Veteran of Meta, Google, and Uber joins the team building the leading AI roleplay platform following its $40M Series B and 1 million user milestone

SEATTLE, July 27, 2026 — Yoodli, the AI-powered experiential learning platform that uses AI roleplays to help teams practice high-stakes conversations, today announced the appointment of Kartik Murthy as Vice President of Product. Murthy officially joins the company July 27 and will lead product strategy and execution as Yoodli scales its platform for global revenue teams.

Murthy brings more than 17 years of product leadership spanning AI, consumer software, hardware, and learning. He joins Yoodli from Coalition, the cyber insurance leader, where as Head of Product for Security, AI, and Expansion he led teams that shipped generative AI features across the core product, automated more than 30% of servicing tasks, and expanded into five new markets, more than tripling international revenue. Previously, he led the product management team behind Ray-Ban Stories, Meta’s first wearable device, from inception through launch, drove Uber’s international expansion of Rides and Eats, and served as VP of Product at edtech platform Subject, making Yoodli a return to his roots in learning technology.

“At over 1 million users and 900% revenue growth, our constraint isn’t demand, it’s how fast we can build the right things. Kartik has spent his career solving exactly that problem, from launching Meta’s first wearable to tripling Coalition’s international revenue. He builds, he ships, and he thinks about product the way we do,” said Varun Puri, CEO and co-founder of Yoodli.

The appointment comes during a period of rapid growth for Yoodli., achieved 900% year-over-year revenue growth, and closed a $40M Series B led by WestBridge Capital, bringing total funding to $60M at a $300M valuation. Enterprise customers including Google Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, and RingCentral use Yoodli’s AI roleplays to build readiness across revenue teams, with results like 15,000+ reps certified at Google Cloud and 1,600+ manager hours recovered per quarter at Snowflake.

“I’ve built products across AI, hardware, and learning, and the pattern I keep seeing is that people improve through practice, not content. Yoodli is the first experiential learning platform built for enterprise, and the team ships with a velocity I’ve rarely seen. There’s never been a better time to build, and there’s no better place to build than here,” said Murthy.

At Yoodli, Murthy will lead the product organization as the company scales its platform for the world’s largest revenue teams. His mandate includes deepening the realism of Yoodli’s AI roleplays, strengthening the platform’s enterprise capabilities, and expanding the Learn → Practice → Do loop across enablement, L&D, leadership, and partner teams.

Murthy is based in Seattle and will work from Yoodli’s headquarters at Pier 70.

About Yoodli

Yoodli is an AI-powered experiential learning platform that helps people practice and improve communication skills through personalized AI roleplays, adaptive coaching, and real-time feedback. Trusted by enterprises worldwide, Yoodli enables learners to build confidence, measure progress, and perform when it matters most. Learn more at yoodli.ai or visit us on LinkedIn. 

Welcoming Kartik Murthy as Yoodli’s VP of Product

We’re thrilled to share that Kartik Murthy is joining Yoodli as our VP of Product, effective July 27.

Kartik brings more than 17 years of product leadership across some of the most demanding consumer and enterprise environments in tech. Most recently, he was Head of Product for Security, AI, and Expansion at Coalition, the cyber insurance leader, where his teams shipped generative AI features across the core product, automated more than 30% of servicing tasks, and expanded into five new markets to more than triple the company’s international revenue. Before that, he was VP of Product at Subject, the edtech platform formerly known as Emile Learning, and spent over four years at Meta, where he led the product management team that took Ray-Ban Stories, Meta’s first wearable device, from inception to launch.

His resume also includes leading the cross-functional teams behind Uber’s global expansion of Rides and Eats, including launching Uber Eats in India and Korea, leading Quora’s first international expansion, product management on search internationalization at Google, and program management at Microsoft. He holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Why this matters for Yoodli

Yoodli is at an inflection point. We recently crossed 1 million all-time users, grew revenue 900% year over year, and raised a $40M Series B led by WestBridge Capital to bring AI roleplays to enterprise revenue teams around the world. As demand for experiential learning accelerates, our product roadmap has never been more ambitious.

