus productos y su tecnología, su marca global y su infraestructura comercial. Con el respaldo de nuestros inversores estratégicos y socios industriales, Pudu seguirá ampliando los límites de la IA integrada y la robótica de servicios comerciales. Mantenemos nuestro compromiso de innovar con espíritu inventor y aprovechar una visión global para acelerar la adopción de robots, elevando así la industria a nuevas cotas en la cadena de valor global”.

Acerca de Pudu Robotics

Pudu Robotics, líder mundial en el sector de la robótica de servicios comerciales, se dedica a facilitar el trabajo y mejorar la calidad de vida mediante la IA y la robótica, con la visión de construir una infraestructura robótica inteligente global que preste servicio a 10.000 millones de personas en todo el mundo.

Pudu Robotics, basada en tres tecnologías fundamentales (movilidad, manipulación e interacción), ha sido pionera en una arquitectura de “un cerebro, múltiples formas”, estableciendo una cartera de productos integral que incluye robots especializados, semihumanoides y humanoides.

Actualmente, Pudu ofrece cuatro líneas de productos principales: prestación de servicios, limpieza comercial, entrega industrial e inteligencia artificial integrada. Sus soluciones se utilizan ampliamente en sectores como el comercio minorista, la hostelería, la fabricación y las instalaciones industriales, la alimentación y las bebidas, los servicios inmobiliarios, la sanidad, el entretenimiento y el deporte, la educación y los servicios públicos.

Hasta la fecha, Pudu Robotics ha enviado más de 120.000 unidades a nivel mundial, con presencia en más de 80 países y regiones.

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With Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, and executives from Stripe and OpenAI also participating, the SEC-registered platform uses AI to deliver personalized investment guidance to the millions of Americans who can’t access traditional financial advice.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2026 — Astor, an AI-native investment advisory platform registered with the SEC, today announced a $5 million seed round led by Monashees, with participation from Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, Gilgamesh Ventures, 468 Capital, Valutia, Sunshine Lake and executives from Stripe and OpenAI. Since launch, the platform has attracted thousands of users and more than $200 million in connected accounts. The funding will be used to grow Astor’s product, engineering, and growth teams, and expand its service lines.

Investing Has Become a Spectator Sport

More Americans are investing than ever before. But for many, investing has started to look a lot like gambling. Meme stocks, crypto speculation, and prediction markets have turned financial markets into a form of entertainment. According to FINRA, 61% of investors under 35 now rely on social media for investment decisions.

Meanwhile, the people and institutions designed to help — financial advisors — remain out of reach for most. Traditional advisors typically require $500,000 or more in assets just to take you on as a client. Only about 35% of Americans work with one, and among adults under 30, that figure drops below 5%.

A Problem the Founders Lived

Co-founders Bruno Koba and Daniel Tulha grew up in Brazil, where it’s standard practice to be paired with a financial advisor the moment you open a brokerage account, regardless of how much money you have. When they moved to the United States, they found the opposite: most people are investing entirely on their own.

“We looked around and everyone we knew was investing on their own, with many treating their brokerage accounts like a casino,” said Koba, co-founder and CEO of Astor. “Back home, even the most basic advisor gives you the sense that someone is paying attention to your money. Here, unless you’re wealthy, nobody is.”

Koba previously worked as a fintech investor at Monashees and as a data scientist at Nubank, where he built machine learning models to scale credit to millions of Brazilians. Tulha was a software engineer at Stripe and Robinhood, building financial infrastructure at global scale.

The pair joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 batch to build Astor: an AI advisor designed for the millions of American households that the traditional advisory industry has left behind.

An Advisor That Knows Your Portfolio

Astor connects to users’ existing brokerage accounts, evaluates their holdings across performance, risk, and diversification, and delivers tailored recommendations based on what the user owns. The platform is SEC-registered and operates under a fiduciary duty to act in clients’ best interest, setting it apart from social media advice and generic AI chatbots.

