The funding enables the next generation of AI and high-performance computing chips beyond the limit of silicon, while accelerating the industry’s first 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductor platform

SINGAPORE, Sept. 22, 2026 — Nexstrom, the semiconductor company building the first wafer-scale platform for 2D semiconductor materials, today announced it has raised a $12 million seed round led by Xora Innovation, with participation from Foothill Ventures and SEEDS. The round brings Nexstrom’s total capital raised to $15 million, including $3 million in non-dilutive funds. The funding will accelerate commercialization of Nexstrom’s wafer-scale 2D semiconductor platform, driving toward the industry’s first 12-inch 2D wafer growth on production-ready manufacturing tools. The Singapore-based company is also working closely with prominent industry partners to validate its technology within existing chip manufacturing workflows, positioning Nexstrom to bring next-generation semiconductor materials into large-scale commercial production.

As AI workloads drive demand for faster, more energy-efficient computing, the semiconductor industry is approaching the physical limits of silicon. There is a hard ceiling to how much silicon channels can continue to shrink before electrons begin leaking, causing significant power loss. Nexstrom aims to bypass this bottleneck by developing the industry’s first platform for growing 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductor materials. These atomically thin materials support precise electron control, reduce energy loss at the transistor level, and improve efficiency, while remaining compatible with advanced foundry manufacturing. Nexstrom is developing the commercial-scale platform advanced foundries need for next-generation computing.

“Silicon has fueled decades of computing innovation, but the industry now needs a new materials platform to continue scaling performance,” said Dr. Lance Li, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist. “For years, the challenge has not been demonstrating the promise of 2D materials, but manufacturing them at the scale and quality advanced foundries require.” Nexstrom was incubated through Xora’s venture-building model to bridge the gap between academic research and commercial semiconductor manufacturing. Through this model, Nexstrom developed a practical path to manufacturing wafer-scale single-crystal 2D semiconductors, allowing chipmakers to move beyond the limitations of conventional materials and build the next generation of AI infrastructure.

Unlike existing methods that yield only small laboratory samples or require changes to existing foundry manufacturing processes, Nexstrom’s full-stack platform integrates proprietary chemical vapor deposition (CVD) hardware, process technology, and wafer-scale 2D material growth right into a foundry’s existing workflow. By combining advanced equipment, specialized chemistry, and manufacturing expertise, Nexstrom’s technology promises continuous, single-crystal 2D material growth across industry-standard 12-inch wafers, providing a clear path to commercial adoption.

Nexstrom’s technical foundation is anchored by Dr. Lance Li, a globally recognized leader in 2D materials and a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2018, a distinction recognizing roughly the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide by research influence. A pioneer in single-crystal MoS₂ (molybdenum disulfide) growth since 2012, he later led corporate research at TSMC on post-silicon electronics, bringing decades of expertise across 2D materials, atomic-layer chemistry, and semiconductor manufacturing to Nexstrom.

Nexstrom is also supported by a board and advisory group that includes semiconductor industry leaders Dr. Sundar Ramamurthy, Dr. Philip Wong, Dr. Aaron Thean and Dr. John Langan. “The question is no longer whether 2D semiconductors matter. They are already on the technology roadmap of major semiconductor companies. The challenge is making them manufacturable,” said Dr. Philip Wong, Board Advisor at Nexstrom and Inez Kerr Bell Professor at Stanford University. “The industry needs high-quality, uniform 2D materials on 300 mm substrates, and solving that materials bottleneck is exactly where Nexstrom is focused.”

By enabling wafer-scale 2D semiconductors compatible with advanced manufacturing, Nexstrom is laying the foundation for the post-silicon era of computing. The new funding will support ongoing platform development, strategic collaborations with semiconductor foundries, and the expansion of Nexstrom’s engineering and leadership teams as the company advances high-performance, low-power chips for AI, data centers, and future computing applications.

To learn more, visit: https://nexstrom.com/.

About Nexstrom
Founded in 2024, Nexstrom is a semiconductor technology company advancing wafer-scale 2D materials for next-generation AI and high-performance computing. The company has developed the industry’s first platform for producing 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductors, allowing chipmakers to overcome silicon’s limitations and create faster, more energy-efficient devices. Backed by Xora Innovation, Foothill Ventures, and SEEDS, an arm of SG Growth Capital, Nexstrom is helping bring 2D semiconductor technology from the lab to commercial manufacturing.

