ABU DHABI, UAE, June 18, 2026 — Robo.ai Inc. (NASDAQ: AIIO), a Nasdaq-listed UAE-based company, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the equity interests of QC Capital Limited (“Quantum Core” or “QC Capital”). Under the agreement, the total consideration for the proposed transaction is US$60 million, payable in newly issued Class B ordinary shares of Robo.ai. The consideration shares will be subject to a vesting and release schedule of up to eight years. The transaction is expected to close within 30 business days following, subject to customary closing conditions and other applicable requirements.

The proposed acquisition represents a strategic step in Robo.ai’s development of a global artificial intelligence robotics network platform. QC Capital is positioned as an AI-driven technology holding and venture-building platform with capabilities across technology development, venture building and industrial investment. Through the proposed integration of QC Capital, and drawing upon Robo.ai’s successful experience in acquiring AI visual data processing and compression technology company Neurovia, Robo.ai expects to strengthen its capabilities in technology company sourcing, capital allocation, venture incubation, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, post-investment operations and global commercialization.

Under the acquisition agreement, the transaction consideration is structured to align with long-term performance targets. The consideration shares will be released in stages and linked to the achievement of multi-year revenue targets. This structure is intended to align the release of transaction consideration with QC Capital’s future business performance and the long-term interests of Robo.ai shareholders.

QC Capital’s operating model is based on AI technology and operational enablement capabilities, with a focus on AI agents, vertical AI applications and industrial technology enablement for sectors including industry, transportation, embodied robotics and intelligent manufacturing. In the course of its operations, QC Capital expects to accumulate AI data, operating data from portfolio companies, post-investment operating data and market feedback data. These data resources are expected to be incorporated into its AI Investment Engine and QC Alpha™ system to support industry analysis, project screening, due diligence, risk management, post-investment management, M&A screening and portfolio optimization. This model is designed to create a long-term loop from technology capability to data assets, and from AI-assisted decision-making to revenue growth and ecosystem expansion.

QC Capital’s business system includes four core areas: venture building, strategic investment, M&A platform development and AI investment technology. Its key areas of focus include AI infrastructure, smart cities, robotics and AI agents, autonomous driving and intelligent logistics, AI fintech, enterprise AI platforms and the next-generation digital economy. These areas are complementary to Robo.ai’s artificial intelligence robotics network, intelligent device ecosystem and digital infrastructure strategy.

Performance Targets

Pursuant to the performance-based release mechanism stipulated in the acquisition agreement, the shares issued to QC Capital will be released over the next eight years subject to the achievement of specified revenue targets. These include, but are not limited to, a cumulative revenue milestone of approx. US$2.4 billion across 2026 and 2027, which will serve as part of the key benchmark for the phased release of the consideration shares.

Robo.ai expects that, subject to the successful closing of the transaction, successful business integration and the recognition of related revenue in accordance with applicable accounting standards, QC Capital may become an incremental platform for the Company’s medium- to long-term revenue growth, industrial synergies and global AI ecosystem commercialization. These revenue targets are forward-looking in nature and do not constitute a guarantee of future performance.

Benjamin Zhai, Chief Executive Officer of Robo.ai, said, “Robo.ai is building a global artificial intelligence robotics network platform for the next generation of the intelligent economy. QC Capital is expected to bring capabilities in AI investment decision-making, data asset accumulation, venture building, M&A integration and global resource networks. Following the completion of the transaction, QC Capital is expected to serve as Robo.ai’s platform for strategic holdings, venture building, investment development and data asset growth, supporting the Company’s continued expansion across artificial intelligence, robotics, digital infrastructure, smart cities, intelligent mobility, low-altitude economy and the next-generation digital economy.”

About QC Capital Limited

QC Capital Limited is an AI-driven technology holding and venture-building platform focused on artificial intelligence, robotics, digital infrastructure, smart cities, autonomous driving and the next-generation digital economy. Through AI technology, operational enablement capabilities, industrial operating experience, data asset accumulation and global resource networks, QC Capital seeks to identify, incubate, invest in and operate technology companies with long-term value, while supporting the development of synergies among AI technology, capital capabilities, industrial resources and data assets.

