BOSTON, Oct. 6, 2026 — Second Avenue Capital Partners (SACP), a Schottenstein affiliate and leading provider of asset-based loans and structured financing solutions, announced today that it has provided an $8,000,000 Senior Secured Revolving Credit Facility to IT’SUGAR, one of the world’s largest specialty candy retailers. The new facility supports IT’SUGAR’s working capital needs and provides incremental liquidity to drive growth.

Founded in 2006, IT’SUGAR operates over 100 locations throughout the United States and Canada. With one of the most expansive confectionery assortments in specialty candy retail, the company offers an immersive shopping experience through a curated product mix and an entertainment-first approach. In addition to its established store and e-commerce channels, IT’SUGAR recently launched a wholesale business that expands the distribution of its branded and differentiated merchandise.    

“IT’SUGAR was created to satisfy a universal sweet tooth through a variety of bold and iconic merchandise you can’t find anywhere else,” said Ryan Nelson, CEO of IT’SUGAR. “As we pursue growth across both new and existing channels, it is essential to have a financing partner that understands merchandising, execution, and our broader strategic priorities, and SACP was the clear choice when we decided to establish a new lending relationship.”

“IT’SUGAR has done a remarkable job building brand awareness through distinctive product lines and engaging customer experiences,” said Andrew Prunier, Founding Member and Head of the Portfolio Team at SACP. “The leadership team has a strong track record of creating dynamic shopping environments, capitalizing on trends, and leveraging partnerships with leading brands to offer differentiated products. Our partnership provides IT’SUGAR with greater flexibility to invest in productive inventory and execute strategic initiatives.”

This transaction highlights SACP’s expertise in providing tailored financing solutions to consumer-facing brands navigating an evolving marketplace. By leveraging extensive industry expertise and a collaborative approach, SACP helps clients achieve their immediate goals while laying a strong foundation for sustained, long-term success.

About Second Avenue Capital Partners – Second Avenue Capital Partners, LLC, a Schottenstein affiliate, specializes in asset-based loans for the broader retail and consumer products industry. Serving middle-market companies, SACP leverages the experience of retail operators, product merchants, and lenders to deliver customized capital solutions. A unique merchant perspective allows SACP to recognize and unlock value in assets that other capital providers often overlook or do not understand. The firm’s tailored financial solutions are a vital resource for clients seeking capital to effectuate strategy and achieve financial objectives. Learn more at sacp.com.

About IT’SUGAR – IT’SUGAR is one of the largest specialty candy retailers, with over 100 locations in North America. IT’SUGAR provides a sweet & humorous escape from everyday life. Known for its absurd sugar innovations that celebrate lighthearted rebellion, IT’SUGAR aspires to a future where everyone has access to the pure joy that comes from indulging in a world with fewer restrictions and more SUGAR. For more information, please visit www.itsugar.com.

SOURCE Second Avenue Capital Partners, LLC

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 6, 2026 — Benchmark Energy II, LLC (“Benchmark” or the “Company”) announced today the closing of a senior secured financing providing for up to $47.5 million with Cibolo Energy Partners, LLC (“Cibolo”). Proceeds are dedicated to an operated, multi-well development program across Benchmark’s liquids-rich, oil-weighted Western Anadarko Basin position. Benchmark is majority owned by Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTG) and is a joint venture with McArron Partners and members of management.

“This financing enables us to accelerate development across our operated acreage footprint,” said Kirk Goehring, Chief Executive Officer of Benchmark Energy II. “Rig activity in the Western Anadarko is up sharply, led almost entirely by private operators. Well-level results today are much improved from a decade ago, driven by focus on the best rock, conservative spacing, and modern completions. This is our second transaction with the Cibolo team. They understand the basin and have been a strong partner across both, which made this a straightforward process.”

TenOaks Energy Advisors acted as exclusive financial advisor to Benchmark in connection with the financing.

