85% of social impact professionals use AI; only about 10% of organizations see significant returns. Lantern is built to close that gap, developed through a strategic collaboration with Databricks.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 29, 2026 — Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world’s leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact, today at bbcon 2026 unveiled Lantern™, the first domain-specific language model purpose-built to optimize fundraising intelligence.

The social impact sector is being underserved by large language models. While 85% of social impact professionals say they are using AI in their daily jobs, only about 10% of organizations are realizing significant dividends on their investment. Blackbaud has entered a strategic collaboration with Databricks to ensure the social impact sector gets the best outcomes from AI. Lantern is built on more than four decades of experience in fundraising workflows, decisions, and results, so that it understands giving behavior rather than buying behavior. This gives social impact organizations tailored intelligence to help them raise more so they can continue solving society’s most pressing challenges.

“Every organization has access to powerful AI, but frontier models learn from the internet, while Lantern learns from philanthropy,” said Mike Gianoni, president, CEO and vice chairman of the board of directors, Blackbaud. “With more than $100 billion raised, granted or managed through our platforms every year, Blackbaud has deep expertise on social impact and generosity, including why, when and how people give. Lantern understands fundraising goals, donor dynamics and nonprofit priorities in ways general-purpose AI doesn’t and puts actionable intelligence into the hands of fundraisers so they can make the best-informed decisions.”

Frontier AI meets fundraising expertise  

Working with Databricks, Blackbaud is combining leading open-weight models on the Databricks Data + AI Platform with more than 40 years of social impact intelligence. Lantern is post-trained on synthetic scenarios modeled on Blackbaud’s comprehensive Social Impact Signal Graph™ to reflect real-world fundraising patterns and bring the unique complexity of fundraising to the model. This flexible approach enables Lantern to evolve as technology advances. 

“There is an enormous opportunity for the philanthropy world to benefit from AI, but seeing returns requires the right data, context and governance,” said Andy Kofoid, president, global field operations, Databricks. “Together, Blackbaud and Databricks are giving nonprofits the data foundation they need to scale their fundraising and maximize their real-world impact.”

Lantern is developed under Blackbaud’s Responsible AI principles with privacy, transparency and sector-appropriate governance at its core to serve the unique needs of social impact organizations.

A model that supports social impact

Lantern understands the rhythms of fundraising, including how relationships are built, nurtured and transformed into generosity. It can illuminate opportunities that might otherwise go unseen, helping social impact organizations navigate complexity, uncover new possibilities and focus their energy where they can create the greatest impact. It reflects the importance of things like retention, upgrade paths and lifetime relationships, all of which are central to fundraising but not native to general-purpose AI models.

“The future of AI isn’t about who has the largest model; it’s about who best reflects the world their customers operate in,” said Carrie Cobb, chief data and AI officer, Blackbaud. “Lantern was purpose-built to reflect fundraising, leveraging decades of sector expertise with the intelligence embedded in Blackbaud’s Social Impact Signal Graph. The result is trusted intelligence that is more relevant, more transparent and more actionable because it understands the relationships, behaviors and opportunities that drive impact for our customers. The sector doesn’t need more AI. It needs AI designed to support social impact.”

Lantern is being built with input from Blackbaud customers including Boston University, Hesed House and YMCA of the North to support the outcomes frontline fundraisers want to achieve.

“Every industry has its own language, expertise, decision-making processes, rules and guardrails,” said Tim Cerato, assistant vice president, constituent relationship management, Boston University. “One of the biggest unlocks for AI is its ability to understand those nuances and amplify the effectiveness of the people doing the work. We see tremendous potential in technologies that augment the knowledge and expertise of our teams, expanding what people can accomplish and allowing them to focus their energy on the work that drives the most meaningful outcomes.”

Availability

Lantern will be embedded within Blackbaud’s Platform for Good™, bringing fundraising intelligence directly into the solutions organizations use every day to engage supporters, grow generosity and advance their missions.

Lantern will begin powering select Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Agents for Good™ capabilities in 2027, with broader availability planned across Blackbaud’s Platform for Good.