About Robo.ai Inc.

Robo.ai Inc. (NASDAQ: AIIO) is a technology company focused on building a global artificial intelligence robotics network platform. The Company focuses on artificial intelligence, robotics, intelligent devices, digital infrastructure and related technology ecosystems, with the objective of connecting technology, data, devices and industrial scenarios through an AI-driven network platform.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those projected. For additional information, please refer to Robo.ai Inc.’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Media Contact:

Robo.ai Inc. Corporate Communications
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.roboai.io

QC Capital Limited Corporate Communications
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.qccapital.io

SOURCE Robo.ai; QC Capital Limited

SINGAPORE and NEW YORK, June 18, 2026 — Vibefam, the all-in-one operating system for fitness businesses, announced the completion of a US$1 million seed funding round led by a Singapore-based family office with a strong track record of backing category-defining technology companies. In addition to capital, the investor brings deep operating insight and a network built through years of supporting founders and working alongside leading venture investors.

Today, Vibefam powers more than 700 fitness locations worldwide and serves over 500,000 end users. The platform supports a diverse range of fitness businesses, including Pilates studios, yoga studios, strength and conditioning gyms, dance academies, martial arts schools, and boutique fitness brands.

The investment will accelerate Vibefam’s mission to help fitness businesses launch, operate, and scale through a unified platform that combines operations, payments, customer engagement, and growth solutions within a single platform.

The funding comes at a time when fitness operators are increasingly seeking intelligent operating platforms that unify operations, payments, and customer engagement, replacing fragmented technology stacks and legacy software platforms.

“Fitness businesses deserve technology that works as hard as they do,” said Serene Lim, Co-Founder and CEO of Vibefam. “Many operators still juggle multiple disconnected systems to manage bookings, payments, customer communication, marketing, and reporting. We’re building a platform that brings everything together, helping businesses operate more efficiently while delivering better experiences to their customers.”

The newly raised capital will primarily be invested into artificial intelligence and embedded financial services, two areas the company believes will fundamentally reshape how service businesses operate.

In July 2026, Vibefam will launch Vibe AI, a messaging-native customer engagement platform that allows members to interact with fitness businesses through natural conversations. From answering enquiries and recommending classes to completing bookings and re-engaging inactive customers, the platform helps businesses deliver instant service at scale without increasing administrative workload.

The company is also expanding its embedded finance capabilities through a growing network of financial partners, enabling eligible businesses to access funding directly within the Vibefam platform to support expansion, hiring, equipment purchases, and working capital needs. By leveraging operational data already available on Vibefam, eligible businesses can gain faster access to growth capital with significantly reduced paperwork and approval times.

“We believe the future of business software will be proactive, intelligent, and deeply embedded into the daily operations of every business,” Lim added. “The opportunity extends far beyond managing bookings and payments. We’re building infrastructure that helps fitness businesses acquire customers, automate operations, access capital, and make better decisions every day.”

The funding will support continued product development, strategic hiring, and the expansion of Vibefam’s AI and embedded finance capabilities as the company continues its evolution into a comprehensive operating system for fitness businesses.

About Vibefam

Vibefam is an AI-powered operating system for fitness businesses. The platform helps gyms, studios, and wellness operators manage scheduling, memberships, payments, customer engagement, reporting, and growth from a single platform. Today, Vibefam powers more than 700 fitness locations worldwide and serves over 500,000 end users.

Vibefam is also backed by leading early-stage investors including Hustle Fund and Ignite Asia, alongside strategic investors and operators from the fitness and wellness industry who bring deep expertise in building and scaling consumer and service businesses.

SOURCE Vibefam

Austin-based company helps ESPs turn the processes that made them successful into AI systems that can scale

AUSTIN, Texas, June 17, 2026 — Intellectible, the AI-native revenue operations platform, today announced the close of a $3 million seed round led by Bread & Butter Ventures, with participation from Victorum Capital, Gray Ventures, Circadian Ventures, Allied VC, High Street Equity Partners, and angel investor Adam Burgoon.

