Founded by former Palantir engineers, Mural is the compliant system of record that fintechs and platforms, including Deel and Opera, build on to move, store, and grow money for their customers and the agents acting for them

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2026 — Mural (https://www.muralpay.com), the compliant system of record for fintechs and platforms, announced today the completion of a $15 million Series A round of financing led by Tether, with participation from North Island Ventures as well as existing investors. The new capital brings the company’s total funding to $28 million and will support Mural’s global expansion and investments in the regulatory and payments infrastructure required to scale agentic finance.

“The economy is about to gain 10 billion new participants, and none of them are human,” said Sinclair Toffa, co-founder and CEO of Mural. “Our mission has been to connect people and businesses to the Global Financial Internet. Now we are connecting agents as well.”

Mural serves as a single system to manage the accounts, payments, identity, and compliance behind financial products designed for humans and the agents authorized to act on their behalf, handling the licenses, bank relationships, and local and blockchain payment rails required to operate across markets. Customers, including Deel, Opera, and Axexo, use Mural to build financial products such as payroll and remittance workflows, enabling their end users to hold dollars, stablecoins, and local currency in a unified account. These accounts have a policy and compliance engine that lets both people and agents securely store money and transact globally, with controls such as account limits, approved counterparties, and custom approvals on larger payments. Since launching its API in 2025, Mural has processed $2.1 billion in payment volume for end users in 128 countries. Its 2026 volume to date is nearly six times its total for all of 2025.

Many global businesses stitch together dozens of financial tools, bank partners, and compliance vendors to offer financial products to their customers. As these systems scale, so do the complexities of managing the components and policies of a user’s financial accounts across platforms and providers. Stablecoins and agents are making the problem more acute. Real-world stablecoin payments more than doubled in 2025 to roughly $390 billion, with businesses accounting for about 60%, according to McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, and businesses are now accepting payments from AI agents. When an agent moves money, businesses need to know who authorizes it and who is accountable if it goes wrong.

As engineers at Palantir, Mural’s founders, Sinclair Toffa and Chris Fernandes, worked alongside Fortune 100 companies to integrate various independent systems that were built for different functions. Now, they are solving the same problem for the growing number of software companies that are adding financial products with more capabilities, more providers and more systems operating around the same customer with nothing to connect them. The problem of disjointed systems only intensifies as companies begin connecting agents to their platforms.

Mural brought Palantir’s forward-deployed model to finance: its engineers embed with customers on the ground in each market and launch the integration alongside them.

“We wanted people who know the market where they work and the intricacies of that market. They were on the ground in Colombia, they were thought partners, and they moved fast,” said Olek Shtanoprud, Head of Payments at Deel.

Tether, which led the round, is the issuer of USD₮, the world’s largest and most used stablecoin. “What drew us to Mural was the team’s background building enterprise-grade software that connects existing systems to stablecoin rails. As agents start moving money, that connection to the banks, payment networks and compliance systems the world still runs on becomes essential, and Mural is already doing it at scale,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO at Tether.

Mural is available now to fintechs, platforms, and global businesses building financial products for people and the agents authorized to act on their behalf. Companies can get started at muralpay.com or reach the team at [email protected].

About Mural
Mural is the compliant system of record for companies building financial products. It brings accounts, money movement, identity, permissions and compliance together, giving businesses a consistent view of their customers and money across the systems they use. Built for people and agents acting on their behalf, Mural provides the financial infrastructure, licenses, and controls required to operate across products and markets. Founded in 2022, Mural is headquartered in New York. Learn more at muralpay.com

Mural Technologies, Inc. is a financial technology company, not a bank. Money transmission services are provided by Mural Networks, Inc. (NMLS ID 2744530), a FinCEN-registered money services business licensed in the states listed at muralpay.com/legal. In other states, Mural Technologies provides these services through federally chartered FDIC-insured U.S. banks.

SOURCE Mural

Condor uses AI to reconcile CRO and site-payment vendor data against trial activity and contracted rates, uncovering site performance patterns, assessing costs relative to site performance, and improving forecasting accuracy

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 20, 2026 — Condor Software, the AI platform for biopharma R&D teams, today introduced AI-powered investigator grants intelligence, a new capability that lets sponsors ingest payment data from their CROs and site-payment vendors and automatically reconcile it against their own trial activity and site contracts. R&D teams can now instantly see site-level cost and performance patterns, assess costs relative to site performance, and improve forecasting accuracy — bringing greater financial visibility and accountability to investigator grants spend.

Investigator grants account for up to half of total per-trial cost, and clinical activity can generate tens of thousands of payment lines in a single mid-sized trial. Most teams outsource grant payments to CROs or payments vendors who typically share summary reports — sometimes only a single dollar figure — with no visibility into which visits, procedures, or site fees it represents. Without line-level verification, sponsors pay for visits that never happened, procedures billed at off-contract rates, and duplicate charges, and they struggle to effectively forecast and understand how sites perform. Sponsors that receive details from CROs and payment vendors must reconcile thousands of payment lines by hand in spreadsheets, which is painstaking and error-prone.

“Every investigator grant has three versions of the truth: what the contract says should happen, what your own trial data says happened, and what the vendor says happened,” said Condor VP of Product Nim Fox. “Sponsors already had the first two in Condor. Vendor-level data was the missing piece. But even when teams can get it, it arrives in the vendor’s format, split and combined differently from how they track the work. We use AI to close that gap, so teams know whether they’re being overbilled, what’s missing, and what’s coming, instead of taking the vendor’s number on faith, and can then build more accurate forecasts. Today’s announcement is another great example of how we are leveraging AI to automate manual work that slows biopharma R&D teams down.”

How AI-Powered Investigator Grants Intelligence Works 

Sponsors ingest vendor payment reports, procedure data, and visit data, from accrual reports to detailed site invoices, directly into Condor. Built on Condor’s clinical and financial knowledge graph, the Biopharma R&D Graph, the platform’s AI normalizes each vendor’s format and maps every line to the sponsor’s EDC activity, protocols, and site contracts in Condor. Once reconciled, Condor surfaces:

• Overbilling and pricing discrepancies. Invoice lines are checked against contracted rates, amendments, and terms, with wrong prices, off-contract charges, and duplicates flagged automatically.
• Missing and unmatched payments. Payments with no recorded activity behind them, sites paid with no subject enrolled, and completed work that has not yet been invoiced.
• Patterns over time. Sites and vendors that consistently overbill, lagging invoices, and the share of spend going to startup versus patient activity; trends a single month’s report cannot show.

