Building on years of strategic technology investing, Aprio Ventures will connect the firm with emerging solutions to evaluate, implement, and scale to enhance client service

AI Summary:

• Aprio launches Aprio Ventures to invest in emerging AI and technology companies.
• The program will help evaluate and scale technologies that enhance client service.
• Since 2019, Aprio has invested in nearly 20 technology companies.

ATLANTA, Aug. 18, 2026 — Aprio, the 20th largest business advisory and accounting firm in the U.S., today announces the launch of Aprio Ventures, a strategic investment program created to identify and accelerate technologies to strengthen Aprio’s services and enhance the client experience. Through Aprio Ventures, Aprio will invest in emerging technology companies, work alongside founders, and evaluate innovative solutions that can strengthen its services, empower its professionals, and create a better experience for clients.

Since 2019, Aprio has invested in nearly 20 companies and worked alongside founders to evaluate, pilot, and scale technology across the professional services landscape. Aprio Ventures brings greater focus to that work, allowing the firm to pursue more opportunities across AI, automation, and enterprise software while gaining a broader view of the technologies shaping accounting and advisory services.

Aprio’s investments through Aprio Ventures will be paired with strategic and technical support, giving Aprio professionals an opportunity to help shape how the solutions work in practice and founders the support to scale their businesses. The goal is to equip teams with tools that will benefit our clients, giving our professionals more time to focus on strategic advice and the issues that matter most to our clients.

“Aprio Ventures is about building the firm our clients will need in the future,” said Richard Kopelman, CEO of Aprio. “By investing in emerging technology and putting promising solutions to work inside Aprio, we can improve how we serve clients and give our professionals more time to focus on meaningful advice. This is another way Aprio is staying ahead and helping lead the profession forward.”

Aprio Ventures, part of Aprio’s Corporate Development Team, will be led by Kyle Kling. Kyle brings more than a decade of experience building corporate venture programs and investing across AI, enterprise software, fintech, and emerging technologies. He will lead the firm’s efforts to identify investment opportunities, build relationships with founders and other investors, and connect promising technologies with leaders across Aprio.

Aprio Ventures expects to invest alongside established venture capital firms and other investors. In addition to capital, Aprio can offer founders access to the perspective of professionals working across accounting, tax, advisory, wealth, legal, and talent solutions, as well as opportunities to evaluate how their technology performs in a growing professional services firm.

Aprio Ventures supports Aprio’s broader growth strategy and the firm’s five-year, $300 million commitment to technology and automation. Together, these investments are designed to strengthen how Aprio delivers its services, expand the capabilities available to clients, and help the firm continue to lead as technology reshapes the accounting and advisory profession.

To learn more about Aprio Ventures, visit ventures.aprio.com.

About Aprio
Aprio is redefining what it means to be a global advisory and accounting firm. We help businesses and individuals Account for Anything™ — delivering clarity and confidence in a world full of unknowns. Aprio is the brand name under which Aprio, LLP, and Aprio Advisory Group, LLC deliver professional services to clients worldwide. Aprio Advisory Group, LLC provides advisory, tax, legal, wealth, and talent solutions to help build value, drive growth, manage risk, and protect wealth, while Aprio, LLP delivers audit and attest services with uncompromising quality and integrity. With more than 3,400 team members serving clients in 50+ countries and $5.8B in assets under advisement as of June 30, 2026, Aprio, the 20th largest business advisory and accounting firm in the U.S., is consistently recognized as a Top Workplace, celebrated for transformative growth on the Inc. 5000 and Inc. Power Partners lists, and led by Richard Kopelman, named to Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting. Learn more at Aprio.com.