“Enterprise service providers are some of the biggest, most important, and most under-automated companies in the economy,” said Jesse Lozano, CEO and Co-founder, citing an industry estimate of $2 trillion in annual federal, state, and education contract spending. “ESPs deliver critical services across government, healthcare, facilities, technology, infrastructure, education, defense, and other major markets, but many of their core revenue workflows still run on spreadsheets, inboxes, shared drives, manual research, and institutional knowledge trapped in people’s heads.”

The platform and team map how a company actually wins and executes work: its SOPs, documents, templates, pricing logic, CRM data, approvals, customer context, and decision-making patterns. Intellectible then turns those processes into configurable AI engines for capture, proposal development, pricing, estimation, knowledge management, and related workflows.

“The services industry is massive, deeply complex, and almost entirely underserved by software,” said Brett Brohl, Managing Partner of Bread & Butter Ventures. “Intellectible is not a model wrapper or a thin AI feature; it requires real systems engineering, workflow design, customer discovery, and implementation discipline. Jesse, along with co-founders Rosie and Reuben are exactly the team to build it.”

“For services firms, the non-linear scaling we’ve enabled means the same team can evaluate more opportunities, pursue more of the right work, respond faster, price with better context, and manage more complexity without adding headcount at the same rate,” Lozano added.

Intellectible already works with numerous ESPs and early results include a more than 300 percent increase in qualified top-of-funnel pipeline for one customer with a 95 percent reduction in associated admin work, and a more than 150 percent increase in qualified federal pipeline for Oceus, a 20-year-old enterprise wireless services provider.

HHS, a powerhouse in the support services industry with over 22,000 employees, is another Intellectible customer. “What Intellectible is building for us goes far beyond automation,” said HHS Head of Growth Derek Kissos. “They are helping us architect an intelligent operating system for growth – one that understands our business at a deep, structural level and turns that understanding into continuous action. For the first time, we can see how AI can operate alongside our teams capturing how we think, how we qualify, how we price, and how we execute, and then scaling those capabilities 24/7 across the entire enterprise.”

The new funding will accelerate product development, expand go-to-market across government contracting and enterprise services, and increase implementation capacity for larger customers.

SOURCE Intellectible

Hide Your Martech Vendors

BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 17, 2026 — “Never Pay Full Price,” said Maricor Resente, Founder of Queen One.

Queen One has assembled a world-class team of commerce technologists, founders, and apex marketers to bring the commerce ecosystem world-scale technology at prices designed to destabilize Martech.

Today, Queen One proudly unveils the Queen One CRM.

Beauty and Performance
We have a duty to be a steward for All Brands. Queen One has a vision for commerce and today we delivered our first book. It’s here. You should engage with it. It delivers the two things that brands care about most: Beauty and Performance.

Beauty is Vibrant brand experience.
Beauty is true essence of products…the vibration of goods.

Performance is growing your business 50% and giving your team members raises.
Performance is undeniable. Top-line, bottom-line, get in line.

If you’re interested, we produced a song. In the hook, it says “make the beauty go up, make the cost go down, watch the revenue circle the towwwwwwnnnnn,” lyrics by Ryan Urban, CEO.

At Queen One, we focus on the value of the product. When you join forces with us, your customers get to feel the energy of the brand and the stories of all your great products. “This feels like us,” said the CEO of a prominent brand that recently signed with us.

Talk to us to usher your brand into 2028, to increase your CRM performance by 50%+, to reduce your CRM costs by 50%+.

CRM: No Longer a Utility Bill
Today’s CRM platforms do not understand customer + brand relationships. Brands don’t like creating rules, flows, journeys, and segmentation logic. Customers don’t like receiving them.

That is why Queen One has launched a completely new system for commerce — one powered by more than 30 competing models, algorithmic decision-making, and individualized streams for every consumer. Every interaction becomes a competition of models working on behalf of both the consumer and the brand. “When models compete, you win,” said Namik Adulzade, CTO of Queen One.

The result is the industry’s first true CRM — one where every consumer receives beauty and every brand receives performance.

A Word From Our Sponsors
The company has already attracted strong conviction from investors across AI and commerce.