That’s where Kartik comes in. He has spent his career building products that scale across markets, languages, and platforms, from zero-to-one hardware launches at Meta to global expansion at Uber. That combination of AI depth, enterprise rigor, and international scale is exactly what Yoodli needs as we grow our platform for the world’s largest revenue teams.

“We just crossed 1 million users and grew revenue 900% year over year, and honestly that’s the easy part. The hard part is what comes next: turning a product people love into a platform the world’s largest enterprises run their most important conversations on. Kartik has done this before. He took Meta’s first wearable from zero to launch, tripled Coalition’s international revenue, and built PM teams that use AI to move faster than anyone thought possible. He’s a builder first, and that’s the kind of product leader Yoodli needs at this stage,” said Varun Puri, CEO and co-founder of Yoodli.

In Kartik’s words

“The cost of building software is heading toward zero, which means the companies that win won’t be the ones that ship the most features. They’ll be the ones with the clearest conviction about what to build. Yoodli has that conviction: practice is how people get better at high-stakes conversations, and AI roleplays finally make practice scalable. I’ve spent my career on 0 to 1 products and global expansion, and before I ever talked to the team, I’d already built AI roleplay prototypes on my own weekends because I believe in this space that much. Joining Yoodli at this moment, with this team and this momentum, was an easy call.”

Kartik is based in Seattle, joining us at our Pier 70 headquarters, and we couldn’t be happier to have him leading product as we build the future of experiential learning.

Welcome to the team, Kartik.

Yoodli is a secure, experiential learning platform that uses AI roleplays to personalize real-life practice and transform how organizations learn and prepare. Learn more at yoodli.ai.

Media Contact:
Sage Quiamno
[email protected]
+18082321321

SOURCE Yoodli

New admin features unlock critical visibility into AI usage, customizable employee limits, model access controls, and company-wide spend caps

BOSTON, July 27, 2026 — CollectivIQ, the world’s first AI consensus platform for business intelligence, today announced new tiered pricing and enterprise control capabilities designed to help organizations manage their AI usage with greater visibility, accountability, and cost discipline.

Many enterprises are confronting runaway token consumption and unpredictable model costs. Gartner forecasts that enterprise AI spending will reach $2.59 trillion globally, a 47%  increase year-over-year, underscoring that AI has become one of the largest technology investments in the enterprise, and one that now requires stronger financial guardrails. CollectivIQ’s new pricing tiers and controls give business leaders a more practical way to monitor usage, manage costs, and track ROI, while responsibly scaling AI across their organization.

CollectivIQ unifies leading LLMs, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok, and others, into a single consensus-driven platform, enabling users to query multiple models at once and receive one synthesized, annotated answer. With its newest pricing and control features, CollectivIQ adds another layer of enterprise value by helping companies align AI usage with business priorities, employee needs, and budget requirements.

New pricing and control capabilities include:

• Model Tiering: CollectivIQ now organizes leading models into defined access tiers, giving companies a more structured way to balance performance and cost. Enterprise administrators can customize access by employee, including the ability to limit use of higher-cost or premium-tier models based on role, department, business need, or budget.
• Company-Wide and Individual Spend Caps: Administrators can set restrictions that apply to the entire organization to manage total AI spending and prevent unexpected usage spikes, while also establishing daily cost and token limits for individual employees, giving teams flexibility while maintaining clear boundaries around consumption.
• Employee and Company-Wide Usage Insights: CollectivIQ now gives leaders visibility into AI usage at both the employee and organizational level, allowing them to understand adoption patterns, identify high-value use cases, track tangible outcomes from AI use, and manage spending more effectively.
• Auto Mode: CollectivIQ can automatically select the appropriate model tier based on prompt complexity, helping teams avoid using premium models for simple tasks while preserving access to higher-performing models when the work demands it.

Together, these controls give enterprises a more complete and personalized operating model for AI adoption. Single-model systems often force companies into rigid contracts, closed ecosystems, limited integrations, rising costs, and a vendor roadmap that may no longer reflect their needs. They can also put company data, institutional knowledge, and long-term flexibility at risk. CollectivIQ gives organizations a different path, allowing employees to access the best models for the work at hand. At the same time, leaders retain the oversight needed to manage costs, reduce waste, protect enterprise intelligence, and scale AI responsibly.

