AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 6, 2026 — Benchmark Energy II, LLC (“Benchmark” or the “Company”) announced today the closing of a senior secured financing providing for up to $47.5 million with Cibolo Energy Partners, LLC (“Cibolo”). Proceeds are dedicated to an operated, multi-well development program across Benchmark’s liquids-rich, oil-weighted Western Anadarko Basin position. Benchmark is majority owned by Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTG) and is a joint venture with McArron Partners and members of management.
“This financing enables us to accelerate development across our operated acreage footprint,” said Kirk Goehring, Chief Executive Officer of Benchmark Energy II. “Rig activity in the Western Anadarko is up sharply, led almost entirely by private operators. Well-level results today are much improved from a decade ago, driven by focus on the best rock, conservative spacing, and modern completions. This is our second transaction with the Cibolo team. They understand the basin and have been a strong partner across both, which made this a straightforward process.”
TenOaks Energy Advisors acted as exclusive financial advisor to Benchmark in connection with the financing.
About Benchmark Energy
Benchmark Energy II, LLC is a private oil and gas company focused on acquiring, producing, and developing operated assets in the Anadarko Basin. Benchmark and its affiliates operate over 150,000 net acres producing more than 8,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day across Western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. The Company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is capitalized by Acacia Research Corporation, McArron Partners, L.P., and members of management.
Cibolo Energy Partners, LLC is a private investment group specializing in alternative credit opportunities within the North American energy sector. Founded in 2016, Cibolo has built a strong reputation for successfully financing upstream and midstream companies. Focusing primarily on privately-negotiated investments in the lower-middle market, Cibolo’s team of investment professionals brings extensive expertise in both the financial and technical domains. Cibolo is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and is a registered investment advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTG) is a value-oriented acquirer and operator of businesses across public and private markets and industries including the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management. Additional information about Acacia and its subsidiaries is available at www.acaciaresearch.com.
About McArron Partners
McArron Partners is the investment arm of the Jones family of Albany, Texas. McArron’s Chief Executive Officer is Jonny Jones, founder of Jones Energy and former Chairman of the Texas Oil & Gas Association and U.S. Oil & Gas Association. McArron deploys its capital in a mix of global public and private investments. The Jones family has supported energy entrepreneurs for more than five decades.
The annual list honors groundbreaking technologies with the potential to reshape industries and redefine the way we work and live
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 6, 2026 — Mesh, the leading crypto payments network, today announced that it has been named to Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech, an annual list recognizing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform industries and shape the future.
Mesh’s SmartFunding™ was selected in the Financial Services category for its payment orchestration engine, which decouples what consumers hold from what merchants accept. Consumers can pay with any of more than 100 digital assets, while merchants settle in their preferred currency. Mesh handles conversion and routing automatically across point-of-sale, e-commerce, and autonomous transactions. The result is an experience built around the user’s existing financial life rather than the technical requirements of the underlying network.
Over the past year, the company joined Paxos’s Global Dollar Network and launched the Mesh Alliance Program, which unites more than 50 partners to simplify the growing complexity of enterprise crypto payments. It also released Mesh Wallet, which empowers AI agents to complete real-world transactions. Mesh’s partner network spans exchanges, regulated banks, fintechs, payroll platforms, and payment providers, extending digital asset payments into everyday financial workflows.
“Payments should work around people and businesses, not force them to change how they transact,” said Bam Azizi, CEO and Co-founder of Mesh. “We’re building the infrastructure that connects both sides, so people can pay with what they hold and businesses get paid in the currency they prefer. As more transactions are initiated by AI agents, that flexibility will become even more important.”
Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech recognizes innovative technologies developed by established companies, startups, and research teams that are making meaningful progress toward transforming the lives of consumers, businesses, and society. This year’s honorees span industries, with each innovation demonstrating the potential to create significant impact in the years ahead.