SOURCE Nexstrom

6 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks use Sela while crossing $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Sela, the market-leading voice AI system for mortgage sales, today announced a total of $21 million in funding across Seed and Series A, led by Costanoa, with participation from Emergence Capital. Today, Sela’s AI agents help loan officers originate more than $1 billion in new mortgages per month, and the company has crossed $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months. Sela will use the funding to grow its team and continue to develop agents that guide borrowers through the entire consumer finance journey.

Sela’s AI agents answer complex questions, build rapport, educate borrowers, and bring in a loan officer when necessary. Its agents are built to maximize conversion, benefiting from hundreds of optimizations and AB tests to create a system that consistently outperforms human teams and other AI solutions. Sela designs, runs, and continuously improves its agents for each lender, measuring success in borrowers reached, productive conversations held, and loans closed, not minutes used.

Large lenders typically A/B test Sela’s agents against existing systems before rolling out widely. In one A/B test involving more than 10,000 prospective borrowers, Sela produced a 9% increase in lead-to-lock rates, yielding more than 40% higher profit for the lender than their existing process. In an A/B test with a top-five mortgage servicer, Sela outperformed another voice AI solution by 41% on a lead-to-lock basis, across 7,000+ leads.

“At my last company, I watched the strongest salespeople outperform the average by three or four times, and how hard it was to coach an entire team to that level,” said Nate Becker, Co-Founder and CEO of Sela. “Sela’s agents take the best performing sales behaviors, learned across tens of millions of calls, and employ them consistently across every customer interaction. Automating the mortgage process with AI doesn’t actually help anyone unless it improves the experience for consumers and makes the process more effective for lenders. We have built a system that does both of these things, and we’ve proven it works at scale. In the next 12 months, our AI agents will run more of the mortgage sales process, as we aim to make financial decisions less anxiety-inducing, more pleasant, cheaper, and easier for consumers.”

“Every lender’s P&L comes down to the same two numbers: conversion and cost per funded loan, and both are under more pressure right now than at any point in a decade,” said David Cheng, Partner at Costanoa. “What convinced us to lead was that Nate and Vahe fundamentally sell the ability to do more funded loans. That’s why six of the ten largest independent mortgage banks put Sela in production in under two years.”

Sela was founded by Nate Becker, a former co-founder of VoiceOps and a data scientist at LinkedIn, and Vahe Tshitoyan, a former senior machine learning engineer and tech lead at Google. The company now has 17 full-time employees and plans to grow to 50 over the next year, hiring across product, engineering, and go-to-market roles.

About Sela

Sela builds AI agents for consumer lending. Its agents hold millions of real conversations with consumers, help them navigate complex decisions, and connect engaged borrowers to loan officers to complete the loan. Founded by Nate Becker and Vahe Tshitoyan and backed by Costanoa and Emergence Capital, Sela is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at sela.io.

About Costanoa

Costanoa exists to elevate founders building companies of consequence. We lead investments from formation through Series A in Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. With $2.5B AUM, we’re boutique by design—making fewer investments to deliver deeper expertise and operational support when it matters most: the early, defining stages of growth. We have been recognized as one of America’s Top Venture Capital Firms by TIME and named to a top 4 Seed-Stage firm on Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Investors list. For more information, please visit www.costanoa.vc.

About Emergence Capital

Emergence Capital backs visionary founders transforming the way the world works. We partner from the earliest stages and stay committed as companies scale. Notable investments include Bill, Box, Doximity, Genspark, Gusto, Mercor, Physical Intelligence, Salesforce, Together AI, Veeva, and Zoom. More than 1 in 5 of our early-stage investments have exceeded a billion-dollar valuation. Learn more at emcap.com.

Media Contact

Press Team, Sela

[email protected]

SOURCE Sela AI, Inc. / BAM Agency

Transformational investment will elevate the Psaros Center’s national and global impact, advancing its position as the preeminent nonpartisan institution at the center of financial markets and policy

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has received a total investment of $25 million from Michael G. Psaros (B’89), his wife Robin and their family to expand the Center’s position as the preeminent nonpartisan institution at the intersection of financial markets and public policy and deepen its ability to inform policy and practice in the United States and around the world.