“When we began deploying AI across our own organization, we needed to understand who was using which models, what they were spending, and where AI was creating real value,” said John Davie, CEO of CollectivIQ and Buyers Edge Platform. “We could not find a platform designed for that level of oversight, so we built it. These new pricing tiers and controls give enterprise leaders a practical way to manage AI spend while preserving employees’ access to the best tools for their specific tasks.”

This release is the latest expansion in CollectivIQ’s role as the controlled intelligence layer for enterprise AI. The platform’s multi-model consensus approach helps businesses compare outputs from leading LLMs, surface disagreements, identify bias, and reduce the risk of hallucinations before decisions are made. By pairing that intelligence layer with tiered pricing, spending caps, usage analytics, and background activity controls, CollectivIQ now gives companies a more governed way to deploy AI across the workforce while giving enterprises a clearer command of the economics, accuracy, and accountability required to scale AI effectively.

About CollectivIQ

CollectivIQ is the intelligence layer for the AI era, unifying leading LLMs into a single consensus-driven platform that delivers more accurate, secure, and cost-efficient insight. Founded by the leadership team behind Buyers Edge Platform, CollectivIQ was built to bring accountability, governance, and economic alignment to enterprise AI adoption. Learn more at www.collectiviq.ai.

SOURCE CollectivIQ

Betting on AI services over software, Freight Hero executes brokers’ back-office work with AI Agents, backed by human Heroes

DURHAM, N.C., July 27, 2026 — Freight Hero, an AI company that fully manages freight brokers’ back-office operations, has closed a $5 million seed round. The round was led by Field Ventures, with Flybridge Capital, Tip Top VC and Front Porch Venture Partners joining in.

Freight brokerage is a $19 billion industry bleeding margins. The Great Freight Recession, overcapacity, soft spot rates, and climbing insurance, labor and tech costs turned a slow decline into a real threat. Technology was supposed to be the fix. In fact, 41% of brokers already use some form of AI or automation, per Truckstop.com. So far, it hasn’t worked.

“Everyone in this industry is selling AI as a technology product, and that’s the mistake,” said André Luis Martins Filho, founder and CEO of Freight Hero. “When you sell broker software and promise results, you’re handing them the responsibility to make it work. ROI depends on implementation, adoption and change management, which are hard to get right. We do the opposite. Brokers pay a flat fee per load, and we run it end-to-end as an extension of their team. If it doesn’t run efficiently, that’s on us.”

Freight brokerage runs on exceptions, and Freight Hero was built around that reality. The company owns the full lifecycle of each load, from rate confirmation through proof of delivery, inside the systems brokers already use. AI agents handle more than 90% of customer load touches, while a trained team of operators, the Heroes, steps in whenever a situation calls for judgment, like an upset driver demanding a human call or a data discrepancy that needs untangling.

Selling outcomes instead of software is one of the most-watched shifts in venture capital right now. Sequoia’s thesis, Services: The New Software, argues the next generation of defining companies will sell finished work, not tools, a view Y Combinator and others share. VCs such as Field have been calling the model Service-as-a-Software or AI Native Services. This is perfect for industries like Freight brokerage: operationally brutal, relationship-driven and run by people whose job is moving freight, not managing technology.
 

“Traditional industries like freight brokerage don’t have large software budgets, but instead have enormous labor budgets,” said Jillian Williams, Partner at Field Ventures. “AI alone struggles to properly serve these markets because of the operational complexity. Freight Hero reduces that friction by focusing on outcomes, doing the work for the customer rather than giving them a tool. We believe this model defines this next era of innovation, and Andre is exactly the kind of domain expert we need to build it.”

By the end of July, Freight Hero will have managed more than 50,000 loads and handled millions of carrier communications. Customers have turned fixed labor costs into variable ones, lifted service quality, and are tracking toward 100%+ ROI. Ally Logistics, a fast-growing Michigan brokerage that holds vendors to a hard line, brought Freight Hero in early to automate track-and-trace.