“The most exciting technology innovations are the ones that move beyond promise to demonstrate real potential for impact,” said Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “The companies and teams recognized on this year’s list are tackling ambitious problems with new ideas, products, and approaches that have the potential to fundamentally shape the years ahead.”
About Mesh Founded in 2020, Mesh is building the first global crypto payments network, connecting hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and financial services platforms to enable seamless digital asset payments and conversions. By unifying these platforms into a single network, Mesh is pioneering a connected and secure ecosystem for digital finance. For more information, visit meshpay.com.
About Fast Company Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with fellow business publication Inc. For more information, please visit fastcompany.com.
Buyer and seller agents transact directly on infrastructure built for agents, governed on both sides of every buy, with Compliant’s media quality and governance signals in every decision
NEW YORK and LONDON , Oct. 6, 2026 — pubX, which builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising, today announced a $5 million Series A led by Chicago Ventures and the acquisition of Compliant, the media quality and governance company. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Compliant will retain its name and operate as a pubX company, led by CEO Jamie Barnard. Within pubX, Jamie will take the role of President, Global Demand Growth, leading the company’s global growth strategy across agencies, advertisers and the wider buy-side.
pubX builds the agents that plan, buy, sell and optimize advertising — and the infrastructure they transact on. Its buyer agents and seller agents work directly with one another, from brief to reporting, across every channel, so that more of every dollar reaches the media and the publisher behind it. pubX began on the publisher side, spending years helping publishers price and sell their inventory. Compliant, founded by former Unilever and P&G executives, has focused principally on the demand side, delivering measurable value to global brands and their agencies. The acquisition unites brand and publisher in one company, and that experience, on both sides of the market is what shaped the company’s vision for something new: infrastructure designed from the ground up for agents to buy and sell directly. Built on the open Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), it works for buyer and seller alike.
Trust as the founding product principle
pubX was built on the premise that no one hands their media budget to a system they don’t trust, so trust, transparency, and accountability are built into the infrastructure itself, on both sides of every transaction. Its agents are educated by pubX: governance checks on every buy, decisions that are reasoned, traced and auditable, with Compliant’s quality signals shaping what they consider. The agents are guided by the client, on the brand’s own brief, plan, publishers and commercial rules. People stay in control: the client sets the level of autonomy and approves the plan at key stages, and the agents execute inside those rules. As trust is earned, autonomy grows.
“Programmatic took this industry from fax machines and spreadsheets into more automated and real-time platforms in two short decades, and everything we’ve done since builds on that premise,” said Andrew Mole, CEO and co-founder of pubX. “Agents let us finish what was started. You tell them how you buy, you sign off where it matters, and every page of the brief gets read every single time. For the first time, the infrastructure has caught up with what brands want to achieve with their advertising and how publishers want to sell.”
“For years, brands have searched for high-quality, high-performing inventory with real, relevant and engaged audiences. Compliant built the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes so that they could do that with certainty rather than speculation,” said Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant. “Inside pubX, those media quality and governance signals sit in the decision itself, so an agent weighs them before it buys. This is what gives each CMO the confidence to trust pubX’s agents.”
“Every part of the advertising industry is asking how agents will improve buying and selling, and most answers so far are an agentic layer built on existing infrastructure. Co-founders Andrew Mole and Alex Rosen, pubX’s CTO, have built advertising infrastructure before, and this time they built it for agents from the start, on both sides of the transaction, with a publisher base that already trusts them and a design that keeps the client in control. That is a rare starting position, and the Compliant acquisition makes it stronger,” said Stuart Larkins, Co-founder & General Partner at Chicago Ventures.
The funding will support pubX’s expansion in the United States, the build-out of its demand-side business serving brands and agencies, continued development of its buyer and seller agents on AdCP, and the integration of Compliant’s signals across the platform.
“For a publisher, agentic buying is about discoverability. Buyer agents see the audiences and environments we actually have, backed by our first-party data, and that puts us in front of spend that never reached us before, in an environment we can win. It amplifies what our sales team already does well,” said Stephanie Mazzamaro, Head of Revenue and Data, Paradium.AI, formerly The Arena Group.