“The financial markets touch every aspect of American life. Financial policy, from legislation to regulation, has an outsized influence on our financial markets and our economy,” said Michael G. Psaros, co-founder and managing partner of KPS Capital Partners, LP. “The Psaros Center serves the national interest by helping ensure that financial policy is informed by rigorous research, practical experience and bipartisan dialogue. My family’s gift to the Psaros Center is an act of patriotism, not an act of philanthropy. It is our way of giving back to our country.”

The Psaros Center conducts original research and provides objective, rigorous analysis on major issues facing financial markets. It brings together policymakers, regulators, financial market leaders and academics to examine issues at the intersection of finance and policy, and shares its work broadly with industry professionals, policymakers, students and other stakeholders.

The Center was founded by Reena Aggarwal, the Robert E. McDonough professor of finance and director of the Psaros Center, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Aggarwal sought to create a global hub at Georgetown to bridge the divide between policymakers and financial-sector leaders through objective, data-driven research and convenings. Psaros provided the seed funding at that time to help bring that vision to life.

The Center is now the preeminent forum for dialogue among leaders shaping financial markets and policy. Its annual Financial Markets Quality Conference and other convenings bring together senior figures from across the financial and policy communities to discuss the most pressing issues facing global markets, most recently including the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and the CEOs of JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs.

The Psaros Center’s distinguished fellows – including Rostin Behnam (C’00), former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Dr. Lael Brainard, former director of the White House National Economic Council and vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and Patrick McHenry, former member of Congress from North Carolina and chair of the House Financial Services Committee – extend the Center’s reach across government, financial regulation and industry, bringing firsthand expertise to its research and programming. The Psaros Center also connects Georgetown students directly with leaders shaping financial markets and policy through opportunities such as the FinPolicy Trek and other experiential programs.

“Mike Psaros and his family have made an extraordinary investment in the future of the Psaros Center and in Georgetown’s ability to contribute to the most important conversations shaping financial markets and public policy,” said Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair of Georgetown McDonough. “Their commitment gives the Center the resources and reach to bring together leading voices from Wall Street, government and academia, advance rigorous nonpartisan research and extend its influence well beyond Washington, DC. We are deeply grateful for their vision and confidence in what the Psaros Center can accomplish on a national and global stage.”

The investment comes as the financial system undergoes rapid transformation. Artificial intelligence, crypto and digital assets, prediction markets, data and changing market structures are creating new opportunities while raising consequential questions for policymakers, regulators and market participants.

To lead the center through this next phase, Georgetown recently appointed Michael Piwowar (MBA’94) as executive director. Piwowar previously served as executive vice president of Milken Institute Finance leading financial market policy and held senior positions in federal financial regulatory agencies, including serving as acting chairman and commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2013 to 2018.

“What excites me most about joining the Psaros Center is building on its momentum through engaging students; engaging business leaders; and bringing students, policymakers and market participants together through thought leadership and nonpartisan debate on today’s most pressing issues,” said Piwowar.

The Psaros Center’s expanded capacity will allow it to build on its preeminent position and broaden its reach at a time when financial markets and public policy are increasingly interconnected.

“Georgetown University is honored by the significant investment the Psaros family has made in establishing the Psaros Center as a leading source for vital thought leadership, scholarship and discussion shaping the future of finance and policy,” said Georgetown University President Eduardo M. Peñalver. “This transformative commitment reflects Michael, Robin and the Psaros family’s steadfast dedication to Georgetown University, to the McDonough School of Business and to our students who are the next generation of leaders.”

“We are where Wall Street meets Washington, and I am proud that the Psaros Center is recognized as one of the few truly nonpartisan institutions in Washington respected by both sides of the aisle,” Psaros said. “The Psaros Center is moving the needle in policy and practice in the real world, and elevating Georgetown University’s role in shaping the conversation around finance and public policy.”

About Georgetown University
Established in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll, Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. Located in Washington DC, Doha, Qatar, and around the world, Georgetown University is a leading academic and research institution, offering a unique educational experience that prepares the next generation of global citizens to lead and make a difference in the world. For more information about Georgetown University, visit Georgetown.edu or connect with Georgetown on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

About the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy
The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy is the preeminent destination for unbiased expertise at the intersection of finance and policy. The Psaros Center provides thought leadership and actively contributes to shaping global finance. Located in Washington, D.C., we connect policymakers, industry leaders, and scholars through solutions-driven platforms.

