SEDI-CASE, Global Asset Management Group (GAMG), Alexander Hamilton Opportunity Zone Fund, and TriFactor Capital Markets Network Deploy Cross-Border Public Capital Marketplace

ST. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands, Oct. 21, 2026 — Following the definitive executive announcement by United States Virgin Islands Governor Albert Bryan Jr. on September 30, 2026 regarding the launch of the 3rd Wall Street Financial District Hub Initiative, an institutional strategic collaboration has been finalized to implement a powerful public capital marketplace for real estate acquisitions, community infrastructure economic revitalization, restoration, and regional development across the Territory.

According to statement benchmarks explicitly confirmed by Anthony Weeks, Special Economic Envoy and SEDI-CASE Managing Director, this paradigm-shifting initiative directly bridges localized Caribbean property development goals with premier international financial pipelines. “By establishing this infrastructure, we are successfully connecting the immense liquidity nodes of New York Wall Street and Wall Street South Florida with the tremendous opportunity landscape of St. Croix, creating a highly structured cross-border ecosystem for commerce, trade, and financial onshoring,” stated Envoy Weeks.

The integrated network aligns the public capitalization architecture of Global Asset Management Group Inc. (OTCBQB: GAMG) and the targeted tax-sheltered investment tracks of the Alexander Hamilton Opportunity Zone Fund. Together with the clearing technology of the TriFactor Capital Markets Network, this coalition will establish the USVI very first public capital markets vehicle capable of driving long-term capital into community infrastructure restoration and Class-A commercial assets, centered on the physical execution of the St. Croix 3rd Wall Street Hub. This new public capital marketplace will also enable private local companies to go public if they elected to do so.

Capital deployed through Qualified Opportunity Zone structures may be eligible for certain tax advantages under applicable federal law. The availability and extent of any such benefits depend upon individual investor circumstances, applicable regulations, investment structure, and continued compliance with legal requirements. Prospective investors should consult their own legal, tax, and financial advisors regarding any potential tax consequences. Onboarding procedures are functioning under SEC Rule 255 ‘Testing the Waters’ rules, allowing participants to register priority allocations via non-binding indications of interest.

About SEDI-CASE & Invest: USVI SEDI-CASE

is an economic integration and project development organization focused on enhancing regional trade, commerce, technology, and global capital deployment frameworks for the U.S. Virgin Islands. For authoritative project updates, download links, and compliance tracking, visit the official interface at www.sedivision.org.

This release contains forward-looking statements regarding anticipated collaborations, capital formation initiatives, economic development activities, real estate acquisitions, infrastructure projects, investment opportunities, and related business objectives. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks, uncertainties, regulatory approvals, financing considerations, market conditions, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. No assurance can be given that any contemplated transaction, project, or initiative will be completed as described or at all.

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

References to governmental initiatives, public officials, economic development programs, and regional development objectives are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement of any company, investment opportunity, security, or commercial undertaking. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Any securities-related activities, if undertaken, will be conducted in compliance with applicable federal and state securities laws and pursuant to applicable offering materials.

SOURCE Global Asset Management Group

Investment to Accelerate DashFuel’s Mission to Modernize Operations for Petroleum Wholesalers and Fuel Carriers

DashFuel has received a growth investment from Five Elms Capital to accelerate its mission to build the definitive operating platform for the petroleum distribution industry.

The investment will fund continued expansion of DashFuel’s platform and AI capabilities and go-to-market reach, enabling the company to serve a growing customer base while keeping best-in-class customer experience as a core piece of strategy.

Five Elms Capital brings deep experience scaling vertical SaaS businesses and will support DashFuel as it continues to grow and innovate.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — DashFuel, a platform for petroleum wholesalers, carriers, and retailers, announced a growth investment from Five Elms Capital. The partnership will accelerate DashFuel’s product roadmap and go-to-market efforts, while growing the team to better serve a rapidly expanding customer base.

Petroleum distribution is one of the most operationally demanding industries in the economy, requiring operators to manage pricing volatility, multi-step logistics coordination, and complex regulatory compliance, often across disconnected systems and manual workflows. DashFuel, founded in 2022, is purpose-built for the operational complexity of petroleum distribution.