About Benchmark Energy

Benchmark Energy II, LLC is a private oil and gas company focused on acquiring, producing, and developing operated assets in the Anadarko Basin. Benchmark and its affiliates operate over 150,000 net acres producing more than 8,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day across Western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. The Company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and is capitalized by Acacia Research Corporation, McArron Partners, L.P., and members of management.

www.benchmark-energy.com

About Cibolo Energy Partners

Cibolo Energy Partners, LLC is a private investment group specializing in alternative credit opportunities within the North American energy sector. Founded in 2016, Cibolo has built a strong reputation for successfully financing upstream and midstream companies. Focusing primarily on privately-negotiated investments in the lower-middle market, Cibolo’s team of investment professionals brings extensive expertise in both the financial and technical domains. Cibolo is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and is a registered investment advisor with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

www.ciboloenergy.com

About Acacia Research Corporation

Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTG) is a value-oriented acquirer and operator of businesses across public and private markets and industries including the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management. Additional information about Acacia and its subsidiaries is available at www.acaciaresearch.com.

About McArron Partners

McArron Partners is the investment arm of the Jones family of Albany, Texas. McArron’s Chief Executive Officer is Jonny Jones, founder of Jones Energy and former Chairman of the Texas Oil & Gas Association and U.S. Oil & Gas Association. McArron deploys its capital in a mix of global public and private investments. The Jones family has supported energy entrepreneurs for more than five decades.

SOURCE Benchmark Energy

The fund was significantly oversubscribed amid strong investor demand for LS Power’s differentiated strategy

NEW YORK, Oct. 6, 2026 — LS Power, a leading development, investment, and operating company focused on the North American power and energy infrastructure sector, today announced the successful closing of LS Power Equity Partners VI (Fund VI) with total fund commitments of approximately $6 billion.

Launched in January 2026, Fund VI was oversubscribed and fully allocated against its hard cap by July, which was well in excess of its initial $4 billion target. Investor demand was driven by LS Power’s longstanding track record of delivering attractive realized returns across multiple market cycles.

Fund VI will invest in assets, platforms, and companies in the renewables, conventional generation, energy storage, distributed energy resources, and other critical energy infrastructure spaces. The fund is already being deployed, with a commitment of approximately $1.7 billion for investments associated with LS Power’s pending acquisitions of what will form a 5-gigawatt platform of gas-fired generation assets from Constellation Energy across the Mid-Atlantic (PJM) and Texas (ERCOT) power markets.

“This fundraise is a strong endorsement of the team, strategy, and platform we have built at LS Power over more than three decades,” said Paul Segal, CEO of LS Power. “Our approach has always been to anticipate the evolving needs of the U.S. power and energy system and invest behind them with discipline. Fund VI gives us greater capacity to pursue those opportunities while maintaining the selectivity that has guided us over the years.”

“Meeting America’s growing need for reliable, affordable power requires more than capital,” said Darpan Kapadia, COO of LS Power. “Our hands-on development and operating experience across generation, transmission, and other energy infrastructure informs how we underwrite investments, execute complex transactions, and improve the assets and businesses we own. That combination gives us flexibility to pursue opportunities across technologies, geographies, and market environments.”

David Nanus, President of LS Power Equity Advisors, said, “We believe that the scale of the opportunity has never been greater, and our team has never been stronger. We are grateful to our investors for their trust and continued support. We look forward to deploying Fund VI behind compelling opportunities where LS Power’s capital, capabilities, and industry relationships can help our counterparties achieve their objectives while creating value for our investors.”

Fund VI attracted commitments from some of the world’s leading pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, foundations, endowments, family offices, and private wealth investors, among others. The fund received strong support from LS Power’s existing investors and investment consultants and expanded the firm’s global investor base into new markets. LS Power’s previous Fund V, which raised $2.7 billion in commitments in 2024, is fully deployed. Across its flagship funds and other investment partnerships, LS Power has raised approximately $19.8 billion of equity commitments since inception.

Evercore Private Funds Group, Leader Capital Markets, and Magenta Capital Services acted as global placement agents and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as fund counsel.

