Berkeley-rooted company unveils algorithmic neuroscience platform for political polling, messaging, fundraising and voter persuasion

BERKELEY, Calif., Sept. 1, 2026 — Amygdala Corp., www.amygdala.com, whose technology successfully predicted a key upset in recent Wisconsin primaries, is bringing a disruptive new technology platform to politics: Algorithmic Neuroscience.

Built on technology developed by neuroscience and engineering teams with Berkeley roots, Amygdala is pioneering NeuroPolitics — the application of neuroscience to political strategy.

“We had tremendous success applying neuromarketing to some of America’s leading brands,” said Dr. A.K. Pradeep, Amygdala chairman and co-founder. “Now we are taking those neuroscience insights from brand and market competition and applying them to something even more consequential: helping candidates win elections.”

Amygdala is built on cutting-edge science and engineering. Dr. A. K. Pradeep’s latest foundational work on neural state reduction becoming reportable thought has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Frontiers of Computational Neuroscience, a multidisciplinary journal that focuses on the theoretical modeling of brain function.

The company draws on a team with decades of neuromarketing experience with major global brands to model how voters respond at a non-conscious level. Its technology focuses on two powerful neural systems: the limbic mechanisms underlying threat and emotional response, and the brain mechanisms that create Desire.

Pradeep previously founded NeuroFocus, which was acquired by Nielsen (NiQ) and became a global leader in neuromarketing. Amygdala applies these principles across political messaging, polling, voter-level issue framing and fundraising. The platform is already being deployed in congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative races across the Midwest.

Its synthetic polling moves beyond conventional digital personas. Amygdala creates neuroscience-grounded Dynamic Digital Twins using neurographic profiles of real voters. The approach combines neural-state modeling to deliver polling that is faster, less expensive and designed to capture the forces underlying voter choice.

“NeuroPolitics models what voters actually feel beneath conscious reporting — not simply what they say,” said Devin Pracar, Amygdala co-founder and VP of Product.

Amygdala continues expanding its leadership network. The company recently added Caroline Winnett, executive director of SkyDeck, the startup ecosystem of U.C. Berkeley to its advisory board. She joins the board that includes veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, and political strategist Alex Shashlo.

“We are assembling extraordinary expertise across politics, neuroscience, technology and entrepreneurship,” said Dr. Robert Tatterson, CEO of Amygdala. “The sky is the limit for Amygdala as a company, and the field of NeuroPolitics.”

About Amygdala

Amygdala is a political technology company at the intersection of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and political strategy. Its NeuroPolitics platform uses Algorithmic Neuroscience to understand non-conscious voter response, generate advanced polling insights, optimize political messaging and help campaigns turn voter understanding into electoral advantage.

Contact:
Mike Smith
Chief Political Officer
Amygdala
[email protected]
703-623-3834

SOURCE Amygdala

Building on its U.S. equities offering, Binance expands access to options on selected U.S. stocks and ETFs

ABU DHABI, UAE, Sept. 1, 2026 — Binance today announced it will begin offering options on 1,000+ selected U.S. stocks and ETFs through Nest Trading Limited, its Abu Dhabi Global Market-regulated broker-dealer. Nest Trading Limited acts as introducing broker, routing orders to Alpaca Securities LLC (dba Alpaca Clearing), a U.S.-registered self-clearing broker-dealer, for execution, clearing, settlement, and custody.

The launch builds on Binance’s existing U.S. equities offering, which includes 7,000+ stocks and ETFs through Nest Trading Limited’s partnership with Alpaca, and complements equity-linked perpetual futures listed on Binance’s Recognized Investment Exchange. In addition to its crypto offerings, users can access stocks, ETFs, bStocks (tokenized securities), equity-linked perpetuals, and now stock options from a single Binance account.

Binance does not offer these products to U.S. users. Through its global, regulated broker structure and partnership with Alpaca, it is expanding access to U.S.-listed equities and related products for eligible users outside the country, helping broaden participation in the world’s largest equity market. Binance data showed users in emerging markets accounted for more than 80% of direct stock trading volume during the first week of launch.

Demand for traditional financial (“TradFi”) products on Binance has grown significantly. TradFi perpetual futures volume on Binance reached approximately $433.4 billion in August 2026, roughly 15x January’s $29.5 billion. Equity-linked perpetuals accounted for approximately 79% of Binance’s TradFi perpetuals activity in August, with equity-linked perpetual volume reaching approximately $342.9 billion, representing over 800x growth from January’s $410.9 million and underscoring the growing role of equity exposure within the platform’s derivatives offerings.