The platform unifies quoting, tank monitoring, dispatch, delivery, billing reconciliation, and back-office integration into a single cloud-native system, giving petroleum operators the visibility, automation, and control to run more efficiently and profitably. That depth earns DashFuel a mission-critical role in daily operations and translates into measurable outcomes for customers. Paired with a relentless focus on customer support, it has allowed DashFuel to build deep trust with a rapidly growing customer base and sustain exceptional retention.

“Petroleum distribution runs on thin margins and moves fast, prices shift multiple times a day, and a single operational miss can cost thousands of dollars and a customer relationship,” said Miles Moen, Founder & CEO of DashFuel. “We built DashFuel to give operators the infrastructure to compete: real-time visibility, intelligent automation, and end-to-end workflow control that the industry has long needed. This investment lets us build faster and reach more of the market that needs it.”

With Five Elms’ backing, DashFuel will deepen and expand its core platform capabilities, including continued investment in AI-powered automation and workflow intelligence. The company will build out its go-to-market function while continuing to invest in customer success to ensure they maintain the same level of high-quality support as they scale. 

Thomas Kershisnik, Partner at Five Elms Capital, commented on the investment: “DashFuel has built something genuinely rare: a modern, end-to-end platform with a team that has earned deep customer trust by delivering real, measurable results. The petroleum distribution market is large, underserved by legacy technology, and ready for a purpose-built solution like DashFuel. We’re excited to partner with Miles and the team as they scale.”

About DashFuel
DashFuel is a platform for petroleum wholesalers, carriers, and retailers. The platform consolidates quoting, tank monitoring, dispatch, delivery, billing, reconciliation, and back-office integration into a single system — enabling wholesalers and carriers of every size to automate manual workflows, capture more margin, and scale operations without adding headcount. Trusted by a rapidly growing customer base across the United States, DashFuel has achieved impressive gross and net revenue retention. Founded in 2022, DashFuel is purpose-built for the operational complexity of petroleum distribution. For more information, please visit dashfuel.com.

About Five Elms Capital
Five Elms Capital is a growth investor in B2B software companies delivering innovative, AI-powered solutions to vertical end markets. We provide capital and resources to help companies accelerate growth and further cement their role as industry leaders.

With over $3 billion in assets under management and a team of over 80 professionals, Five Elms has invested in more than 70 software platforms worldwide. Beyond providing capital, Five Elms delivers strategic and operational expertise, focused on executing initiatives that move the needle on AI, growth, retention, and product to set companies up for long-term success. For more information, visit fiveelms.com.

SOURCE Five Elms Capital

NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2026 — Whop, the technology company on a mission to deliver everyone a sustainable income, today announced a $200 million Series D at a $5.1 billion valuation, led by Sequoia and Shopify Ventures. The new capital will accelerate Whop’s global expansion and R&D efforts to make payment and advertising markets radically more efficient. This round marks Whop’s second fundraise this year following an announcement of a $200 million strategic investment from Tether at a $1.6B valuation in February 2026.

Work is fundamentally changing and AI is calling traditional career paths into question. Entry level job opportunities are at an all time low (Forbes). For a generation starting in a hole, Whop is a way for individuals to own their economic futures.

Whop’s core customers are business operators, ranging from heads of product at high growth startups, to 16 year old first time entrepreneurs. Whop provides business operators with a gamified UI and extensive API, powering distribution, business creation, and money.

Roughly 25,000 business operators generate $550M on Whop each month. Whop also delivers an income to more than 50,000 other people who provide value to the businesses every month.

“We take inspiration from the traditional economy in designing Whop, and because businesses are the primary conduit by which people earn money and create value, we focus on them as our primary customer,” said Steven Schwartz, Co-founder and CEO of Whop.

Most businesses on Whop service hyper specific customer needs, rather than broad mass-market products. The internet has made it possible to reach customers in markets that were once too small or fragmented to build a business around. Businesses built natively on Whop include invoicing software for trucking companies, emergency tree removal services, private jet booking platforms, neobanks for dropshippers, and marketplaces supplying data to humanoid robotics companies.