Follow Aprio:
Aprio Website: https://www.aprio.com/
Aprio Ventures Website: https://ventures.aprio.com/
Aprio Careers: https://www.careers.aprio.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aprio/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aprioadvisors/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aprioadvisors/ 

SOURCE Aprio

Funding follows more than 200% year-over-year growth as CAMO helps hotels capture a share of the estimated $5 billion guest spend annually on delivery to U.S. hotel rooms

ANAHEIM, Calif., Aug. 18, 2026 — CAMO Hospitality, the infrastructure platform powering hotel-branded room service, today announced the closing of its $4 million seed funding round to accelerate its expansion across the U.S. The funding follows more than 200% year-over-year revenue growth and growing demand from hotel brands, owners and managers.

CAMO will use the funding to enter additional U.S. markets, support portfolio-wide deployments currently in pilot, and continue developing its robust technology platform.

Investors in the round include Anthony Lacavera, founder and chairman of Globalive; Rajan Hansji, CEO of Hansji Corporation; Azim Jamal, CEO of Pacific Reach; Parsa Rohani, co-founder of Neudesic/Timu; Evan Weiss, co-founder of LWHA; and a group of hotel owners currently using CAMO at their properties.

 “Hotels have digitized everything except the transaction that happens inside the room,” said Lacavera. “That is a large market with no incumbent. CAMO is building the infrastructure to own it.”

The investment comes as hotels look for new ways to capture guest spending and gain greater visibility into guest behavior during the stay. CAMO estimates that guests spend more than $5 billion annually on restaurant delivery to U.S. hotel rooms, while roughly nine in 10 hotels don’t offer traditional room service. Much of that spending currently flows through third-party delivery platforms, leaving hotels without the revenue, guest data or control over the experience.

“Guests never stopped wanting food delivered to their rooms,” said Kevin Rohani, CAMO founder and CEO. “The traditional model just became too expensive and operationally complex for most hotels to support. We built CAMO to give hotels a way to meet that demand without the fixed costs of traditional room service. After years of proving the model, this funding gives us the ability to bring it to hotel brands and management companies at scale.”

CAMO provides hotels with fully managed room service under their own brands, handling the ordering technology, local kitchen fulfillment, delivery logistics, and guest support behind the scenes. The model requires no kitchen buildout, capital expenditure, or additional hotel headcount. Hotels retain control of the branded guest experience while gaining a new revenue stream and visibility into guest ordering behavior that traditionally sits outside the hotel ecosystem.

Orders average approximately $45, with most hotels earning $1,000 to $5,000 in net monthly profit through CAMO’s revenue-share model. CAMO also manages delivery and guest support, with average delivery times of approximately 22 minutes, while providing hotels with order-level data on what guests purchase, when they order, and how their behavior changes throughout the stay. Hotels access order-level data through CAMO’s hotel portal, and many direct their revenue share toward staff and guest tools like guest recovery credits, employee recognition, and local sales efforts that fall outside an approved operating budget.

The company currently operates across more than 60 hotel properties in six U.S. markets and is working with several major hotel brands and management companies for broader portfolio rollouts. Longer term, CAMO plans to expand the in-room commerce model beyond dining into other areas of on-demand services for guests.

“There is a commerce layer inside every hotel room that nobody has claimed,” Rohani said. “Dining, wellness, transportation, experiences, services. A guest wants all of it during a stay, and today most of it reaches them without the hotel involved at all. We are building the layer that routes every one of those transactions back through the hotel.”

CAMO has also expanded its advisory board with leaders across hospitality, payments, and off-premises dining, including Paul Tuscano, former KFC Chief Digital Officer and Marriott International executive; Mike Cohen, former Square and Meta executive; and Alex Canter, founder of Ordermark and Nextbite.

“Hotel brands invest millions to make the guest’s experience just right,” said Tuscano, who led onsite digital and mobile product development at Marriott. “To hand-off the in-room moment to an outside marketplace kills the guest’s relationship with the brand. CAMO keeps the guest experience on-brand and inside the hotel ecosystem.”

About CAMO
CAMO Hospitality, Inc. is the infrastructure platform powering hotel-branded room service. The company provides the end-to-end infrastructure for hotels to offer branded room service to guests without the need for a kitchen or kitchen staff, including ordering technology, kitchen fulfillment, delivery coordination, and guest support. CAMO operates on a revenue share model and is live under major brands and independent hotels in key U.S. markets. The company was founded by Kevin Rohani and is headquartered in Anaheim, CA. Learn more at camoeats.com.