“In my 18 years of investing, I’ve never seen a team ship so much product so fast,” said Elodie Dupuy, Founder and Managing Partner at Full In. “Not only is the rate of evolution astounding, but the vision is celestial—ever expanding—and not pie in the sky. It’s rooted in an unbelievable depth of customer understanding, the kind of understanding that lets you give customers what they never knew they needed. I can’t imagine where the company will be in a year.”

“I’ve never seen a team with such a big, beautiful vision for the future of commerce,” said Brett Martin, Co-Founder of Charge Ventures. “In a sea of soulless wrappers that confuse eliminating jobs with progress, Queen One unleashes the world’s best creatives to do their best work. Generative commerce is coming, and Queen One is leading the way.”

“Commerce experiences have looked identical for way too long. What sets Queen One apart is their deep industry expertise and absolute passion to build something truly unique. They’re reinventing the way brands create presence, tell stories, and drive performance online. We are thrilled to back a team with the ambition to make the internet feel alive again,” said Sandy Cass, Partner at Red Swan Ventures.

Investor, Media, and Brand Relations
Time is Now. Invest Boldly.

Queen One is backed by Charge Ventures, Full In Partners, Red Swan Ventures, Inspired and more than 44 friends and family investors.
Queen One is also partnered with New York State and is committed to creating 600 jobs. The company has built the Rise and Fly Vision Centre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and received $6 million in performance-based tax credits from Empire State Development.

SOURCE Queen One

Charlottesville-based med-tech company accelerates innovation and commercialization in orthopedic technology

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 17, 2026 — Icarus Medical, a Charlottesville-based med-tech company focused on advancing orthopedic bracing technology, today announced the successful close of its Series A financing round. Originally targeting $5 million, the round closed oversubscribed at $7.2 million, reflecting strong investor confidence in the company’s technology platform, market momentum, and long-term vision.

Proceeds from the financing will support accelerated commercialization across the US, continued product development, manufacturing expansion, clinical validation of current devices, and personnel development as the company continues increasing its national presence.

Major investors participating in the round include Riptide Ventures, OSF Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, Highpoint Ventures, MedTech Connect, Neovate Capital Partners, and BLU Venture Investors. In addition to capital, these partners bring strategic healthcare, commercialization, operational expertise, and industry relationships that will help support Icarus Medical’s next stage of development.

“This financing represents a major milestone for Icarus Medical and validates both the clinical impact of our technology and the strength of the team we have built,” said Dave Johnson, Founder and CEO of Icarus Medical. “We are excited to partner with investors who not only believe in our mission, but who also bring strategic insight and relationships that can help accelerate our trajectory.”

Founded in Charlottesville, Icarus Medical is developing a new class of orthopedic bracing technologies that combine biomechanics, additive manufacturing, and patient-focused design to help people stay active and mobile while reducing pain and improving function. The company’s technologies include the Ascender Knee Brace for patellofemoral and multicompartment osteoarthritis, along with solutions for post-operative recovery, neurological conditions, and complex lower extremity mobility challenges.

“Our health system’s mission is to serve all persons with the greatest care and love. As we evaluated Icarus Medical, we needed to be confident that its solutions could meaningfully improve the lives of the patients we serve, said Ben Spektor, director of Venture Investments at OSF Ventures. “Through engagement with our clinicians, we quickly validated that conviction and received strong feedback regarding both the significant unmet need and the value of Icarus’ innovative bracing technology. Spektor added, “Icarus is at the forefront of bracing innovation, and we are proud to support the company’s growth while helping expand access to its products across our Ministry.”

Icarus Medical designs and manufactures its products in Charlottesville, Virginia, while continuing to advance its manufacturing capabilities and create new local jobs. Over the past year, Icarus Medical was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies after achieving 1,283% three-year growth. The company was also recently recognized with the 2026 CBIC Startup of the Year Award by the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council.

“Healthcare innovation requires more than just great technology. It requires strong clinical alignment, operational execution, and the ability to scale,” said Dave Johnson. “We believe this group of investors positions us extremely well for the next phase of the company.”