Every finding links back to the underlying raw data and can be viewed by site, visit, procedure, and site admin fee. Because payment history is now connected to trial performance, those patterns also feed Condor’s forecasting, giving clinical operations and finance teams projected spend grounded in how vendors actually bill rather than in invoices alone.

The launch extends the AI capabilities Condor introduced with its Clinical Finance Agent in September, and expands the platform’s investigator grants functionality as a foundation for more autonomous, agentic workflows.

“The next step is moving from analysis on demand to continuous monitoring,” said Fox. “Condor’s AI will watch payment and performance data as it arrives and flag anomalies the moment they appear. And the site-level evidence it builds gives sponsors a stronger position when they negotiate CRO change orders.”

AI-powered investigator grants intelligence is available now. To see it in action, book a demo at https://condorsoftware.com/book-a-demo.

About Condor

Condor Software is the AI platform for biopharma R&D teams. It automatically centralizes clinical, operational, and financial data; automates various workflows — like budgeting, forecasts, month-end closes, accruals, and change order management; and then surfaces patterns, flags risks, bridges context across functions, and delivers the “why” behind the numbers. Founded by Jen Kyle, Condor is backed by Insight Partners, Felicis, 645 Ventures, Pamir Ventures, and SNR Ventures, and is trusted by leading biopharma companies worldwide — including Acadia Pharmaceuticals, BridgeBio Pharma, Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, and Stemline Therapeutics. Learn more at condorsoftware.com.

Media Contact:
Joseph Roualdes
[email protected]
415.823.2136

SOURCE Condor Software

After scaling from zero to seven-figure ARR in eight months, the former YC & Amazon leaders behind Rosie are betting that in an age of AI, the future of family support is still human.

SEATTLE, Oct. 20, 2026 — Rosie, the membership for flexible childcare and household support, today announced that it has raised $7 million across two oversubscribed financing rounds. Bling Capital and Reach Capital led the rounds, with participation from Graham & Walker, Marketplace Capital, Ingeborg Investments, Precursor Ventures, Mother Ventures, Yonder Ventures and notable angels including co-founder of DoorDash, Evan Moore. The funding will support Rosie’s first expansion beyond Seattle, with launches planned in Austin and San Francisco in the coming months.

Founded by former Amazon & YC leaders and mothers Mitra Raman and Karthika Shankar, Rosie quietly launched in Seattle in January 2026. The founders worked as Rosie’s first Pros to learn what families and Pros need. Since then, Rosie Pros have delivered more than 17,000 hours of childcare and household support to over 250 member families through organic growth.

“I looked over at my son playing with the babysitter one day while I was making dinner and thought, ‘I wish we could switch’ That moment clarified the problem we wanted to solve. We built Rosie to give families flexible support to meet the week in front of them, whether that means caring for a child, folding laundry or resetting the kitchen – whatever keeps a family and home running,” said Mitra Raman, co-founder and CEO of Rosie.

Rosie uses AI to make getting human help feel remarkably easy. Rosie’s AI learns each household’s routines, schedules, preferences and favorite Pros, then handles matching, scheduling, coordination and payments behind the scenes. Families book the support they need without repeatedly explaining how their home runs, while Pros arrive with context and can build lasting relationships with their families. While AI can organize a family’s week, it can’t pick up a child, fold laundry or become a familiar face in the home. Rosie does both.

“The thing that really changed for us wasn’t just having the help. It was the low lift to get someone home. I love that someone else handles most of the communication and setup, and a Pro can come in and do things without asking a single question or without me being home. It removes the enormous amount of labor of accessing help in the first place,” said an early Seattle member.

Better support for families means better work for the people providing it. Rosie gives Pros the flexibility to choose work that fits their schedules & preferences and the opportunity to return to the same households, building familiarity and trust over time.

After its success in Seattle, Rosie is now gearing up to launch in Austin and San Francisco. Parents in those markets can join the waitlists at rosiematch.com, and families elsewhere can request Rosie come to their city next.

“As a dad of three young kids, I know all too well the chaos that working parents face with childcare and daily tasks. We’re excited to back Rosie as they bring vetted, hyperpersonalized support to families, while creating access to flexible yet consistent earnings for often-overlooked household professionals,” said James Kim, Partner at Reach Capital.

Investors in the Rounds

Institutional investors

Notable angel investors

• Ryan Delk, founder and CEO of Primer
• Evan Moore, co-founder of DoorDash
• Varadh Jain of Opendoor
• Naman Trivedi, founder and CEO of WattBuy
• Ajay Mehta, founder of Tolan and Birthdate
• Aviel Ginzburg of Techstars and Foundations

About Rosie

Rosie is a care company that supports families with access to vetted childcare and household support and provides flexible work to caregivers. Rosie’s AI-powered Family Manager learns each family’s routines and preferences, then coordinates matching, scheduling and payments behind the scenes so families can build lasting relationships with people they trust. Founded by former Amazon & YC leaders and mothers Mitra Raman and Karthika Shankar, Rosie launched in January 2026 and is expanding to Austin and San Francisco. Learn more at rosiematch.com.

Media Contact

Mitra Raman, Co-Founder and CEO, Rosie
[email protected]

SOURCE Rosie Match, Inc.

More than 300 startups and 900 leaders from business, government,
healthcare, research, and investment for the summit’s first edition
focused exclusively on health innovation

CHICAGO, Oct. 20, 2026 — The Chicago Venture Summit: Future of Health opens today, bringing together more than 900 startup founders, investors, corporate executives, healthcare leaders, researchers, and public-sector partners for the first edition of World Business Chicago’s flagship venture conference dedicated exclusively to health innovation.