Contact:
CJ Arlotta
CJ Media Solutions for CAMO Hospitality
Ph: 631-572-3079
E: [email protected] 

SOURCE CAMO Hospitality

KRAKOW, Poland, Aug. 18, 2026 — DefendEye, developer of fully autonomous drone systems, today announced the closing of a major investment round led by NovaCapital. Backed by a premier syndicate of international venture capital and strategic investors, this capital infusion empowers DefendEye to aggressively scale production of its flagship Overwatch Drone, an advanced aerial intelligence system built primarily for first responders.

To accelerate international growth, the funding round features a distinguished group of global backers:

• NovaCapital (Italy): Investment holding company backing ambitious entrepreneurs to accelerate growth in B2B companies across Europe and the USA.
• ff Venture Capital (Poland): Prominent early-stage venture firm with a Warsaw-based European fund, empowering founders to scale emerging technologies.
• Hard2beat (Poland): Specialized early-stage fund focusing on complex, hardware-enabled deep-tech and dual-use technologies.
• Sunfish Partners (Germany): Berlin-based early-stage firm backing ambitious deep-tech, space, and defense startups across Central and Eastern Europe.
• In-Q-Tel (USA): Independent, not-for-profit strategic investor accelerating the development and delivery of cutting-edge technologies to U.S. national security agencies and allies.

“This investment and support will allow us to scale and expand operations,” said James Buchheim, CEO of DefendEye. “We are excited to bring to market the world’s first AI drone designed from the ground up for First Responders. We manufacture our entire drone and NDAA subcomponents ourselves, including PCB assembly, in our Hallandale Beach, FL facility.”

When emergencies strike, every second counts. DefendEye is revolutionizing how emergency personnel respond by providing instant, life-saving situational awareness. Unlike traditional drones requiring trained pilots and setup time, DefendEye offers a fully autonomous, pilot-free system that deploys in seconds directly from a rugged, weather-proof tube.

Engineered for high-stakes environments, the smart base station features a built-in tactical LTE modem securely connecting the drone to the cloud. This connectivity allows incident commanders, dispatchers, and remote teams to instantly access live video feeds worldwide, ensuring rapid decision-making before personnel arrive on scene.

Security and supply chain resilience are central to DefendEye’s mission. The company manufactures its hardware at state-of-the-art facilities in Krakow, Poland, and Hallandale Beach, Florida. By maintaining strict end-to-end control over manufacturing and conducting printed circuit board (PCB) assembly entirely in-house, DefendEye ensures full National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliance. This offers government and public safety agencies a secure, trusted platform free of foreign supply chain vulnerabilities.

With this new financial backing, DefendEye is positioned to become the premier standard in autonomous aerial overwatch for emergency services worldwide, redefining crisis management from the sky.

About DefendEye DefendEye is a global technology company specializing in fully autonomous, pilot-free aerial intelligence systems. With dual manufacturing facilities in the United States and Europe, DefendEye delivers instant, secure, and NDAA-compliant drone technology engineered to protect first responders. For more information, visit www.defendeye.com

Media Contact: DefendEye Email: [email protected] Phone: +48 730 731 802

SOURCE Defendeye

Live Oak Investment Partners and River Financial Group become the latest advisor teams to join Diversify.

SANDY, Utah, Aug. 18, 2026 — Diversify, a leading advisor-founded wealth management platform, announced the addition of Live Oak Investment Partners of Austin, Texas and River Financial Group of Boston, Massachusetts. Together, the two offices oversee nearly $400 million in client assets, and bring Diversify’s total assets to over $14 billion.

Live Oak Investment Partners was founded by Mike Hostick. Having built and operated its own RIA for the past 7 years, the firm made the strategic decision to join Diversify to capitalize on the scale and capabilities of an institutional-quality platform and offload much of the administrative and regulatory burden.