“Stock options are an important next step in Binance’s evolution into a fuller multi-asset platform,” commented Shunyet Jan, Head of Exchange and Trading at Binance. “By adding options on selected U.S. stocks and ETFs, we are expanding the tools available to users who want to participate in equity markets, manage exposure, and access strategies that have historically been offered through traditional brokers — all from one Binance account.”

Key highlights:

• Expanded multi-asset experience: Stock options complement Binance’s existing crypto and TradFi offerings, giving eligible users access to a broader range of products through a single Binance account. Fees are primarily paid in USDC, with support for BNB, USDT, USD1, and $U, subject to availability.
• Physically-settled U.S. stock options: Upon exercise, users receive or deliver the underlying shares of supported U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, held in custody by Alpaca on behalf of Binance users. Exercise requests can be submitted up to 30 minutes before the expiry.
• More tools for market access and risk management: Eligible users can use options to express market views, hedge positions, and manage exposure. Retail users eligible for options trading will be able to buy calls and puts, where maximum potential loss is limited to the premium paid.
• Regulated framework: Stock options will be operated through Binance’s ADGM-regulated broker-dealer, with orders executed, cleared, and custodied by Alpaca Clearing, a US-registered self-clearing broker-dealer and FINRA member.

Additional stock options listings are expected over time. For most U.S. stock options, regular trading hours run from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM ET. Certain ETF and ETN options are subject to late-close exceptions and may continue trading until 4:15 PM ET.

Binance will maintain applicable onboarding, compliance controls, education, and risk disclosures consistent with its ADGM-regulated operations.

Disclaimer: The products and services referred to herein may be restricted in certain jurisdictions or regions or to certain users, in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements. These materials are intended only for those users who are permitted to access and receive the products and services referred to and are not intended for users to whom restrictions apply.

Nest Trading Limited (“NTL”) acts as your introducing broker and routes your orders for Securities and Stock Options to its clearing broker partner, Alpaca Securities LLC (dba Alpaca Clearing), for execution, clearing, settlement and custody. Alpaca Clearing does not clear or settle futures transactions. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options. NTL does not handle or custody your Securities.

Stock Options are contracts that give you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell the underlying Securities at a specified price on or before a specified expiration date. You pay a Premium to acquire this right. Stock Options do not represent ownership of the underlying Securities. Stock Options can be exercised at any time before the cut-off time on the relevant expiration date. You are solely responsible for monitoring your open Stock Option positions and determining whether to exercise them. To exercise a Stock Option, you must submit an exercise instruction through the Binance Platform. If you do not submit an exercise instruction before the cut-off, your Stock Option will be subject to auto-liquidation, meaning that your position will be sold on a best-efforts basis before the close of trading. Your Stock Option may expire without value and you may lose the entire Premium paid. Even if your Stock Option is in-the-money at expiration, it will not be automatically exercised unless you have submitted an exercise instruction.

Stock Options are subject to high market and liquidity risk and price volatility. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. Stock Options are only available for trading during regular market hours. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and to the extent permitted by applicable law, neither NTL nor its affiliates shall be liable for any losses you may incur. Past performance is not a reliable predictor of future performance. Before trading, you should make an independent assessment of the appropriateness of the transaction in light of your own objectives and circumstances, including the risks and potential benefits. You should not trade Stock Options unless you understand the nature of the product, including how options are exercised, the risks of auto-liquidation and the consequences of failing to act before the relevant cut-off time. Consult your own advisers, where appropriate. This information should not be construed as financial or investment advice. NTL may receive payment for order flow remuneration for directing your orders. To learn more about how to protect yourself, visit our Responsible Trading page. For more information, see our Terms of Use, Stock Options Trading Product Terms, Securities Trading Product Terms and Risk Warning.

About Binance
Binance is a leading global blockchain ecosystem behind the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and registered users. Binance is trusted by more than 320 million people in 100+ countries for its industry-leading security, transparency, trading engine speed, protections for investors, and unmatched portfolio of digital asset products and offerings from trading and finance to education, research, social good, payments, institutional services, and Web3 features. Binance is devoted to building an inclusive crypto ecosystem to increase the freedom of money and financial access for people around the world with crypto as the fundamental means. For more information, visit: https://www.binance.com.

Newlight’s retrofit transforms existing diesel engines into intelligent hybrid energy systems, combining hydrogen with AI-guided real-time combustion control to enable significantly higher energy efficiency and lower emissions.