Representing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Max Budovitch, Deputy Mayor for Business, Economic, and Neighborhood Development, joined World Business Chicago (WBC) and leaders from across the city, region, and state as the sold-out summit convened more than 900 participants and more than 300 startups — the largest startup portfolio in the event’s history.

Founded in 2014 by J.B. Pritzker, then co-founder of Pritzker Group and now governor of Illinois, and led by World Business Chicago, the Chicago Venture Summit was built around a public-private approach to economic growth. For more than a decade, the summit has brought together leaders from business, government, investment and entrepreneurship to connect high-growth companies with capital, customers and institutions across Chicago and Illinois.

“Chicago has always been a city where people build things, and where we support one another in helping those ideas grow, said Mayor Brandon Johnson. “The Chicago Venture Summit gives our startups a direct forum to meet investors from across the country and make the relationships that can help them scale. To every founder working in one of our universities, hospitals, labs, or neighborhoods, our message is clear: build it here. Chicago has the talent, institutions, customers, and growing ecosystem to give your company every opportunity to thrive.”

The Chicagoland region’s life sciences and healthtech industries support more than 210,000 jobs and 13,000 businesses, generating $93.5 billion in annual output. They grow alongside one of the nation’s largest healthcare sectors: Chicagoland ranks third nationally in healthcare employment, with nearly 556,000 jobs, and healthcare is projected to add more than 37,000 jobs by 2030, more than any other industry in the region. That dense base of hospitals and insurers puts customers, partners, and clinical trial sites within reach for growing companies. The region also offers a manufacturing base few metros can match, ranking second nationally in pharmaceutical and surgical supplies manufacturing jobs. Companies here draw on nearly 67,000 relevant graduates a year, $5.5 billion in NIH funding since 2021, and $10.9 billion in growth capital raised between 2020 and 2025. Healthtech is leading the way, with jobs up nearly 50% since 2020, and the region is well positioned to capitalize on emerging technologies such as bioinformatics and AI. Learn more in “Chicagoland’s Life Sciences & Healthtech Economy” by the WBC Research Center: https://infograph.venngage.com/pl/Zo997AkfaG8

“Chicago’s competitive advantage is rooted in our ability to build and scale the next generation of industry-defining companies,” said Abin Kuriakose, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for World Business Chicago, and Head of WBC’s Innovation and Venture Department, the organizers of the Chicago Venture Summit series. “With another sold-out summit, we’re showcasing why the Midwest represents one of the most compelling opportunities for the next generation of venture-backed innovation.”

That focus on building and scaling companies also underscores a broader economic priority: creating the conditions for entrepreneurs to grow in Chicago and contribute to the region over the long term. Registered participants represent more than 30 U.S. states and more than 15 countries, as well as more than 500 organizations, including startups, investment and financial firms, corporations and universities.

“The companies that will drive Chicago’s economy a decade from now are being built today,” said Mark Tebbe, World Business Chicago board member and Innovation and Venture Council Chair. “Investing in promising entrepreneurs and new healthcare solutions creates a multiplier effect, attracting capital, creating jobs, developing talent, and generating new economic activity across the region. The Chicago Venture Summit is about making sure the people building those next big ideas have the connections and investment they need to scale them in Chicago.”

Keynote & Featured Speakers Include:

• Dr. Omar Lateef, President and CEO, Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center, opening keynote
• Derek J. Robinson, MD, MBA, FACEP, CHCQM, Divisional Senior Vice President & Chief Health Officer, and David Mao, PhD, Divisional Senior Vice President for AI, Transformation, and PMO of Health Care Service Corporation, afternoon keynote
• Consulate General of Canada in Chicago, closing keynote
• Canadian Consul General Claire Kennedy
• Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering and Vice Chancellor for Chicago Strategic Partnerships, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Featured Sessions Include:

• “Investing in Health for a Changing Climate,” presented by SecondMuse
• “Care at the Frontier: How AI and Strategic Partnerships Are Reimagining Health,” presented by Microsoft, a WBC board member
• “From Image to Answer, How AI is Changing Cancer Diagnosis,” presented by DLA Piper, a WBC board member

Startup spotlights will feature companies presented through programs and organizations including 2Flo Ventures, APCO, Cooley, Enterprise Ireland, J.P. Morgan, MATTER, Northwestern Medicine and Techstars Healthcare Accelerator, Northwestern Querrey InQbation Lab, PACE Healthcare Capital, Portal Innovations, TechNexus Venture Collaborative, and University of Chicago Medicine Ventures.

For individual founders, those connections can shape a company’s next stage of growth. At the regional level, the same dynamic can help direct more investment toward Chicago companies and keep capital, talent, and economic opportunity circulating through the local economy.

“Chicago is a nearly trillion-dollar economy with deep strength across healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, finance, technology, and research,” said Charles Smith, Vice Chair, World Business Chicago. “What matters now is making sure capital sees those opportunities, reaches the entrepreneurs building here, and continues circulating through our local economy. Through ChiForward and the Chicago Venture Summit, we are connecting investors with credible opportunities and helping turn Chicago’s industry strengths and emerging technologies into companies, jobs, and long-term economic value.”

Grainger Engineering Tech Startup Challenge Makes Debut at Chicago Venture Summit. For the first time, the Chicago Venture Summit is proud to welcome the Grainger Engineering Tech Startup Challenge. Hosted by the Landuyt Center for Entrepreneurship, the challenge brings engineering-powered startups from leading universities together with investors, founders, and technology leaders who can help move promising innovations toward real-world impact. This year’s finals are part of the Chicago Venture Summit: Future of Health 2026, one of the city’s signature gatherings for emerging technology and entrepreneurship. The event comes as the Landuyt Center expands to Chicago with a permanent presence at the Discovery Partners Institute, further strengthening the connection between Illinois research and innovation and the scale of Chicago’s industry ecosystem. “We are thrilled to partner with World Business Chicago, connecting the next generation of engineering entrepreneurs with the investors, industry leaders, and networks that can help transform breakthrough ideas into successful companies,” said Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering and Vice Chancellor for Chicago Strategic Partnerships at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “The University of Illinois System is a proud member of World Business Chicago’s board of directors; we recognize the extraordinary opportunity to strengthen the innovation corridor between Urbana-Champaign and Chicago.”