“As advertising increasingly moves toward agentic buying, discoverability becomes critical,” said Jason Taylor, Chief Revenue Officer, USA TODAY Co. “Publishers that invest in trusted content, engaged audiences, and brand-safe environments should be more visible to AI-powered buying platforms. The opportunity is to create a more transparent marketplace where quality is recognized and rewarded.”
pubX at Advertising Week New York
On Wednesday, October 7, pubX will run a live agent-to-agent media buy at a private executive lunch during Advertising Week New York. A campaign for Reckitt’s Mucinex brand will go from brief to live placement, with Reckitt’s trading team approving the plan at key stages and publishers including Paradium.AI and USA TODAY Co. reviewing and accepting the campaign as it happens. Attendance is by invitation.
About pubX pubX builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising. Its buyer and seller agents, educated by pubX, trained by the client, and governed on both sides of every transaction, let brands, agencies and publishers plan, buy, sell and optimize media directly, with trust earned one campaign at a time. Learn more at www.pubx.ai
About Compliant Compliant, a pubX company, is the media quality and governance company behind the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes, used by leading global advertisers and industry bodies to measure data integrity and media quality across the supply chain. Learn more at www.compliant.global
About Chicago Ventures Chicago Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund founded to fill a market gap in early-stage capital for tech companies outside traditional hubs like Silicon Valley, focusing on undercapitalized tech ecosystems in the Central U.S. and beyond. They lead seed rounds “before it’s obvious” and operate a formal platform function that serves as a direct extension of portfolio companies’ teams, with their network explicitly architected to provide customer introductions, expert help, and talent access at scale rather than just for sourcing deals. Learn more at www.chicagoventures.com
Sub-2µs p99 latency and up to 50 million inferences per second in audited benchmarks unveiled today at STAC Summit London
CAMBRIDGE, England, Oct. 6, 2026 — myrtle.ai today announced that its VOLLO® inference accelerator has set new records on the STAC-ML Markets (Inference) benchmarks for gradient-boosted trees, cutting 99th-percentile latency by more than 30% and raising throughput by at least 5x over the previous best results. The STAC®-audited results were unveiled at the STAC Summit in London today.
Independently audited by STAC
Running on an AMD Alveo™ V80LL Compute Accelerator in a Blackcore ICON 3132-SM+ server, VOLLO achieved p99 latencies below 2 microseconds for all three models. For the smallest model, it sustained 50 million inferences per second at a p99 latency of just 1.77µs.
In electronic trading, the time between market data arriving and a decision being made directly affects returns. Low, deterministic latency lets firms run larger, more accurate models without missing the market, so model quality no longer has to be traded off against speed.
“Trading firms want to run ever more powerful models without giving up speed, and these results show they can. Developers can now test their own models on VOLLO without any FPGA expertise and see the difference for themselves,” said Peter Baldwin, CEO, myrtle.ai.
Following the STAC Tacana results announced in April, VOLLO now holds the records for deterministic latency for both decision trees and neural networks. It is already proven in production, with hundreds of thousands of hours of live trading generating alpha for many of the world’s leading trading firms. Its model flexibility has also made it a platform of choice in telecoms, network security and defence.
STAC-ML Markets (Inference) is the technology benchmark standard for running inference on real-time market data. Designed by quants and technologists from leading financial firms, it reports the performance, resource efficiency and quality of any technology stack capable of running the provided models. Full results are in the STAC Report (SUT ID MRTL2026905) at www.STACresearch.com/MRTL2026905.
ML developers can evaluate how their own models would perform on VOLLO today, with no FPGA tools or expertise required. Visit myrtle.ai/vollo-trees or contact [email protected].
About myrtle.ai
Myrtle.ai is an AI/ML software company delivering ultra-low-latency inference accelerators on FPGA-based platforms from all the leading FPGA suppliers. Its accelerators serve applications including financial trading, wireless telecoms, LLMs, speech processing and recommendation.