Housed at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy serves as an impartial, academic-based research center. The Psaros Center integrates practice with policy: facilitating a forum for solutions-oriented discussion, conducting relevant and original research on key global market issues, and engaging students interested in the nexus of finance and policy. Collectively, our efforts impact policy and practice by informing current industry professionals, the next generation of finance and policy leaders, and the world, to create meaningful change.

SOURCE Georgetown University

Vital.io guides 7M patients through ER, urgent care, inpatient & surgical visits, accurately predicting wait times, reassuring frustrated patients, and providing clear guidance on what to do next.

CLAYMONT, Del., Sept. 22, 2026 — Vital, which uses AI to predict ER wait times, explain doctors notes in human terms to hospitalized patients, and gives real-time updates during surgical procedures to family members, has been recognized by TIME and Statistica as a top company in the Health Information Management category. The award list was announced on September 17^th, 2026, and can be viewed on Time.com. Vital.io guides millions of patients during their visits, leading to lower leave-rate, fewer readmissions, better patient scores, and – unsurprisingly when you treat people right – better financial outcomes for 3 of the top 6 health systems, plus dozens of others.

“Wow! Happy to be recognized by TIME (and Statistica). And what a coincidence. Every morning, next to ‘Live, Laugh, Love’, I look at one of those TIME Person of the Year frames that’s really just a mirror. This award was clearly made to live beside it. I mean what do you do to hype yourself up to change healthcare each morning?” asks Aaron Patzer, Vital’s Cofounder & CEO. He further muses, “Seriously, by ‘you’ I mean you the human, the person who’s reading this press release. I’ve been worried that it’s all just AI agents these days. If you’ve made it this far, you’re going to love – okay, probably just tolerate – the rest. I wrote the whole thing, and quoted myself here, crazy right? Who’s regulating press releases, or more importantly, AI for that matter?”

Vital does a few things exceptionally well: it’s used by 65% of patients during hospital & emergency stays. Your standard comes-with-the-EHR software, 10-15% during a visit. As a result of being super-easy for patients, it produces great outcomes: 30-50% reduction in left-without-being-seen (LWBS) which is when patients are so fed up with waiting they bail; a 30% increase in follow-up visits, so people actually get better long term and don’t just end up back at the hospital. That’s our enterprise system.

Vital also runs Vital Care Finder (https://vit.al) directly for consumers. We have millions of doctors, dentists, nurses and physician assistants listed everywhere, sorted by price, which other find-a-doc systems seem to neglect. It matches using your clinical fingerprint, so the “best doctor” for you depends very much on what chronic conditions you have, age, language,s etc. It’s also built for AI, with deep integrations into ChatGPT & Claude via widgets and MCP servers.

We also are a founding member of AICareStandard.com created with industry leaders and executives from MedStar, IU Health, HCA, Patients for Patient Safety, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and more.

In short, we’re the pro-patient company. And for all patients, rich and poor, insured or not. This feels rare in health care for some reason. We’re allowed to use like 1500 words, but press releases are a bit like corporate journal entries, self-focused and a bit look-at-me. Thanks for getting this far. Consider going outside. Or just standing up. Or drinking some water. Something for your health – we stopped short so you could.

About Vital.io

Vital.io today guides 7M patients annually through emergency, urgent care, and inpatient visits across dozens of health systems including 3 of the top 6 largest IDNs. Vital is known for its innovations in safe, patient-facing AI, including the doctor-to-patient translator launch in May 2023, and its status as a founding member of the PatientAI Collaborative™ at aicarestandard.com committed to safe, accurate, and clinically responsible AI-driven patient communication.

Vital was founded by Aaron Patzer, formerly Founder of Mint & VP of Product Innovation at Intuit, and Justin Schrager, MD, a practicing emergency physician at IU Health & Emory. Vital is backed by Transformation Capital, Threshold Ventures, First Round Capital, and luminaries in healthcare including the founders of Flat Iron Health, Patient Ping / Bamboo, and more.

Media Contact: Kathy English, [email protected]

SOURCE Vital Software Inc.

Founders will live and build together at a private camp in the Poconos, with mentors and speakers including Gary Vaynerchuk, Sophia Amoruso, Zach Yadegari and Brandon Bryant. The program will be filmed as a documentary series and closes with a Demo Day in front of investors.