In partnership with the City of Chicago and a network of civic and business leaders, WBC advances initiatives that help companies expand and innovate and serves as the lead organization for the Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership (GCEP) — a seven-county collaboration aligned to compete — and win — globally with a unified regional strategy. GCEP is an official partner and supporter of the Chicago Venture Summit series, focused on expanding the summit reach to be inclusive of more startups and investors across the seven-county region of northeast Illinois. “I’ve always believed that one of Chicagoland’s greatest strengths is what we can accomplish when we come together as a region, said Kevin Considine, Chair of the Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership and President & CEO of Lake County Partners. “From Lake County’s world-class biopharmaceutical industry to the groundbreaking research, healthcare institutions, and emerging startups across our communities, we have an extraordinary collection of assets that become even more powerful when we connect them across county lines. That’s what makes the Chicago Venture Summit: Future of Health so important to me – it reflects the power of regional collaboration to bring entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and industry leaders together. When we work together, we’re not just growing individual companies or industries; we’re building a more vibrant regional economy and positioning Chicagoland to lead the future of healthcare and life sciences.”

“I’ve sat on the investor side of the table, and I know how consequential that first conversation can be for an entrepreneur,” said Phil Clement, President & CEO, World Business Chicago. “Capital matters, but so do the introductions, customers, mentors, and experienced operators who help a young startup turn an idea into a business. That is what makes the Chicago Venture Summit so important. We are putting promising healthcare founders in the room with people who can help them take the next step and giving them a compelling reason to take that step in Chicago.”

Presenting Partners Investing in Chicago’s Innovation & Startup Economy

The 2026 Chicago Venture Summit Future of Health is made possible through the generous support of our sponsors. Presenting Partners include: Bank of America, the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago, DLA Piper, the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Health Care Service Corporation, MATTER, Microsoft, Portal Innovations, Rush University System for Health & Rush University Medical Center, and Shapack Partners.

“At Bank of America, we recognize that access to capital, strong business relationships, and industry expertise are essential to turning innovation into sustainable economic growth. Chicago’s extraordinary strengths in healthcare, life sciences, technology, and advanced research position our region to compete for the next generation of investment and business expansion. Through our partnership with World Business Chicago and support of the Chicago Venture Summit: Future of Health, we are proud to help accelerate innovation, strengthen our regional economy, and create lasting opportunities for businesses and communities across Chicagoland.” ­­—­Rita Sola Cook, Managing Director and President, Bank of America Chicago, and a member of World Business Chicago’s Board of Directors.

“Healthcare and life sciences innovation represents one of the most promising opportunities to deepen the economic partnership between Canada and Chicago, two globally connected innovation ecosystems with shared strengths in research, talent, and entrepreneurship. Chicago’s world-class healthcare institutions, research universities, and growing venture capital ecosystem make it a natural partner for Canadian innovators seeking to expand their reach and bring transformative solutions to market. Through initiatives like the Chicago Venture Summit Future of Health, we are strengthening cross-border connections while creating new opportunities for investment, commercialization, and economic growth. Canada is proud to partner with World Business Chicago in advancing a shared vision for a more innovative, competitive, and globally connected healthcare and life sciences economy.” —Claire Kennedy, Consul General of Canada in Chicago

“The future of healthcare and life sciences will be shaped by our ability to transform breakthrough scientific discoveries into commercially successful companies that can compete and scale globally. At DLA Piper, our global life sciences platform brings together more than 400 industry-focused professionals across over 40 jurisdictions, connecting scientific acumen, investment capital, regulatory insight, and commercial strategy to help innovative companies navigate the complexities of growth and international expansion. Supported by the firm’s market-leading transactional practice, which was ranked No. 1 in combined venture capital, private equity, and M&A global deal volume by PitchBook, we help clients at every stage of the business lifecycle. Chicago is a leading destination for the next generation of healthcare and life sciences innovation.” —Jeffrey Torosian, Partner at DLA Piper, and World Business Chicago board member

“The future of healthcare innovation must be measured by the meaningful value delivered to people and communities we serve. From a health insurance perspective, innovation has the greatest impact when it makes healthcare more affordable, accessible, and easier to navigate, while improving health outcomes and the overall member experience. At HCSC, we recognize the important role that collaboration among health insurers, healthcare providers, technology innovators, and entrepreneurs plays in addressing some of our industry’s most pressing challenges.” —Dr. Opella Ernest, M.D. President for HCSC Markets at Health Care Service Corporation, and World Business Chicago board member

“As one of the nation’s leading healthcare innovation hubs, MATTER is committed to helping promising startups turn breakthrough ideas into scalable businesses by connecting founders with the mentorship, industry expertise, healthcare partners, and investment networks they need to succeed. Through our partnership with World Business Chicago and the Chicago Venture Summit Future of Health, we are strengthening the connections between startups, investors, and healthcare decision-makers to accelerate commercialization, drive industry transformation, and position Chicago as a global destination for healthcare innovation.” —Steven Collens, CEO of MATTER

“Thriving innovation ecosystems are built through collaboration that brings together technology, expertise, partnerships, and global networks to imagine what’s possible and build the future. We are proud to champion Chicago’s entrepreneurial community by empowering founders to harness the power of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies to accelerate innovation and scale their businesses. Together with World Business Chicago, we are excited to connect Chicago startups with new opportunities to deliver impact and innovation.” —Tony Surma, CTO, Americas Enterprise Partner Solutions, Microsoft; World Business Chicago Board Member

“Chicago has the scientific talent, research institutions, and entrepreneurial drive to build the next generation of leading life sciences companies. Since launching Portal Innovations in 2020, we’ve been committed to helping science-driven startups grow by providing the lab infrastructure, venture support, and industry connections they need to scale. Today, more than 50 startups are working out of our Chicago ecosystem, which has resulted in nearly 300 jobs being created. The Chicago Venture Summit is an opportunity to build on that momentum by bringing together investors, innovators, and industry leaders to ensure more promising life sciences companies can scale in the Windy City. —John Flavin, Founder and CEO, Portal Innovations