The voyage represents a major commercial milestone for Newlight and the maritime industry. It marks Newlight’s transition into multi-vessel deployment while demonstrating a new pathway for the future of maritime energy.

Based on the measured performance, the system is projected to save similar vessels $500,000 annually, with a payback period for the technology of under 18 months.

“In a world where energy demand is accelerating, from global trade and shipping to AI and data centers, getting more useful work out of every unit of energy is becoming increasingly important. That is exactly where Newlight fits. We are building a new energy layer for the diesel engines already powering the global economy, making them materially more efficient and cleaner without requiring them to be replaced,” said Haran Cohen Hillel, Co-Founder and CEO of Newlight. “The vessel didn’t need to change how it operated. We simply gave its existing engine a way to do more, and it did so successfully across thousands of miles at sea.”

Commercial Traction

Newlight has signed commercial agreements covering 12 vessels across multiple shipping companies, with broader fleet rollouts planned for next year.

Newlight’s partners throughout this journey include lomarlabs, Undeterred Capital, CiRi Ventures, Fusion VC, BIRD Energy, AURELIA, and RINA.

“Our lomarlabs vision is to support novel ways of increasing energy efficiency and reducing shipborne emissions. When we first connected with Newlight we were drawn by the promise that its technology could cut fuel and emissions at cost levels that appeared commercially viable and sustainable,” said Stylianos Papageorgiou, Managing Director at lomarlabs. “We then admitted Newlight into our Compass Programme and became an investor to put that promise to the test. This voyage has demonstrated that hydrogen can safely be managed and used onboard, to enhance the combustion of HFO and reduce emissions. It therefore provides a new pathway for sustained compliance within the IMO 2050 framework for existing and aging vessels.”

A Retrofit, Not a Replacement

Newlight’s retrofit approach – installed in one to two weeks on traditional diesel engine vessels in the water, without needing to drydock – allows operators to start cutting both fuel costs and emissions immediately, without having to wait for delivery of a newbuilding vessel or a global alternative-fuel infrastructure that doesn’t exist at scale and likely will not be commercially available for years to come. Vessels can also continue operating during installation so there is no downtime.

Unlike ammonia- or methanol-based alternatives, which require vessels to depend entirely on a new fuel, Newlight’s system injects a small proportion of hydrogen into a ship’s existing diesel combustion process. A real-time controller anticipates each combustion cycle milliseconds in advance, continuously optimizing hydrogen injection pressure and volume as engine load, speed, and operating conditions change.

The system also allows vessels to run on diesel alone if hydrogen isn’t available, removing the infrastructure dependency and risk that has traditionally slowed down adoption of other alternative-fuel systems in shipping. The Newlight system has received regulatory approval from RINA, the globally recognized classification and regulation society, which also named the company the winner of its Hydrogen Innovation Award.

An Industry Under Pressure to Change

Global shipping moves more than 80% of world trade by volume and burns an estimated 250–300 million tons of fuel a year, at a cost of over $150 billion annually – typically comprising about half of all costs and the largest single line item in a vessel’s operating budget.

Moreover, EU carbon emissions penalties now add an estimated €1.3 million in annual costs per ship. Global fuel instability and energy dependence – evidenced most recently by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and dramatically reduced traffic through the Suez Canal – further compound the pressures of surging fuel and regulatory costs.

About Newlight

Newlight is a maritime energy company developing hydrogen injection systems for large commercial vessels. Led by co-founders Haran Cohen Hillel and Evyatar Cohen – former senior naval officers with engineering and management experience – Newlight’s mission is to accelerate the transition of the maritime industry towards cost-effective sustainable energy. Its hydrogen injection diesel engine retrofit has been proven to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by over 20% on long-range commercial voyages.

About lomarlabs

lomarlabs is a venture catalyst with a proven track record of advancing pioneering technologies across the maritime industry. Drawing on five decades of operational expertise from Lomar, its ship-owning and management parent company, it works alongside start-ups and innovators to develop, test, and scale solutions that support the decarbonisation, automation, and transformation of global shipping.

The lomarlabs Compass Programme provides the route from early validation to onboard deployment, supporting maritime deep-tech start-ups as they move from controlled environments into live commercial operations.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/3008921/Newlight_Vessel.jpg

Media Contact

Zack Rothbart, Concrete Media
[email protected]

SOURCE Newlight

AMSTERDAM, Sept. 1, 2026 — DataSnipper, the agentic platform for audit and finance, today announced that Standish Management, a leading fund administrator serving private equity, venture capital, and other alternative investment funds, is leveraging DataSnipper’s AI Agents as part of its broader technology strategy to increase efficiency across its fund administration workflow.