“Most people don’t need more investment products, they need someone in their corner. Astor gives people the knowledge and guidance to actually take control of their financial future”, said Fabiola Quinzaños, Partner at Monashees. “Bruno brings the investor perspective from his years at Monashees and the personal conviction of having lived this problem, while Daniel brings technical depth from building financial products at Stripe, and Bruno going from Monashees investor to Monashees-backed founder is the kind of full-circle story we love to be part of.” 

To connect with the Astor team, reach out at [email protected].

About Astor

Astor is an AI-native, SEC-registered investment advisory platform that connects to users’ existing brokerage accounts and delivers personalized investment recommendations through conversational AI. Founded by Bruno Koba and Daniel Tulha, Astor’s mission is to make quality financial guidance accessible to every investor. Learn more at astor.app

About Monashees

Monashees is a Latin American venture capital firm, founded in 2005, and one of the pioneer investors in Latin America’s tech ecosystem. Today, the Monashees community spans more than 150 companies and 300+ founders. Monashees has offices in Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Silicon Valley.  Learn more at monashees.com

Media Contact:
Bruno Koba, Co-founder & CEO | [email protected]

SOURCE Astor

Petual, an AI-powered platform for audit and compliance, has raised $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, and Cowboy Ventures, among others, to transform internal audit and SOX teams into AI-native functions, beginning with control test automation.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2026 — Petual, an AI-powered platform for audit and compliance, today announced it has raised $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Cowboy Ventures, and Elad Gil. The new capital will be used to accelerate product development and go-to-market.

Today, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance and internal audit are among the most resource-intensive and manual processes in public enterprises. Auditors are required to wade through hundreds of unstructured files per control, collecting, enriching and reasoning through evidence, performing tests, and generating documentation. This work repeats year-over-year and leaves little room for risk management activities that demand auditor judgement and stakeholder engagement. Well over $8B is spent annually on SOX in the US market alone.

Petual’s platform brings agentic AI to SOX testing and internal audit, making autonomous execution of evidence gathering and work paper generation possible for the first time at enterprise scale. The platform ingests both structured and unstructured evidence such as screenshots, PDFs, and Excel files to generate complete work papers in minutes, compared to the double or triple-digit hours spent manually by most teams today. Its outputs are formatted to meet external auditor expectations and templates, with detailed reasoning traceable to source documents. A built-in review workflow supports the approval chain, ensuring human oversight always remains central to the process.

Petual’s customers can see efficiency gains of 68 to 80 percent on current SOX workflows. Early Petual customers include both S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 companies and span every industry: energy, software, infrastructure, manufacturing, financial services, and more.

“As a large public company, maintaining audit quality while scaling efficiently is critical. Petual enables us to do both, delivering structured, auditor-ready workpapers in a fraction of the time it would take manually,” said Petual customer Erin Dempsey Heuwetter, Head of Audit, Risk and Compliance at Navan.

Eos Energy customer Sumeet Puri, Chief Accounting Officer added, “Strengthening audit execution while staying focused on risk is a priority for Eos. Petual’s AI agents help us accelerate audit testing in a disciplined way, allowing our team to focus on risk analysis and oversight.”

The team behind Petual brings deep experience at the intersection of technology, AI, risk, and audit. They’ve built internal audit teams and engineering organizations alike, with backgrounds spanning Stripe, Retool, Lyft, and the Big Four. Before founding Petual, Founder and CEO Snir Kodesh led engineering at Retool. The team also includes leaders like Eliot Walker, former CTO of Fleet at Lyft, and David Coulombe, former VP of Audit and Chief Audit Executive at Lyft.

“It’s not often that we see an early-stage company able to reach large enterprise customers so early in their journey. This is a testament to both how compelling the market opportunity is for Petual and the strength of the product they’ve built,” said Brian Roberts, a16z general partner, Petual board member, and former CFO at Lyft and Splunk.