“Track and trace is one of the areas in brokerage operations with the most human touches and manual interventions,” said Dan Manshaem, CEO of Ally Logistics. “It’s very hard to automate due to the depth of nuance that exists in the process. Freight Hero’s team has consistently been willing to build that depth into their system. The results speak for themselves: they’re now fielding the vast majority of all touches on our loads post rate confirmation. We’ve grown our revenue by 82.4% year-over-year without meaningfully increasing operations headcount. Freight Hero was certainly one of the enablers of that.”

With the new funding, Freight Hero will expand its go-to-market efforts, grow its engineering and operations teams and deepen its service into adjacent functions, increasing Freight Hero’s scope towards billing, accounting and carrier sales.

“Freight brokerage was built on trust, on carriers and brokers who knew they could count on each other,” said Ted Alling, co-founder of Dynamo Ventures, former CEO of Access America Transport and an early Freight Hero investor. “Two decades of paperwork and tracking buried that trust. Logistics is full of businesses too relational to fully automate, too heavy to run without help. Freight Hero is the first company to nail that balance. I believe the model holds up across the whole industry, not just brokerage.”

Freight Hero has raised more than $6 million in funding to date. To learn more about how the company helps freight brokers automate their back offices, visit freighthero.ai.

About Freight Hero
Freight Hero fully manages the back-office operations of freight brokerages, combining AI automation with a dedicated team of human operators to guarantee operational outcomes rather than sell software. Founded by André Luis Martins Filho, Freight Hero serves mid-market freight brokerages and is backed by Field Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Dynamo Ventures, the AI Fund and other investors.

Media Contact
Ryan Hecker
PANBlast for Freight Hero
[email protected]

SOURCE Freight Hero

SEC registration of Securitize Capital expands Securitize’s regulated platform and positions the
company to deepen its work with asset managers and institutional investors

MIAMI, July 27, 2026 — Securitize Corp. (“Securitize”) (NYSE: SECZ), the leader in tokenized assets, today announced that its subsidiary, Securitize Capital LLC (“Securitize Capital”), is now registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) as an investment adviser.

The registration marks another expansion of Securitize’s regulated platform for onchain capital markets. Through its U.S. affiliates, Securitize now combines an SEC-registered investment adviser with an SEC-registered broker-dealer and Alternative Trading System (“ATS”), an SEC-registered transfer agent and fund administration services.

The registration provides a broader foundation for Securitize Capital’s advisory business and positions Securitize to deepen its relationships with asset managers, institutional investors and other sophisticated market participants. The timing comes as regulators consider how established investment-adviser obligations may apply to emerging onchain portfolio-management tools. In a July 22 statement, SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce noted that managing certain crypto vaults and lending strategies may implicate investment-adviser issues, depending on their structure and activities. As these models develop, Securitize Capital is positioned to work with market participants exploring onchain investment strategies within applicable regulatory frameworks, supported by Securitize’s broader capabilities across product development, distribution, ownership recordkeeping, trading and administration.

“Becoming an SEC-registered investment adviser is an important step in the continued expansion of Securitize’s platform,” said Carlos Domingo, Co-Founder and CEO of Securitize. “Asset managers and institutional investors want to work with partners that understand both the opportunity of tokenization and the obligations that come with operating in regulated markets. Through Securitize Capital, we are adding another important capability to our full stack and strengthening our ability to help institutions develop and manage investment strategies built for an onchain financial system.”

Securitize Capital previously operated as an exempt reporting adviser. As an SEC-registered investment adviser, Securitize Capital is subject to additional public disclosure, compliance, recordkeeping and examination requirements under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.

About Securitize

Securitize, the world’s leader in tokenizing real-world assets with $5B+ AUM (as of July 2026), is bringing the world onchain through tokenized funds in partnership with top-tier asset managers, such as Apollo, BlackRock, BNY, Hamilton Lane, KKR, VanEck and others. In the U.S., Securitize operates through its affiliates, including Securitize Markets, LLC, an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC that operates an SEC-regulated Alternative Trading System (ATS); Securitize Transfer Agent, LLC, an SEC-registered transfer agent; Securitize Capital LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser; and Securitize Fund Services, LLC, which provides fund administration services. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Commission. In Europe, Securitize operates through its affiliate Securitize Europe Brokerage and Markets, S.A., which is fully authorized as an Investment Firm and operates a Trading & Settlement System (TSS) under the EU DLT Pilot Regime, making Securitize Corp. currently the only company, based on its existing U.S. and EU regulatory authorizations, licensed to operate regulated digital-securities infrastructure across both the U.S. and EU. Securitize has also been recognized as a 2026 Forbes Top 50 Fintech company.