As fund structures, reporting requirements, and investor expectations grow in complexity, Standish continues to invest in people, processes, and technology that support scalable, high-quality fund administration. Using DataSnipper’s Agentic platform, Standish has developed AI agents to work together with its highly experienced teams to automate certain tasks across processes such as investor relations, journal entries, workflow tracking, and reporting. For Standish and its clients, DataSnipper’s AI Agents enable its teams to provide enhanced value to clients through greater efficiency, faster turnaround times, greater insights, and enhanced quality.  In addition, it enables Standish’s industry leading experts to spend more time engaging with clients as thought partners.   

Working inside the native files and workflows teams already use, DataSnipper automates document-intensive processes without requiring teams to fundamentally change how they work. The platform keeps traceable links to the source document behind each figure, then matches, extracts, and compares the data, so Standish’s teams perform reviews efficiently, while preserving appropriate controls in a manner consistent with Standish’s proven, time-tested processes.

With DataSnipper’s human in the loop approach, a Standish expert stays in control at every judgment point, and every result links back to its exact source document. For a firm whose name goes on everything it sends to clients, the traceability that DataSnipper provides is what lets its teams verify and stand behind their work.

 “Our goal is not to replace expertise with automation. It’s to give our team better tools,” said Linda Jones, Managing Director and Co-Head of Client Solutions & Technology at Standish Management. “By reducing time spent on manual data gathering and validation, our teams can focus more attention on analysis, oversight, and responsiveness to our clients. We see DataSnipper as a way to enhance the client experience while maintaining the high standards of quality and accountability that define our service model,” added Alexa O’Hare, Managing Director and Co-Head of Client Solutions & Technology at Standish Management.

How Standish Management Is Using DataSnipper

As part of its broader investment in technology and operational excellence, Standish is putting DataSnipper’s AI Agents to support a number of workflow-specific activities within its fund administration operations. These are the high-volume, document-heavy tasks that run through a fund administrator every day, from extracting and validating incoming data to reconciling records and preparing information for review and reporting. Using DataSnipper’s Agent Builder, the firm has turned its procedures into reusable agents its teams can run firmwide. As the agents take on the repetitive work in bulk, Standish’s people get more time for the review, judgment, and client service the firm is known for.

“Standish is exactly the kind of forward-thinking firm we love to work with,” said Vidya Peters, CEO of DataSnipper. ” They saw how much AI could do for the speed and quality of the work they deliver to clients, and they’ve built over 50 agents across their fund administration process   They are among the first fund administrators to adopt agents at this scale, while keeping their people in control of every result. We’re proud to support Standish’s team as they raise the bar for clients.”

As more firms weigh how to bring AI into their work, Standish is at the forefront of embedding AI into its fund administration workflows in a responsible manner: agents working across the process, people accountable for every result. As the first fund administrator to work with DataSnipper to build agents, and a DataSnipper design partner, the firm will keep expanding its use of AI Agents and help put new capabilities to work first.

Learn more about DataSnipper’s agentic platform for audit and finance at datasnipper.com.

About DataSnipper

DataSnipper is the agentic platform transforming audit and finance. Powered by AI Agents, DataSnipper helps professionals reduce manual work, accelerate document analysis, and streamline complex workflows while maintaining full transparency and control. Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, global enterprises, and all Big Four accounting firms, DataSnipper is used by professionals across 175 countries. In 2025, the company delivered more than $1.4B in productivity savings to its customers.

About Standish Management

Standish is the leading independent provider of fund administration and related services to the private capital industry. With more than 1,200 professionals across 19 offices in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, Standish provides comprehensive solutions for Fund Sponsors, including: fund administration, management company, tax, compliance, as well as corporate and depositary services for its clients in Europe. The firm supports over 500 clients with over $850 billion in assets under administration and serves all major alternative asset classes.

Media Contact
Chloe Shoobridge
(+31) 20 211 76 54
[email protected]

SOURCE DataSnipper

PSI launches with $58M in seed funding to industrialize physics discovery at machine scale, starting with a founding role in the first privately funded interstellar space mission and productization of its platform for optimizing terrestrial and orbital data centers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 1, 2026 — Matt Pines, Alex Klokus, and Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross today launched Physical Superintelligence (PSI) to build the world’s most advanced physics research lab, creating higher-fidelity world models, engineering physical systems beyond human design, and ultimately discovering new physical laws of our universe. PSI’s vision statement is here: https://psi.inc/

PSI also announced $58 million in seed funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, joined by Dragon Global, Robot Ventures, Solari, Susa, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Valkyrie, Balaji Srinivasan, Anthony Scaramucci, and individual investors from OpenAI, NVIDIA, SoftBank Energy, Oracle, Hugging Face, JUMP Capital, and the a16z Scout Fund. As an initial proof point for its technology, PSI is productizing a portion of its core platform, Emmy (named for renowned physicist Amalie Emmy Noether) for terrestrial and orbital data center optimization.