“They’re doing about a half billion revenue, business is doing great, and we’re helping humanity create businesses for people who can’t find a job”, said Doug Leone, Partner at Sequoia Capital.

In the past three months, Whop has launched:

• Business Blueprints, which lets new operators launch a ready-to-sell business in a few clicks. Over 21,000 businesses have been created via Blueprints since the product launched 6 weeks ago.
• Whop CLI, which debuted in July, making Whop’s API compatible with any AI agent and allowing operators to run their businesses via prompts. The Whop CLI and MCP connectors collectively receive over 350,000 calls per day with over 14,700 monthly active users.
• Economic Intelligence, a decision engine trained on millions of transactions that recommends the highest-ROI next move for each business. To access Economic Intelligence, businesses give an extra percentage of the revenue earned from using the system.

Whop is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with offices in New York and is hiring across engineering, product, sales, and operations.

About Whop

Whop is a technology company on a mission to deliver everyone a sustainable income. Our vision is to create the world’s largest internet market, where everybody can pursue a more lucrative and fulfilling livelihood. Whop provides business operators with a gamified GUI and extensive API powering distribution, business creation, and money. Today, Whop facilitates over $7 billion in on-platform transactions to people in 185 countries. For more information, visit whop.com.

Media Contact

[email protected] 

SOURCE Whop

Watchtower uses AI, simulation, and optimization to help military planners anticipate what happens next and evaluate options while there is still time to act

SEATTLE, Oct. 21, 2026 — Watchtower Labs today emerged from stealth with $35 million in seed financing led by Shield Capital and Conviction, with participation from Founders Fund. The company is building AI-native applications that help military leaders and planners anticipate what happens next in an operation, evaluate their options, and make decisions while there is still time to act.

Watchtower is starting with logistics planning, where transport, spare parts, fuel, munitions, routes, and time can determine whether a mission is executable. “We started this company on the vision of leaders who understood what AI could bring to our most consequential decisions,” said Akhil Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Watchtower Labs. “These conditions can change faster than traditional planning processes can keep pace, forcing staff to continually reassess plans under increasing time pressure.”

Watchtower models hundreds of possible futures against real-world operational constraints, generates executable options, and shows the assumptions and tradeoffs behind each one. Planners can ask questions in plain language, while decision makers remain in control of what happens next.

In 2025, Watchtower Labs partnered with the Naval Postgraduate School to inform the system’s development through operations research, operationally relevant data, and collaboration with defense practitioners. In January 2026, the Defense Innovation Unit selected Watchtower under the Joint Sustainment Decision Tool program, designed to support operational and joint commands with advanced decision-support capabilities.

“An entire generation of companies is being built from scratch on what AI can now do, against the most challenging geopolitical environment in decades,” said Raj Shah, Founder and Managing Partner at Shield Capital and Chairman of Watchtower Labs. “Shield Capital sits at that intersection, bringing frontier technology together with teams that understand the mission.”

Watchtower Labs was incubated within Shield Capital and co-founded by Iyer, a former Marine special operations officer and Shield Capital investor, alongside Souren Aghajanyan and John Morman, seasoned Microsoft engineering leaders who spent years building large-scale distributed systems. The combination brings together engineers who have built systems at scale with operators who have lived the planning problems Watchtower is designed to solve.

“AI is accelerating the pace, quality and communication of decision-making across the commercial realm,” said Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction. “Its impact is still nascent in the realm of national security, but it will be decisive. Logistics is the backbone of our military’s power, and yet we’re stuck in the Stone Age. Our ability to simulate our capabilities, our adversaries, and our options remains painfully inadequate. The Watchtower team uniquely understands this problem, and is prepared to solve it for decisive advantage.”

The financing will support team growth, an expanding set of applications built on Watchtower’s core platform, and continued testing and deployment as the technology extends beyond sustainment into broader operational planning.

About Watchtower Labs
Watchtower Labs builds software that helps decision makers and planners understand what happens next and determine what to do about it. Its AI-native decision environment combines simulation, optimization and AI to model real-world constraints, generate and stress-test executable courses of action across hundreds of possible futures, and help teams adapt as conditions change. Developed initially for military sustainment alongside operational users, Watchtower is expanding across high-stakes operations where conditions change quickly, resources are constrained and plans must adapt. For more information, visit www.watchtowerlabs.ai.