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2026 — Stan, the company on a mission to help anyone live life on their own terms, today announced Launchpad, a 14-day program bringing 100 founders together to start and scale their companies by sharing their journey publicly. Participants will turn their ideas into companies, growing awareness around what they’re creating and learning how to build distribution from day one.

The program will run October 4–19th, 2026 at a private camp in the Poconos, about two hours from New York City, and will include masterclasses and mentorship from leading operators and investors, protected focus time, immunity and elimination rounds, and a closing Demo Day in front of actively investing firms.

Throughout the 14-day program, founders will live and learn alongside other early-stage entrepreneurs, receive ongoing mentorship from Stan co-founders Vitalii Dodonov and John Hu, and compete for a $100,000 prize. The full experience will be filmed and produced as a documentary competition series, giving audiences a front-row seat to the founder journey.

“Building is easy. Distribution is hard. You can build the best product in your category and still lose to someone who started building an audience a year earlier,” said Vitalii Dodonov, Co-Founder of Stan. “Building in public is how founders build distribution before they need it, and it’s what we will be teaching at Launchpad.”

Throughout the program, founders will use Stanley, a Personal Head of Content built by Stan, to document their journeys, develop content and share what they’re building with a broader audience, putting Stan’s belief that distribution is a core founder skill into practice.

Launchpad is open to early-stage software and AI founders, with roughly 30 teams made up of 100 founders expected to be selected. Programming will include sessions from Gary Vaynerchuk, serial entrepreneur, chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia; Zach Yadegari, co-founder of Cal AI and founder of Flow; Sophia Amoruso, founder and managing partner of Trust Fund and founder of Nasty Gal; and Brandon Bryant, co-founder and partner at Harlem Capital.

“A handful of people bet on me before there was anything to bet on. That is the only reason Stan exists,” said John Hu, Co-Founder of Stan. “Launchpad is our turn to make that bet on a hundred other founders.”

Applications are open now at launchpad.stan.com and will remain open until September 25th 2026.

About Stan
Stan is the ecosystem helping anyone live life on their own terms. Stan brings together Stanley, a personal Head of Content, and Stan Store, an all-in-one hub for selling digital products, coaching, and community programs. Since 2021, Stan has helped more than 90,000 people to build their visibility, their business and their confidence, earning more than $600M through Stan Store. We believe anyone, anywhere can make it if they work hard.

SOURCE Stan

Returning investors fund equity raise at $8.50 per share — more than 20% above the September 21 close

WILMINGTON, Del., Sept. 22, 2026 — Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNAI) (“BEN” or the “Company”), an enterprise AI software company, today announced that it has entered into a securities purchase agreement for a $1,051,025 private placement of common stock priced at $8.50 per share. The purchase price represents more than a 20% premium to the Company’s September 21, 2026 closing price of $7.07.

The placement was subscribed in equal parts by returning investor BEN Capital Fund I, LLC and Joseph Bevash. The Company will issue an aggregate 123,650 shares of common stock. An initial $150,025 (17,650 shares) was funded at closing, with the remaining $901,000 to be funded in five equal monthly installments of $180,200 through February 5, 2027.

The transaction includes 100% warrant coverage. For each share purchased, the investors receive a six-month warrant to purchase one additional share at the same $8.50 exercise price. If the placement is fully funded, the warrants will cover up to 123,650 shares.

This transaction continues the clear 2026 trend of BEN securing equity commitments from sophisticated investors at significant premiums to the prevailing market. Prior private placements this year were priced at $63.25, $39.25, and $17.82, each above the then-current closing price, including placements priced 20% above the close.

“This is another above-market commitment from investors who already know the company — after Cataneo, after Accelevate, and while we continue to deploy enterprise AI,” said Tyler Luck, Chief Executive Officer of Brand Engagement Network. The people writing the checks are not trading the noise. They are funding the plan.”

Transaction Highlights

• $1,051,025 aggregate commitment at $8.50 per share
• More than 20% premium to the September 21, 2026 close of $7.07
• 123,650 shares, split equally between BEN Capital Fund I, LLC and Joseph Bevash
• $150,025 funded at initial closing; $901,000 to be funded over five months
• 1-for-1 six-month warrants at the same $8.50 strike price
• Continues a consistent 2026 track record of premium-priced private placements

The securities described in this release were offered and sold in private transactions pursuant to exemptions from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities.