About LS Power Equity Advisors

Since LS Power Equity Advisors, LLC’s inception in 2005, LS Power’s investment partnerships have raised approximately $19.8 billion of equity capital to invest primarily in power and energy infrastructure assets, platforms, and companies, drawing on LS Power’s investment, development, and operational capabilities to drive value. Investments have included the acquisition of more than 39,000 MW of power generation capacity, as well as assets and businesses that are meeting the growing needs of the energy expansion, including electric vehicle charging, demand response, microgrids, and renewable fuel platforms.

About LS Power

Founded in 1990, LS Power is a premier development, investment, and operating company focused on the North American power and energy infrastructure sector, with leading platforms across generation, transmission, and energy expansion solutions. Since inception, LS Power has developed or acquired more than 50,000 MW of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities. Through its transmission business, LS Power Grid, the company operates 7 transmission utilities and has built 780+ miles of high-voltage transmission, with another 400+ miles currently in construction or development. Over the years and across its investment partnerships, projects, and businesses, LS Power has raised more than $95 billion in debt and equity capital to support North American infrastructure. For information, please visit www.lspower.com.

Media Contact

Prosek Partners for LS Power
[email protected].

SOURCE LS Power

– Series B financing led by Alta Partners with participation from Series A co-leads Venrock and Foresite Capital, new investor J. Wood Capital and others –

– K-1728 is designed to selectively inhibit both kinase domain and helical domain PI3Kα mutations while sparing wild-type PI3Kα –

– Phase 1 patient dosing expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026 –

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 6, 2026 — KymaThera, a biotechnology company developing next-generation precision medicines for genetically defined diseases, today announced the closing of an $80 million Series B financing led by Alta Partners, with participation from Venrock, Foresite Capital, J. Wood Capital and others. Proceeds from the financing will primarily support the advancement of K-1728, KymaThera’s investigational, oral, pan-mutant selective PI3Kα inhibitor. This financing follows the Series A, co-led by Foresite Capital and Venrock in 2024, and brings KymaThera’s total capital raised to more than $100 million.

KymaThera is initially developing K-1728 as a monotherapy and in combination regimens for HR+/HER2- breast cancer, where substantial unmet need remains despite available therapies, and as a monotherapy for PI3Kα-driven vascular malformations. Vascular malformations are serious, often debilitating conditions for which systemic treatment options remain limited. The company expects to initiate patient dosing in a Phase 1 study in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the financing expected to fund development through initial clinical proof-of-concept.

“I invest in people, and KymaThera has assembled an outstanding team with deep experience in drug discovery and development,” said Bob More, Partner at Alta Partners. “Drug development is hard, and great people find ways to solve hard problems. Rob and his team have the experience, scientific rigor and determination to take on an important challenge with K-1728, and I’m thrilled to support them as they advance the company and move the program into the clinic.”

“PI3Kα is one of the most important, well-validated, and heavily pursued disease drivers in oncology, but its therapeutic potential has been constrained by wild-type PI3Kα-mediated toxicity and incomplete coverage of clinically relevant mutations,” said Rob Kania, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of KymaThera. “Our drug design objective from the outset was to address these limitations. K-1728 possesses class-leading potency with helical mutant selectivity windows wider than any reported to date. This financing, backed by an exceptional syndicate of leading life sciences investors, gives us the resources to rapidly advance K-1728 into the clinic and pursue its potential across cancer and vascular malformations.”

In preclinical and IND-enabling studies, K-1728 demonstrated potent activity against both kinase and helical domain PI3Kα mutations, driving tumor regressions at low, once-daily doses in models harboring both mutation classes. K-1728 also demonstrated a wide preclinical therapeutic window between exposures associated with deep tumor regressions and those associated with hyperglycemia. These data support a differentiated pan-mutant profile and the advancement of K-1728 into clinical development.