“PSI aims to industrialize the discovery of new physics,” said CEO and Co-founder Matt Pines. “Today, that means giving our customers a measurable edge to design and run their data centers more efficiently. Tomorrow, it means going after physics problems that have been untouched for decades. Our job is to make that kind of ambition affordable and scalable again for our customers and to genuinely change what’s possible for humanity.”

“AI has the potential to fundamentally change the pace of scientific discovery, and physics is one of the areas where that impact could be profound,” said Carmichael Roberts at Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “PSI is bringing together a world-class team with the ambition and technical depth to turn that potential into real breakthroughs and unlock new possibilities across energy, computing, materials and other foundational technologies as they build a new model for how physics research gets done.”

Emmy is the lab’s team of virtual physicists, built on PSI’s sovereign reasoning engine and a large, curated inventory of simulations. Where a human physicist carries one mental model of a system, Emmy constructs higher-fidelity world models, decomposes hard research problems into trees of verifiable hypotheses, and tests them in parallel at a scale no human research team can match. Directed at open scientific problems, Emmy discovers new physics the way physics demands: following a problem to its logical end and verifying every step until the conclusion is undeniable.

The first commercial application is AI data centers and AI factories, terrestrial and orbital. Emmy uses physics-native reasoning and simulation to solve multiphysics design problems (power, cooling, network, compute) whose interactions are too coupled for the slow, manual engineering iterations they require today. The result is infrastructure engineered beyond what human design cycles can reach: optimized before construction, and retrofitted for gains in facilities already running.

PSI is the founding technical partner for the Fermi Explorer Mission, the first AI-planned interstellar mission to Alpha Centauri. PSI validated the mission’s physics, identified a substantially more efficient trajectory within the mission’s mass and budget constraints, and will contribute additional scientific instrumentation to extract greater research value from the flight.

The seed funding supports PSI’s operations as a focused, long-term research and development engine, backing work on foundational physics discoveries that have the potential to reshape humanity. It will be used to:

• Continue recruiting a world-class team: bringing together researchers, scientists, and engineers across physics and AI who want to solve genuinely new physics to benefit humanity
• Build the core Emmy platform: advancing the models, simulation, infrastructure, and verification systems its virtual physicists need to generate, test, and prove physics hypotheses at machine scale
• Pursue directed progress on the world’s most commercially and scientifically valuable discoveries across the energy-to-compute stack, from novel sensing to novel compute substrates, with the ambition of discovering new physical laws of our universe.

PSI is a team of physicists, AI researchers, experimentalists, and builders from the world’s leading companies and scientific institutions, and is hiring people who want to create the next era of physics discovery to benefit all of humanity. To learn more or apply, visit: https://psi.inc/

About PSI:

PSI is an AI-native physics lab staffed by virtual physicists, creating higher-fidelity world models, engineering physical systems beyond human design, and ultimately discovering new physical laws of our universe. To learn more or apply, visit: https://psi.inc/

Media contact: [email protected] 

SOURCE Physical Superintelligence

Funding will scale Odyssey’s platform in regions including Asia, Africa, and Latin America

BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 1, 2026 — Odyssey Energy Solutions, the leading platform for financing distributed renewable energy (DRE) projects in emerging markets, today announced $74 million in new financing. The funding consists of a $27 million equity round and $47 million in debt. New equity investors include Broadscale Group, FMO, and Al Mada Ventures, with continued participation from existing investors including Union Square Ventures, Equal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Twelve Below, FJ Labs, MCJ, and Transition Ventures. Debt financiers include British International Investment, BIO, the Facility for Energy Inclusion represented by Cygnum Capital and the Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund represented by TripleJump.

The financing will support continued expansion of Odyssey’s platform, which connects more than 6,000 solar installers and engineering, procurement, and construction companies (EPCs) with financiers and equipment suppliers in more than 50 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, facilitating access to $3.6 billion in capital for distributed energy projects. Odyssey’s procurement platform, launched in 2024, aggregates equipment procurement across its large network of EPCs, offering these small-to-medium sized companies access to volume pricing with embedded supply chain credit. The platform has unlocked 1.5 GW of projects to date.