About Shield Capital
Shield Capital is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage companies building technology in artificial intelligence, autonomy, cybersecurity and space. SHIELD’s experienced team of company founders, investors and national security leaders is mission-focused to support the entrepreneurs addressing challenges and opportunities at the nexus of commercial industry and national security. At SHIELD, the Mission Matters. Learn more at www.shieldcap.com.

About Conviction Partners
Conviction Partners was founded in 2022 to help extraordinary founders build the most important companies of tomorrow. They are early partners to the world’s leading AI companies — including Baseten, Cognition, Harvey, Instinct, OpenEvidence, Sierra and Thinking Machines.

Media Contact
Inkhouse for Watchtower
[email protected] 

SOURCE Watchtower

Fulcrum and Slalom work together to empower electrical, gas, and water utilities businesses to prioritize and realize the full potential of their AI investments

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Fulcrum, the Field Operations Management (FOM) platform for utilities and the service providers who serve them, today announced that it is working with Slalom, the fiercely human business and technology company. Together, the companies will help develop and deliver AI transformation solutions for field operations and business initiatives that require high-quality field data for analysis, process automation, and digital transformation.

“Utility leaders are being asked to invest in AI and to prove it pays off, and in field operations the payoff happens in the field,” said Jim Grady, CEO of Fulcrum. “Slalom helps utilities decide where AI will make the biggest difference and measure what it delivers. Fulcrum replaces the many narrowly scoped field apps and all the pen and paper with a single platform for field operations, so AI gets the whole job to work on, not one slice of it.”

AI investments can’t improve utility business outcomes when operational field data remains fragmented across single-purpose mobile apps, spreadsheets, and paper forms. From routine inspections to storm restoration, unreliable frontline data undermines enterprise AI initiatives, while traditional office-based tools fail to solve the operational realities of field work.

Fulcrum replaces fragmented field tools with a single platform for running, recording, and closing out work. Slalom adds the strategy, tools, and services to help utilities scale AI transformation, process redesign, and adoption. Their AI Value Platform helps clients prioritize where to deploy AI, quantify value before investing, and measure realized outcomes. Together, Fulcrum and Slalom put AI to work in three areas.

AI for field operations. Fulcrum puts AI where fieldwork happens: Audio FastFill turns a crew member’s spoken observations into structured form entries, hands-free. Fulcrum Insights improves office-based decision-making by answering plain-language questions against the complete field record. Finally, teams also use AI to build on Fulcrum: they describe the workflow they need and get back a working tool that inherits Fulcrum’s security model, permissions, GIS and offline sync. Slalom helps organizations identify where these AI capabilities can make a practical difference and integrate them into field and office workflows. By enabling field teams to self-serve using a governed system, Fulcrum increases flexibility without encouraging shadow IT.

A data foundation for enterprise AI. Fulcrum validates every record at capture and ties it to a location, a time and a person, giving enterprise AI high-quality, defensible data it can put to work immediately. Teams can track where materials are installed for warranty work, how quickly inventory is used and where loss and breakage occur, then compare those patterns across projects. Slalom helps clients connect this trusted field data to enterprise priorities, so teams can build a path from better records to useful analytics and AI. As records accumulate and a reliable historical record develops, the same data supports periodic anomaly detection across projects. It also powers predictive models that guide asset maintenance and the vegetation work that reduces wildfire risk.

Quantifying the return on AI. Slalom’s 2026 Global AI Insights Survey found that 91% of organizations plan to increase AI investment in 2026, yet only 39% track ROI. Slalom’s AI Value Platform helps utilities assess and prioritize AI use cases based on business value and impact. As part of this collaboration, the platform can quantify benefits such as defensible records and decision-grade data, identify high-impact use cases, and track realized value against forecasts after go-live. It’s proving the business case rather than simply promising it.