“I interviewed several firms and found that Diversify has one of most competitive compensation programs in the market while allowing their advisors the flexibility to run their businesses the way they want to,” said Hostick. “They also have all the tools needed to expand and scale our business and we’re excited about utilizing all the resources that Diversify offers.” Hostick continued, “The entire Diversify team has made us feel like family and we couldn’t be more excited about what lies ahead.”

River Financial Group is led by founder Leo Rotman. The Boston-based firm is yet another to join a growing list of advisors leaving wirehouse and insurance broker-dealer models in favor of Diversify’s independent platform.

“I’ve spent more than two decades building River Financial Group to help families raising a child with a disability. Growing that kind of specialized practice requires a platform built for independence,” said Rotman. “Diversify gives me the flexibility and infrastructure to launch the next stage of River’s growth, while continuing to serve these families the right way. I am very excited about the possibilities ahead.”

Diversify has eclipsed $14 billion in assets without taking on any outside institutional or private equity capital. The firm points to that independence as a defining part of its growth strategy, one that gives advisors consistency of culture and leadership, familiarity built over years of relationships rather than ownership turnover, and direct access to the people making decisions about the platform’s future.

“Mike and Leo have built great businesses, and we’re proud they’ve chosen Diversify to support the next chapter of that growth,” said Ryan Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Diversify. “These are some of the most important decisions advisors will make in their careers. At Diversify, these are not transactions, they are long-term partnerships that we treat with the care and respect that advisors deserve”.

About Diversify

Diversify is an advisor-founded and advisor-led wealth management platform that empowers financial advisors and their clients with institutional resources and a boutique, personalized approach. The firm operates through Diversify Advisory Services, LLC and Diversify Wealth Management, LLC, both SEC-registered investment advisers, with securities offered through DFPG Investments, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Diversify is led by CEO and Co-Founder Ryan O. Smith. Learn more at www.diversify.com.

Media Contact

Brett Beynon

Diversify

[email protected]

www.diversify.com

SOURCE Diversify

Wing Venture Capital leads investment in a foundation-model company bringing intelligence to the structured data that runs the physical and digital economy

SAN FRANCISCO, August 18, 2026 — Synthefy today unveiled its foundation-model platform for structured data. The company’s  Structured Data Foundation Models (SDFMs) bring foundation-model intelligence to the numbers, tables, transactions, and signals that drive the physical and digital economy without building and training a separate model for every problem.

Synthefy also announced a $6.5 million seed round led by Wing Venture Capital, with participation from Haystack, Samsung Next, Canonical, and Lightscape. The round also includes investments from Srinivas Narayanan, former CTO of Applied AI at OpenAI; Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer of Experiences and Devices at Microsoft; and Manohar Paluri, Vice President of AI at Meta Superintelligence Labs.

“While much is focused on artificial general intelligence that replicates human capabilities through language, we’re building machine intelligence for problems humans cannot solve at scale,” said Somi Agarwal, co-founder of Synthefy. “Our models are designed specifically for structured numerical data, bringing foundation-model intelligence to the numbers, tables, transactions, and the signals that drive the global economy.”

Bringing foundation models to the world’s structured data

LLMs learned reusable patterns by pretraining on vast collections of text, and Synthefy applies the same approach to structured numerical data. Synthefy’s Structured Data Foundational Models process structured data tokens while preserving relationships within tables and time series.  A structured data token can represent a sensor reading, a financial transaction, a stock tick, a housing price, a meter pulse, or a biometric signal.

Unlike traditional machine learning, where every dataset and use case demands its own purpose-built model, Synthefy’s Structured Data Foundational Models generalize across numerical data itself. A pretrained model can forecast demand across thousands of products, optimize prices in real time, detect financial fraud, anticipate infrastructure failures, and improve data center efficiency. The same foundation model can extend to any problem that can be expressed as structured data.