“The focus of financing for distributed renewable energy has historically been on post-construction capital—funding that flows once a project is built,” said Emily McAteer, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey Energy Solutions. “That has left a significant gap upstream, where thousands of small and medium EPCs and installers lack the working capital needed to procure equipment, complete construction, and unlock customer payments. Odyssey bridges this gap directly, providing companies with the equipment pricing and financing they need to accelerate project delivery.”

The announcement comes at a moment of accelerating demand for distributed renewable energy across Odyssey’s core markets. Falling solar and battery costs, rising oil prices, and evolving government policy have converged to make the unit economics of distributed solar materially stronger than fossil-fuel alternatives. In Nigeria, where diesel backup generators supply more electricity than grid-connected power plants, according to the International Finance Corporation, diesel prices rose more than 93% between February and April 2026 following supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. In India, where Odyssey’s platform has grown 205% over the past 12 months, new domestic manufacturing requirements for solar components are reshaping supply chains and driving demand for the procurement and financing infrastructure that Odyssey provides. Rapid data center construction across India, driven by rising AI compute demand, is further increasing electricity demand at a pace grid infrastructure is struggling to meet, adding urgency to distributed solar and storage as a complement to centralized power supply.

“Distributed solar in emerging markets has reached a watershed moment,” said Andrew Shapiro, founder and Managing Partner at Broadscale Group. “The demand is there, the economics work, and the remaining constraint to deployment at massive scale is access to capital and procurement infrastructure for installers. That is exactly what Odyssey provides and why we’re thrilled to support the company as they enable this critically important growth.”

“Having worked across distributed energy finance in India and emerging markets, I’ve seen firsthand both the scale of the opportunity and the barriers that have held the sector back,” said Piyush Mathur, co-founder and Managing Director of Odyssey Energy Solutions. “Today, the conditions for rapid deployment of clean energy have never been stronger. EPCs and distributed energy developers are growing at unprecedented rates, creating an urgent need for the procurement, financing, and technology infrastructure that can enable them to scale. That is the gap Odyssey is uniquely filling.”

The new capital will allow for expansion of Odyssey’s procurement platform, which aggregates equipment orders across smaller buyers to improve supplier terms and offers embedded supply chain credit. Given high demand from commercial and industrial customers for solar and storage solutions, installers typically have a much larger order book than they can supply at a given time due to working capital constraints. Procuring through Odyssey allows these companies to procure and construct more projects at once, accelerating project deployment.

The recent funding follows Odyssey’s $15M Series A, announced in May 2023, bringing the total capital raised by the company to $94M. The company is also among the inaugural portfolio partners of Multiplier, an advisory firm co-founded by Jigar Shah and Jonathan Silver, both former directors of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.

About Odyssey Energy Solutions
Odyssey Energy Solutions is accelerating the clean energy transition in emerging markets. The platform connects more than 6,000 distributed energy companies with financiers and equipment suppliers across India, Africa, Latin America, and more than 50 countries worldwide, facilitating access to $3.6 billion in capital. Learn more at odysseyenergysolutions.com.

SOURCE Odyssey Energy Solutions

SHANGHAI, Sept. 1, 2026 — Mech-Mind Robotics, a portfolio company of Qiming Venture Partners and a global-leading robobrain company, successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 1, 2026 Beijing time and became the first listed embodied intelligence “Eye-Brain-Hand” company, marking the tenth IPO for Qiming Venture Partners this year. Mech-Mind Robotics (09615. HK) issued its shares at a price of HK$101.7 per share with a market capitalization of HK$12.71 billion.

Qiming Venture Partners exclusively invested in the Round A+ financing of Mech-Mind Robotics in early 2019, accompanying the firm in its development all the way. Before Mech-Mind Robotics’ IPO, Qiming Venture Partners held a 7.38 percent stake in the firm and is one of the firm’s leading senior independent investors under the Chapter 18C of the Listing Rules of the HKEX.

Founded in 2016, Mech-Mind Robotics (Mech-Mind means robobrain) is one of the few technology companies in the world that has achieved cross-industry, cross-scenario and cross-regional large-scale implementation of physical AI relying on intelligent robot technologies. Different from most robot manufacturers, Mech-Mind Robotics does not produce robots, but provides “Eye-Brain-Hand” standardized intelligent components — Mech Eye industrial 3D cameras responsible for perception, Mech-GPT multimodal embodied large models responsible for decision-making, and Mech-Hand dexterous hands responsible for execution.