About Blackbaud

Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world’s leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact. Serving nonprofits, educational institutions, companies committed to corporate social responsibility, and individual change makers, Blackbaud propels impact at scale with the sector’s most intelligent solutions for fundraising and engagement, education solutions, financial management and CSR and grantmaking. With the deepest expertise powered by the world’s largest philanthropic data set, the most connected workflows, and the most powerful impact network, Blackbaud’s solutions are building a future where resources are unleashed at the speed of need. Blackbaud has been recognized by Fast Company, Newsweek, Quartz, Forbes and more for AI innovation, responsible leadership and workplace excellence. Blackbaud has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, India and the United Kingdom, supporting users in 100+ countries. Learn more at www.blackbaud.com or follow us on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Media Inquiries

[email protected] 

Forward-looking Statements

Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations and assumptions contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding expected benefits of products and product features. Although Blackbaud attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based. In addition, other important factors that could cause results to differ materially include the following: general economic risks; uncertainty regarding increased business and renewals from existing customers; continued success in sales growth; management of integration of acquired companies and other risks associated with acquisitions; risks associated with successful implementation of multiple integrated software products; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; risks associated with management of growth; lengthy sales and implementation cycles; technological changes that make our products and services less competitive; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in the SEC filings for Blackbaud, copies of which are available free of charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or upon request from Blackbaud’s investor relations department. All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud, Inc.

SOURCE Blackbaud

The appointment follows Yardstik’s $30M Series B and deepens the company’s focus on the security risks that surface beyond a candidate’s point of hire

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 29, 2026 — Yardstik, the Human Trust Platform for employers, today announced that Nick Schneider, President and CEO of the cybersecurity and AI company Arctic Wolf, has joined its board of directors. The appointment comes weeks after Yardstik closed $30 million in new funding Series B led by Harbert Growth Partners to build out fraud prevention, continuous monitoring, and credential tracking through the entire worker lifecycle.

Schneider has spent more than 20 years building high-growth technology companies at scale. As President and CEO of Arctic Wolf® since 2021, he has grown Arctic Wolf into one of the largest privately held cybersecurity companies, driven its international expansion, and established the company as an industry leader. Arctic Wolf ranks among Forbes’ top 25 Cloud 100 companies and has been named to the Fortune Cyber 60. Under his leadership, Arctic Wolf launched the Aurora® Agentic SOC, the industry’s leading agentic security operations center, and was named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Service for Midmarket, cementing its place among the top cybersecurity companies in the industry. Before Arctic Wolf, he ran North American sales at Code42 and held senior sales roles at Compellent Technologies through its IPO and acquisition by Dell.

Yardstik and Arctic Wolf sit on opposite sides of the same problem: keeping bad actors out of a company’s systems and workforce. In June 2025, the Department of Justice broke up a network of laptop farms that let North Korean operatives pose as remote IT workers using stolen American identities. They’d landed jobs at more than 100 U.S. companies, several of them Fortune 500 firms. A second case unsealed later that year tied a five-person facilitator ring to fraudulent placements at 136 more companies. Some of those workers went on to steal data from the same employers who’d hired them and tried to extort them for it.

Arctic Wolf watches the network for signs something’s gone wrong once someone’s already inside. Yardstik monitors the person behind the login: who was actually hired, whether their credentials are still valid, and whether the person clocking in today was the one who passed the background check six months ago. Ponemon’s 2026 research puts the average cost of insider risk at $19.5 million a year per organization, and Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report ties roughly three in ten breaches to an insider. A background check run once at hire can’t catch any of that. It only proves who someone was on the day they applied.

“Nick has spent his career proving that real security is never a one-time check, it’s a continuous journey.” said Andrew Johnson, CEO of Yardstik. “You don’t scan a network once and call it safe. Every attack surface gets watched continuously except one…the workforce. A candidate clears a background check at the point of hire and nobody bothers to check again. That’s the gap we built Yardstik to close, and Nick understood the importance immediately.”

“Companies have invested heavily in securing their networks, but people accessing those systems are still an underprotected part of the security equation,” said Nick Schneider, President and CEO of Arctic Wolf. “Yardstik is bringing a modern approach to workforce risk by giving businesses greater visibility into who is accessing their organization and how that risk can change over time. I’m excited to help the company establish lifecycle workforce protection as a core part of the enterprise security stack as it enters its next stage of growth.”

Schneider’s appointment expands Yardstik’s board as the company scales past its Series B, adding a director with direct experience turning a security platform into a channel-driven growth engine. A path Yardstik is now pursuing with its own ATS, HR, and marketplace integration partners.

About Yardstik

Yardstik is a Human Trust Platform built to help organizations move beyond one-time background checks toward a continuous and transparent workforce lifecycle. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, Yardstik combines fraud prevention and background verification into a single, cost-efficient platform used by customers including HR Block and Gopuff. Yardstik operates in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), providing full transparency to the individuals it monitors.

About Arctic Wolf

Arctic Wolf is the cybersecurity and AI company that ends cyber risk by transforming it into business resilience. Powered by the Aurora® Superintelligence Platform, Arctic Wolf delivers modern security operations built on proprietary AI and decades of real-world expertise. By combining AI-driven automation with expert-validated precision, Arctic Wolf takes ownership of cyber risk — so organizations can operate with confidence, control, and the freedom to innovate.