Designed for enterprise deployment and control

Recent advances in architecture, data, and computing have made numerical pretraining practical at scale. Synthefy turns that capability into a reusable foundation-model layer for forecasting, pricing, fraud detection, risk analysis, and infrastructure monitoring.

Enterprises and developers can generate production-grade predictions through an open model, a managed API, an enterprise platform, or a deployment inside their own environment. The platform supports the data environments enterprises already use, including AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, and Google Cloud. 

Synthefy is already working with customers and partners across retail, financial services, telecommunications, infrastructure, healthcare, and defense. Its models are being used for demand forecasting, pricing optimization, risk detection, and infrastructure failure prediction.

Nori brings foundation-model intelligence to tables

Synthefy’s models are smaller and purpose-built for numerical prediction and require less compute and energy than large, general-purpose language models. 

Nori is an open-source structured data foundation model. Nori helps enterprises solve high-value problems, including pricing optimization, fraud detection, risk analysis, and demand forecasting.

• Nori ranks first across 130 public (regression) benchmarks.
• Available under an Apache 2.0 license, almost 600K Nori models have been downloaded, and 5,000 Python installations have occurred in its first weeks since launch last month.

“The rise of foundation models for structured data represents the next major expansion of artificial intelligence,” said Gaurav Garg, founding partner at Wing Venture Capital. “Synthefy is building a model platform that can address some of the largest and most valuable datasets in the world. Its combination of technical performance, efficient architecture, open models, and early enterprise adoption positions the company to define this emerging category.”

Synthefy will use the new funding to expand its research and engineering teams, develop the next generation of Nori, and establish partnerships in industries where better numerical prediction can generate significant economic and operational value.

“Our vision is a single model layer for the world’s structured data, one foundation that any team can point at any numerical problem,” said Assistant Professor Sandeep Chinchali, University of Texas at Austin, and co-founder of Synthefy. “Foundation models for structured data will become as important as foundation models for language. They will be less visible and less conversational, but they will quietly improve the decisions that move value through the real world.”

About Synthefy

Synthefy is building Structured Data Foundation Models, foundation models designed specifically for the numerical data that runs the world. Its open, enterprise-ready models help organizations forecast demand, optimize pricing, detect risk, predict failures, and simulate outcomes without building and training a separate model for every problem.

Founded in 2023, Synthefy is backed by Wing Venture Capital, Haystack, Samsung Next, Canonical, Lightscape, and leading artificial intelligence executives. The team includes former engineers and scientists from Meta, Nvidia, Adobe, Uber, and leading academic institutions, with research published at top conferences.

 Learn more at www.synthefy.com.

Contact: Michael Celiceo, [email protected] 

SOURCE Synthefy

Founder John Vance ties fees to client outcomes, writes checks to support companies it advises

AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 18, 2026 — Veteran entrepreneur John Vance today announced the launch of Parachute, the advisory studio and VC fund seeking to close the gap between frontier technology companies’ brand strength and revenue.

When Procter & Gamble closed its fiscal year last month, the world’s most sophisticated brand-building machine reported flat organic sales and “underwhelming demand for its products,” according to CNBC. P&G’s brands did not get weaker. Their conversion of people into buyers did.

Parachute is focused on that gap between how strong a brand is and how much it earns, working with founders to rebuild their company’s stories and sales infrastructure together, with pricing based on outcomes rather than fixed retainers. The firm launches alongside a $1.5 million in-house venture arm that deploys capital directly into the clients it serves.

“P&G’s latest results demonstrate at maximum scale what founders feel at the seed stage,” said Parachute founder John Vance. “Brand strength and revenue are two different variables of a company. Most companies with underperforming revenue don’t have a ‘marketing’ problem. They have a brand-revenue gap that is closable with the correct diagnosis and treatment.”

Vance brings a 10-year track record as an entrepreneur, including selling a company in 2020 for $7.3 million. Over three years as a top seller at a frontier-tech media company, he personally drove more than $100 million in revenue throughout his career. He’s worked with major brands including Stripe, Adidas, AT&T, Ramp, and Corgi.