As of June 15, 2026, Mech-Mind Robotics has deployed over 29,000 units of its products globally, which have been used in more than 50 typical scenarios in dozens of industries, handled over 100,000 types of goods, and served more than 100 Fortune Global 500 companies, including CATL, BYD, Midea, and Foxconn.

Calculated by revenue in 2025, Mech-Mind Robotics’ market share in the global “AI+3D vision guided general intelligent robot components” market is about 22.1 percent, ranking first; Calculated by shipments, the firm’s global market share exceeds 27 percent, larger than the sum of its four largest rivals ranking after the firm. In addition, the firm has the highest market share in China, Japan, and North America, and is one of the market leaders in Southeast Asia, Europe, and South Korea.

“The integration of artificial intelligence and robotics is one of the greatest opportunities of our time. Seizing this opportunity requires not a brainwave of a few geniuses, but sustained efforts in technology and product development. Mech-Mind Robotics seeks truth from facts, keeps pace with the times, strives to build capabilities to explore cutting-edge technologies, stable and reliable capabilities to develop products, and capabilities to serve customers globally, and continuously creates genuine value. Qiming Venture Partners’ belief in AI technology and long-term value tallies with our company. We are very honored to have received recognition and critical support from Qiming Venture Partners in our early days,” says Shao Tianlan, Chairman, Executive Director, and Chief Executive Officer of Mech-Mind Robotics.

“Qiming Venture Partners invested in Mech-Mind Robotics in 2019 for we were optimistic about the vast potential of intelligent robotics and believed the application of artificial intelligence in the physical world was still in the early stages of industrialization, and closed-loop implementation scenarios were limited. Mech-Mind Robotics boasts top R&D and commercialization capabilities, and its products are consistently used and validated by global-leading companies, with outstanding performance both at home and abroad. We expect that Mech-Mind Robotics will become a core supplier of physical AI infrastructure and reply on its mature commercialization loop to continuously drive long-term innovation in general embodied intelligence,” Alex Zhou, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners, stated.

About Qiming Venture Partners

Qiming Venture Partners was founded in 2006. Currently, Qiming Venture Partners manages eleven US Dollar funds and seven RMB funds with $9.5 billion in capital raised. Since our establishment, we have invested in outstanding companies in the Technology and Healthcare industries at the early and growth stages.

Since our debut, we have backed over 580 fast-growing and innovative companies. Over 210 of our portfolio companies have achieved exits through IPOs at the NYSE, NASDAQ, HKEX, Shanghai Stock Exchange, or Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or through M&A or other means. There are also over 80 portfolio companies that have achieved unicorn or super unicorn status.

Many of our portfolio companies are today’s most influential firms in their respective sectors, including Xiaomi, Meituan, Bilibili, Zhihu, Roborock, Hesai Technology, UBTech, WeRide, HyperStrong, Insta360, Unisound, Biren Technology, Z.ai, Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals, Tigermed, Zai Lab, CanSino Biologics, Schrödinger, APT Medical, Sanyou Medical, AmoyDx, SinocellTech, Insilico Medicine, AusperBio, Yuanxin Technology, Medilink Therapeutics, LaNova Medicines, StepFun, among many others.

Early Investment Sudo AI Valued at Nearly $2B

TAIPEI, Sept. 1, 2026 — Cherubic Ventures today announced the close of its sixth fund (Fund VI) at $68.88 million. The fund size reflects the auspicious meaning of the number eight in East Asian cultures, where it is traditionally associated with prosperity and good fortune. With this close, assets under management across the firm’s six funds have surpassed US$500 million.

Investors across all six funds include leading global institutional investors and foundations, as well as publicly listed companies, family offices, successful entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals.

Fund VI maintains the firm’s early-stage focus, investing in AI-native companies across infrastructure, developer tools, enterprise software, healthcare, physical AI and robotics. Sudo AI, a robotics startup in the portfolio, has reached a valuation of nearly $2 billion two years after its founding, joining the ranks of unicorns.

“After ten years, I am more certain than ever about why I chose to invest at the earliest stages,” said Matt Cheng, Founder & Solo GP of Cherubic Ventures. “Working alongside exceptional founders, finding a path through uncertainty, and ultimately changing an industry is what keeps driving me.”

Investing Across AI, From Infrastructure to Industry Applications

As AI reshapes industries, Cherubic Ventures continues to look for founders using the technology to build new products and redefine markets. Since 2024, the firm’s AI-native investments have spanned infrastructure, developer tools, enterprise software, healthcare, physical AI and robotics.