To learn more about Arctic Wolf, visit www.arcticwolf.com.

Media Contact
[email protected]

SOURCE Yardstik, Inc.

Non-dilutive federal funding will support preclinical and clinical work validating red blood cell-bound tumor DNA as an early detection biomarker for non-small cell lung cancer.

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 29, 2026 — Senticell, Inc. (“Senticell” or the “Company”), a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of liquid biopsy built on red blood cell (RBC)-bound nucleic acids, today announced it has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award will fund the project “RBC-Based Liquid Biopsy for Early Detection of Tumor DNA in Resectable NSCLC,” conducted with the University of Pennsylvania as a sub awardee to the STTR award.

“This STTR award is an important validation of our science from one of the most rigorous review processes in government funding, and it provides grant funding to support research that complements the funding we’ve received from our recent seed financing,” said Neha Shah, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Senticell. “It allows us to move faster on the specific data package that matters most to clinicians and regulators: showing that RBC-bound tumor DNA can meaningfully improve early detection of lung cancer.”

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, and no liquid biopsy test is currently available to adequately guide clinical decisions in early-stage disease. Research shows that red blood cells actively bind and retain tumor-derived DNA, offering a potential biomarker that may be more stable and abundant than the circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) found in plasma-based assays. The STTR award will support two research aims: the first, using murine tumor models, will characterize how RBCs acquire and retain tumor DNA over time relative to plasma ctDNA; the second will extend these findings clinically by evaluating RBC-based mutation detection in 100 patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

“Early in my career, I was told that red blood cells would not be a fruitful area of investigation. But over the past two decades, my research at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania challenged that assumption and revealed that red blood cells interact with and retain nucleic acids in ways we did not previously understand,” said Dr. Nilam Mangalmurti, whose discoveries have given rise to the technology that serves as the foundation of Senticell. “Our preliminary work suggests red blood cells may retain tumor DNA longer and in greater abundance than plasma. This grant lets us rigorously test that biology, first in animal models and then in a cohort of 100 early-stage NSCLC patients, to determine whether it can become a reliable diagnostic tool.”

The findings from this NIH Phase I STTR award are intended to lay the scientific and clinical groundwork for a multi-center clinical validation study and to support a regulatory strategy toward FDA marketing authorization, with the ultimate goal of enabling earlier, more accurate detection of lung cancer to guide treatment decisions.

About Senticell

Senticell is a biotechnology company developing a new class of liquid biopsy diagnostics based on red blood cell (RBC)-bound nucleic acids. Its vision is to build the definitive RBC-based diagnostics platform, one that starts in oncology but ultimately extends across disease areas where earlier, more sensitive detection can change how patients are treated. Founded on research pioneered at Penn Medicine, Senticell’s platform is designed to unlock disease signals that plasma-based liquid biopsy often cannot detect, with initial applications in oncology and infectious diseases. Senticell holds an exclusive, worldwide license to its foundational RBC platform from the University of Pennsylvania and is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.senticell.bio.

SOURCE Senticell

DALLAS, Sept. 29, 2026 — Canyon Partners, LLC (“Canyon”), a $30 billion global alternative investment manager, today announced that it has served as arranger and anchor lender for a NZ$300 million financing to support Advent International’s (“Advent”) acquisition of NZCR Group (“NZCR”), a leading clinical trials and medical research organization in New Zealand and Australia.

NZCR Group is a leading physician-led clinical research organisation with more than 35 years of research experience and a strong track record in complex early and later-phase studies. Headquartered in Auckland, the company has operations across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

The financing enables Advent to support the company’s next stage of growth and work alongside the NZCR management team as they look to further enhance the group’s capabilities across the clinical trial spectrum, with a particular focus on strengthening sponsor and CRO relationships and international reach as part of the Advent portfolio.

“We are excited to support NZCR’s continued development and to work again with Advent, whose deep sector expertise and strong track record of partnering with management teams make them an ideal fit for the business,” said Davide Amico, Partner and Co-Head of Private Credit at Canyon. “It’s our pleasure to leverage our capabilities as a global investment firm to support Advent on deals originated from their new Australian office and be a reliable financing partner in the ANZ market as we long have in the United States, Europe and beyond.”

Canyon’s investment is underpinned by the sustained growth of the ANZ clinical research market and NZCR’s strong positioning within the sector as a reliable and trusted partner to biotech and pharma sponsors globally.

“NZCR has built a strong platform with meaningful growth momentum, and we see significant opportunity as the ANZ market continues to attract an increasing share of global clinical trial activity,” said Maximilian Lichtenheld, Managing Director at Canyon. “We are pleased to support Advent as they bring their expertise to this next stage of growth, working alongside existing management to help the business capitalize on these opportunities.”