About Petual Petual is an AI-powered audit and compliance platform that helps drive toward AI-native audit functions. By bringing agentic AI into control testing, Petual enables organizations to operate more efficiently, improve audit quality, and scale. Learn more at petual.ai.

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. We are stage agnostic: We invest in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies, across bio + healthcare, consumer and enterprise apps, crypto, fintech, infrastructure, and companies building toward American dynamism. a16z has over $90B under management across multiple funds.

SOURCE Petual, Inc

Seasoned investor relations leader to deepen global investor engagement and support next phase of better-for-you consumer PE firm’s growth

DENVER, April 23, 2026 — Manna Tree, a global private equity firm investing in companies that empower consumers to live better, longer, today announced that Jessica Schmitt has joined the firm as Managing Director of Capital Formation focused on deepening and expanding relationships with institutional investors as the firm continues to scale. Ms. Schmitt is based in Los Angeles, expanding the firm’s senior leadership footprint across major U.S. consumer and capital markets, including New York, Minneapolis, Denver, San Francisco and Austin.

Ms. Schmitt brings more than 15 years of experience in fundraising and investor relations, with a career dedicated to building long-term partnerships with institutional investors. At Manna Tree, she will oversee capital formation initiatives, serve as a senior point of contact for the firm’s global investor community, and support the firm’s growth as consumer interest in health and wellness continues to accelerate. With an exclusive focus on the health and wellness ecosystem, Manna Tree has established a clear strategy and a strong track record of scaling founder-led brands into category leaders. Over the past year, the firm successfully exited better-for-you leaders Health‑Ade and Good Culture and made a strategic investment in Plant People, reinforcing its ability to deliver strong outcomes while advancing its mission of empowering consumers to live better, longer through improved health and wellness.

“Unlike the broader consumer sector, health and wellness remains one of the most compelling areas within the private markets, and Manna Tree is at the forefront with our leading investment platform in this space,” said Ellie Rubenstein, Co‑Founder and Managing Partner at Manna Tree. “With a demonstrated ability to create value across investments and exits, we are entering an exciting next chapter of growth as consumer and investor interest in health and wellness continues to build. Jessica’s experience and relationship‑driven approach will be critical as we expand the firm, deepen partnerships with our investor community, and build on the momentum we have created.”

“Jessica has spent her career working closely with institutional investors and building trusted relationships,” added Ross Iverson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Manna Tree. “Her background and perspective complement our leadership team as we scale, and we’re excited to have her guide our capital formation efforts as the firm continues to grow and be a leader in the trillion-dollar health and wellness market.”

Prior to joining Manna Tree, Ms. Schmitt led the Investor Relations team at Waud Capital Partners, a growth-oriented, multi-billion-dollar private equity firm focused on healthcare and software buyout investments, where she was responsible for fundraising and investor relations. Before that, she served as Arrowroot Capital’s first Head of Investor Relations, establishing and building the firm’s investor relations function as it scaled to over half a billion dollars in assets under management. Earlier in her career, Ms. Schmitt spent nine years at The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm with more than $10 billion in assets under management, as part of its investor relations and fundraising team.

“Manna Tree has a clear strategy investing in, scaling and successfully exiting leading brands that empower consumers to live better, longer and a differentiated focus on the rapidly growing health and wellness sector, utilizing strong industry expertise, relationships and a deep commitment to growing high-quality companies,” said Ms. Schmitt. “I’m excited to help expand and strengthen its investor relations platform and support its continued growth.”

Ms. Schmitt holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Loyola Marymount University.

About Manna Tree

Founded by Gabrielle (Ellie) Rubenstein and Ross Iverson in 2018, Manna Tree is a global private equity firm committed to investing in companies that empower consumers to live better, longer. The firm strategically invests in the consumer sector, particularly within the health and wellness ecosystem, focusing on growth-stage and buyout opportunities. Manna Tree has made investments in 15 companies to date, including companies like: Health-Ade, Gotham Greens, Vital Farms, Good Culture, Plant People, Verde Farms, Urban Remedy, and the New Primal.