“When we made our Series A investment in KymaThera, we saw an experienced team with a rigorous scientific approach to building differentiated medicines against highly validated targets. K-1728, internally discovered and wholly owned by KymaThera, is an impressive result,” said Michael Rome, Ph.D., Managing Director at Foresite Capital. “What the team has accomplished in just two years has strengthened our conviction in both their approach and their ability to execute, and we are excited to continue supporting the company as it enters the clinic,” said Mariana Mihalusova, Ph.D., Partner at Venrock.

About K-1728

K-1728 is an investigational, oral, pan-mutant selective PI3Kα inhibitor designed to potently inhibit disease-driving kinase and helical domain mutations while sparing wild-type PI3Kα. KymaThera designed K-1728 using its structure-based drug discovery capabilities to address limitations of earlier generations of PI3Kα inhibitors. Preclinical studies have demonstrated antitumor activity across multiple PI3Kα-mutant models and a differentiated preclinical therapeutic window. KymaThera plans to develop K-1728 across PI3Kα-mutant cancers and vascular malformations.

About KymaThera

KymaThera is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing precision medicines against well-characterized targets that drive human disease. KymaThera applies a proprietary structure-based drug design platform built on the team’s decades of drug discovery experience to create differentiated small-molecule therapeutics where scientific precision can achieve meaningful improvements over current therapies. KymaThera’s lead program is advancing K-1728 to treat PI3Kα-mutant cancers and vascular malformations. KymaThera is also advancing earlier-stage discovery programs against additional validated disease targets.

For more information, visit kymathera.com and engage with us on LinkedIn.

Investor and Media Contact

Juniper Point
[email protected]
858-914-1962

SOURCE KymaThera

The annual list honors groundbreaking technologies with the potential to reshape industries and redefine the way we work and live

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 6, 2026 — Mesh, the leading crypto payments network, today announced that it has been named to Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech, an annual list recognizing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform industries and shape the future.

Mesh’s SmartFunding™ was selected in the Financial Services category for its payment orchestration engine, which decouples what consumers hold from what merchants accept. Consumers can pay with any of more than 100 digital assets, while merchants settle in their preferred currency. Mesh handles conversion and routing automatically across point-of-sale, e-commerce, and autonomous transactions. The result is an experience built around the user’s existing financial life rather than the technical requirements of the underlying network.

Over the past year, the company joined Paxos’s Global Dollar Network and launched the Mesh Alliance Program, which unites more than 50 partners to simplify the growing complexity of enterprise crypto payments. It also released Mesh Wallet, which empowers AI agents to complete real-world transactions. Mesh’s partner network spans exchanges, regulated banks, fintechs, payroll platforms, and payment providers, extending digital asset payments into everyday financial workflows.

“Payments should work around people and businesses, not force them to change how they transact,” said Bam Azizi, CEO and Co-founder of Mesh. “We’re building the infrastructure that connects both sides, so people can pay with what they hold and businesses get paid in the currency they prefer. As more transactions are initiated by AI agents, that flexibility will become even more important.”

Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech recognizes innovative technologies developed by established companies, startups, and research teams that are making meaningful progress toward transforming the lives of consumers, businesses, and society. This year’s honorees span industries, with each innovation demonstrating the potential to create significant impact in the years ahead.

“The most exciting technology innovations are the ones that move beyond promise to demonstrate real potential for impact,” said Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “The companies and teams recognized on this year’s list are tackling ambitious problems with new ideas, products, and approaches that have the potential to fundamentally shape the years ahead.”

View the complete Fast Company 2026 Next Big Things in Tech list.

About Mesh
Founded in 2020, Mesh is building the first global crypto payments network, connecting hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and financial services platforms to enable seamless digital asset payments and conversions. By unifying these platforms into a single network, Mesh is pioneering a connected and secure ecosystem for digital finance. For more information, visit meshpay.com.

About Fast Company
Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with fellow business publication Inc. For more information, please visit fastcompany.com.

SOURCE Mesh

Sub-2µs p99 latency and up to 50 million inferences per second in audited benchmarks unveiled today at STAC Summit London

CAMBRIDGE, England, Oct. 6, 2026 — myrtle.ai today announced that its VOLLO® inference accelerator has set new records on the STAC-ML Markets (Inference) benchmarks for gradient-boosted trees, cutting 99th-percentile latency by more than 30% and raising throughput by at least 5x over the previous best results. The STAC®-audited results were unveiled at the STAC Summit in London today.