Parachute’s outcome-based pricing model is a deliberate distinction from the legacy advisory sector, which is scrambling to transition under pressure from the AI boom. McKinsey, the oldest and largest of the “Big Three” strategy consulting firms, now derives about a quarter of its fees globally from performance-based arrangements, according to Business Insider.

Bain’s tech- and AI-enabled work makes up about 30% of its business, while BCG expects AI work to reach about 40% of revenue. When AI compresses a week of human analysis into an afternoon of compute, an hourly rate no longer reflects the value delivered. Historically, consultancies bill for time and deliver strategy documents. Conversely, Parachute collects fees when clients hit tangible, agreed-upon objectives.

“The advisory industry is built to serve the consultant, not the client,” Vance said. “Retainers reward time, not results, and the client carries all the risk. We invert that. We get paid when objectives are hit. When we have a strong enough belief in a company, we write it a check. That’s not marketing: It’s our operating model.”

Parachute’s venture arm demonstrates that the firm’s pricing model is more than a marketing gimmick.

“Many firms will knock 10% off their retainer and claim they now have skin in the game,” Vance said. “We write checks and then build the go-to-market function to protect our investment. If we’re wrong about a company, we lose twice. When we’re right, we both win.”

Parachute is now accepting a limited number of seed and Series A engagements.

Learn more at parachuteventures.co

About Parachute
Parachute is a frontier and emerging tech brand-revenue advisory firm with an in-house VC arm. Parachute closes the gap between brand strength and revenue for seed and Series A companies, building the story and the revenue engine behind it.

SOURCE Parachute Ventures

New investment supports continued expansion of LJM’s technology, analytics and strategic shipping advisory services

FARMINGDALE, N.Y., Aug. 18, 2026 — LJM, a technology-enabled parcel shipping advisory and management company, today announced a strategic partnership with Clearview Capital, a private investment firm. The transaction, which closed May 6, 2026, brings additional resources to support LJM’s continued growth while preserving the expertise and high-touch service model that clients rely on today.

For LJM clients, the partnership will maintain continuity in day-to-day service while enabling increased investment in the company’s technology, analytics and advisory capabilities. LJM plans to accelerate investment in its Parcel Intelligence Platform™, scale its advanced analytics and service offerings, and expand its Executive Shipping Advisory to support holistic, integrated shipping strategies for its largest clients.

The partnership arrives at a time when parcel shipping is becoming an increasingly strategic expense for businesses. In Boston Consulting Group’s 2025 Parcel Study, 90% of shippers indicated that reducing parcel delivery costs is a core challenge in managing parcel logistics.

UPS and FedEx are increasingly prioritizing value and margin over volume, while dynamic pricing, more frequent rate changes and expanding accessorial charges are making parcel costs harder to predict and manage. For shippers, these changes make data-driven carrier negotiations, service optimization and network strategy increasingly important.

“This is about building on what already works,” said Ken Wood, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at LJM. “Our clients will continue receiving the same hands-on expertise they expect from LJM. What changes is our ability to invest more aggressively in the technology, data and capabilities behind that service. Parcel shipping is becoming more complex every year, and this partnership gives us additional resources to help clients see their costs more clearly, make better-informed decisions and manage shipping as an integrated component of their broader business strategy.”

LJM combines proprietary technology and robust parcel data with deep carrier-side expertise to help businesses manage and reduce parcel spend. Its services span carrier contract negotiation and ongoing rate optimization, parcel analytics, invoice audit and recovery, and strategic shipping advisory. LJM’s Parcel Intelligence Platform™ provides centralized access to shipping and spend data, shipment-level reporting, alerts and cost-trend analysis, giving businesses greater visibility into parcel performance and the ability to continuously optimize shipping costs and strategy.

Over more than two decades, LJM has built its business around measurable client outcomes and a high-touch approach to parcel management. Today, the company serves more than 1,500 businesses and has processed more than 5.5 billion parcels, combining technology with experienced parcel professionals to help shippers navigate increasingly complex carrier pricing and operating environments.