“Advent has been following NZCR Group’s success and growth for over 18 months, and we continue to be impressed by the quality of the platform, its clinical leadership, and the trust it has built with biopharma and biotech clients,” remarked Beau Dixon, Managing Director and Head of Australia and New Zealand at Advent. “We look forward to partnering with management and existing shareholders to unlock NZCR Group’s full potential and introduce the business into Advent’s global network. We see exceptional opportunities to build on NZCR Group’s strengths while preserving the clinical focus that underpins its success.”

About Canyon Partners, LLC
Founded in 1990, Canyon employs a deep value, credit intensive approach across public and private corporate credit, asset-backed credit, and real estate. The firm seeks to capture excess returns available to those investors with specialized expertise, rigorous research capabilities, and the ability to underwrite complexity. Canyon invests on behalf of a broad range of institutions globally. For more information visit www.canyonpartners.com.

About Advent 
Advent is a leading global private equity investor committed to working in partnership with management teams, entrepreneurs, and founders to help transform businesses. With 17 offices across five continents, we oversee more than USD $94 billion in assets under management* and have made 451 investments across 45 countries.

Since our founding in 1984, we have developed specialist market expertise across our five core sectors: business & financial services, consumer, healthcare, industrial, and technology. This approach is bolstered by our deep sub-sector knowledge, which informs every aspect of our investment strategy, from sourcing opportunities to working in partnership with management to execute value creation plans. We bring hands-on operational expertise to enhance and accelerate businesses.

As one of the largest privately-owned partnerships, our 675 colleagues leverage the full ecosystem of Advent’s global resources, including our Portfolio Support Group, insights provided by industry expert Operating Partners and Operations Advisors, as well as bespoke tools to support and guide our portfolio companies as they seek to achieve their strategic goals.

To learn more, visit our website or connect with us on LinkedIn.

*Assets under management (AUM) as of March 31, 2026. AUM includes assets attributable to Advent advisory clients as well as employee and third-party co-investment vehicles.

About NZCR Group
NZCR Group, made up of NZCR, CMAX, Optimal, and Fusion, are a combined single clinical trials organisation offering integrated Phase I-IV clinical trial capability across New Zealand and Australia.

With over 30 years’ experience, the clinician led group has vast experience across a significant number of therapeutic areas and strong relationships with loyal sponsor companies in a multitude of international markets.

NZCR has some of the most experienced early and late phase research clinicians globally supported by a high-quality group of employees helping in the delivery of groundbreaking research to advance global health.

Media Contacts

Canyon Partners:
Kris Cole
Prosek Partners
[email protected]
(310) 614 9208

Advent International:
Peter Folland
Vice President, Communications, Advent
[email protected]

SOURCE Canyon Partners LLC

Coinciding with portfolio company XTEND’s IPO, the $125 million fund allows Protego to deploy capital into Israel’s most promising early-growth defense companies as global security spending hits record highs

TEL AVIV-YAFO, Israel, Sept. 29, 2026 — Protego Ventures, the first and largest dedicated defense fund in Israel, today announced the final close of its Fund I at $125 million. Protego backs early-growth Israeli defense companies at the stage where capital and strategic access matter most, identifying battlefield-proven Israeli innovations and positioning them for commercial scale globally.

Global defense budgets have grown 50% over the past decade, and with conflicts worldwide driving record demand – defense tech VC dealmaking hit $19.8 billion in Q1 2026 alone – governments are actively seeking battlefield-tested solutions they can deploy immediately. Until Protego, no dedicated venture fund existed connecting Israel’s most promising early-growth defense companies with the global capital and networks required to scale. Protego has closed that gap, combining financial discipline with deep defense-sector expertise and a partner network spanning the US Department of Defense, NATO allies, Elbit, IAI, Lockheed Martin, and Army Futures Command.

“Protego was built on the conviction that many of the best defense companies in the world are being built right now, in Israel, under real operational demands, iterating according to real frontline conditions, for real customers,” said Protego Co-founder Lital Leshem. “That feedback loop produces technologies that are faster, leaner, scalable and more flexible than almost anything developed through traditional procurement channels. The free world is defending itself, and smart capital is following.”

Fund I’s portfolio spans the full spectrum of modern defense technologies, from autonomous systems and agentic AI to critical infrastructure sensing and contested-environment navigation. Every company in the portfolio has moved from development to deployment faster than many in the traditional defense industry thought possible, winning contracts and customers in some of the world’s most challenging operational environments. Protego is accelerating what’s already working, providing the capital, the partner network, and the market access to turn Israeli defense innovation into globally scaled success stories.

