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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Sela

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

About Costanoa

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

About Emergence Capital

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

Media Contact

Press Team, Sela

[email protected]

SOURCE Sela AI, Inc. / BAM Agency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE Nexstrom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About Vital.io

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

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

Media Contact: Kathy English, [email protected]

SOURCE Vital Software Inc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE Stan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transaction Highlights

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

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

About Brand Engagement Network

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

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

For more information, visit www.brandengagementnetwork.com

Forward-Looking Statements

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

Contacts

Investor Relations
[email protected]

Media Relations
[email protected]

SOURCE Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (BEN)

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

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

The problem Baselayer solves

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

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

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

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

The Agentic Identity Suite

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

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

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

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

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

About Baselayer

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

Media Contact

Jonathan Awad

Co-Founder & CEO, Baselayer

[email protected]

SOURCE Baselayer

Round Led by .406 Ventures Fuels Teal Health’s Next Phase of Growth, Expanding Payor, Health System, Employer and Provider Partnerships Ahead of Broad Insurance Coverage in 2027

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Teal Health, creators of the Teal Wand™, the first and most accurate FDA-authorized self-collection device for at-home HPV cervical cancer screening, today announced $22 million in Series A funding to meet accelerating consumer demand and expand access ahead of broad insurance coverage beginning in January 2027.

The round was led by .406 Ventures, with continued backing from Emerson Collective (managed by Yosemite), Forerunner, and Serena Ventures, and new participation from Japan-based MPower Partners. The financing brings Teal Health’s total funding to $45 million. It arrives at a critical moment where nearly one in three U.S. women isn’t up to date on screening, largely due to physician shortages causing limited appointment availability and therefore making the traditional in-office screening difficult to access. Increasing preventive care options for women is a national imperative. As the first to deliver an accurate, convenient at-home screening alternative, Teal is already defining the future of women’s preventive health, ahead of January 2027 federal guidelines that will require most health plans to cover self-collection for cervical cancer screening.

The new capital will fuel a growing network of payor, health system, employer, provider, and brand partnerships that make screening available wherever women receive care, access benefits, or make decisions about their health. Teal Health is also expanding direct-purchase options for individuals and organizations. Together, these channels are designed to move at-home screening beyond early adoption and establish it as a routine, widely available, and highly preferred part of preventive care nationwide. The funding will also support continued hiring across key clinical, commercial, technology, and operational functions as Teal scales to serve more women and partners.

“We designed Teal for all women, whether they are behind on their screening or coming due. Screening is just too difficult today, whether that is finding an appointment, the time in your day to attend, or the physical discomfort. Women need an accurate, trusted alternative that makes it easy to screen,” said Kara Egan, CEO and Co-Founder of Teal Health. “This funding allows us to scale to meet the demand of patients and providers. It’s clear this option is preferred by women and now we can ensure everyone has a way to stay healthy.”

The Teal Wand is the first FDA-authorized self-collection device for at-home HPV cervical cancer screening – no speculum or in-office visit required. Teal Health pairs a private, speculum-free at-home sample collection with a telehealth visit, delivers results through a secure platform, and connects patients to follow-up care when it’s needed. Women love having this option, and Teal data shows 59% of women who choose Teal are underscreened; these are women who now have an option to take care of their health. Thousands of women have rated the end-to-end experience an average of 4.95 out of 5, clear evidence that this is the kind of screening experience women have been waiting for.

“Patients are demanding more convenient ways to access healthcare, and Teal has proven that convenience doesn’t have to come at the expense of accuracy,” said Kathryn Taylor Reddy, Partner at .406 Ventures. “With insurance coverage expanding in 2027, Teal Health is positioned to transform how millions of women receive essential preventive healthcare.”

Since receiving FDA-authorization in 2025, Teal Health has already screened thousands of women nationally, been incorporated in national screening guidelines, advanced research on self-collection screening with 17 peer-reviewed papers and presentations, and is partnering with health systems, providers, employers, and payers – providing access to the Teal Wand where women already receive care – closing screening gaps, easing the load on clinics, and reaching the women who are overdue. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers, yet thousands of women in the U.S. are diagnosed each year – and roughly 4,320 will die from it this year. This funding extends these partnerships and opens new ways for organizations and individuals to offer screening directly, pushing at-home screening from early-adopter territory into routine care.

To learn more, visit www.getteal.com.

About Teal Health

Teal Health is a women’s health company on a mission to eliminate cervical cancer by making screening accessible, comfortable, and accurate. Its flagship product, the Teal Wand, is the first FDA-authorized at-home HPV self-collection device for cervical cancer screening. Through its telehealth platform, Teal Health provides an end-to-end screening experience that includes access to providers, at-home sample collection, secure results, and support with follow up care. As a member of the Cervical Cancer Roundtable (a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and Cancer Moonshot), Teal Health is helping to shape the future of preventive care. The company continuously advances screening standards through robust clinical evidence, including 17 peer-reviewed papers and presentations. Learn more at getteal.com.