“What stood out to us about LJM is the consistency and quality with which the company delivers measurable, valuable outcomes to its clients,” said Geoff Faux, Partner of Clearview Capital. “In an environment where parcel shipping costs remain a significant and increasing expense for businesses, LJM has developed a highly differentiated platform and a proven ability to generate tangible savings for its clients. These attributes position LJM well for its next phase of growth, and we are excited to support the team as they continue to expand the company’s capabilities and build on that success.”

About LJM

LJM is a technology-enabled parcel shipping advisory and management company that helps businesses understand, manage and reduce parcel spend. Combining the Parcel Intelligence Platform™, advanced analytics and deep carrier-side expertise, LJM provides carrier contract negotiation and ongoing rate optimization, parcel analytics, audit and recovery, and executive shipping advisory services. LJM serves more than 1,500 businesses and has processed more than 5.5 billion parcels.

Learn more at myljm.com.

About Clearview Capital

Clearview Capital is a private investment firm founded in 1999, focused on acquiring and recapitalizing lower middle-market companies in North America. The firm has completed more than 150 transactions across diverse industries and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, with additional offices in California and Tennessee.

SOURCE LJM

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Aug. 18, 2026 — Capitan Orthopedics, Inc. (https://capitanortho.com/) announced today that it has closed its oversubscribed Seed round, bringing its total capital raised to date to $4.1 million.

Chance W. Leonard, CEO of Capitan Orthopedics, Inc., commented, “I am extremely excited to announce that we have not only closed our Seed round, but have oversubscribed by over $1.1 million dollars. In addition to our recent receipt of FDA Breakthrough Device Designation, our team continues to reach milestone achievements at an accelerated pace. Today is yet another special day in our rapidly progressing project timeline.”

Capitan Orthopedics, Inc. intends to use the funds to continue its project development and validation efforts and begin its first in-human clinical trial, which is expected to begin in Q1 2027.

Mr. Leonard also added, “We remain very encouraged by our continued progress on this innovative project, the strength of the unmet clinical need and the unique opportunity it creates. Our investors clearly recognize this opportunity, and their capital investment demonstrates significant confidence in the work we are doing. The progress we are making to deliver to the market a solution that is simple, reproducible, and cost effective is exceptional. With core development complete and a clear regulatory path ahead, we look forward to beginning our first in human clinical trial as soon as possible.”

R. Sean Churchill, MD, MBA, shoulder reconstruction specialist, and surgeon design team member, “For decades surgeons have struggled with the irreparable rotator cuff tear. For those patients 65 years and older, the reverse total shoulder arthroplasty provides outstanding results. However, for the younger, active patients with an irreparable rotator cuff tear, there remains a void in surgical treatment options. The SupraSpacer™ stands to fill that gap with a durable, metallic implant that maintains the humeral head aligned with the glenoid throughout a full shoulder range of motion while preserving 90% of the humeral head cartilage. The seven-step surgical procedure is straightforward, reproducible, and ideal for utilization in the ambulatory surgery center.”

About Capitan Orthopedics, Inc.

Capitan Orthopedics, Inc. is an innovator in the design of orthopedic implant products for shoulder surgery. The company has developed the SupraSpacer™ implant and procedure to successfully address the critical unmet need of irreparable rotator cuff tears in younger, active patients. This novel technology fills a distinct gap in the current care continuum and provides surgeons with a simple, reproducible solution that integrates smoothly into existing surgical workflows. The system is purpose-built for the ASC setting and includes sterile-packaged instruments and implants to support procedural efficiency. 

Capitan Orthopedics, Inc. is backed by Genesis Innovation Group, Inc. (https://genesisinnovationgroup.com/), a leader in medical device development and commercialization and represents a compelling opportunity to bring a first-in-class solution to a large, underserved patient population. For investment information, please contact the company at 1-833-444-2468.

https://genesisinnovationgroup.com

https://capitanortho.com 

SOURCE Capitan Orthopedics, Inc.