Protego’s first portfolio company, XTEND, embodies the very features Protego is designed to accelerate: Israeli-born innovation, battlefield validation, and global scale. Its AI-driven XOS operating system enables intuitive control of tactical drones and robots, with no prior flight experience required, and is fully operational within the IDF, US DOD, SOCOM, and allied forces across Singapore, Germany, Canada, and England. Protego led XTEND’s $70 million Series B round, and the autonomous robotic platforms company has since gone public on the New York Stock Exchange at a $1.5 billion valuation, trading under the ticker XTND.

Other portfolio companies include:

• ASIO: pioneering autonomy, enhanced situational awareness, and resilient navigation for manoeuvring forces in complex, contested environments — solving the coordination and communication challenges of joint multi-force operations through proprietary edge navigation and interoperability technology. One of the company’s most notable customers is U.S. defense technology company Anduril, which is establishing operations in Israel. ASIO executives have met with Anduril founder and CEO Palmer Luckey during his visits to Israel, and are  expected to supply components for Anduril’s unmanned aerial vehicles.
• Prisma Photonics: turning existing fiber-optic cables into large-scale, AI-powered sensors for monitoring critical infrastructure, including power grids, pipelines, and secured perimeters, across thousands of kilometers, without additional hardware – detecting and classifying threats in real time.
• Rilian: building AI that thinks like a practitioner, deploying into mission-controlled environments and turning hard-won operational expertise into a permanent, compounding asset.

“What we kept hearing from founders was that generalist investors didn’t understand their business, and defense-focused investors didn’t understand the Israeli security ecosystem,” said Protego Co-founder Lee Moser. “There was real capital flowing into defense globally, but it wasn’t reaching the companies that deserved it most — the ones that had already proven their technology under the toughest operational conditions, with genuine customers, in some of the most demanding arenas in the world. We built Protego to bridge that gap, and the close of Fund I combined with our portfolio companies tremendous achievements in just a short period of time demonstrates that this combination is exactly what the market needed.”

With Fund I closed, Protego will soon turn its attention to Fund II, which will expand the firm’s investment footprint into the United States,  targeting early-growth American defense companies and deepening Protego’s presence across the US defense ecosystem, where accelerated procurement reform, record R&D budgets, and sustained geopolitical demand are creating exactly the conditions Protego was built for.

To learn more, visit https://www.protego.vc/

About Protego Ventures

Protego Ventures is the first and largest dedicated defense fund in Israel, backing early-growth companies building the next generation of AI, sensors, drones, and autonomous systems. Co-founded by Lital Leshem and Lee Moser — veterans of IDF intelligence and US-Israel defense relations — the fund combines privileged access to Israel’s defense ecosystem with partnerships spanning Elbit, IAI, Lockheed Martin, and US Army Futures Command. Protego is a defense VC redefined, from the country that redefined defense. Learn more at protego.vc.

Media Contact

Gabi Benedyk
Headline Media
[email protected]
+972-584847380

SOURCE Protego Ventures

CALGARY, AB, Sept. 29, 2026 — NGIF Capital, a venture investor with a ten-year track record backing innovation in the natural gas sector, today announced it will operate as  (Northreach), reflecting a significantly expanded investment mandate. 

NGIF Capital is now Northreach Capital
Northreach is expanding beyond its natural gas mandate to back technology solutions to modernize energy-intensive heavy industries that power the global economy, extracting more value from existing and future assets and making them smarter, leaner, and more resilient. The firm’s mission is to invest in asset-light technology companies that increase asset value, lower operating costs, and solve system bottlenecks with solutions that transfer across heavy industry operators. Northreach pursues this mission with discipline, supporting portfolio companies operationally and partnering with industry to accelerate commercialization and adoption, with the underwriting rigour institutional capital expects from a top-tier venture manager.

“Ten years of working with operators and investing in solutions for the natural gas industry taught us that increasing the value of industrial assets, lowering operating costs, reducing emissions, and resolving system bottlenecks is what wins,” said John Adams, Founder, CEO, and General Partner of Northreach Capital. “Northreach broadens the mandate; we’re backing companies that do exactly that across multiple heavy-industry sectors, with the same discipline, the same team, and the same ecosystem that delivered our first decade of results.”

Northreach’s vision is a future where heavy industry, across its primary sectors (oil & natural gas, mining, minerals) and secondary sectors (LNG, steel, manufacturing, cement, petrochemicals, refining & fuels), competes on higher efficiency, fewer constraints, and stronger balance sheets that fuel long-term sector growth. The mandate also extends to AI data centres, given their similar profile of energy demand and asset lifespan.