VOLLO, VOLLO Accelerator and the VOLLO logo are registered trademarks of myrtle.ai. “STAC” and all STAC names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Strategic Technology Analysis Center, LLC. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Alveo, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
New private capital specific plugins bring trusted Chronograph portfolio data and purpose-built skills directly into Claude, extending Chronograph’s AI solution suite and automating a range of mission-critical private capital workflows.
NEW YORK, Oct. 6, 2026 — Chronograph, the leading global provider of portfolio monitoring, valuations, and analytics technology for institutional private capital, today announced the launch of dedicated Chronograph plugins for Claude. Each plugin bundles Chronograph’s existing Claude Connector with a curated set of off-the-shelf skills, enabling clients to seamlessly deploy purpose-built AI workflows on their trusted Chronograph data.
This release includes dedicated private capital plugins that contain custom skills designed for distinct, recurring workflows. Rather than simple prompts to a Claude chat interface, each skill is built out with instructions, methodologies, markdown files, exception handling, and review-ready deliverable standards grounded in the foundation of sound Chronograph data. From LP reporting and company-by-company TVPI attribution to commitment pacing analysis, the plugins bring powerful AI solutions to the tasks fund managers and institutional allocators handle every day.
For general partners, the Chronograph GP plugin packages skills to:
Assemble quarterly review packs, including fund-level summaries and portfolio company one-pagers.
Generate branded investor reports or one-pagers for any company, from live Chronograph data.
Compare company scenarios (e.g. actuals vs budget) across the portfolio, flagging which companies are off-plan and by how much.
Produce briefs that identify company valuation markups and markdowns, quantify each change, and rank them by impact on fund NAV.
Attribute fund TVPI by company, decomposing performance into company-by-company contributions to surface top drivers and detractors.
For limited partners, the Chronograph LP plugin packages skills to:
Forecast cashflows, including capital calls, distributions, NAV, and unfunded commitments, using the Takahashi-Alexander “Yale” model.
Build commitment pacing plans to achieve and maintain target private markets allocations within a broader portfolio.
Scan look-through exposures, surfacing concentration by sector, geography, vintage, and currency across funds and aggregate total unrealized exposures to underlying portfolio companies across different fund commitments.
Prep for manager meetings by reviewing a GP’s latest reporting, surfacing what changed since last period, and drafting questions and key themes for the call.
“Recurring workflows in private markets need a durable data foundation, and that’s the layer we’ve spent ten years building,” said Divya Odayappan, Product Lead, Chronograph LP. “Skills let users run complicated, multi-step processes on top of it, encoded once, instead of every firm writing the procedure itself. We package the MCP server and the skills together as a single plugin, so clients get the whole workflow as one drop-in piece instead of assembling it themselves.”
The addition of these plugins within Claude reflects the continued expansion of Chronograph’s AI capabilities for private capital investors. Chronograph remains AI agnostic, meeting investors wherever they work. Regardless of AI provider, Chronograph is committed to unlocking the largest, most trusted private markets dataset across the industry’s preferred interfaces. These powerful plugins underscore that principle. In the era of AI, the core challenge is no longer generating an answer, but rather delivering one investors can trust, defend, and reproduce, with full versioning and point-in-time accuracy. This is the mission Chronograph aims to solve across its AI solutions.
Chronograph was founded in 2016 to bring trust and efficiency to private capital markets data. The firm’s products help institutional limited partners and general partners — including many of the world’s largest private equity and private credit investors — streamline and automate portfolio monitoring, valuations, analytics, and reporting. The firm is backed by Sixth Street, Summit Partners, Carlyle AlpInvest, and Nasdaq, Inc. with offices in Brooklyn, NY, San Francisco, CA, and London, UK. For further information, visit www.chronograph.pe, and follow Chronograph on LinkedIn.