Running on an AMD Alveo™ V80LL Compute Accelerator in a Blackcore ICON 3132-SM+ server, VOLLO achieved p99 latencies below 2 microseconds for all three models. For the smallest model, it sustained 50 million inferences per second at a p99 latency of just 1.77µs.

In electronic trading, the time between market data arriving and a decision being made directly affects returns. Low, deterministic latency lets firms run larger, more accurate models without missing the market, so model quality no longer has to be traded off against speed.

“Trading firms want to run ever more powerful models without giving up speed, and these results show they can. Developers can now test their own models on VOLLO without any FPGA expertise and see the difference for themselves,” said Peter Baldwin, CEO, myrtle.ai.

Following the STAC Tacana results announced in April, VOLLO now holds the records for deterministic latency for both decision trees and neural networks. It is already proven in production, with hundreds of thousands of hours of live trading generating alpha for many of the world’s leading trading firms. Its model flexibility has also made it a platform of choice in telecoms, network security and defence.

STAC-ML Markets (Inference) is the technology benchmark standard for running inference on real-time market data. Designed by quants and technologists from leading financial firms, it reports the performance, resource efficiency and quality of any technology stack capable of running the provided models. Full results are in the STAC Report (SUT ID MRTL2026905) at www.STACresearch.com/MRTL2026905.

ML developers can evaluate how their own models would perform on VOLLO today, with no FPGA tools or expertise required. Visit myrtle.ai/vollo-trees or contact [email protected].

About myrtle.ai

Myrtle.ai is an AI/ML software company delivering ultra-low-latency inference accelerators on FPGA-based platforms from all the leading FPGA suppliers. Its accelerators serve applications including financial trading, wireless telecoms, LLMs, speech processing and recommendation.

VOLLO, VOLLO Accelerator and the VOLLO logo are registered trademarks of myrtle.ai. “STAC” and all STAC names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Strategic Technology Analysis Center, LLC. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Alveo, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

Buyer and seller agents transact directly on infrastructure built for agents, governed on both sides of every buy, with Compliant’s media quality and governance signals in every decision

NEW YORK and LONDON , Oct. 6, 2026 — pubX, which builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising, today announced a $5 million Series A led by Chicago Ventures and the acquisition of Compliant, the media quality and governance company. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Compliant will retain its name and operate as a pubX company, led by CEO Jamie Barnard. Within pubX, Jamie will take the role of President, Global Demand Growth, leading the company’s global growth strategy across agencies, advertisers and the wider buy-side.

pubX builds the agents that plan, buy, sell and optimize advertising — and the infrastructure they transact on. Its buyer agents and seller agents work directly with one another, from brief to reporting, across every channel, so that more of every dollar reaches the media and the publisher behind it. pubX began on the publisher side, spending years helping publishers price and sell their inventory. Compliant, founded by former Unilever and P&G executives, has focused principally on the demand side, delivering measurable value to global brands and their agencies. The acquisition unites brand and publisher in one company, and that experience, on both sides of the market is what shaped the company’s vision for something new: infrastructure designed from the ground up for agents to buy and sell directly. Built on the open Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), it works for buyer and seller alike.

Trust as the founding product principle

pubX was built on the premise that no one hands their media budget to a system they don’t trust, so trust, transparency, and accountability are built into the infrastructure itself, on both sides of every transaction. Its agents are educated by pubX: governance checks on every buy, decisions that are reasoned, traced and auditable, with Compliant’s quality signals shaping what they consider. The agents are guided by the client, on the brand’s own brief, plan, publishers and commercial rules. People stay in control: the client sets the level of autonomy and approves the plan at key stages, and the agents execute inside those rules. As trust is earned, autonomy grows.