“Health systems have an essential role to play in translating promising ideas and emerging technologies into practical solutions that improve patient care, expand access, and deliver better health outcomes. At Rush, we recognize that meaningful innovation requires more than scientific discovery. It demands sustained collaboration between clinicians, researchers, startups, and industry leaders who understand the complex challenges facing patients and healthcare providers. Through our partnership with World Business Chicago, we’re excited to demonstrate how collaboration can create lasting value for patients, communities, and the healthcare industry.” —Dr. Omar B. Lateef, President and CEO of Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center

Innovation & Venture Partners for the Chicago Venture Summit
Official Innovation Partners include: 1871, APCO, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, Business Leadership Council, ChiForward, Chicago Biomedical Consortium, Clique Studios, Cooley, Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership, Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization, J.P. Morgan, mHUB, Northwestern Querrey InQbation Lab, SecondMuse, SEED SPOT, TechNexus Venture Collaborative, and Women in Bio Chicago.

Official Venture Partners: 2Flo Ventures, 7wire Ventures, Enterprise Ireland, Mid-America Healthcare Investors Network, Northwestern Medicine and Techstars Healthcare Accelerator, Orrick, PACE Healthcare Capital, University of Chicago Medicine Ventures, and Valtruis.

Chicago Venture Summit Future of Health Ecosystem Collaborations
Chicago Venture Summit Innovation Partner APCO contributed to WBC’s Business Pulse, a weekly newsletter featuring insights on issues shaping Chicago’s business community, with “Approval Is the Easy Part: Why Proven Health Innovations Still Stall.” Read the full Business Pulse here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chicago-sits-center-healthcares-next-challenge-bfukc/

Chicago Venture Summit presenting partner Portal Innovations examined more than a decade of U.S. life sciences funding to better understand how emerging biotech ecosystems compare with established hubs such as Boston and San Francisco. The analysis highlights Chicago’s opportunity to translate its scientific strengths into successful life sciences companies, supported by world-class research institutions including the University of Chicago, UIC and Northwestern University. Findings show that startups outside traditional hubs often reach clinical milestones with less capital and generate higher returns on invested capital, reinforcing the importance of expanding access to lab infrastructure, venture funding, and industry relationships. For Chicago, the opportunity is to build on its research foundation and strengthen the local ecosystem that helps promising science to become successful businesses. Take a look at the full report here: https://hs.portalinnovations.com/2026-biotechs-next-frontier-article

Chicago Venture Summit Innovation Partner Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBIO) released its annual Member Investor Portfolio Report, documenting more than $947 million in venture-style investment across 105 Illinois-based life sciences companies in 2025. The report features company highlights, major deals and partnerships, and the national and Illinois trends shaping the sector. It points to an industry with real momentum and the policy steps that can help the state turn its research strengths into new companies and investment. Here is a link to the report: https://bit.ly/4dGuTW1

In collaboration with Chicago Venture Summit Innovation Partner Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC), World Business Chicago serves as an official Supporting Partner for the Midwest BioBuilder’s Summit on November 12, 2026. Led by the CBC, the Summit connects academics, entrepreneurs, and startups with investors, operators, and industry leaders who can help advance their innovations. With a pronounced emphasis on life sciences and biotechnology investment, the BioBuilders Summit echoes the Midwest’s industrial spirit, highlighting companies and platforms dedicated to translating breakthroughs into market-ready products and building the infrastructure needed for the next era of biotechnology. You can learn more at www.chicagobiomedicalconsortium.org.

ABOUT WORLD BUSINESS CHICAGO

World Business Chicago drives inclusive economic growth across Chicago and the greater Chicagoland region. As the City of Chicago’s economic development agency, WBC leads business attraction and retention, talent and workforce initiatives, community impact, and promotion of Chicago as a leading global city. WBC also leads the Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership and helps advance Chicago 2050, a long-term strategy for the city and region’s economic future. Supported by a council of 300+ local leaders, World Business Chicago’s portfolio of innovation & venture programs includes: the Chicago Venture Summit series, Startup Chicago, and ThinkChicago. Follow World Business Chicago online for news and announcements on corporate relocation and expansion, industry and ecosystem growth, U.S. and world rankings, and economic development.

SOURCE World Business Chicago

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 20, 2026 — Dialogica (“Dia”), the voice-first AI secretary for the world’s top law firms, today  announced that Silicon Valley go-to-market business development  Investment Banker, Dylan Gittleman, has joined Dia’s founding sales team.

Gittleman brings decades of enterprise sales, business development, legal-industry relationships, and early-stage company-building experience. He will focus on accelerating Dia’s commercial expansion among Am Law 100 law firms and Fortune 500 companies, while also leveraging his extensive network across the legal, technology, investment, and venture communities.

Gittleman, whose early career includes roles at GE Capital during the Gary C. Wendt years and IBM Global Finance during the Samuel J. Palmisano years, went on to launch companies in the U.S. and Silicon Valley, including Murgitroyd & Co., the European intellectual property law firm, and Aranca, a global valuation, research, and advisory firm.

He also served as an advisor to legal technology startup ClearAccessIP, founded by Nicole Shanahan- Brin. This combination of legal-market experience and long-standing relationships with law firms, corporate counsel, intellectual property professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors provides Gittleman a strong platform to introduce Dia to some of the world’s largest professional-services and corporate organizations.

Gittleman stated: “Dia represents the type of opportunity I have spent much of my career pursuing: bringing an innovative company into a large, relationship-driven market and helping turn a compelling technology into meaningful enterprise adoption. My immediate objective is to introduce Dia to decision-makers across the Am Law 100 and Fortune 500 in-house counsel and help establish the commercial foundation for the company’s next stage of growth.”

In addition to operational experience, Gittleman has spent the past 9 years working in investment banking and capital markets, assisting emerging-growth companies seeking capital through private and public-market transactions. His experience includes taking companies public on Canada’s TSXV exchange and working in the US public and private markets, with clients including Fisker Inc., which raised over $1 billion to enter the public markets in 2020 through a SPAC business combination. Gittleman’s firm, Catskill Consulting, worked in partnership with Cowen Securities.