In robotics, Sudo AI was co-founded by Hao Su, a leading researcher in embodied AI and 3D vision and co-author of PointNet, and serial entrepreneur Robin Han. Its sudo R1 robotic system is trained through virtual simulation and can reliably handle objects it has never encountered without relying on real-world manipulation data. This addresses a key bottleneck to deploying robotics at scale. Cherubic Ventures was its earliest institutional investor.

Cherubic Ventures is also an early investor in Entire, the developer platform founded by former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke. The company raised US$60 million earlier this year, the largest seed round ever for a developer tools startup.

While Fund VI is still at an early stage, its portfolio companies have already raised more than $500 million in subsequent funding. Other notable investments include AI-powered patent technology platform Patlytics, along with healthcare and drug development companies Max AI, Generation Lab and therapiAI.

A Decade Alongside Founders, Supporting the Next Generation

Founded in 2015, Cherubic Ventures was among the first venture firms in the world to adopt the solo GP model. It has invested in more than 200 companies globally, with early investments including Hims & Hers, Flexport, Calm, Paidy, 91APP and Astranis. 

Across its portfolio, Cherubic Ventures has been the earliest institutional investors in dozens of companies that went on to become unicorns. Hims & Hers is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and 91APP on the Taipei Exchange, while Paidy was acquired by PayPal for US$2.7 billion.

Fund VI marks the beginning of Cherubic Ventures’ second decade. “The past ten years have made me more certain that believing in founders before the answers are clear, and backing them through uncertainty, is at the heart of early-stage investing,” Cheng said. “In the next decade, we will continue to ‘Stay Early’ and work with the most exceptional founders to build the future we want to see.”

About Cherubic Ventures
Founded in 2015, Cherubic Ventures is a global early-stage venture capital firm that started in Taipei and has built a strong presence in the U.S. market. The firm backs outstanding founders from day one and was among the first venture firms in the world to adopt the solo GP model. Notable investments include Hims & Hers, Calm, Flexport, 91APP, Paidy, Formation Bio and Astranis. To date, Cherubic Ventures has invested in more than 200 startups and brings together more than 500 founders and investors in a distinctive global community.

SOURCE Cherubic Ventures

HONG KONG, Sept. 1, 2026 — H.I.G. Capital (“H.I.G.”), a leading global alternative investment firm with $75 billion of capital under management, is pleased to announce that Younghee Choi has joined the firm’s Capital Formation Group as Head of Asia. Younghee is based in Hong Kong and will lead capital formation efforts across Asia for H.I.G.’s global private equity, credit, and real assets platforms.

With more than 15 years of experience in capital formation and private markets, Younghee joins H.I.G. from Blackstone, where she held senior roles across the firm’s Institutional Client Solutions (“ICS”) and Private Wealth businesses, serving as Senior Managing Director and Head of Korea ICS. During her tenure at Blackstone, Younghee developed and expanded relationships with a broad base of leading institutional investors and played a key role in building the firm’s private wealth fundraising business in Korea.

Jordan Peer Griffin, Executive Managing Director and Global Head of the Capital Formation Group, commented: “We are pleased to welcome Younghee to H.I.G. Her extensive capital formation experience, longstanding relationships across Asia, and ability to build enduring partnerships with institutional and private wealth investors will further strengthen our presence in the region. Younghee’s leadership will be instrumental as we expand our Asian LP base and support the continued growth of H.I.G.’s global investment platforms.”

Younghee Choi, Head of Asia, also commented: “I am thrilled to join H.I.G. at such an exciting time in the firm’s growth. I look forward to working closely with the team to deepen our relationships with investors across Asia, broaden H.I.G.’s presence in the region, and connect our investors with the full breadth of the firm’s global capabilities.”

About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global alternative investment firm with $75 billion of capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Stamford in the United States, as well as international affiliate offices in Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, and Hong Kong. H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to middle market companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/value-added approach:

• H.I.G.’s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations, and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses.
• H.I.G.’s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche, and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets.
• H.I.G.’s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices.
• H.I.G. Infrastructure focuses on making value-add and core plus investments in the infrastructure sector.

Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 400 companies worldwide. The Firm’s current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $53 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at hig.com.

*Based on total capital raised by H.I.G. Capital and its affiliates.

Contact:

Media Relations
[email protected]

H.I.G. Capital Hong Kong, Ltd.
Suite 3106, Level 31, Alexandra House
18 Chater Road, Central,
Hong Kong, China
Phone: +852 2707 5000
hig.com