Contact: Fred Bower Chronograph New York, New York [email protected]
First product, iris chat™, is an AI thought partner designed to help people build meaningful relationships, develop a stronger sense of self, and live with greater purpose and fulfillment
Company launches with an initial commitment of $20 million in funding from Flagship
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 6, 2026 — Flagship Pioneering, a scientific innovation engine for transformative platforms and products, today announced the launch of iris labs, a company building personal AI products designed to advance human wellbeing.
iris labs
iris labs was conceived more than two years ago on the belief that helping people lead more fulfilling lives is a defining opportunity for AI. The company’s work is grounded in psychological fitness: building the capacities to navigate life’s challenges and create more of what is meaningful. This framework informs how iris labs designs and evaluates its novel products, drawing on key dimensions of wellbeing to connect personalized support with its broader ambition for human flourishing.
iris chat™, the company’s first product, is an AI thought partner designed to help you lead a more fulfilling life by deepening relationships, strengthening sense of self, and cultivating resilience, purpose, and hope. Through ongoing conversation on iMessage and RCS, it learns about your experiences, priorities, and aspirations, grounding the experience in who you are and the life you want to build.
“People build resilience, purpose, and confidence through the countless small moments that shape everyday life,” said Armen Mkrtchyan, Ph.D., CEO, Board Member, and Co-founder of iris labs and Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “We created iris labs around the belief that AI can uniquely support those moments by helping people better understand what they’re experiencing, find perspective and take the next step, while keeping them firmly in charge of their own lives.”
Designed to feel as natural as texting someone who knows you well, iris chat learns as you engage with it. It can help you recognize meaningful patterns in your life, prepare for important conversations, clarify goals and priorities, and take concrete steps toward what matters to you. The experience adapts as your relationships, circumstances, and aspirations evolve.
“We’ve seen incredible early traction with iris chat, validating both the product and the broader platform,” said Rockwell Shah, Co-founder and President of iris labs and Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “People aren’t just trying iris chat; they’re coming back to it time and again. That engagement reinforces something we’ve believed from the start: people want AI for more than productivity. They want technology that can help them better understand themselves, navigate their relationships, and make meaningful changes in their lives.”
iris labs has developed a novel approach to helping AI engage more thoughtfully in subjective, emotionally complex conversations. While self-learning systems can readily improve in objective domains with clear measures of success, such as games or coding, meaningful conversations require an AI to recognize nuance without reinforcing unproductive patterns. iris chat combines expert-informed guidance with AI judges, agents that evaluate and refine the outputs of other agents, to create consistent quality loops for these interactions.
Safety is foundational to how iris chat was designed. The product includes a safety scaffold that pairs each conversation with a parallel AI safety agent designed to assess interactions in real time and guide responses when a conversation warrants additional safeguards. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all safeguards, the system draws on conversational context to distinguish genuine concern from ambiguity and support more appropriate, measured responses. This approach reflects the belief that safety and progress can reinforce one another: early evidence suggests that users who interact with iris chat’s safety systems are much more likely to continue using the product.
“Artificial intelligence represents one of the most profound technology platforms of our time, with the potential to redefine how we understand and improve the human experience,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Co-founder of iris labs. “At Flagship, we seek opportunities where breakthrough technologies can open entirely new frontiers rather than simply improve existing approaches. iris labs reflects that philosophy, exploring how AI can deepen our understanding of human wellbeing while creating a new platform at the intersection of psychology and intelligent systems.”
In addition to Afeyan, Mkrtchyan and Shah, the founding team includes Ayşe Muñiz, Ph.D., Principal, Flagship Pioneering.
iris chat is available through iMessage and RCS, bringing personal AI into a familiar part of everyday life. It can be accessed at www.chatwithiris.com.