At Dia, Gittleman’s mandate will extend beyond traditional sales. He will work with the founding team on go-to-market strategy, strategic business development, enterprise adoption, partnerships, and relationships within the investment community as Dia builds its presence in the legal technology market.

“Dylan is exactly the kind of executive I wanted alongside as Dia continues to grow,” said Austin Worrell, CEO and co-founder of Dialogica. “He has spent his career opening markets, building enterprise relationships, and helping companies translate strong technology into commercial traction. Just as importantly, Dylan has spent years developing trusted relationships throughout the legal, technology, and investment communities. Bringing him onto the founding team as Director of Business Development significantly expands our ability to reach major law firms and corporate legal departments and execute on the opportunity we see ahead.”

About Dialogica
Dialogica, Inc. is the company behind Dia, a voice-first AI secretary built to help firms clear the clutter of daily practice while preserving the legal judgment, client trust, and confidentiality that define the profession. Designed for the operating realities of sophisticated firms, Dia works across existing systems to reduce repetitive, non-billable work and give lawyers more time for the counsel, strategy, analysis, and client service only they can provide. For more information, visit: dialogicaai.com.

[email protected] 

SOURCE Dialogica, Inc.

Latest raise accelerates Neurpac commercialization as the company’s Persistent Cognitive Machine AI achieves its first complete build in September

MORAGA, Calif., Oct. 20, 2026 — Atombeam, an AI technology company with two platforms, Neurpac, data compaction and encryption software in commercial production today, and the Persistent Cognitive Machine (PCM), a new AI architecture that learns continuously and does not hallucinate by design, today announced the close of its latest funding round, raising $18.3 million through its Regulation A+ offering hosted on StartEngine.

With the close of this round, Atombeam has raised more than $55 million in total funding to date, providing additional capital to accelerate the development and commercialization of its technology as organizations face continued growth in machine-generated data, AI workloads and connected devices. The company’s technology is protected by one of the larger patent estates in its field: 678 filings, of which 308 are issued or allowed and 370 are pending.

“Closing this round marks an inflection point for Atombeam. We now have the capital, the team, and the technology to accelerate Neurpac adoption while bringing PCM through independent benchmarking and into customer pilots,” said Charles Yeomans, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Atombeam. “Neurpac is in production with customers today, measured on their own traffic. PCM is something genuinely new: an AI that keeps learning after it ships and becomes an expert in the organization it serves with no data center behind it. In November we will put it beside conventional language models in independent benchmarks.”

Neurpac is software that makes machine data dramatically smaller and secure in one pass, typically removing 50% to 90% of the data that must move and restoring the original exactly at the receiving end. Because the intelligence lives in learned codebooks rather than in each message, Neurpac compacts even the tiny packets that defeat conventional compression, multiplying effective bandwidth, typically by around 4x, on infrastructure customers already own. Results are measured with named parties on satellite, defense, and commercial links, and include independent validation on a major satellite operator’s own traffic; video and other already-compressed content passes through untouched, which is part of why the claims hold.

Atombeam is also developing its Persistent Cognitive Machine (PCM) technology, an AI architecture designed to enable continuous learning and real-time decision-making with persistent memory all while requiring exponentially less power and resources than stateless Large Language Models. PCM is being developed to bring more capable AI processing to resource-constrained environments, including devices and systems where traditional AI architectures can be limited by compute, memory and connectivity requirements.

“With Neurpac we are solving the challenges Large Language models exacerbate – wired, cellular and satellite networks and data centers pushed to the brink by heavy AI workloads and the barrage of data from connected machines,” added Yeomans. “Simultaneously, with PCM we are creating a form of AI that addresses the very weaknesses of LLMs that lead to unprecedented network congestion and data centers that use as much power as small cities. In these ways we are using AI to address both the challenges of AI adoption today while creating the innovations required to realize AI’s full potential in the future.”

About Atombeam
Atombeam is an AI technology company that uses AI to overcome the infrastructure challenges exacerbated by the stateless nature of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the dramatic growth of connected machines. The company’s Neurpac solution enables organizations to shrink the size of all data, including file, block, SCADA and video by 75%. Neurpac also increases available bandwidth by up to 9x, strengthens security, and radically decreases network congestion with a software-only solution that can be deployed in existing stacks in just minutes. Enterprises gain the ability to do more with, and extend the life of, legacy infrastructure while simultaneously improving the performance of state-of-the-art wired, cellular and satellite networks. Atombeam is also developing the Persistent Cognitive Machine (PCM), a new AI architecture that supports continuous learning with real memory, delivering the understanding required for in-the-moment decision making in a solution light enough for chips and devices. For more information, visit www.atombeamtech.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube.

Media Contact:
Matthew Richardson
Guyer Group for Atombeam
P: 781-996-1866
E: [email protected] 

SOURCE Atombeam

Recognition comes less than eight months after Gambit emerged from stealth with $61 million in funding and an AI-native cyber resilience platform for the AI era

NEW YORK, Oct. 20, 2026 — Gambit, a cyber resilience company that helps enterprises ensure their critical operations are resilient, recoverable, and keep running, announced today it has been named to the Disruptors 60, Class of 2026, Greenfield Partners’ annual list of the world’s most groundbreaking AI startups, unveiled live on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. The recognition comes less than eight months after Gambit emerged from stealth with $61 million in combined Seed and Series A funding from Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Cyberstarts.

The Disruptors 60 spotlights the world’s most groundbreaking AI startups, spanning infrastructure behind tomorrow’s models and the applications reshaping critical industries. Greenfield considered hundreds of companies for this year’s list and Gambit was selected for its work helping organizations keep their critical operations running through outages, whether due to cybersecurity incidents, errors, or IT failures.

“Every organization wants to move at the speed of AI. Each new AI tool, agent, and integration changes the environment the business runs on, and each change is a new way for something to break,” said Alon Gromakov, Co-founder and CEO of Gambit Security. “AI also speeds up attacks and adds new possibilities for error. Yet most companies still can’t show, with evidence, that their business would keep running or come back fast if something went wrong. We built Gambit to answer that question before a real incident forces it, and being named to this class confirms that resilience indeed sits at the center of how organizations can innovatively adopt AI.”