Media Contact: 
Kate Schneiderman, ICR
[email protected]

SOURCE Manna Tree Partners

BAND enables agents across frameworks, clouds, enterprises, partners, and personal environments to communicate, collaborate, and operate together in real time

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2026 — BAND, pioneering a new interaction layer for multi-agent systems, today announced its launch alongside a $17 million seed funding round with investment from Sierra Ventures, Hetz Ventures and Team8. The company is emerging from stealth to solve one of the most critical challenges in enterprise AI: enabling seamless communication and interaction between autonomous distributed agents across systems, teams, and organizations.

As enterprises begin deploying dozens or even hundreds of agents across engineering, security, and operations workflows, coordination between those agents is quickly becoming the next infrastructure challenge. By the end of 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will embed AI, yet 50% of agent deployments are predicted to fail due to insufficient runtime enforcement and multisystem interoperability and only 21% of companies currently have a mature governance and collaboration model to prevent it.

Currently, teams are forced to manually pass context between agents and maintain brittle coordination layers that were never designed for production-scale automation. What should be collaborative systems instead become fragmented siloes. In practice, this leaves developers and enterprise teams filling the gaps by manually passing information between agents, maintaining context across tools, and stitching together workflows that were never designed to function as a unified system.

BAND addresses these gaps by introducing a unified interaction layer that allows agents to discover each other, exchange context, delegate tasks and collaborate in real time, regardless of if they are custom agents written in leading frameworks like LangChain or CrewAI, third-party SaaS agents, coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex, or even personal AI assistants, such as OpenClaw. This critical shift transforms agents from isolated tools into coordinated participants in shared workflows.

“We’re entering the agentic economy, where millions of agents will need to collaborate across companies, platforms, and environments,” said Arick Goomanovsky, CEO and Co-Founder of BAND. “The challenge isn’t only building more agents, but getting them to work together in real time. BAND is building the infrastructure that makes that communication and interaction seamless, so agents can operate as part of a production-ready system, not isolated tools. This isn’t a nice-to-have, this is mission critical for the success of agent deployment in the enterprise.”

BAND enables developers to move from manually coordinating coding agents to running continuous, multi-agent interactions where planning, coding, testing, and monitoring agents operate together with shared context. R&D teams can build modular multi-agent architectures, encompassing agents running on different clouds or on-premise environments, instead of relying on brittle, monolithic systems. Enterprises can connect internal agents with those embedded in SaaS platforms and partner environments, creating cross-functional automation that was previously impossible. At the same time, personal agents can begin to interact with business agents or other users’ agents, pointing toward a future where individuals participate in a broader “internet of agents.”

Key capabilities include:

• A new architectural layer that provides shared infrastructure for multi-agent systems 
• Structured communication and delegation, preserving workflow context
• Cross-framework interoperability without rewriting agents
• Human-in-the-loop oversight for inspection, approval, and intervention
• Agent discovery and connection across internal and external environments

Additionally, built-in governance gives enterprises full visibility into agent interactions, monitors task delegation, and enforces authority boundaries, enabling secure and scalable multi-agent operations.

“Multi-agent systems are quickly becoming the foundation of modern software,” said Tim Guleri, Managing Director at Sierra Ventures. “Without a reliable and efficient way for agents to communicate, their potential is limited. BAND is building the missing layer that makes large-scale agent collaboration practical in all environments, in the enterprise and beyond.”

The $17 million seed round will expand BAND’s engineering team, accelerate product development, and grow its early design partner ecosystem across developers, enterprise platforms, and AI-native companies. Early adopters are already using BAND to build multi-agent systems in software development, enterprise automation, and advanced R&D.

About BAND
BAND builds enterprise-grade interaction infrastructure for distributed AI agents. Its platform enables real-time, multi-peer collaboration across agents and humans, while providing a runtime control plane that enforces policy, authority boundaries, and visibility across heterogeneous systems.