About Icarus Medical

Icarus Medical is a Charlottesville, Virginia-based medical technology company focused on developing innovative orthopedic bracing solutions that help patients stay active, improve mobility, and reduce pain. The company combines biomechanics, software, and additive manufacturing to create advanced orthopedic technologies for osteoarthritis, post-operative recovery, neurological conditions, and lower extremity mobility challenges.

For more information about Icarus Medical, visit https://icarusmedical.com.

SOURCE Icarus Medical

KLIPY is the enterprise-grade expression API layer, helping developers integrate GIFs, memes, stickers, clips, and AI for real-time expression, while giving creators, brands, and rights holders tools to distribute, manage, and control expressive media across digital communication platforms.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 17, 2026 — KLIPY today announced a $3.8 million fundraising round, and that it has joined Google’s AI Futures Fund, to scale its expression API layer for memes, stickers, clips, and AI for real-time expression. KLIPY helps developers integrate expressive media and AI APIs into social and creative platforms like BeReal, Baidu, Canva, Figma, and Microsoft SwiftKey, while giving creators, brands, and rights holders tools to distribute, manage, and control content.

KLIPY’s “expression layer” is built for the AI era, and nearly 10,000 developers and 40,000 creators already use KLIPY’s API, which processes billions of requests weekly. In addition to content search and creation, KLIPY is building monetization infrastructure for expressive media. Its contextual ad tools help partner apps create new revenue streams while maintaining control over content and offering a privacy-conscious user experience.

The funding will allow the company to grow its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams, expand to even more platforms, and build new monetization and creative tools for creators and content studios. KLIPY is founded by serial entrepreneurs Givi Beridze, Frank Nawabi, and Waska Chaduneli. Between them, they’ve founded seven companies, including Nawabi’s GIF-sharing platform Tenor which was acquired by Google in 2018 and scaled to over a billion users across the globe.

“People are expressing themselves through memes, GIFs, and short-form content more than ever, especially Gen Z and Gen Alpha,” said KLIPY co-founder and CEO Givi Beridze. “This explosion in visual communication is only accelerating now that AI makes expression so quick and easy.”

“While internet culture moves at lightning speed, memes, for example, possess surprising staying power,” Beridze continued. “They take on cultural meaning, and brands are realizing that they are an authentic way to join the conversation and keep their franchises relevant.”

“At Tenor, we created the largest GIF-sharing platform and pioneered the very first sponsored GIF,” said KLIPY co-founder and board member Frank Nawabi. “Now, KLIPY is building a next-generation ‘expression layer’ for the AI era that combines search, AI, and monetization into a unified API platform, with tools for content rights holders and creators to distribute and manage short-form media at scale.”

“BeReal is all about authentic expression, and KLIPY helps our users express themselves in fun, engaging, and creative ways,” said Jérémie Colin, BeReal. “Their platform is purpose-built for the next generation of social connection, and the migration was quick and easy.”

“The way people communicate online is changing rapidly, driven by AI,” said Jonathan Silber, co-founder and director of Google’s AI Futures Fund. “Increasingly, people want to be active co-creators of content, not passive consumers. KLIPY is building the intelligent, trusted expression layer that the next generation of apps will rely on, and we’re thrilled to back a team that deeply understands this space at scale.”

Participants in the round included Google’s AI Futures Fund, I2BF, Silvercircle VC, Sturgeon Capital, Red Swan Ventures, Intuition Ventures, Yash Patel of Capra Ventures, and former Golden State Warriors basketball player and two-time NBA champion Zaza Pachulia.

About KLIPY
KLIPY is an API platform for expressive media, enabling apps to integrate GIFs, stickers, clips, and AI APIs into their products. The company provides developer infrastructure, creator tools, and monetization solutions designed for the next generation of digital communication.

SOURCE KLIPY

Venture Capital was supposed to fund the future. Instead, too often it traps founders, employees, and early backers inside a system that can take a decade or more to return a dollar. Rafe Furst, Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, argues that the deepest flaw in VC is a structure built around delayed liquidity, misaligned incentives, and early-stage bets.