“Programmatic took this industry from fax machines and spreadsheets into more automated and real-time platforms in two short decades, and everything we’ve done since builds on that premise,” said Andrew Mole, CEO and co-founder of pubX. “Agents let us finish what was started. You tell them how you buy, you sign off where it matters, and every page of the brief gets read every single time. For the first time, the infrastructure has caught up with what brands want to achieve with their advertising and how publishers want to sell.”

“For years, brands have searched for high-quality, high-performing inventory with real, relevant and engaged audiences. Compliant built the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes so that they could do that with certainty rather than speculation,” said Jamie Barnard, CEO of Compliant. “Inside pubX, those media quality and governance signals sit in the decision itself, so an agent weighs them before it buys. This is what gives each CMO the confidence to trust pubX’s agents.”

“Every part of the advertising industry is asking how agents will improve buying and selling, and most answers so far are an agentic layer built on existing infrastructure. Co-founders Andrew Mole and Alex Rosen, pubX’s CTO, have built advertising infrastructure before, and this time they built it for agents from the start, on both sides of the transaction, with a publisher base that already trusts them and a design that keeps the client in control. That is a rare starting position, and the Compliant acquisition makes it stronger,” said Stuart Larkins, Co-founder & General Partner at Chicago Ventures.

The funding will support pubX’s expansion in the United States, the build-out of its demand-side business serving brands and agencies, continued development of its buyer and seller agents on AdCP, and the integration of Compliant’s signals across the platform.

“For a publisher, agentic buying is about discoverability. Buyer agents see the audiences and environments we actually have, backed by our first-party data, and that puts us in front of spend that never reached us before, in an environment we can win. It amplifies what our sales team already does well,” said Stephanie Mazzamaro, Head of Revenue and Data, Paradium.AI, formerly The Arena Group.

“As advertising increasingly moves toward agentic buying, discoverability becomes critical,” said Jason Taylor, Chief Revenue Officer, USA TODAY Co. “Publishers that invest in trusted content, engaged audiences, and brand-safe environments should be more visible to AI-powered buying platforms. The opportunity is to create a more transparent marketplace where quality is recognized and rewarded.”

pubX at Advertising Week New York

On Wednesday, October 7, pubX will run a live agent-to-agent media buy at a private executive lunch during Advertising Week New York. A campaign for Reckitt’s Mucinex brand will go from brief to live placement, with Reckitt’s trading team approving the plan at key stages and publishers including Paradium.AI and USA TODAY Co. reviewing and accepting the campaign as it happens. Attendance is by invitation.

About pubX
pubX builds agent-to-agent infrastructure for advertising. Its buyer and seller agents, educated by pubX, trained by the client, and governed on both sides of every transaction, let brands, agencies and publishers plan, buy, sell and optimize media directly, with trust earned one campaign at a time. Learn more at www.pubx.ai

About Compliant
Compliant, a pubX company, is the media quality and governance company behind the Data Integrity and CTV Quality Indexes, used by leading global advertisers and industry bodies to measure data integrity and media quality across the supply chain. Learn more at www.compliant.global

About Chicago Ventures
Chicago Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund founded to fill a market gap in early-stage capital for tech companies outside traditional hubs like Silicon Valley, focusing on undercapitalized tech ecosystems in the Central U.S. and beyond. They lead seed rounds “before it’s obvious” and operate a formal platform function that serves as a direct extension of portfolio companies’ teams, with their network explicitly architected to provide customer introductions, expert help, and talent access at scale rather than just for sourcing deals. Learn more at www.chicagoventures.com

SOURCE pubX

New private capital specific plugins bring trusted Chronograph portfolio data and purpose-built skills directly into Claude, extending Chronograph’s AI solution suite and automating a range of mission-critical private capital workflows.

NEW YORK, Oct. 6, 2026 — Chronograph, the leading global provider of portfolio monitoring, valuations, and analytics technology for institutional private capital, today announced the launch of dedicated Chronograph plugins for Claude. Each plugin bundles Chronograph’s existing Claude Connector with a curated set of off-the-shelf skills, enabling clients to seamlessly deploy purpose-built AI workflows on their trusted Chronograph data.