BAND supports developers, engineering teams, and enterprise platform leaders operating multi-agent ecosystems across internal systems, SaaS platforms, and partner environments.

BAND is backed by Team8, Hetz Ventures, and Sierra Ventures.

SOURCE BAND

Led by TLV Partners, Copperhelm introduces AI agents that investigate and remediate cloud threats in real time

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 23, 2026 — Copperhelm, a new cybersecurity company pioneering agentic cloud security, today announced its launch from stealth alongside $7 million in seed funding led by TLV Partners, with participation from toDay Ventures, ICON, and SaaS Ventures Israel. Notable Angel investors include Kfir Tishbi, Or Hiltch, Guy Zipori and Ephraim Yarmak. Already working with paying customers, including Fortune 500 enterprises, the company introduces a new model for cloud defense where AI agents replace manual workflows by continuously monitoring cloud environments, investigating threats, and executing real-time remediation, while keeping security teams in control.

Founded by Shimon Tolts, Eyar Zilberman, and Roman Labunsky, Copperhelm is built to address a growing gap in enterprise cloud security. The founding team brings deep experience from companies including Unity, McAfee, and RSA, with a track record of building cloud infrastructure and security products at scale. Their backgrounds include recognition as AWS Heroes, a CNCF Ambassador, a GitHub Star, and Y Combinator alumni.

AI has already transformed other domains, but it has not yet translated easily to cloud security. Cloud environments are highly complex and fragmented, making it difficult for AI to access and understand the full context needed to take action. Security teams cannot simply connect a general-purpose AI model to hundreds of cloud accounts and expect reliable results.

As AI agents take on more autonomous roles across industries, cloud security workflows have remained largely manual. Copperhelm changes that by bringing autonomy to cloud defense and enabling teams to operate at a fundamentally different scale. The company serves CISOs and security teams at large enterprises, offering a new model where humans remain in control and AI agents perform the heavy lifting. By continuously monitoring the environment, investigating threats, and remediating vulnerabilities, Copperhelm enables teams to focus on the most critical risks while significantly increasing operational efficiency.

Copperhelm solves this challenge with its Context Lake, a real-time decision layer for cloud security that structures and connects cloud data across environments, enabling AI agents to accurately investigate and remediate risk. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Copperhelm is purpose-built for cloud environments, operating across hundreds of accounts with the scale and connectivity required to take meaningful action. This enables its agents to continuously analyze infrastructure, validate real risk, and execute remediation with high confidence.

Built on its Context Lake, Copperhelm deploys purpose-built AI agents that act as an extension of the security team. These agents continuously analyze infrastructure, investigate real risk, and execute remediation actions in real time, enabling organizations to move from alert to resolution without traditional manual handoffs. With CopperHelm’s agentic approach, one Fortune 500 company transformed 6 million of raw findings into a few hundreds evidence-backed shortlist of validated risks their teams could actually remediate, cutting engineering toil and accelerating action on the exposures that mattered most.

“Engineering teams got AI years ago; security was left behind doing manual work,” said Shimon Tolts, CEO and Co-Founder of Copperhelm. “Copperhelm finally brings true AI to cloud security. It’s like instantly adding twenty senior engineers to your team.”

The platform includes specialized agents focused on network analysis, system behavior, adversary simulation, and automated remediation. These agents connect directly to live workloads, inspect active processes and container images, map cloud network topology, and deploy targeted protections such as WAF rules to mitigate threats without downtime.

“Applying AI to cloud security requires deep architectural expertise, not just generic models with integrations,” said Rona Segev, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at TLV Partners. “Shimon, Eyar, and Roman are true cloud veterans and the right team to bring autonomous AI into this space and shape the future of cloud defense.”