TAMPA BAY, Fla., June 17, 2026 — Venture capital is not slowing down, it is concentrating. The number of active U.S. VC firms fell from 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024, while more than half of the $71 billion raised by U.S. venture firms last year went to just nine players. On this episode of Disruption Interruption, host Karla Jo Helms (KJ) speaks with Rafe Furst, World Series poker champion, five-time founder, bestselling venture-capital author, and Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, about why the traditional 10-year lockup model is breaking early-stage investing, why VC incentives have drifted away from true company building, and why blockchain may finally offer founders and investors a path to liquidity. As Furst puts it, “The biggest structural problem with VC is there’s no liquidity.”

Why Venture Capital Keeps Missing
Furst’s core argument is that Venture Capital no longer behaves like true Venture Capital should. Too many firms now approach early-stage investing less as a genuine commitment to founders and more as a strategic placeholder. They view it as a low-cost way to preserve the option to invest bigger once the risk has already been reduced. “They’re looking to buy a lottery ticket to be able to deploy capital much later on”, Furst says. The result is a market where the earliest builders still absorb the most uncertainty, but do not always receive the deepest alignment or support.

That misalignment gets worse because the asset class is unforgiving. Nine out of ten early-stage companies will still fail, while the winners can take 10 years or more to generate liquidity. According to the Wall Street Journal, that delay is not theoretical: more than 90% of 2021 venture funds had produced zero distributions as of mid-2024, underscoring how long capital can stay trapped in the system. In his words, “It’s just a lifetime. It’s just untenable. It doesn’t work.”

This is where incentives begin to warp. Instead of committing to one clear strategy, either deep hands-on conviction at the earliest stage or broad high-volume early-stage allocation, many firms try to split the difference. Furst says that this middle ground creates the wrong behavior: less patience, weaker founder alignment, more pressure to control outcomes, and lower returns than the asset class should be capable of producing. His critique is not of VC in principle, but of a version that no longer matches the realities of early-stage risk or the founders it claims to support.

Blockchain Can Bring Liquidity Back to Innovation
Furst believes the unlock is liquidity. That is why he sees blockchain not as a side bet, but as the logical next evolution of venture finance itself. His view lands at a moment when even top-tier firms have been rethinking the traditional venture structure and its long lockup periods, according to Sequoia Capitals. Early public markets can be compared to a form of equity crowdfunding that originally allowed capital formation and liquid ownership to coexist before regulation, and market abuse changed the landscape. “Blockchain now offers a new version of that missing bridge,” Furst says. “The future of venture capital is through decentralized technologies, Web3, crypto, and blockchain.”

That thesis is now shaping The Crypto Company’s next move. The company has acquired the technology behind a new layer-one blockchain and cryptocurrency called Frame, which Furst describes as a unifying liquidity and interoperability layer across fragmented crypto ecosystems. His analogy is the interstate highway system: local economies can thrive on their own, but real commerce accelerates when movement between them becomes seamless. In that sense, Frame is meant to help separate blockchain economies interoperate, transact, and share liquidity more effectively.

For Furst, the opportunity is only growing as AI and blockchain converge. He says AI agents are already transacting on-chain because they cannot use the traditional banking system the way humans do, and he believes that trend will accelerate. His advice to founders is not to wait for certainty, but to position themselves early. “The way to not get swept away is to get in front of the wave.”

Links

Disrupting Venture Capital: Why the 10-Year Lockup Is Dead with Rafe Furst

Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you will hear from today’s biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about innovation and how they overcame opposition to adoption.

https://omny.fm/shows/disruption-interruption/disrupting-venture-capital-why-the-10-year-lockup-is-dead-with-rafe-furst

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafefurst/
Company Website: https://www.thecryptocompany.com/

About Disruption Interruption^TM
Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries — MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping, logistics, and more — and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo “KJ” Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews badasses who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits — and not-so-common — that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world’s key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at www.disruption-interruption.com.