Gambit continuously maps an organization’s Minimum Viable Business (MVB), the critical applications, data, and dependencies it needs to operate, and proves it can recover as the environments change. It uses AI to ensure that map stays current, work that specialist teams previously performed manually. The platform flags infrastructure drift that would block a recovery, checks the conditions recovery depends on, such as coverage, immutability, and configuration, and scores each application using parameters that include live threat intelligence. The platform deploys agentlessly within 15 minutes and generates audit-ready evidence for DORA, NIST CSF, and SOX, replacing point-in-time resilience exercises with continuous proof of business recovery.

Since its launch, Gambit has deployed integrations with Wiz, Cyera, and Microsoft Sentinel and partnered with AHEAD. In August 2026, the company strengthened its leadership team with Martin Walter, formerly of Rubrik and Zscaler, as Chief Product Officer, and Jake Bernardes, former CISO at Anecdotes and Whistic, as Chief Information Security Officer.

This year, Gambit’s threat intelligence team traced several major attacks in which adversaries used AI to go after backups, storage, or stolen data, the layers a company needs to recover after a breach. Every attack Gambit traced in 2026 served as fuel for updating its resilience platform, so their customers can be sure ahead of time that they will be recoverable even in the face of the latest attack techniques.

“Prevention will always matter, but what happens after an attack gets through decides the ultimate outcome,” added Gromakov. “This recognition belongs to our team, and to the customers and partners who bet on us early to build the enterprise resilience layer that’s missing in the industry.”

About Gambit Security

Gambit Security is the cyber resilience platform for the AI era, helping organizations keep their critical operations running through disruption. Gambit continuously maps an organization’s Minimum Viable Business (MVB), the applications, data, infrastructure, and dependencies it needs to operate, and continuously proves it can recover as the environment changes. Having a provable understanding of recoverability lets enterprises adopt new technologies and innovate faster without putting critical operations at risk.  Founded by Alon Gromakov, Sa’ar Elias, and May Kogan, Gambit has raised $61 million from Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Cyberstarts. Learn more at https://gambit.security/.

About the Disruptors 60

The Disruptors 60 is Greenfield Partners’ annual list of the world’s most groundbreaking early and growth-stage AI startups, unveiled live on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. The Class of 2026 recognizes sixty companies across infrastructure, physical AI, horizontal & vertical AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and digital health. Learn more at www.disruptors60.ai.

About Greenfield Partners

Greenfield Partners is a global Early Growth investor partnering with visionary technology and tech-enabled businesses as they transition from product-market fit to scalable, efficient growth. With over $3 billion in assets under management, Greenfield applies its Greenfield Growth Momentum (G²M) operational playbooks to help founders and management teams build repeatable go-to-market engines and accelerate their path to global scale. Learn more at www.greenfield-growth.com.

Media Contact
Sarah Small
Headline Media
[email protected]
+1 929 255 1449

SOURCE Gambit Security

NTTVC-led Series A backs AuxoAI’s industry-defining model for enterprise AI – combining forward-deployed expertise with deep enterprise context to redesign how work gets done and turn AI into measurable business outcomes.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 20, 2026 — AuxoAI today announced a $20.7 million Series A led by NTTVC to accelerate the company’s growth and scale its forward-deployed model for enterprise AI. AuxoAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team has worked with more than 40 clients across manufacturing, consumer goods, healthcare, telecom, and other industries to turn AI into measurable business results transforming operations, accelerating adoption, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer engagement

The round also includes participation from prominent technology executives and strategic investors, including George Still Jr., Partner Emeritus at Norwest Venture Partners and longtime Workday board member; Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow; and Giacomo Sonnino, Managing Director at Charlesbank Capital Partners and former COO of QuantumBlack North America.

AuxoAI has built a strong foundation over the last three years, working with G2000 enterprises and strategic AI technology partners. At the center of AuxoAI’s approach are Forward Deployed Experts, a combination of Forward Deployed Strategists and Engineers who work alongside the customer’s business to understand how work actually happens, capture enterprise context, identify ways to reimagine work, and build production AI that gets used.

Strategy and engineering teams work in tandem with customers, building a unique approach that translates enterprise goals to production-grade AI deployments. AuxoAI accelerates time to value with its proprietary FDE Workbench, Damia, which has codified intelligence for several enterprise AI deployments.

Earlier this year, AuxoAI was announced as one of select AI Pureplay Partners for Gemini Enterprise Transformation program, as part of Google’s $750Mn investment in enterprise AI deployment.

Scaling the Forward-Deployed AI model

The Series A will accelerate the next phase of that journey: expanding AuxoAI’s global Forward Deployed talent, investing in proprietary technology and AI-native delivery capabilities, and scaling its presence and strategic ecosystem.

“We founded AuxoAI on a simple thesis: AI will fundamentally change how enterprises work, but technology alone will not make that happen,” said Amaresh Tripathy, Arvinder Pal Singh and Kabir Singh, co-founders of AuxoAI. “Our mission is to bring AI into the operating fabric of the enterprise by deeply understanding its context, a context that general-purpose AI does not inherently understand, and reimagining how work gets done. Our vision is to build a new kind of AI company – one that combines human expertise, enterprise context and engineering to stay with the problem from the first idea through measurable outcomes in production. This investment gives us the opportunity to scale that model globally.”

“Over the past year, we’ve gotten to know AuxoAI’s co-founders, and what stands out is their rare combination of technical ambition and human instinct,” said Vab Goel, Founding Partner of NTTVC. “The authenticity and thoughtfulness they bring to customer conversations earn trust. Paired with deep enterprise understanding and the ability to deploy AI, that trust is the foundation for a lasting partnership on a customer’s most consequential work. We are excited to lead Auxo’s Series A funding round because we believe they can build an enduring leader in AI services.”

“AuxoAI’s FDEs have embedded directly into our teams and helped accelerate our vision of becoming an AI-native marketing organization. They’ve helped our teams adopt new ways of working by building AI capabilities and agents, while supporting training and change management. Together, we’ve significantly shortened campaign strategy-to-launch timelines, eliminated many hours of manual reviews, and moved from lagging metrics toward leading signals,” said Stacy Simpson, Chief Marketing Officer, Athenahealth.