For more information, please visit:

Website | X/Twitter | LinkedIn

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release, including statements regarding Securitize Corp.’s (“Securitize”) future results of operations and financial position, business strategy, and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend,” “strategy,” “future,” “opportunity,” “potential,” “plan,” “may,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “will be,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” and similar expressions. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: regulatory developments relating to digital assets and tokenization; market volatility; competition; and those risk factors described in the filings of Securitize Corp.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Securitize Corp. does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Contacts

SOURCE Securitize

New offering gives general partners a structured way to create liquidity for limited partners with greater transparency on buyer selection, pricing and timing

CHICAGO, July 27, 2026 — Tradable, a leading private asset marketplace, today announced the launch of its private fund secondaries offering, giving private fund managers a more structured way to provide liquidity to their investors.

Private fund investors can often wait years for their capital to be returned. Tradable’s platform gives fund managers the software tools to provide rolling liquidity to their investors and receive offers from approved buyers through a structured, permissioned process. Buyers also receive access to curated fund interests and first-party data about the fund and its underlying investments.

Tradable’s SaaS platform streamlines the process, giving users a competitive edge through a technology-enabled approach to liquidity. General partners (GPs) can integrate their funds and enable existing limited partners (LPs) to first seek liquidity from within the manager’s existing investor base, reducing the need for expensive and time consuming diligence and consents. The offering then seamlessly integrates into Tradable’s private asset marketplace. LPs can additionally access Tradable’s network of fund secondaries buyers to run broader market processes.

“Investors increasingly want a clear path to liquidity, while fund managers want to minimize operational overhead in the process and protect their investor relationships,” said Alex Cordover, CEO of Tradable. “Tradable gives managers the tools to offer structured liquidity inside their funds in a more organized and repeatable way.”

The launch builds on Tradable’s existing private asset marketplace, which has a network of more than 250 institutions and counterparties representing more than $1 trillion in assets under management.

To learn more about Tradable and its offerings for investors and fund managers, visit tradable.xyz.

Media Contact:

Bob Spoerl

414.617.1768

[email protected] 

SOURCE Tradable

Investment positions leading North American CRO to expand clinical research and regulatory capabilities.

LONDON, ON and CHICAGO, July 27, 2026 — KGK Science Inc. (“KGK”), a leading North American contract research organization specializing in clinical trials and regulatory services for the dietary supplement, nutraceutical and consumer health industries, today announced it has received a growth investment led by Maxim Partners. The transaction closed on June 30, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 1997, KGK has completed more than 400 clinical trials across over 40 health indications and published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications. The company provides clinical research, regulatory consulting, and claim substantiation services that help consumer health companies develop and commercialize scientifically validated products worldwide.

The investment will support expanded clinical trial capacity, continued investment in decentralized and virtual trial capabilities, growth of KGK’s regulatory services, and continued expansion of its commercial organization. Founder and CEO Najla Guthrie and the existing management team will continue to lead the business.

“For nearly three decades, KGK has been committed to helping consumer nutrition companies generate the scientific evidence needed to bring innovative products to market. This investment marks an exciting new chapter for our company. Maxim shares our long-term vision and brings the strategic resources and sector experience to help us expand our capabilities, invest in our team, and better serve our clients around the world,” said Najla Guthrie, Founder and CEO of KGK Science Inc.

“KGK has built a differentiated platform with an outstanding reputation for scientific rigor, regulatory expertise, and customer service. As demand for clinically validated consumer nutrition products continues to grow, we believe KGK is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on those long-term industry trends. We are excited to partner with Najla and the management team to support the company’s next phase of growth,” said Gregg Wilson, Founder & Managing Partner of Maxim Partners.