About Brand Engagement Network

Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (Nasdaq: BNAI) builds secure, enterprise-grade artificial intelligence for the engagement layer of AI-where human intent is transformed into intelligent interactions, automated workflows, and real-world outcomes.  Powered by BEN’s proprietary Engagement Language Model (ELM), the technology enables conversational AI interactions that connect human intent to organizational data, workflows, and real-world outcomes. BEN’s AI operates within secure closed-loop environments using approved organizational data and built-in governance and compliance controls.  Trusted by organizations in regulated and high-impact industries, BEN helps bring AI into real operational settings where engagement drives outcomes and accountability matters. 

In June 2026, BEN acquired Cataneo GmbH, which provides enterprise software for advertising sales, scheduling, traffic, content management, monetization, analytics, CRM integration, and real-time reporting across linear, digital, and on-demand media. 

For more information, visit www.brandengagementnetwork.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding the funding of remaining installments under the securities purchase agreement, issuance and exercise of warrants, use of proceeds, commercial execution, integration of acquired businesses, and future capital formation. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the Purchasers’ performance of remaining funding obligations, Nasdaq listing and market conditions, dilution from the issuance of shares and warrant shares, the Company’s liquidity and going-concern considerations described in its SEC reports, integration of acquired businesses, and other risks described in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law.

Contacts

Investor Relations
[email protected]

Media Relations
[email protected]

SOURCE Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (BEN)

Already used by more than 1 in 5 financial institutions to verify businesses and manage risk, Baselayer is extending its identity network to agents acting and transacting on their behalf

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2026 — Baselayer, the identity and risk infrastructure company trusted by 1 in 5 financial institutions nationwide, today announced it has raised a $35 million Series A led by M13, with participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital, and Matt Thompson of Socure. Alongside the round, the company launched its Agentic Identity Suite, bringing the industry’s first interoperable trust layer and agentic fraud consortium to the global agentic economy.

The problem Baselayer solves

Agentic commerce is arriving faster than the trust infrastructure required to ensure it can safely flourish. In June, Stripe reported that 70% of the commands used to access data through its API now come from AI agents. Over the past year, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express have all shipped agent commerce protocols, and Shopify turned on agentic sales channels by default for roughly one million merchants.

That creates a new identity problem for financial infrastructure built to recognize people and businesses, not autonomous software acting on their behalf. Before a bank, merchant, or platform lets an agent transact, it has to know: who does this agent represent, is it authorized to act, and can it trust the party on the other side.

Baselayer already answers the equivalent questions for businesses. Its platform provides identity verification and risk infrastructure to 2,300+ financial institutions and payments companies, and has helped customers prevent more than $1 billion in fraud losses. Founded in 2024 by machine learning pioneer Timothy Hyde and risk management veteran Jonathan Awad, the company is now extending that same infrastructure to autonomous agents.

“Every era of commerce has required a new trust layer, but historically that infrastructure gets built only after fraud and abuse make the problem impossible to ignore,” said Jonathan Awad, co-founder and CEO of Baselayer. “Agentic commerce is moving too fast for the industry to repeat that mistake. We already help one in five U.S. financial institutions answer, ‘Can I trust this business?’ Now we’re building the infrastructure they need to answer, ‘Can I trust this agent, who does it represent, and what is it allowed to do?'”

The Agentic Identity Suite

Baselayer works with agent builders, card networks, and leading FIs and payments companies including FIS, Prove, Socure, Exa, Parallel Web Systems, Natural, Nevermined, Lane, and more, to offer agentic identity and risk solutions to meet accelerating enterprise demand.

Beyond the products they develop, Baselayer is helping to establish and promote the industry standards the agentic economy will run on, including the FIDO Alliance Authentication Working Group, Legal Context Protocol, and the x402 Identity Working Group alongside companies like Cloudflare, Google, Visa, and Mastercard.

“Agents don’t carry ID, and the infrastructure built to verify humans and businesses simply doesn’t recognize them,” said Timothy Hyde, co-founder and CTO of Baselayer. “Static fraud controls end up blocking good customers while sophisticated attacks walk through. We built the Agentic Identity Suite so any institution can know, cryptographically, which agent it’s dealing with, who that agent represents, and whether its own agent can safely proceed with any transaction.”