About iris labs
iris labs™ is building personal AI products designed to help people lead more fulfilling lives. Founded within Flagship Labs, the company brings together psychology, behavioral science, artificial intelligence, and product design, with psychological fitness guiding how it develops and evaluates its products. Its first product, iris chat™, is an AI thought partner delivered through iMessage and RCS, designed to help people deepen their relationships, strengthen their sense of self, and cultivate resilience, purpose, and hope. Through ongoing conversation, iris chat learns about each person’s experiences, priorities, and aspirations, adapting as their lives evolve. Learn more at www.irislabs.com.
About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health, sustainability and beyond. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures, operating with $14 billion of assets under its direction as of its latest capital raise, announced in July 2024. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises more than 40 companies, including Generate Biomedicines, Inari, Lila Sciences, Moderna, Sana Biotechnology, Tessera Therapeutics and Valo Health.
VeriAct, Vermiculus corporate action system, enables market infrastructures to manage any corporate action event type through a fully configurable, cloud-native system with complete transparency, automation, and scalability.
STOCKHOLM, Oct. 6, 2026 — Vermiculus, a global independent provider of market infrastructure technology, today announced the launch of VeriAct corporate action system, a cloud-native solution designed to handle the full lifecycle of corporate action processing.
The corporate action system features fully configurable event types, formulas, and tax rules, allowing organizations to respond quickly to new market demands. Explicit and auditable outcome logic provides complete transparency and traceability throughout the processing chain, while comprehensive notification capabilities keep market participants informed throughout the event lifecycle.
The system is designed to handle both official processing and simulations with equal precision, making it suitable for any system that depends on corporate action results. It efficiently processes complex scenarios by parameterizing any event type invented in the market, while ensuring accurate outcomes and consistent delivery to downstream systems.
“Corporate actions require market infrastructures to manage a constantly evolving range of event types. With our new AI-powered corporate action system, we’ve made that process dramatically simpler and more flexible,” said Gustav Nystedt, Senior Product Expert at Vermiculus. “With this launch, we are providing market infrastructures with a flexible product built for change that can manage any event types, regulatory requirements, and local market practices without lengthy hard-code projects.”
The VeriAct corporate action system is used by clients such as B3, one of the world’s largest market infrastructure operators, Built on a microservices architecture, the system offers flexible deployment options and seamless interoperability through message-based integration. Individual components can operate independently, enabling high-performance processing while isolating workloads and simplifying integration with existing market infrastructure environments.
The VeriAct corporate action system is available as a stand-alone solution or as part of Vermiculus’ broader portfolio of cloud-native systems supporting trading, clearing, and CSD operations.
About Vermiculus
Vermiculus Financial Technology AB provides best-in-class trading, clearing, and CSD solutions to market participants around the world. Vermiculus’ solutions are the first to bring state-of-the-art advances in dynamic microservice architecture together with vast experience in clearing house, exchange, and CSD business requirements
The company started its operation in 2020 and is founded by industry experts with the incentive to revolutionize the technology of exchanges, clearing houses, and CSDs. With its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Vermiculus consists of hand-picked teams, trained to deliver mission-critical solutions. Learn more at vermiculus.se
HONG KONG, Oct. 6, 2026 — Organized by Hong Kong Youth Professional Global Advocacy, the third Global Youth Powerhouse Summit convened over 600 in-person attendees and participants from 60+ countries at Conrad Hong Kong. Aligning with the HKSAR’s First Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) and latest Policy Address, the summit brought together leaders and young professionals to address AI, geopolitics, education, capital markets, life technology, and start-up financing. Across three editions, it has reached 17,000+ online participants across 30+ countries and regions with a social media reach exceeding 50 million.
Global Youth Powerhouse Summit 2026
In a pre-recorded video address, The Chief Executive of the HKSAR, Mr John Lee, GBM, SBS, PDSM, PMSM, encouraged young talent to seize emerging opportunities, affirming the government’s commitment to building platforms for youth to thrive locally, nationally, and globally. Delivering the opening keynote, The Deputy Secretary for Justice of the HKSAR, Dr Cheung Kwok-kwan, SBS, JP, highlighted GBA integration, urging young professionals to serve as “super-connectors” and “super value-adders” helping Mainland enterprises go global. Dr Kevin Lau, MH, Founding Convenor of Hong Kong Youth Professional Global Advocacy, highlighted that venture funds managing US$10 billion gathered to support Hong Kong’s next generation, emphasizing that while AI assists technology and healthcare, human care remains irreplaceable.