About Rafe Furst
Rafe Furst is Chief Strategy Officer of The Crypto Company, a five-time founder, investor, and longtime builder at the intersection of early-stage finance, emerging technology, and market design. In the episode, he traces his path from advanced study in artificial intelligence at Stanford and early web entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley to angel investing, poker, and blockchain-based venture infrastructure. Publicly, he is also known as a World Series of Poker champion and as the author of a bestselling book on venture capital. Today, his work is focused on solving what he sees as venture capital’s deepest structural flaw: the absence of liquidity for founders, employees, and early backers, and the role blockchain can play in fixing it.

About Karla Jo Helms
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR^® Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinion — Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way, and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

References

• Primack, D. (2021, October 26). Scoop: Sequoia Capital just blew up the VC fund model. Axios. axios.com/2021/10/26/sequoia-capital-fund-venture-capital-model
• Chernova, Y. (2024, August 16). More than 90% of 2021 venture funds have had zero distributions thus far, report shows. The Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/articles/more-than-90-of-2021-venture-funds-have-had-zero-distributions-thus-far-report-shows-32b0348f
• Financial Times. (2025, January 1). Number of US venture capital firms falls as cash flows to tech’s top investors. ft.com/content/7a787423-9466-4e55-8c0e-8811cfe44dd3

Media Inquiries:
Karla Jo Helms
JOTO PR™ 
727-777-4629

SOURCE Disruption Interruption

SAN FRANCISCO, June 17, 2026 — Flagright, the AI operating system for financial crime compliance, is announcing it has raised a $12.5M Series A, led by Infinity Ventures, with participation from Sella Direct Ventures and continued backing from existing investors including Frontline and Y Combinator.

The round will accelerate Flagright’s position as the enterprise standard for financial crime compliance by expanding explainable AI use cases across compliance operations and aggressively increasing its US market presence.

Financial crime compliance is entering a platform shift. Across banking, payments, lending, brokerage, credit unions, and other regulated sectors, institutions are being asked to move faster, manage higher volumes, meet rising regulatory expectations, and respond to increasingly sophisticated financial crime. At the same time, AI is moving from experimentation into operational reality.

The problem is that much of the compliance stack was not built for this environment.

Many institutions are still forced to choose between rigid legacy systems that are difficult to adapt and fragmented point solutions that create more operational complexity than they remove.

Flagright is the AI operating system for financial crime compliance, built to end that tradeoff.

Flagright brings transaction monitoring, watchlist screening, risk scoring, case management, AI forensics, and governance workflows into a unified AI operating system for financial crime compliance. The platform combines best-in-class compliance modules, enterprise grade workflows, and explainable AI capabilities that help fincrime teams improve recommendations, system optimization, alert investigations, and decision support while keeping control, transparency, and human oversight at the center.

Baran Ozkan, co-founder and CEO of Flagright, said: “The financial crime compliance stack is being rebuilt, and Flagright is the company to define the operating system layer for this category. Regulated financial institutions need a system that gives them speed, control, explainability, and auditability in one place. This round helps us accelerate our position as the enterprise standard for financial crime compliance by expanding explainable AI use cases across compliance operations and increasing our US market presence, while we continue serving sophisticated clients with the reliability and depth they expect from a mission critical software.”

The round will accelerate Flagright’s position as the enterprise standard for financial crime compliance by expanding explainable AI use cases across compliance operations and increasing its US market presence.

This includes expanding AI across investigations, alert intelligence, rule optimization, decision support, and audit-ready workflows, while growing Flagright’s enterprise go-to-market presence around banks, fintechs, credit unions, and regulated financial institutions looking to replace fragmented or legacy compliance infrastructure.

Madhu Nadig, co-founder and CTO of Flagright, said: “AI in compliance only matters if it is explainable, governable, and useful in real operations. The market does not need another black box tool. It needs an operating system that brings monitoring, screening, investigations, governance, and explainable AI together in one place. We are building the system of choice for sophisticated institutions that need AI they can trust, audit, and operationalize at scale.”

Jeremy Jonker, co-founder and managing partner at Infinity Ventures, said: “At Infinity Ventures, we back founders building best-in-class modern financial infrastructure. Flagright stood out because sophisticated financial institutions are increasingly choosing the platform for its combination of enterprise readiness, explainable AI, operational flexibility, and product maturity. We believe Flagright is defining the AI operating system layer for financial crime compliance, and we expect the company to become the market leader in this category over the next five years.”