MLT Aikins (www.mltaikins.com) was the legal advisor to Maxim Partners on the transaction.

About KGK Science

Founded in 1997 and headquartered in London, Ontario, KGK Science Inc. is a full-service contract research organization specializing in the nutraceutical and natural health products industry. KGK designs and conducts human clinical trials, provides regulatory and claim substantiation expertise, and supports preclinical development, giving consumer health brands the evidence they need to differentiate their products and reach global markets with confidence. For more information, visit kgkscience.com.

About Maxim Partners

Maxim Partners is a Chicago-based investment firm dedicated to backing founders and managers seeking to impact lives through nutrition, nutraceuticals, functional foods, fitness, recreation, pets, personal care, and education. Maxim helps entrepreneurial leaders accelerate growth through capital, operational support, and deep sector expertise. For more information, visit www.maximpartnersllc.com.

SOURCE Maxim Partners

The latest episode of “The Opus Open Kitchen” podcast shares capital raising best practices from one of the world’s top placement agents.

NEW YORK, July 27, 2026 — Opus Fund Services, a leading global fund administrator, announced a new episode of the “Opus Open Kitchen”, an alternative investments industry podcast focused on challenges and opportunities impacting fund managers and investors.

In the recent release, “Discovering Alpha”, host Leo LaForce sits down with the Founding Partner of Old City Investment Partners, Seth Damski, and Managing Director Avi Sage, who share valuable insights and lessons learned while placing more than $20 billion of institutional capita with clients over the past two decades, including:

• How niche strategies play an important role in investors’ portfolios
• Attributes of fund managers who differentiate during due diligence
• Advice for building meaningful long-term relationships with investors
• “Uncommon Ideas” coming out of the Alpha on the Delta 2026 conference
• What’s next in Old City Investment Partners’ continuing growth story

“We thank Seth and Avi at Old City Investment Partners, both for sharing their expertise and for being a long-time Opus administration client” said LaForce. “Our conversation together stressed the importance of integrity, alignment of interests, infrastructure quality, and listening closely to each investor’s specific priorities as key ingredients for success in today’s ultra-competitive fundraising environment.”

The Opus Open Kitchen podcast brings listeners unique perspectives from special guests at some of the world’s leading allocators, capital raisers, consultants, and managers across key themes shaping the alternative investments industry. The latest episode, “Discovering Alpha”, is available now on:

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-alpha/id1872499401?i=1000778036903

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ApShDmY578qjBK3rRDbuG?si=bJVytPH5RCKCfZ9uDRzByA

About Opus Fund Services

Opus Fund Services is an award-winning independent global fund administrator currently servicing over 625+ alternative investment managers of all strategies, 1,200+ funds, and 100,000+ investors worldwide. Opus pioneered the use of intelligent automations, solving for the industry challenges and operational risks that traditional administration could not. Opus’ industry-first Digital Back Office continues to transform the controls, scale, and transparency available to support and protect fund managers and investors. For further information visit www.opusfundservices.com and follow Opus on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Leo LaForce, Opus Fund Services: [email protected].

About Old City Investment Partners

Old City Investment Partners was founded in New York City in 2006, and during the last twenty years has been instrumental to the emergence and growth of many best-in-class private credit, private equity, real asset, and hedge fund managers. The firm has placed over $20 billion of institutional capital with its clients, and is known for consistent sourcing of differentiated investments, it’s long-standing investor relationships, and its collaborative, thoughtful approach to capital formation. For more information visit www.oldcitycapital.com and follow Old City on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Ansley Sobel, Old City Investment Partners: [email protected]

SOURCE Opus Fund Services

FARNBOROUGH, England, July 23, 2026 — Pelico, the manufacturing orchestration platform powering factory operations for the world’s leading industrial companies, today announced a strategic investment from AE Ventures, the venture capital platform of AE Industrial Partners — a private investment firm focused on national security, aerospace and industrial services. The investment was announced at the Farnborough International Airshow; financial terms were not disclosed.