“Utilities are increasingly investing in AI as they respond to rising energy demand and prepare for more frequent extreme weather events and emergencies,” said Tim Stafford, Global Lead for Energy & Natural Resources at Slalom. “Slalom brings the industry perspective and transformation experience to help utilities turn trusted field data into AI-powered operations, integrated with existing enterprise systems they rely on. Together with Fulcrum, we enable utilities to provide crews and leaders with defensible information to act with confidence and deliver critical work safely and reliably.”

Utilities should visit fulcrumapp.com to contact their Fulcrum team to assess how Fulcrum and Slalom’s joint capabilities can improve their business.

About Fulcrum

Fulcrum is the AI-native field operations management platform: the platform field organizations use to run, record, and close out their work. Almost 3,000 companies, across electric, gas, water and wastewater utilities and the service providers who serve them, use Fulcrum for asset management, vegetation management, linear construction, and disaster recovery and emergency response. Learn more at fulcrumapp.com.

About Slalom

Slalom is a fiercely human business and technology consulting company that leads with outcomes and champions leaders to dream big and build now. From strategy through delivery, our agile teams across 54 offices in 12 countries collaborate with clients to bring powerful customer experiences, innovative ways of working, and new products and services to life. We are trusted by leaders across the Global 1000, many successful enterprise and mid-market companies, and 500+ public sector organizations to improve operations, drive growth, and create value. At Slalom, we believe that together, we can move faster, dream bigger, and build better tomorrows for all.

SOURCE Fulcrum

Most of America’s roads, utility poles, and power lines were designed to last 50 years. That was 70 years ago. There has never been more to build and rebuild.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Mach9, the AI CAD software for civil engineering, today announced a $34 million Series A co-led by First Round Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Prudence and continued participation from Quiet Capital. The new financing brings Mach9’s total funding to $49 million. The company will use the capital to expand its AI software for surveying and civil engineering as America faces a growing need to rebuild and maintain aging infrastructure.

Much of America’s infrastructure was built in a single generation, designed to last 50 years. That was 70 years ago. Today, roads, utility poles and power lines across the country are reaching the end of their intended lives. In response, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $1.2 trillion to rebuild and repair these critical systems. But before engineers can build what’s next, they need an accurate blueprint of what’s already there.

Creating that initial blueprint is the job of survey teams, and it’s one of the first bottlenecks in nearly every infrastructure project. Advances in LiDAR mean teams can scan miles of roadway in a day, but turning those scans into engineering drawings remains manual and can take weeks or months. And there are fewer people to do the work, with resident surveying licenses down 24% between 2011 and 2025.

Mach9 is AI CAD software for civil engineering that turns reality capture data into digital blueprints up to 10x faster at one-fifth the cost. Civil engineering and surveying teams upload 3D scans of roads, utilities and construction sites collected with the equipment they already use. Mach9 then automatically drafts physical features like curbs, signs, poles, lane markings and wires with centimeter-level accuracy. Surveyors and engineers review, refine and finalize the drawings using Mach9’s editing tools.

“We need to rebuild aging roads and utilities while expanding the power, transportation and communications networks people will rely on for decades to come,” said Alex Baikovitz, co-founder and CEO of Mach9. “We’re expanding the world’s capacity to build and maintain the infrastructure that people depend on.”

Mach9 was founded by Baikovitz, Haowen Shi, Michael Mong and Zach Sussman after meeting at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. They previously worked on systems that perceive and navigate the physical world at Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, NASA and Google X.

Engineering teams have now used Mach9 across more than 2,500 projects in all 50 states, surveying over 100,000 miles of infrastructure corridors — enough to cross the continental United States roughly 35 times. Its customers include civil engineering firms WSP, HNTB and NV5 and transportation agencies such as Caltrans, Minnesota DOT and the Maryland State Highway Administration.

On Interstate 8 in San Diego, Caltrans is using Mach9 to inventory rumble strips and other road-safety features, helping engineers identify gaps and plan improvements. In San Francisco, Kier + Wright is using Mach9 to increase pedestrian safety around schools. In Louisiana, Fibersmith is using Mach9 to help connect 125,000 homes and businesses that lacked high-speed internet.

“There are 4.2 million miles of public roads in the U.S. alone, before you count the power lines, fiber networks, railways and other infrastructure we rely on every day,” said Bill Trenchard, Partner at First Round Capital. “Mach9 is building the software layer that will turn our physical world into information engineers can understand and act on. It will become a foundational tool for how our country’s infrastructure gets built and maintained.”