NGIF Accelerator continues the NGIF brand
The NGIF brand continues in tandem: NGIF Accelerator continues funding innovation programs, backed by industry and government capital, to demonstrate and validate new technologies for adoption in the natural gas sector and transfer to other heavy industries. Together, NGIF Accelerator and Northreach Capital reinforce each other’s work, validating emerging technologies through operators while investing capital that builds market traction and drives adoption across industries.

The transition changes the firm’s name and mandate only: the team, portfolio, existing fund commitments, and office locations all continue without interruption. During the transition period, the firm will be identified as Northreach Capital, formerly NGIF Capital.

About Northreach Capital
Northreach Capital (formerly NGIF Capital) is a venture capital firm with a dedicated team of professionals offering equity financing for startups solving critical constraints across heavy industry’s primary and secondary sectors. Northreach is unique in how it brings industry leadership to every investment with strong connections to every part of the value chain, partnering with founders to achieve scalable, repeatable deployment and global scale. Learn more at northreachcapital.ca

Fund Information:
John Adams
Founder, CEO, and General Partner, Northreach Capital
(613)-748-0057
[email protected]

SOURCE Northreach Capital

Vast-10M is the first frontier AI model with ten million tokens of context

IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 29, 2026 — Today AI research laboratory Voltropy unveiled Vast-10M, the first frontier AI model with ten million tokens of context. The new model can process ten times as much data at once as the flagship models from Anthropic and OpenAI.

“For almost three years, frontier models have been stuck around a million tokens of context,” said Clint Ehrlich, Voltropy’s CEO and co-founder. “Vast-10M breaks the million token barrier while delivering true frontier intelligence. Users can paste in the entire U.S. tax code or earnings call transcripts for every company in the S&P 500.”

The technology behind Vast-10M is Voltropy Scalable Attention (VSA), a new algorithm which can be used to expand the context windows of existing transformers. VSA delivers ten million tokens of context in three model sizes:

• Vast-10M-Flash, based on DeepSeek V4 Flash;
• Vast-10M-Medium, based on GLM 5.2; and
• Vast-10M-Pro, based on DeepSeek V4 Pro.

“Prior techniques for extending model context degraded intelligence,” said Ted Blackman, Voltropy’s CTO and co-founder. “VSA does the opposite. It actually makes models smarter at shorter context lengths. That boost lets Vast-10M compete with the best models in the world, even on tasks that fit inside those models’ context windows.”

On the industry-standard BEAM benchmark, Vast-10M-Flash beats Anthropic’s flagship model, Fable 5.1, at the one-million-token tier. It achieves parity with OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra. Vast-10M’s context window is 10x larger than Fable’s and 9.5x larger than Astra’s.

The entirety of Vast-10M’s immense context window is fully functional. On BEAM, Vast-10M-Flash has greater recall ability at ten million tokens than its base DeepSeek model has at one million tokens.

Users can sign up for early access to Vast-10M starting today at www.voltropy.com.

About Voltropy

Voltropy PBC is an AI research laboratory based in Orange County, California, whose mission is to build artificial superintelligence aligned with the long-term flourishing of civilization.

The company is known for LCM: Lossless Context Management, an agentic architecture that was integrated with OpenClaw and Hermes Agent after outperforming Anthropic’s Claude Code on the OOLONG benchmark. 

Vast-10M is Voltropy’s first model family. A full technical report is available at www.voltropy.com.  

Media Contact
Clint Ehrlich
CEO, Voltropy
(818) 473-5404
[email protected] 

SOURCE Voltropy

Founded by former Tesla supply chain leaders, Atomic already automates 90% of purchasing for DoorDash’s DashMart business and helped Good Chop cut inventory in half while more than doubling revenue.

BOSTON, Sept. 29, 2026 — Atomic, the AI-native supply chain planning platform, today announced a $12.5 million Series A led by Klass Capital and Madrona. Adrian Schauer of Klass Capital and Matt McIlwain of Madrona join Atomic’s board. 

Atomic will use the funding to extend its platform from planning and decision support into a control system that connects a company’s business objectives to its daily operating decisions, with AI agents extending the capability of human teammates. When demand shifts or supply tightens, planning teams have to understand what changed, compare responses and adjust what gets bought, built or moved. Atomic connects that work in one operating model. Teams can improve the logic behind a decision and carry that improvement into the orders the business places every day.

The company was founded by Michael Rossiter, Neal Suidan, and Jeff Goodrich, who together led Sales and Operations Planning and planning at Tesla through the Model 3 ramp-up and built a 50-person planning engineering organization. The company was incubated at DVx Ventures, the venture firm founded by former Tesla President Jon McNeill, who worked alongside the team at Tesla and now serves on Atomic’s board.