SOURCE Teal Health

Left Lane Capital incubated and led the round as Rising Tide scales property management firms with shared technology and capital, without asking them to give up their name, team, or local relationships

CHICAGO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Rising Tide, which acquires and invests in independently owned residential property management companies, today announced the close of an undisclosed seed round led by Left Lane Capital. Left Lane incubated the company alongside CEO Blake Mohseni on a shared conviction: property management is a large and deeply fragmented market; it is mission-critical to the lives of everyday consumers, and its complexity across multiple stakeholders creates unique opportunities for AI to improve the customer experience.

Property management is a $100B+ market split across more than 240,000 property management firms that together handle a large share of residential rentals. Most run without the technology, systems, and back-office support that larger, well-capitalized platforms take for granted. The result: owners spend more time on manual admin than on building the tenant and owner relationships that actually differentiate a good property manager. Many also face a tough choice when it comes time to sell or transition: sell to a private equity firm that rebrands them under a national name, or figure out succession alone.

“AI is changing the definition of what premier service looks like in property management. It gives our operators more room for the relationships with owners and tenants that actually built their business,” said Blake Mohseni, Founder and CEO of Rising Tide. “This funding brings that same approach to more independent property management firms: real technology, real capital, and partnership instead of a takeover.”

Rising Tide takes a different approach: a federation of independent property management companies. Each one gets shared technology and capital to grow, while the local brand, the team, and the relationships an owner spent years building remain exactly as they are.

There’s no shortage of AI hype in property management right now. The hard part is knowing how to actually put it to work. That’s where Rising Tide comes in, through The Lab, where the company builds and tests its AI tools inside real property management businesses through hands-on implementation at no cost. The Lab is live today with three property management firms. Rising Tide keeps ownership of what it builds; the operators get full use of it for free, and their business data never leaves their hands.

Vinny Pujji, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Left Lane Capital, said, “We have invested over $100 million into AI companies transforming traditional services industries, from accounting to dental. Property management is universal, mission-critical, and not for the faint of heart. Blake and his team have the thoughtful approach needed to bring AI to the industry and drive modernization alongside tenured operators.”

About Rising Tide

Rising Tide is building a federation of independent property management companies with real capital and technology behind each one, while the local brand, team, and relationships are fully intact. Learn more at www.risingtidehq.com.

About Left Lane Capital

Founded in 2019, Left Lane Capital is a New York and London based venture capital and growth equity firm investing in high growth internet and consumer technology businesses globally. Left Lane’s mission is to partner with extraordinary entrepreneurs who create category defining companies across growth sectors of the economy. For more information, visit www.leftlane.com.

SOURCE Rising Tide

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Primrose Bio, Inc. (“Primrose”), a provider of production solutions for next-generation biologics, today announced the closing of a financing round led by new investor Signet Healthcare Partners (“Signet”), with significant participation from existing investors 1315 Capital, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (Nasdaq: LGND), LDV Partners, and Agent Capital. In conjunction with the financing, James Gale, Founding Partner and Managing Director of Signet, has joined Primrose’s Board of Directors.

The proceeds will help Primrose continue to expand the reach and capabilities of its differentiated technology portfolio:

• Pfenex Expression Technology^® (“Pfenex”), a scalable microbial expression platform for efficient, high-yield production of complex, engineered proteins used in six approved biologics
• Prima RNApols^®, proprietary RNA polymerases for consistent, scalable, high-quality mRNA manufacturing (available in RUO- and GMP-grade)
• PeliCRM197^®, a validated carrier protein used in multiple approved vaccines (RUO and GMP) 

“This financing marks an important next step for Primrose and reflects confidence in our technologies, team and commercial opportunity,” said Andrew Burch, Chief Executive Officer of Primrose Bio. “As the engineering of biologic and nucleic acid medicines advances, developers need more robust production systems that also improve quality, yield, speed, scalability and cost. This capital will help us broaden adoption, enhance capabilities and accelerate customers moving therapeutic and vaccine programs forward toward clinical trials.” 

“Signet sees a compelling opportunity across Primrose’s portfolio,” said James Gale. “Having partnered with The Dow Chemical Company to establish Pfenex Inc. in 2009, we have seen the platform’s commercial value firsthand. Primrose is building on that foundation with further advances in Pfenex technology as well as Prima RNApols and PeliCRM197. We are pleased to invest in this next phase of growth and support the team as they scale the business and help more customers improve manufacturing performance across multiple therapeutic modalities.”

About Primrose Bio, Inc.

Primrose Bio develops and commercializes manufacturing technologies that close gaps in biologics, mRNA and vaccine production. Primrose’s major offerings include Pfenex Expression Technology^®: a proprietary microbial production system used in six approved products with up to 20x higher yields and a strong record across diverse protein modalities; Prima RNApols^®: improved enzymes for mRNA manufacturing; and PeliCRM197^®: a commercially validated CRM197 carrier protein used for conjugate vaccines.  Several of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies use Primrose’s technologies in marketed products, including Merck, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Alvogen, and Serum Institute of India. For more information, please visit: www.primrosebio.com.

About Signet Healthcare Partners

Signet Healthcare Partners is a healthcare growth equity firm that invests in commercial-stage pharmaceutical (pharma services and therapeutics) and medical technology companies. Founded in 1998 and based in New York, Signet has invested in more than 60 companies, supporting entrepreneurs with capital, strategic guidance, and deep industry networks. For more information, please visit: www.signethealthcarepartners.com.

SOURCE Primrose Bio