“AI is creating the opportunity for a new generation of CAD software. Just as software transformed construction, AI CAD will transform how infrastructure is surveyed, designed, built and operated. Mach9 can become the platform that brings civil engineering into the AI era,” said Caty Rea, Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners. Rea led Bessemer’s investment in Mach9 with Brian Feinstein, who previously led the firm’s investment in Procore, one of the biggest successes in the architecture, engineering, and construction market over the past decade.

“Demand for infrastructure work keeps growing, but experienced engineering and surveying talent is finite,” said Rob Ashley, HDLS Technology Director at Pennoni. “Mach9 enables us to do 50% more work with the same experienced team. That means we can take on projects we otherwise wouldn’t have the capacity to deliver.”

About Mach9

Mach9 is the AI CAD platform for civil engineering, built to expand the world’s capacity to build and maintain critical infrastructure. Its software turns 3D scans into engineering-ready CAD drawings, helping teams work up to 10x faster and at one-fifth the cost. Mach9 has been used across more than 2,500 projects in all 50 states, surveying over 100,000 miles of infrastructure. Founded by engineers from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute who built systems for the physical world at Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, NASA and Google X, Mach9 is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at mach9.ai.

David Huang, Mach9, [email protected]

SOURCE Mach9

Strategic engagement strengthens CXC Horizon Fund’s financial leadership, operational oversight and institutional infrastructure.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla., Oct. 21, 2026 — CXC Investments, LLC, investment manager of CXC Horizon Fund, LP, today announced the engagement of Silver Fern Financial LLC as its outsourced Chief Financial Officer partner, marking a strategic investment in the Fund’s financial and operational infrastructure as the firm continues to grow.

Through the engagement, Silver Fern Financial will work alongside CXC’s management team and existing service providers, bringing senior financial leadership and specialized alternative investment management expertise to support the Fund’s ongoing operations and long-term development.

Founded by William Bruce, CA, CFA, Silver Fern Financial is a boutique financial and operational services firm serving hedge funds, private equity firms and other alternative investment managers. Bruce brings nearly three decades of industry experience, including senior CFO and CCO leadership positions at investment management firms, as well as earlier roles at Goldman Sachs and Ernst & Young. His experience encompasses building institutional operating infrastructure, financial reporting, fund administration oversight, regulatory compliance and operational due diligence.

“As CXC Horizon grows, we’re strengthening the financial and operational foundation supporting the Fund,” said Benjamin Cohen, Founder and Managing Partner of CXC Investments. “Silver Fern brings experienced financial leadership to work alongside our team and existing service providers.”

“We’re excited to partner with Benjamin and CXC Horizon as they continue building the firm,” said William Bruce. “Having spent much of my career building and managing the financial and operational infrastructure of investment firms, I understand the importance of establishing a strong foundation early. We look forward to working alongside CXC’s leadership, bringing experienced financial oversight and practical operational expertise to support the firm’s continued development.”

CXC Horizon Fund launched in July 2025 and employs a fundamental, valuation-driven long/short equity strategy. The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation by identifying undervalued companies with high barriers to entry and durable competitive advantages, maintaining flexibility across sectors and market capitalizations while emphasizing disciplined risk management.

About CXC Investments

CXC Investments, LLC is a Miami-area investment management firm founded by Benjamin Cohen. The firm manages CXC Horizon Fund, LP, a long/short equity fund focused on fundamental research, valuation discipline and high-conviction investment opportunities across sectors and market capitalizations.

For more information, contact [email protected].

About Silver Fern Financial

Silver Fern Financial LLC is a boutique financial and operational services firm providing outsourced CFO, COO, CCO, Cayman Directorships, and related operational support to hedge funds, private equity firms and alternative investment managers.

Founded by William Bruce, CA, CFA, the firm brings senior-level financial and operational expertise to investment management businesses through an integrated, hands-on partnership model.

For more information, visit www.silverfernfinancial.com.