“Most companies can’t justify building the kind of planning engineering team we had at Tesla,” said Rossiter, Atomic’s co-founder and CEO. “They’re still running critical parts of their business through legacy software, hundreds of spreadsheets and individual heroics. Atomic gives them that capability as a product.”

Companies can deploy Atomic’s sales and operations planning layer in about 30 days using the data they already have. From there, Atomic can expand into detailed planning and execution, running alongside a company’s existing ERP rather than requiring the business to rebuild its processes around new software.

For DoorDash’s DashMart business – the company’s convenience and essentials store – Atomic now automates 90% of purchasing across hundreds of sites. DashMart migrated to Atomic in about three months with feature parity and zero business disruption. Its team recently used Atomic’s AI to build new purchasing logic for how primary and backup suppliers should be used in roughly an hour. Atomic then applied that logic across daily purchases, helping shift more volume toward primary suppliers and improve gross margins.

“Atomic has helped us plan and manage inventory more proactively, so we can maintain high service levels for consumers even in times of disruption,” said Nick Palefsky, Director of New Business Verticals at DoorDash. “Turning a forecast into the right purchase at the right site takes operating judgment we’ve built over years. What to carry where, how to substitute when a supplier misses. Atomic is how we apply that judgment across our network every day.”

Additionally, Good Chop, HelloFresh’s meat box subscription business, used Atomic to reduce inventory on hand from eight or nine weeks to four while more than doubling revenue and expanding its distribution network and product range.

“Atomic helped us keep inventory under control as we expanded the business. It’s the core engine we use to plan supply and place purchase orders,” said Seb Tron, president of Good Chop.

Atomic’s AI agent platform, Nucleus, is also in daily use by customers for tasks including S&OP preparation, inventory questions and supply-risk checks. The new funding will be used to expand the platform and support larger enterprise deployments.

Adrian Schauer of Klass Capital and Matt McIlwain of Madrona will join Atomic’s board alongside Jon McNeill, co-founder and CEO of DVx Ventures and the former President of Tesla. DVx incubated Atomic and has backed the company since its earliest days.

“We’ve never heard customers talk about a software vendor the way they talk about Atomic. They trust it with daily operating decisions and are asking for more,” said Daniel Klass, founder and managing partner of Klass Capital.

“We backed Atomic at the seed because the founders had lived this problem at Tesla. A year and a half later, their platform runs daily purchasing across DoorDash’s DashMart network. Most enterprise AI stops at a recommendation. Atomic acts on the plan and shows its work. We’re pleased to co-lead this round and join the board,” said Matt McIlwain, managing director of Madrona.

“Michael, Neal and Jeff helped build the system that allowed Tesla to operate at a scale and speed that traditional supply chain software simply wasn’t designed for,” said McNeill. “What gets us excited about Atomic was the opportunity to take what they learned solving one of the hardest supply chain problems in the world and turn it into something any company can use. AI now makes it possible to give companies not just better forecasts, but a system that can actually make and execute decisions.”

Atomic’s customers include DoorDash’s DashMart, GoodChop (HelloFresh), Starface World, OOFOS, LMNT and Vincero.

To learn more, visit atomic.supply.

About Atomic
Atomic is building the AI control system for physical goods companies. Founded by former Tesla planning leaders, Atomic gives planning teams a model of their business at the product level, recommendations that show their reasoning, and AI agents that take on more of the work as trust builds. Atomic is backed by DVx Ventures, Klass Capital, Madrona, Alumni Ventures, and Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners. Learn more at atomic.supply.

Media contact: 
Lindsay Mahaney 
[email protected]

SOURCE Atomic

New $2M research investment aims to solve a major unmet need in pulmonary medicine: accurately assessing indeterminate lung nodules and accelerating life-saving diagnoses

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2026 — LUNGevity Foundation, the nation’s leading lung cancer–focused nonprofit organization, today announced its support of two innovative and ambitious research projects designed to fundamentally change how clinicians evaluate indeterminate pulmonary nodules (IPNs), small spots on chest CT scans that may be an early sign of lung cancer.

Each year, more than 1.5 million Americans receive CT scan results showing an IPN. Yet existing non-invasive diagnostic approaches often fall short, leaving patients and providers unable to determine whether a nodule is benign or malignant. As a result, many individuals undergo unnecessary invasive procedures, experience prolonged diagnostic delays, or live with profound uncertainty and anxiety during this critical window of early detection.

Through targeted investment and strategic collaboration, LUNGevity is working with Rising Tide Foundation for Clinical Cancer Research (RTFCCR) to close this diagnostic gap and accelerate the development of more precise, non-invasive tools that can identify cancer earlier, reduce harm, and improve outcomes for patients worldwide.