Other distinguished guests included Mr Kevin Choi, JP, Permanent Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry; Professor Frederick Ma, GBS, JP, Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council; Ms Bonnie Y Chan, JP, CEO of HKEX; and Mr James Chau, President of CUSEF and WHO Goodwill Ambassador. Mr Bryan Che, Chief Strategy Officer of Huawei, and Ms Cindy Chow, Executive Director and CEO of Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, also attended in person to exchange views with young professionals.
Six panel discussions addressed key pillars of Hong Kong’s economic future: artificial intelligence, geopolitics, education, capital markets, life and health technology, and start-up financing. Panellists explored AI implementation, human-centric diplomacy, Asia’s education hub, asset tokenization, and healthcare innovation. The summit concluded with a pitching session connecting 15 start-ups with 11 venture funds managing US$10 billion, reaffirming its commitment to linking young talent with global leaders.
20 locally led companies managing more than 5,000 homes come together to share infrastructure, technology and data, all under one roof.
NEW YORK, Oct. 5, 2026 — Pavilion, a national vacation rental company, launched today with 20 local companies managing more than 5,000 homes and welcoming approximately 50,000 guests each month across the United States.
Introducing Pavilion, the first founder-owned national vacation rental company, brings together locally led vacation rental companies managing more than 5,000 homes under one roof. We’re the vacation makers, for the vacation takers. Local care with national backing – all under one roof. Where vacations come together.
Pavilion brings together successful local vacation rental companies that have built deep relationships with property owners and have real expertise in their markets. Each one stays locally led by the teams who built it, while gaining the resources and scale of a much larger organization. What sets Pavilion apart is who owns it. The leaders of its local companies become long-term shareholders, and together with the team running Pavilion itself, they own the majority of the business.
“The people who built these businesses are the core of Pavilion, and they should get the biggest share of the outcome,” said co-founder and chairman Joe Fraiman. “The typical industry playbook left founders with a small piece of someone else’s company. We’ve been founders in this industry ourselves, so we built the company we would have wanted to join.”
“We look for local companies that have built incredible relationships with their property owners, because those relationships are the heart of this business,” said Lino Maldonado, co-founder and CEO of Pavilion. “We see property owners as business owners. Our job is to put the best service, technology and people in the industry behind them so their business is worth more next year than it is today.”
Behind the local companies, Pavilion provides shared technology, data, owner reporting, accounting, revenue management, business development, purchasing and insurance. Its management team brings experience from Compass, Bridgewater Associates, Inhabit, Grand Welcome, Wyndham and Wheelhouse.
“Pavilion gave me a way to keep building my business while owning a piece of something much bigger,” said Steven Chrobak, founder of Myrtle Beach Destinations. “We have the tools and support we need to grow, and the only thing my homeowners have noticed is that we’ve gotten better.”
Pavilion is actively seeking more local vacation rental companies across the country. “We’re looking for builders,” said Brady Stump, co-founder of Pavilion. “People who have built something exceptional in their market and want the resources to make it substantially bigger. They are joining a collection of pioneers who own the company together, share what works, and solve problems as a team.”
Pavilion’s investors include TZP Group, investment funds managed by HPS Investment Partners (a part of BlackRock), and Capital Dynamics. PGIM, the global asset management business of Prudential Financial, Inc. (PFI), served as the primary lender for the Pavilion platform. “Great hospitality companies shouldn’t have to choose between what makes them special and the advantages of scale,” said Paul Davis, partner at TZP Group. “Pavilion is designed to preserve the local knowledge, hospitality and entrepreneurial leadership that made these companies successful while giving them access to resources that are typically only available to much bigger companies.”