The $7 million in funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand go-to-market efforts, and scale Copperhelm’s engineering team. As part of today’s announcement, Shay Michel, Managing Partner at Merlin Ventures, will join Copperhelm’s board of directors.

About Copperhelm
Copperhelm is the leader in agentic cloud security, helping enterprises defend their cloud environments with AI agents that understand infrastructure as deeply as experienced engineers. By combining autonomous investigation and remediation with a real-time contextual understanding of cloud environments, Copperhelm enables security teams to eliminate manual work, reduce risk, and operate at an unprecedented scale. Founded by cloud and security veterans from Unity, McAfee, and RSA, the team includes recognized industry leaders, with CEO Shimon Tolts named an AWS Hero and CNCF Ambassador, and CPO Eyar Zilberman recognized as a GitHub Star. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Copperhelm serves global enterprises. Learn more at www.copperhelm.com.

Media:
Angelique Faul
513-633-0897
[email protected]

SOURCE Copperhelm

FORT COLLINS, Colo., April 23, 2026 — Healthy Smart Mart™, a leader in unattended retail, has announced the expansion of its micro market business model, positioning it as a premier solution for entrepreneurs seeking sustainable passive income. As the global economy shifts toward automated wealth generation, the company’s systems offer a high-margin alternative to traditional vending and labor-intensive franchises.

The announcement comes as investors seek assets requiring minimal time. Healthy Smart Mart™ micro markets transform workplace break rooms into modern, cashless convenience stores operating 24/7. Unlike legacy vending, these open-market designs enable fresh, healthy food options that cater to employee demand for workplace wellness.

The Evolution of Passive Income

For decades, passive income was limited to real estate or stocks. However, automated micro-retail has introduced a third pillar. Healthy Smart Mart™ systems allow operators to generate revenue with as little as two hours of weekly maintenance. This efficiency is driven by proprietary technology that eliminates on-site staff, shielding owners from rising labor costs.

The scalability of the model is central to its appeal. Healthy Smart Mart™ strategically positions operators to dominate mid-sized locations with 100 to 500 employees. With millions of such locations across the United States, the company provides a path to secure prime placements, ensuring a stable, recurring revenue stream.

Advanced Technology and Operational Efficiency

At the heart of the model is a suite of payment solutions. The system offers multiple ways to complete transactions, including an all-in-one kiosk and a streamlined, app-based mobile option. This flexibility ensures a frictionless shopping experience for all users.

For the operator, this technology provides real-time sales data and automated inventory tracking. Restocking notifications are sent to the owner’s device, ensuring every trip is data-driven, reducing the time required to manage the business.

Capital Access Program

The company introduced a Capital Access Program to lower barriers to entry. This platform allows applicants to view pre-qualified financing options within minutes, covering essential startup costs. By streamlining access to capital, Healthy Smart Mart™ is enabling individuals to capitalize on the boom in automated convenience.

Learn more at https://healthysmartmart.com/.

Commitment to Corporate Wellness

In 2026, corporate wellness is a strategic necessity. Businesses are eager to host Healthy Smart Mart™ micro markets because they provide a valuable amenity at no cost to the employer. These markets improve morale and productivity by providing 24/7 access to nutritious meals, replacing uninspired vending selections with a curated, retail-like experience.

About Healthy Smart Mart™

Healthy Smart Mart™ offers a premier business opportunity for entrepreneurs ready to enter the micro market industry. By transforming traditional workplace break rooms into modern, cashless convenience stores, they help operators build profitable businesses. The company provides a proven model, innovative technology, and a unique funding program to ensure success.

Bill Way, CEO, is a recognized authority in the field and a number-one Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Most notably, his latest book, Micro Markets – Profit From The Automated Convenience Store BOOM! outlines the future of the vending and micro market industry and is the first and ONLY book in print on the subject. Mr. Way is available for interviews, which tend to be quite fun and extraordinary. For more information, please visit HealthySmartMart.com.