The investment goes well beyond capital. As the venture arm of the leading aerospace and defense investment platform, AE Ventures plugs Pelico directly into the sector’s core ecosystem — its OEMs, suppliers and operators — including AE Industrial’s portfolio companies and network of strategic limited partners, and accelerates Pelico’s expansion across North America. As manufacturers confront historic backlogs and multi-tier supply chain complexity, Pelico’s AI-powered platform gives factory teams a single operational picture to anticipate disruptions, prioritize what matters and act in hours instead of weeks. Manufacturers including Boeing, Safran and Daikin have deployed Pelico in as little as 12 weeks, reporting on average a 40% reduction in parts shortages, a 15% improvement in on-time delivery and a 40% reduction in cycle times.

Pelico’s momentum also extends into aerospace sustainment, where shop-floor execution directly affects fleet readiness: Boeing Global Services is already using Pelico to connect planning, supply and execution teams around a shared operational picture in complex maintenance and repair operations.

“Aerospace ramp-up is won or lost on the factory floor,” said Tarik Benabdallah, CEO and co-founder, Pelico. “Partnering with AE Ventures plugs Pelico into the heart of the aerospace and defense ecosystem and gives us the reach to scale across North America. From production to sustainment — including work already underway with Boeing Global Services — this is a partnership to help the industry deliver.”

“The bottleneck in aerospace today is execution — turning order books into deliveries,” said Tyler Rowe, Partner, AE Ventures. “Pelico has proven with the industry’s most demanding manufacturers that orchestration moves the needle where it counts. We’re backing the team and partnering to bring the platform across our network.”

About Pelico

Pelico is the manufacturing orchestration platform that empowers factory teams to anticipate disruptions, align priorities and execute at speed. Founded in Paris in 2019 by Tarik Benabdallah, Mamoun Alaoui and Jonathan Hickson, Pelico is deployed by global manufacturers including Boeing, Safran and Daikin. Learn more at www.pelico.ai.

About AE Industrial Partners

AE Ventures is the venture capital platform of AE Industrial Partners, a private investment firm with $9.0 billion of assets under management as of March 31, 2026, focused on highly specialized markets including national security, aerospace and industrials. AE Ventures has completed over 50 investments in early-stage companies that benefit from the deep industry knowledge, operating experience, and network of relationships across the sectors where the firm invests.

Media Contact: Ina Foalea – Chief of Staff, Pelico — [email protected] — +1 (786) 820-2649

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/3007318/Pelico__Logo.jpg

With AI-generated email attacks up 5x in a single year and FBI-reported cybercrime losses hitting a record $20.8 billion, former Google reCAPTCHA and Safe Browsing leaders are scaling the first defense built for a world where no employee and no amount of training can spot the lure

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2026 — AegisAI, the email security company building its own large language models (LLMs) to defend the inbox, today announced a $36 million Series A led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel and Foundation Capital, to fight the next generation of increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered email attacks, which are having devastating consequences for individuals and organizations.

The round brings the company’s total funding to $49 million, less than a year after the company emerged from stealth. AegisAI will use the funding to scale its fleet of autonomous defense agents, accelerate general availability of Vanguard, its agent that hunts threats beyond the inbox, and expand enterprise go-to-market.

AI has enabled a new form of attack dubbed AI spear phishing. These attacks use LLMs to scan the internet for information about a victim and create highly targeted personalized lures designed to trick people into sharing sensitive data, downloading malware or sending money. This risk is turbocharged by the rising use of AI by individuals and workers. More widespread use of AI agents, which do work on someone’s behalf without human involvement, creates a huge new attack surface for criminals, who may be able to operate undetected for long periods of time.

AegisAI’s technology works by leveraging intelligent language models and an orchestrated network of AI agents to analyze and act on email threats in real time, essentially fighting AI attacks with AI. The company’s adaptive platform uses sophisticated reasoning to evaluate the specific intent of suspicious emails, instead of simply looking for patterns from past scams. This enables users to more quickly detect fraud, which is critical as the volume of email phishing has increased dramatically since the launch of ChatGPT.