JANESVILLE, Wis., Aug. 18, 2026 — As U.S. nuclear fuel recycling moves toward commercial reality, SHINE, a fusion energy company with a platform serving the nuclear fuel recycling market, is working with GE Vernova on a project to develop a modernized and more efficient system to track spent fuel throughout the recycling process.

Led by GE Vernova’s Advanced Research Center, the company’s central technology development hub, the project — funded by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program — aims to use artificial intelligence to optimize spent nuclear fuel tracking and measurement at recycling facilities. As a GE Vernova subcontractor, SHINE is developing improved sensor deployment and AI-powered material-tracking systems that would help incorporate material control and accountability into nuclear fuel recycling facilities from the very start.

“There’s a better way to handle material control and accountability at spent nuclear fuel recycling facilities — one that doesn’t mean permanent cost and disruption,” said Ross Radel, SHINE CTO. “As a company designing a recycling process of its own, SHINE is joining the GE Vernova-led collaboration to tackle the design challenge of building modern accountability and safeguards into nuclear recycling facilities from day one. Get that right, and these facilities will be more cost-effective and have less downtime.”

Economic viability is at the core of the project, which is developing technology known as Monochromatic Assays Yielding Enhanced Reliability, or MAYER, for spent nuclear fuel recycling facilities. The technology is intended to track and measure nuclear material in real time as it flows through a recycling facility and feed that information into a virtual digital twin, strengthening security safeguards while significantly reducing operating costs.

Currently, nuclear operators may use redundant instrumentation, physical security measures, repeated manual sampling and periodic shutdowns to carry out inventory checks of nuclear material within a facility. Material control and accounting are part of a larger safeguards program run by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure nuclear material is not stolen or otherwise diverted.

SHINE’s work on the MAYER project supports its broader goal of building a commercial nuclear fuel recycling facility that would be classified in a lower-security NRC category, significantly reducing the physical security burden and cost.

Along with the MAYER collaboration, SHINE announced today another partnership designed to pave the way for practical nuclear fuel recycling that turns nuclear “waste” into an energy resource. These technologies support the cost competitiveness SHINE is seeking in its Recover Elements – Destroy Undesirables – Create Energy nuclear fuel recycling process, called REDUCE for short. Together, they advance SHINE’s work toward the first commercial application of advanced recycling technologies that aim to enable the efficient, proliferation-resistant extraction of uranium, plutonium and other high-value materials from spent nuclear fuel.

About SHINE

SHINE is a fusion energy company headquartered in Janesville, Wisconsin. We are leading the transition to the fusion economy through a vertically-integrated platform that supplies critical products to global markets, each one funding the next.

Today, we supply defense and research customers with neutron-based testing. Our medical radioisotopes diagnose heart disease and treat cancer, and the world’s largest commercial-scale medical isotope facility is now under construction. We are developing the technology to recycle used nuclear fuel, targeting a commercial pilot to draw down the 94,000 metric tons that have accumulated in the United States. Our long-term purpose is to put fusion energy on the grid. Learn more at www.shinefusion.com.

About GE Vernova
GE Vernova Inc. (NYSE: GEV) is a purpose-built global energy company that includes Power, Electrification, and Wind segments and is supported by its accelerator businesses. Building on over 130 years of experience tackling the world’s challenges, GE Vernova is uniquely positioned to help lead the energy transition by continuing to electrify the world while simultaneously working to decarbonize it. GE Vernova helps customers power economies and deliver electricity that is vital to health, safety, security, and improved quality of life. GE Vernova is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., with approximately 85,000 employees across 100+ countries around the world.

GE Vernova’s Advanced Research segment is an innovation powerhouse, operating at the intersection of science and creativity to turn cutting edge research into impactful realities. Advanced Research collaborates with GE Vernova’s businesses across a broad range of technical disciplines to accelerate the energy transition.

SOURCE SHINE Technologies, LLC