While both of these studies represent bold, patient-centered innovation needed to transform how we detect lung cancer, each offers a unique approach for how health care teams assess a person’s risk for the disease.

“We know the most effective health care tools must work for both the patient and the clinic. By advancing two strong choices in assessing lung cancer risk, we are opening the door for more people to have access to this information. One project aims to combine radiomics and liquid biopsy to determine a person’s lung cancer risk, while the other project builds on advanced AI algorithms to offer a personalized risk assessment,” said Upal Basu Roy, PhD, MPH, executive director of LUNGevity Research. “We are proud to partner with Rising Tide Foundation to support the development of tools that can finally bring clarity to millions of patients facing uncertainty after a CT scan.” 

The two projects are supported through the 2026 RTFCCR/LUNGevity Early Detection Award, a partnership dedicated to accelerating high-impact early detection research that can be rapidly translated into clinical practice.

Award Recipients

Project: Validation of an Integrated Radiomic and Cell-Free DNA Methylome Biomarker for Risk Stratification of Indeterminate Pulmonary Nodules
Awardee: Steven Dubinett, MD
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Amount: $1 million (over 3 years)

This three-year study aims to develop a powerful diagnostic tool that integrates advanced CT imaging analysis with a blood-based test to predict the likelihood that an indeterminate pulmonary nodule is cancerous. The research team will validate the approach in a cohort of 500 patients across UCLA and Veterans Affairs hospitals, with the ultimate goal of providing clinicians with a reliable, non-invasive method to assess cancer risk in patients with IPNs.

Project: The RESOLVE Study – Risk Estimation Using Sybil for Lung Nodules
Awardee: Lecia Sequist, MD, MPH
Institution: Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School
Amount: $1 million (over 3 years)

This three-year clinical trial will evaluate Sybil, an open-source artificial intelligence model capable of estimating lung cancer risk directly from CT scans, without reliance on human annotation of the images. The study will enroll 340 adults ages 35–75 with low-risk pulmonary nodules, testing the real-world performance of AI-driven risk assessment in a diverse clinical population.

If successful, these studies could:

• Significantly reduce unnecessary biopsies and surgeries
• Expand access to early detection through non-invasive approaches, particularly for women without common risk factors for lung cancer, who now represent a growing proportion of lung cancer diagnoses
• Enable faster identification of high-risk patients who require prompt follow-up or early intervention

“Each of these projects is led by a globally recognized expert in lung cancer research and developed with contribution of expert patient partners. They reflect the kind of visionary science that can redefine patient care,” said Zoraide Granchi, PhD, senior scientific program manager of the Rising Tide Foundation for Clinical Cancer Research. “We are proud to once again partner with LUNGevity to accelerate patient-focused solutions that bring hope, clarity, and progress to patients and families around the world.”

LUNGevity Foundation is grateful to Upstage Lung Cancer for their continued partnership in supporting early detection research.

About Rising Tide for Clinical Cancer Research

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, the Rising Tide Foundation for Clinical Cancer Research (RTFCCR) is a charitable, non‑profit organization dedicated to advancing patient‑centered clinical cancer research. Its mission is to support innovative clinical trials that lead to less toxic therapies, earlier detection, and improved quality of life for cancer patients, with a strong focus on projects that address real patient needs and deliver meaningful impact on survival and well‑being. 

Learn more at: https://www.risingtide-foundation.org 

About LUNGevity Foundation

LUNGevity, the nation’s leading lung cancer organization, is transforming what it means to be diagnosed and live with lung cancer. LUNGevity seeks to make an immediate impact on quality of life and survivorship for everyone touched by the disease, while promoting health equity by addressing disparities throughout the care continuum.

• Through research, we use an innovative and holistic approach to finding lung cancer earlier when it is most treatable; advance research into new treatments so people may live longer and better; and ensure a diverse, vital pipeline of investigators for the future of the lung cancer field.
• Through advocacy, we foster groundbreaking collaborations to ensure all people have access to screening, biomarker testing, and treatment breakthroughs.
• Through community, we educate, support, and connect people affected by lung cancer so that they can get the best healthcare and live longer and better lives.

Comprehensive resources include a medically vetted and patient-centric website, Patient Gateways for specific types of lung cancer, a toll-free HELPLine for personalized support, international survivor conferences, and tools to find a clinical trial. All these programs are designed to help us achieve our vision: a world where no one dies of lung cancer. LUNGevity Foundation is proud to be a four-star Charity Navigator organization.

Please visit www.LUNGevity.org to learn more.

SOURCE LUNGevity Foundation