This release includes dedicated private capital plugins that contain custom skills designed for distinct, recurring workflows. Rather than simple prompts to a Claude chat interface, each skill is built out with instructions, methodologies, markdown files, exception handling, and review-ready deliverable standards grounded in the foundation of sound Chronograph data. From LP reporting and company-by-company TVPI attribution to commitment pacing analysis, the plugins bring powerful AI solutions to the tasks fund managers and institutional allocators handle every day.

For general partners, the Chronograph GP plugin packages skills to:

• Assemble quarterly review packs, including fund-level summaries and portfolio company one-pagers.
• Generate branded investor reports or one-pagers for any company, from live Chronograph data.
• Compare company scenarios (e.g. actuals vs budget) across the portfolio, flagging which companies are off-plan and by how much.
• Produce briefs that identify company valuation markups and markdowns, quantify each change, and rank them by impact on fund NAV.
• Attribute fund TVPI by company, decomposing performance into company-by-company contributions to surface top drivers and detractors.

For limited partners, the Chronograph LP plugin packages skills to:

• Forecast cashflows, including capital calls, distributions, NAV, and unfunded commitments, using the Takahashi-Alexander “Yale” model.
• Build commitment pacing plans to achieve and maintain target private markets allocations within a broader portfolio.
• Scan look-through exposures, surfacing concentration by sector, geography, vintage, and currency across funds and aggregate total unrealized exposures to underlying portfolio companies across different fund commitments.
• Prep for manager meetings by reviewing a GP’s latest reporting, surfacing what changed since last period, and drafting questions and key themes for the call.

“Recurring workflows in private markets need a durable data foundation, and that’s the layer we’ve spent ten years building,” said Divya Odayappan, Product Lead, Chronograph LP. “Skills let users run complicated, multi-step processes on top of it, encoded once, instead of every firm writing the procedure itself. We package the MCP server and the skills together as a single plugin, so clients get the whole workflow as one drop-in piece instead of assembling it themselves.”

The addition of these plugins within Claude reflects the continued expansion of Chronograph’s AI capabilities for private capital investors. Chronograph remains AI agnostic, meeting investors wherever they work. Regardless of AI provider, Chronograph is committed to unlocking the largest, most trusted private markets dataset across the industry’s preferred interfaces. These powerful plugins underscore that principle. In the era of AI, the core challenge is no longer generating an answer, but rather delivering one investors can trust, defend, and reproduce, with full versioning and point-in-time accuracy. This is the mission Chronograph aims to solve across its AI solutions.

The Chronograph plugins for Claude Cowork, Chat, and Code are available now to all Chronograph clients. To learn more visit: https://www.chronograph.pe/chronograph-claude-connector/ 

About Chronograph

Chronograph was founded in 2016 to bring trust and efficiency to private capital markets data. The firm’s products help institutional limited partners and general partners — including many of the world’s largest private equity and private credit investors — streamline and automate portfolio monitoring, valuations, analytics, and reporting. The firm is backed by Sixth Street, Summit Partners, Carlyle AlpInvest, and Nasdaq, Inc. with offices in Brooklyn, NY, San Francisco, CA, and London, UK. For further information, visit www.chronograph.pe, and follow Chronograph on LinkedIn.

Contact:
Fred Bower
Chronograph
New York, New York
[email protected]

SOURCE Chronograph

First product, iris chat™, is an AI thought partner designed to help people build meaningful relationships, develop a stronger sense of self, and live with greater purpose and fulfillment

Company launches with an initial commitment of $20 million in funding from Flagship

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 6, 2026 — Flagship Pioneering, a scientific innovation engine for transformative platforms and products, today announced the launch of iris labs, a company building personal AI products designed to advance human wellbeing.

iris labs was conceived more than two years ago on the belief that helping people lead more fulfilling lives is a defining opportunity for AI. The company’s work is grounded in psychological fitness: building the capacities to navigate life’s challenges and create more of what is meaningful. This framework informs how iris labs designs and evaluates its novel products, drawing on key dimensions of wellbeing to connect personalized support with its broader ambition for human flourishing.

iris chat™, the company’s first product, is an AI thought partner designed to help you lead a more fulfilling life by deepening relationships, strengthening sense of self, and cultivating resilience, purpose, and hope. Through ongoing conversation on iMessage and RCS, it learns about your experiences, priorities, and aspirations, grounding the experience in who you are and the life you want to build.