This round is an acceleration point for Flagright, and with the market moving toward a more unified, intelligent, and enterprise-grade approach to financial crime compliance, the company intends to define that future.

About Flagright

Flagright is the AI operating system for financial crime compliance, trusted by more than 100 fintechs and banks across 30+ countries. Our unified, risk-based platform centralizes transaction monitoring, watchlist screening, investigations, and governance so financial institutions can run modern compliance programs on a single audit-ready system, deploying in as little as two weeks.

With Flagright, fincrime compliance teams design and continuously refine controls without code using a powerful scenario builder, sub-second APIs, dynamic risk profiling, and simulation tools that reduce false positives and improve decision accuracy. Auditable AI agents support investigations inside governed workflows, keeping human oversight central while ensuring decisions remain transparent and defensible across jurisdictions.

Organizations replacing fragmented tools with Flagright report up to 93% fewer false positives and 80% lower compliance costs, setting the modern standard for financial crime compliance.

SOURCE Flagright

ATLANTA, June 17, 2026 — OffPlan, a healthcare platform reimagining how employers and employees access primary care, today announced the successful completion of a $2.5 million seed funding round. The capital will support the company’s launch and expansion across multiple states over the next two years as it builds a new model for membership-based healthcare delivery focused on affordability, physician accessibility, and reduced dependence on traditional insurance structures.

OffPlan was founded to address what its leadership sees as a fundamental structural problem in healthcare: the use of insurance for routine and predictable care. The company’s model combines direct primary care memberships, transparent specialty pricing, and catastrophic coverage strategies designed to simplify healthcare access while lowering costs for employers and employees alike.

“Healthcare has become increasingly unaffordable because the system treats everyday care like a catastrophic insurance event,” said Greg Rable, Co-Founder and CEO of OffPlan. “We built OffPlan to create a more rational structure — one where primary care is accessible, transparent, and centered around the physician-patient relationship rather than claims processing and administrative friction.”

The seed financing will be used to accelerate platform development, expand physician partnerships, support go-to-market operations, and launch OffPlan’s services in additional states following initial market rollouts.

OffPlan is led by veteran operators with deep experience across technology, healthcare, payments, and operational scaling.

Co-Founder and CEO Greg Rable is a three-time founder and executive with multiple successful exits, including Derivion, acquired by FIS; FactorTrust, acquired by TransUnion; and QuidMarket, acquired by Propel Holdings. Across nearly three decades building and scaling companies, Rable experienced firsthand the escalating burden healthcare costs place on employers and employees.

Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer Omar Fernandez brings more than 25 years of healthcare industry experience, including leadership roles in specialty pharmacy and physician practice support. Prior to founding OffPlan, Fernandez founded Sabio Health, a company focused on supporting independent primary care practices.

“Our goal is not simply to improve the current insurance system,” said Omar Fernandez. “It’s to build a fundamentally better operating model for everyday healthcare — one that restores physician autonomy, improves patient access, and gives employers a sustainable alternative to annual double-digit cost increases.”

OffPlan’s model emphasizes physician-owned practices, same-day or next-day appointments, longer patient visits, virtual care access, chronic disease management, and transparent pricing structures without traditional primary care claims administration.

The company believes that approximately 80% of healthcare utilization consists of routine, predictable care that can be managed more effectively outside traditional insurance frameworks. By separating everyday healthcare needs from catastrophic coverage, OffPlan aims to deliver lower costs and better patient outcomes while reducing administrative complexity for physicians and employers.

The company plans to expand its physician network, employer partnerships, and advisor relationships as it scales nationally.

About OffPlan

OffPlan is a healthcare platform designed to provide membership-based primary care and simplified healthcare access for employers, employees, physicians, and benefits advisors. The company combines direct primary care, transparent specialty pricing, and catastrophic coverage strategies to create a more efficient and patient-centered healthcare model. OffPlan partners with independent physician-owned practices and is initially launching in Florida and Virginia, with additional market expansion planned nationwide.

Media Contact:
OffPlan
[email protected]
https://offplan.network/

SOURCE OffPlan