“Across quant and panel studies, AuxoAI’s Damia synthetic consumer personas have helped us make faster, more informed decisions across marketing, menu design, and pricing,” said Michael Breed, Chief Marketing Officer for Fogo de Chao. “By connecting synthetic consumers to our real segments, we can follow performance into the real world, compare expectations with actual results, and continuously accelerate the learning cycle.”

Bolstering AuxoAI’s Strategic Investors & Advisors

The company is also welcoming three strategic investors and advisors as part of this round: George Still Jr., Partner Emeritus at Norwest Venture Partners; Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow; and Giacomo Sonnino, Managing Director at Charlesbank Capital Partners

“I’ve spent much of my career working alongside entrepreneurs building successful enterprise technology companies like PeopleSoft, Workday, and Rackspace. What stood out to me about Auxo AI is the combination of a very experienced founding team, strong early customer traction delivering a unique value-added offering,” said George Still Jr., Partner Emeritus at Norwest Venture Partners and longtime Workday board member. “Auxo AI has a clear ambition to build a differentiated company at the intersection of AI, technology, and services. I am pleased and excited to be an investor and look forward to helping the team in any to build a successful and enduring company.”

About AuxoAI

AuxoAI is building the Forward-Deployed AI Company. Founded in 2023, the company works alongside Global 2000 enterprises to understand how their businesses operate, re–imagine how work gets done with AI, and build production systems that deliver measurable business outcomes. AuxoAI has a unique approach to forward deploying teams of AI strategists and engineers, and accelerating deployment with Damia, its IP FDE workbench.

Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, AuxoAI is an AI-native Google Gemini Enterprise transformation partner and an AWS advanced-tier partner. Learn more at www.auxoai.com.

About NTTVC

NTTVC is a silicon valley-based venture capital firm formed in partnership with NTT, a global technology leader operating in over 70 countries. NTTVC helps startups accelerate growth and scale globally. Its investments include Anthropic, Neysa, nference, Celona, Eko Health, and Shoreline (acquired by NVIDIA). For more information, visit www.nttvc.com

Media contact: Marely Arias – [email protected]

SOURCE Auxo AI Inc

Investment will accelerate expansion of the 7,200-location network to address truck parking shortages and meet growing fleet demand

RINGGOLD, Ga., Oct. 20, 2026 — Truck Parking Club, the nation’s largest marketplace for instantly reservable truck and trailer parking and storage, today announced a growth investment from Argentum Capital Partners, a New York-based growth equity firm. The investment will accelerate network expansion and fund the technology and teams that help fleets incorporate parking and storage into their daily operations.

Truck parking supply isn’t keeping pace with demand: 98% of drivers report trouble finding safe parking¹, spending an average of 56 minutes per day to secure a space, resulting in lost driving time of ~ $6,800 annually and 79% of truck stop operators have no plans to add spaces, according to the Federal Highway Administration. In three and a half years, Truck Parking Club has grown to more than 7,200 locations and helped park hundreds of thousands of trucks and trailers. Drivers at 94 of the top 100 trucking companies have booked through the platform, and fleets are increasingly using the network to meet parking and storage needs across their operations.

“Too often, drivers are left to solve parking on their own, giving up drive time or stopping somewhere they shouldn’t,” said Evan Shelley, co-founder and CEO of Truck Parking Club. “Parking is fleet infrastructure, and it should be planned like it. We give fleets a way to do that across their operations, so every driver has a safe, legal place to stop. With Argentum’s investment, we’ll add more locations and bring the network to more fleets.”

Truck Parking Club will use the fresh investment to expand dedicated teams working with warehouses, trucking companies, self-storage operators, and hotel owners to turn suitable unused space into truck and trailer parking. The company will also invest in its technology and expand its work directly with fleets to match the network’s capacity to their operating needs.

Beyond driver parking, the network helps fleets secure truck and trailer storage and drop yard space across multiple locations without sourcing each site independently. Fleets can find locations that meet their equipment, capacity and amenity requirements, and list unused space in their own yards to generate revenue.

“Truck parking is one of trucking’s most challenging and expensive problems, and Truck Parking Club solves it by operating the ideal marketplace that unlocks additional supply of previously underutilized industrial properties and makes them available to the entire universe of truck drivers through a frictionless booking experience,” said Daniel Raynor, Managing Partner and co-founder of Argentum, who will join the Company’s board in connection with the investment. “Individual drivers have embraced it, and now fleets are building it into their core business processes. We are excited to back Evan and his outstanding team to support Truck Parking Club’s rapid growth. Argentum’s investment continues our focus on making investments in mission critical solutions serving essential industries and leverages our significant experience in transportation and logistics.”

About Truck Parking Club

Truck Parking Club is a network of instantly reservable hourly, daily, weekly and monthly truck and trailer parking locations throughout the US. Truck Parking Club helps connect truckers to truck parking locations throughout the US via truckparkingclub.com and our mobile app. Our network is made up of property owners that have locations adequate for truck parking to list on the platform: this includes warehouses, trucking companies, truck repair shops, tow truck companies, storage companies, CDL schools, trailer leasing companies, real estate investors, truck stops, truck parking operators and more!

About Argentum

Argentum Capital Partners is a New York-based growth equity firm that helps scale bootstrapped, capital efficient B2B business services and tech-enabled solutions companies. The firm provides capital to accelerate growth, fund acquisitions, and generate shareholder liquidity. Over its 30+ year history, Argentum has invested in over 100 companies, supported more than 200 add-on acquisitions, and been named to Inc’s list of Top Founder Friendly Investors for six consecutive years. Argentum fills the growing gap between venture capital funds and later stage PE firms by targeting capital-efficient companies that are not seeking a change in control. Learn more at www.argentumgroup.com.

Media Contact

Reed Loustalot
Chief Marketing Officer
Truck Parking Club
[email protected]
423-275-4999
truckparkingclub.com

SOURCE TruckParkingClub.com