“The most immediate, catastrophic risk to your organization isn’t an AI agent hacking your firewall. It’s an AI model manipulating someone in your organization into handing over the keys, often through the most trusted, most vulnerable contact of the person it’s targeting,” said Cy Khormaee, co-founder and CEO of AegisAI. “You cannot patch human trust. If your security program still relies on template-based phishing tests and awareness training, you are training your people to spot last year’s threat, not a capable agent crafting a novel lure just for them. When the attack is AI, the defense has to be AI.”

The future of phishing is perfection
For decades, the real defense against targeted spear phishing was the effort it required. Researching a target, mapping their relationships, impersonating a trusted vendor and timing the lure all took a skilled human operator – a capability reserved for nation-states. Today, that capability costs about the price of a cup of coffee. Off-the-shelf AI can autonomously pull public information on a human target, map their professional relationships, identify their most trusting contact, then craft a flawless, context-aware lure, at unlimited scale.

The evidence of spear phishing’s rise is now unambiguous. AegisAI’s State of the AI Threat in Email study, presented at the 2026 M3AAWG conference and based on analysis of more than 20,000 phishing, scam and malware emails, found:

• 5x growth in one year. AI-generated spear phishing grew from 2.8% to 13.9% of all observed phishing in 2025.
• 75% more effective. AI-generated emails evade traditional filters at nearly double the rate of human-written attacks, reaching the inbox more than half the time.
• Authentication is no defense. 72.6% of successful AI attacks passed email authentication, sent from compromised legitimate accounts with established sending histories.

The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report tells the same story from the victim’s side. Reported cybercrime losses reached a record $20.8 billion last year. Phishing complaint volume stayed essentially flat – but the losses those complaints represent surged more than 200% in a single year, from roughly $70 million to more than $215 million. Precision has replaced volume. Business email compromise, payload-less attacks that exploit identity rather than software, accounted for $11.64 billion in losses, versus less than $52 million for ransomware and malware combined: a 365-to-1 ratio.

AI vs. AI
The security industry spends enormous energy debating advanced autonomous agents that chain minor technical vulnerabilities into major exploits. AegisAI argues the same capability has already arrived at the human layer and it is the more immediate threat.

AegisAI was founded in 2025 by Khormaee and Ryan Luo, veterans of Google’s core security group who helped build reCAPTCHA, Safe Browsing and Web Risk, systems that protect billions of users daily. Instead of scanning for known-bad signatures, AegisAI deploys autonomous AI agents inside the inbox that interrogate the intent and identity behind every message, catching linguistically perfect attacks that pass every technical check, while cutting false positives by up to 90% compared to traditional solutions.

With Vanguard, announced in March, those agents now extend beyond the inbox. When a message is flagged, Vanguard follows suspicious links and attachments across the open web just as a user would – defeating adversarial CAPTCHAs, cloaked pages and weaponized documents – and returns a complete threat report in minutes.

“Email is where enterprise trust lives and generative AI just broke every assumption legacy email security was built on,” said Dharmesh Thakker, general partner at Battery Ventures. “When attacks are machine-generated, personalized and indistinguishable from legitimate mail, the only viable defense is an equally capable AI operating at machine speed. Cy and Ryan spent a decade building exactly these systems at Google scale. They’re the team we’d back to win this market.”

Since its public launch in September 2025, AegisAI has deployed with dozens of customers across fintech and technology, including:

• Mesh, a crypto payments company, where AegisAI’s agents catch everything from fuzzing attempts to AI-generated spear phishing and business email compromise without the security team spending time managing rules.
• LangChain, one of the most visible companies in AI and a prime target for sophisticated, AI-generated attacks given its public-facing engineers and executives.
• Lokker, where AegisAI caught an attack that came through compromised Salesforce infrastructure. This threat had nothing to do with a bad link or attachment, just a trusted vendor’s own systems being used against them.

About AegisAI

AegisAI, the email security company building its own LLMs to defend the inbox, is headquartered in San Francisco. Founded by the team behind Google’s reCAPTCHA, Safe Browsing and Web Risk, AegisAI deploys autonomous AI agents that defend organizations against AI-crafted phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and evasive payloads that slip past traditional filters. With $49 million in capital raised to date, AegisAI is backed by Battery Ventures, Accel and Foundation Capital. Learn more at aegisai.ai.

SOURCE AegisAI