Contact Information

Name: Bill Way   
Email: [email protected]
Phone Number: (970) 222-8582

SOURCE Healthy Smart Mart™

Software-reconfigurable system delivers eight distinct configurations across a multi-vendor stack, now in active use by partners.

OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom, April 23, 2026 — TreQ has designed, built, and brought online its Open-Architecture Quantum (OAQ) Testbed, a fully operational, multi-vendor system now in active use. Part of Innovate UK’s Quantum Mission Pilot, the system operates independent processor, control, and software layers through well-defined interfaces. This enables:

• Reconfiguration and upgrades without rebuilding the stack
• Efficient system-level evaluation and comparison of potential builds
• Portability of solutions across configurations

“Open architecture quantum requires systems engineering to define interfaces, validate integration, and operate at system scale. It is much more than assembling components from multiple vendors,” said Mandy Birch, Founder and CEO of TreQ. “With the OAQ Testbed in operation, we’ve demonstrated that capital-efficient, flexible quantum infrastructure can be built and operated today.”

In just 3 months, from procurement to deployment within its purpose-built facility, TreQ brought online a complete multi-dimensional system that integrates products from across the industry. The team coordinated long-lead components from multiple suppliers and validated performance across multiple configurations.

Beginning with two options each for QPU, control hardware, and calibration software, the system supports eight computing configurations within the same three-rack footprint. The full system configuration can be switched via software, allowing performance assessment in different contexts without cycling or recabling the hardware.

This approach shifts quantum infrastructure from fixed configurations to adaptable architectures that incorporate best-in-class technologies. By defining core layers and integrating them through transparent interfaces, TreQ enables innovation throughout the stack and allows infrastructure investment to advance alongside a dynamic supply chain. Customers can evaluate, upgrade, and incorporate new technologies as they emerge, extending infrastructure lifetime, improving return on investment, and accelerating technical progress.

Open Architecture Quantum Validated

A world-first for open architecture, TreQ has delivered a full-stack system that enables direct evaluation and comparison within a single engineered environment. This demonstrates the viability of open-architecture approaches that rely on rigorous systems engineering rather than fixed integrations.

“The Novera QPU is designed for modularity, enabling ease of testing and integrating with new configurations and architectures. Validating the performance of the Novera QPU in different configurations within a multi-vendor architecture provides insight into system-level design and integration requirements for open architecture systems,” said Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO.

Interoperable at the Core

The OAQ Testbed’s engineered interfaces give innovators the freedom to build a stack from independently developed subsystems with low-friction, reliable interchangeability. A system orchestrator manages user requests across multiple levels of job abstraction and executes them on a selection of targets. Integrated calibration services continuously monitor and maintain system performance.

“Interoperability and autonomy are key to deployability. Running our autonomous calibration workflows on multiple configurations within a shared architecture makes it easier for users to pick the best system for their application, and achieve the best possible performance,” said Alex Shih, VP of Product at Q-CTRL.

Enabling Solution Portability

To ensure our clients’ solutions and intellectual property are portable between hardware systems, a TreQ-led consortium developed an open-source interface specification for vendor-interchangeable low-level integration. This specification has already been integrated into commercial offerings from Q-CTRL and Qruise, and demonstrated on Quantum Machines and Qblox control platforms. In collaboration with Oxford Ionics, an IonQ company, TreQ developed this specification to support multiple modalities, incorporating core operations for ion trap systems alongside superconducting processors from Rigetti and QuantWare housed in the same Maybell cryostat.

“The specification enables our AI-powered calibration technology to be deployed across more backends and increases the market reach of our solutions,” said Anurag Saha Roy, Chief Product Officer at Qruise.

Bringing Open Architecture to Market

TreQ now has a platform to efficiently expand its system offerings. This capability facilitates the evaluation of products from throughout the industry, while accelerating the incorporation of emerging offerings from a rapidly advancing supply chain.

Media Contact:
Megan Chalidis
+1 202.370.7473
[email protected]

SOURCE TreQ