Pavilion’s 20 founding local companies are 30A Vacay, Akers Ellis, Beach Getaways, Blue Creek Cabins, Compass Resorts, Destin Pointe Realty, Enjoy Unique Stays, Executive Villas, Host & Keep, Kabino, Maui Paradise Properties, Myrtle Beach Destinations, Panhandle Getaways, Premium Beach Condos, Rent in Myrtle, Salt Water Vacations, Scenic Stays, Sea Mountain Vacations, Vacay Rental Network and Wild Oak Telluride. Blue Creek Cabins, Destin Pointe Realty, Premium Beach Condos and Rent in Myrtle have merged with one of the other local companies, so the group operates as 16 today.
Jefferies LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor and Cooley LLP acted as legal counsel.
About Pavilion Pavilion is a national vacation rental company majority-owned by the people who run it. Its 20 local companies manage more than 5,000 homes and welcome approximately 50,000 guests each month in vacation destinations across the United States. Pavilion gives those companies shared technology, data, infrastructure and expertise while keeping the local teams and leaders behind each one. Pavilion was founded by Stakeholders, the firm Brandon Ezra, Joe Fraiman and Brady Stump started in 2025 to build national companies owned by the people who run them. For more information, visit pavilioncollection.com. To learn more about Stakeholders, visit stakeholders.us.
About TZP Group TZP Group, a multi-strategy investment firm managing approximately $2 billion across its family of funds, is focused on control, growth equity, debt and structured capital investments in technology, business services, and consumer companies. Founded in 2007, TZP targets companies with solid historical performance and sustainable value propositions and aims to be a “Partner of Choice” for business owners and management teams. TZP seeks to invest primarily in closely held, private companies in which the owners desire to retain a significant stake and partner with an investor with complementary operating and financial skills to accelerate company growth, increase profitability, and maximize the value of their retained stake. TZP leverages its investment professionals’ operating and investment experience to provide strategic and operational guidance and is dedicated to long-term value creation. TZP’s investment in Pavilion was led by Paul Davis, Geoff Allard, Alex Pfeffer, and Sam Dwinell. For more information, please visit www.tzpgroup.com.
About Capital Dynamics Capital Dynamics is an independent global asset management firm focusing on private assets, including private equity (primaries, secondaries and direct investments) and clean energy.
Established in 1988, the Firm has extensive knowledge and experience developing solutions tailored to meet the exacting needs of a diverse and global client base of institutional and private wealth investors. Capital Dynamics oversees more than USD 15 billion in assets under management and advisement1, and employs approximately 150 professionals2 globally across 14 offices in Europe, North America, and Asia.
Capital Dynamics is a recognized industry leader in responsible investment, receiving top marks (Five Stars) from PRI across all categories and investment strategies, as well as in GRESB benchmarking for its clean energy strategy. For more information, please visit: www.capdyn.com.
About PGIM PGIM is the global asset management business of PFI. (NYSE: PRU), with $1.5 trillion in assets under management. 3 PGIM offers clients deep expertise across public and private asset classes, delivering a diverse range of investment strategies and tailored solutions—including fixed income, equities, real estate and alternatives. With 1,500+ investment professionals across 40 offices in 20 countries, we serve retail and institutional clients worldwide. For more information, visit pgim.com.
PFI of the United States is not affiliated in any manner with Prudential plc, incorporated in the United Kingdom or with Prudential Assurance Company, a subsidiary of M&G plc, incorporated in the United Kingdom. For more information please visit news.prudential.com.
1 As of June 30, 2026. Assets under Management are calculated based on the total commitments as of the final closing date for all funds currently managed by Capital Dynamics, including amounts that have been distributed. Assets under Advisement includes assets for which Capital Dynamics provides services such as reporting, monitoring and risk management. 2 Includes all full-time and part-time employees, as well as essential functions performed by temporary staff and long-term consultants 3 As of Jun. 30, 2026. Assets are rounded to the nearest full number.