“People build resilience, purpose, and confidence through the countless small moments that shape everyday life,” said Armen Mkrtchyan, Ph.D., CEO, Board Member, and Co-founder of iris labs and Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “We created iris labs around the belief that AI can uniquely support those moments by helping people better understand what they’re experiencing, find perspective and take the next step, while keeping them firmly in charge of their own lives.”

Designed to feel as natural as texting someone who knows you well, iris chat learns as you engage with it. It can help you recognize meaningful patterns in your life, prepare for important conversations, clarify goals and priorities, and take concrete steps toward what matters to you. The experience adapts as your relationships, circumstances, and aspirations evolve.

“We’ve seen incredible early traction with iris chat, validating both the product and the broader platform,” said Rockwell Shah, Co-founder and President of iris labs and Partner at Flagship Pioneering. “People aren’t just trying iris chat; they’re coming back to it time and again. That engagement reinforces something we’ve believed from the start: people want AI for more than productivity. They want technology that can help them better understand themselves, navigate their relationships, and make meaningful changes in their lives.”

iris labs has developed a novel approach to helping AI engage more thoughtfully in subjective, emotionally complex conversations. While self-learning systems can readily improve in objective domains with clear measures of success, such as games or coding, meaningful conversations require an AI to recognize nuance without reinforcing unproductive patterns. iris chat combines expert-informed guidance with AI judges, agents that evaluate and refine the outputs of other agents, to create consistent quality loops for these interactions.

Safety is foundational to how iris chat was designed. The product includes a safety scaffold that pairs each conversation with a parallel AI safety agent designed to assess interactions in real time and guide responses when a conversation warrants additional safeguards. Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all safeguards, the system draws on conversational context to distinguish genuine concern from ambiguity and support more appropriate, measured responses. This approach reflects the belief that safety and progress can reinforce one another: early evidence suggests that users who interact with iris chat’s safety systems are much more likely to continue using the product.

“Artificial intelligence represents one of the most profound technology platforms of our time, with the potential to redefine how we understand and improve the human experience,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Co-founder of iris labs. “At Flagship, we seek opportunities where breakthrough technologies can open entirely new frontiers rather than simply improve existing approaches. iris labs reflects that philosophy, exploring how AI can deepen our understanding of human wellbeing while creating a new platform at the intersection of psychology and intelligent systems.”

In addition to Afeyan, Mkrtchyan and Shah, the founding team includes Ayşe Muñiz, Ph.D., Principal, Flagship Pioneering.

iris chat is available through iMessage and RCS, bringing personal AI into a familiar part of everyday life. It can be accessed at www.chatwithiris.com.

About iris labs

iris labs™ is building personal AI products designed to help people lead more fulfilling lives. Founded within Flagship Labs, the company brings together psychology, behavioral science, artificial intelligence, and product design, with psychological fitness guiding how it develops and evaluates its products. Its first product, iris chat™, is an AI thought partner delivered through iMessage and RCS, designed to help people deepen their relationships, strengthen their sense of self, and cultivate resilience, purpose, and hope. Through ongoing conversation, iris chat learns about each person’s experiences, priorities, and aspirations, adapting as their lives evolve. Learn more at www.irislabs.com.

About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health, sustainability and beyond. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures, operating with $14 billion of assets under its direction as of its latest capital raise, announced in July 2024. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises more than 40 companies, including Generate Biomedicines, Inari, Lila Sciences, Moderna, Sana Biotechnology, Tessera Therapeutics and Valo Health.

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SOURCE Flagship Pioneering