“AI agents are rapidly becoming economic actors, but the identity infrastructure underneath commerce was never designed for software that can open accounts, make purchases, move money, or enter into transactions on someone else’s behalf,” said Karl Alomar, Managing Partner at early stage venture capital firm M13. “That creates an enormous new trust problem, and we believe identity will become one of the foundational infrastructure layers of the agentic economy. What made Baselayer especially compelling is that Jonathan and Timothy are not starting from a whiteboard. They already have a network spanning more than 2,300 financial institutions, deep risk data, and infrastructure in production today. They have the distribution and the underlying trust graph to become the system institutions rely on to know not just who they are dealing with, but which agents are authorized to act for them.”

M13 manages $2.2 billion in assets and has backed 18 companies at seed or Series A that later reached unicorn status.

About Baselayer

Baselayer is the leading risk and identity infrastructure platform for 2,300+ financial institutions, Fortune 500s, and government agencies as they onboard and underwrite businesses, consumers, and the agents they deploy. Learn more at baselayer.com.

Media Contact

Jonathan Awad

Co-Founder & CEO, Baselayer

[email protected]

SOURCE Baselayer

Former financial leader at Radius Global Infrastructure and Crown Castle will steer finance strategy to meet next stage of enterprise, cloud and AI infrastructure demand

DALLAS, Sept. 22, 2026 — DataBank, a leading provider of enterprise-class colocation, interconnection, and managed services, announced today that Ben Lowe has been appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Lowe will lead all of DataBank’s finance, accounting, treasury, and capital markets functions and will report to DataBank’s President and current CFO, Kevin Ooley, who will be transitioning to CEO on January 1, 2027. DataBank’s current CEO, Raul Martynek, will become Executive Chairman of the Board on January 1, 2027.

Lowe joins DataBank as the company embarks on its next phase of evolution, continuing to provide highly compliant, mission-critical, colocation services to 2,500+ enterprise customers while capitalizing on the rapid growth in digital infrastructure driven by AI and hyperscale cloud demand.  He brings to DataBank a deep reservoir of experience scaling financial operations and capital structures in both public and private equity-backed organizations as well as insight and perspective across the digital infrastructure ecosystem from data centers to wireless networks.  

“Ben possesses a mix of industry knowledge, financial acumen, and capital markets experience that will be incredibly valuable for DataBank as we enter this next chapter,” said Kevin Ooley, DataBank’s President and acting CFO. “His proven ability to access both public and private markets and his track-record of synthesizing capital with strategy will be critical as we navigate this next phase of evolution.”

Most recently, Lowe served as Chief Financial Officer at Radius Global Infrastructure, a portfolio company of EQT Active Core Infrastructure and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board that specializes in the strategic acquisition and management of critical telecommunication infrastructure including cell site leases, network switches/exchanges, fiber aggregation points, Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), data centers, and towers.  Prior to that, Lowe served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer at Crown Castle, an owner and operator of approximately 40,000 wireless towers across the U.S.

“DataBank’s U.S. data center infrastructure footprint is unparalleled, and the company has a rich history of building long-term relationships with customers and capital markets alike,” said Lowe. “This is an incredible platform and track-record upon which to chart the next era of growth and I’m incredibly excited to be joining at such a monumental time.“

“I’m delighted to have Ben joining our leadership team,” added Raul Martynek, DataBank’s CEO. “He and Kevin are the right leaders to champion DataBank’s next phase of growth and continue our heritage of financial strength and performance. I look forward to supporting them in 2027 in my new role as Executive Chairman of the board.”

About DataBank

DataBank helps the world’s largest enterprises, technology, and content providers ensure their data and applications are always on, always secure, always compliant, and ready to scale to meet the needs of the artificial intelligence era.

Recognized by Deloitte in 2023 and 2024, and Inc. 5000 in 2024 as one of the fastest-growing private US companies, DataBank’s edge colocation and infrastructure footprint consists of 70+ “HPC-ready” data centers in 25+ markets, 20 interconnection hubs, and on-ramps to an ecosystem of cloud providers with virtually unlimited reach.

We combine these platforms with contract portability, managed security, compliance enablement, hands-on support, and a guarantee of 100% uptime availability, to give our customers absolute confidence in their IT infrastructure and the power to create a boundless digital future for their business.

To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn or subscribe to our YouTube channel. To tour a facility, visit DataBank or call 1(800) 840-7533.

SOURCE DataBank

Powered by agentic AI, Chamelio’s platform is primed to replace outdated legacy contract lifecycle management systems and empower legal teams to embrace AI-powered operations. Since its seed round five months ago, Chamelio’s ARR has grown 4x

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2026 — Chamelio, the AI-native platform for in-house legal teams, today announced a $26 million Series A round led by Entrée Capital, with participation from existing investors Work-Bench and Emerge Ventures. Bright Pixel Capital also participated. Chamelio boasts hundreds of customers, including Wiz, monday.com, Socure, AppsFlyer, and Wonderful.ai. The company will use the new funding to further develop its proprietary legal action model, grow its legal engineering and product teams and invest further in onboarding technology.

In-house legal departments are overworked and understaffed, with workload demands surging, while budgets and headcount are not keeping pace. An Association of Corporate Counsel survey from this year found that budget and resource constraints were a key barrier to success. Meanwhile, only 32% of legal departments expect to add attorney headcount this year, according to CLOC’s 2026 State of the Industry Report. Most in-house legal teams are still relying on legacy Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software built to store contracts, not analyze or act on them, with the painstaking additional work falling on the same number of overburdened teams.

The legal sector has adopted AI faster than almost any other profession. Deloitte predicts in three years, 30% of a legal team will be AI agents, and one in five will be hybrid lawyer-engineers. This role bridges the gap between technology and legal expertise. Chamelio enables the legal teams of today to delegate the tedious manual labor of contract review to autonomous agents, laying the groundwork for a completely different in-house composition of the future, consisting of both lawyers and AI agents.

Chamelio is an AI-native legal platform for in-house teams that manages and executes the full contract lifecycle, from drafting and negotiation to approvals, obligations, and ongoing legal workflows. Unlike traditional contract management systems built primarily to store documents and manage processes, Chamelio is trained on legal actions and can perform the work itself. It drafts from a company’s own contracts, reviews and negotiates terms, routes requests, manages obligations, and executes multistep legal workflows. Customers can deploy it autonomously for routine, low-risk work or keep a lawyer in the loop where oversight is needed. By handling routine tasks and decisions independently and escalating only the edge cases that require human judgment, Chamelio shifts the in-house lawyer’s role from labor-intensive execution to strategic oversight and judgment.

Chamelio also allows legal teams to easily build their own agents which support and interact with multiple functions across the organization, from procurement to finance, product to people, compliance to sales, helping scale and amplify legal capabilities for enterprise in the AI era.

“The mistake in legal AI has been assuming the future simply looks like today’s lawyer with faster contractual fact-checking,” said Alex Zilberman, CEO and co-founder of Chamelio. “AI in a legal setting shows dividends when it can make decisions intuitively, built on the corporate intelligence of each individual business. This is what Chamelio does. We ensure in-house legal departments deliver watertight contracts and outputs at AI speed, validated by the rigor of lawyers.”

“Chamelio is building the AI-native operating system for in-house legal teams – becoming the system of record, system of action, and system of intelligence for the modern legal function,” said Eran Bielski, General Partner at Entrée Capital. “What stood out to us was not only the strength of the product, but how quickly Chamelio’s founders execute, learn from customer feedback, and turn that feedback into a product with category-defining potential.”

Chamelio’s platform integrates with CRMs like Salesforce, as well as other tools such as Slack, NetSuite and procurement systems. Every deployment from Chamelio’s platform contains access to dedicated legal engineering expertise that helps customers migrate from legacy systems, structure their repositories, translate existing processes into workflows and get AI into production quickly.

Zilberman added: “Chamelio is empowering the next era of legal operations, one which includes vital human legal judgment, backed by legal engineers who turn that knowledge into systems and AI agents. With our platform underpinning every facet of in-house contract execution, we are redefining how in-house legal activities are carried out.”

About Chamelio

Founded in 2024 by serial entrepreneurs and two-time founders, Alex Zilberman and Gal Lellouche, alongside former general counsel, Gil Banyas, Chamelio is the AI system of action for in-house legal teams. Its platform combines contract negotiation, legal intake, workflows, contract intelligence and knowledge in one platform. Its software, AI-powered migration technology and legal engineering model helps corporate legal departments move from legacy systems to AI that does the work.

Media Contact

Headline Media
Jack Mendel – [email protected]

SOURCE Chamelio