Disclaimer

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation with respect to any investment vehicle or strategy managed by CXC Investments, LLC (the “Adviser”). Nothing contained herein should be construed as investment advice.  

Any investment in the Fund involves significant risks, including but not limited to market risk, liquidity risk, and the risks inherent in a concentrated long/short equity strategy. Prospective investors should review the Fund’s offering documents, including the Private Placement Memorandum, for a complete description of risks, fees, and other material terms prior to making any investment decision.

SOURCE CXC Investments, LLC

Proven software finance leader joins as Wiser advances its AI-powered competitive intelligence platform and pursues ambitious growth strategy

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Wiser Solutions, a leading competitive intelligence platform trusted by brands and retailers globally, today announced the appointment of Rick Buffington as Chief Financial Officer. Buffington joins Wiser at a pivotal point in the company’s evolution, following a comprehensive business transformation that has strengthened its operating foundation and positioned the company to pursue a new phase of growth, innovation and market leadership.

Buffington brings extensive financial and operational leadership experience across enterprise software and technology companies. Most recently, he served in a senior finance leadership role at MultiTracks.com, where he helped guide the business through a period of change and significant expansion. His previous experience includes leadership roles at Accruent and Community Brands, where he developed deep expertise in scaling software businesses, building high-performing finance organizations and driving operational performance.

“We’ve fundamentally transformed Wiser over the past year, and we’re entering our next chapter with a much stronger foundation and a clear ambition to lead the evolution of competitive intelligence,” said Michael Richards, Chief Executive Officer of Wiser Solutions. “The opportunity ahead is significant. Advances in AI are changing what’s possible in how competitive data is collected, connected and turned into actionable intelligence, and Wiser is exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on that shift. Rick has proven he can help scale recurring revenue businesses while building the financial and operational discipline needed to sustain that growth. He’s exactly the kind of leader we want helping shape and execute our strategy.”

Wiser is accelerating the development of its next-generation competitive intelligence platform by combining its extensive global data infrastructure with increasingly sophisticated AI capabilities. The company is fundamentally changing how competitive information is collected and delivered, enabling brands and retailers to respond faster to market developments and make better commercial decisions. With a more efficient operating model and a sharper strategic focus, Wiser is positioned to capitalize on growing demand for accurate, actionable competitive intelligence at scale.

“Wiser has a tremendous opportunity to redefine how brands and retailers use competitive intelligence to drive business performance,” said Buffington. “The company has made significant progress in building a more focused and scalable business, and its combination of data assets, technology and customer relationships creates a powerful foundation for growth. I’m excited to partner with Mike and the leadership team to realize that potential and build a business that delivers sustained value to customers and stakeholders.”

As CFO, Buffington will lead Wiser’s global finance organization and serve as a key strategic partner to the CEO and executive leadership team. His priorities will include strengthening financial and operational performance, supporting strategic investments in technology and go-to-market capabilities, and building the financial infrastructure to support Wiser’s long-term growth ambitions.

About Wiser Solutions

Wiser is the competitive intelligence platform brands and retailers trust to win more sales, starting where it matters most: Price. Its intelligence spans pricing, promotions, shipping, availability, ratings, reviews and market execution, giving customers a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape and the tools to act with confidence. Powered by advanced AI and a global data infrastructure, Wiser helps businesses make smarter decisions, respond faster to market changes and deliver stronger commercial outcomes.

For more information, visit www.wiser.com.

SOURCE Wiser Solutions, Inc.

Company’s ARR grew 17x since January, with more than 10,000 startups and enterprise companies running builds and tests on its platform.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2026 — Blacksmith, the infrastructure platform for building and testing code, today announced a $66M Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $1 billion valuation, with participation from Premji Invest and existing investors Peak XV Partners, GV and Y Combinator. The round brings Blacksmith’s total funding to $125 million and will enable the company to grow its team and expand its compute footprint.

For years, writing code was the slow part of shipping software. With AI coding agents now producing a large and growing share of the world’s code, the burden has changed from writing code to validating it. Every change still has to be built and tested before it can be merged, a step known as continuous integration, or CI.

Most companies run CI on general-purpose cloud infrastructure that was never designed for it. As developers push more code, teams hit longer waits for compute, slower builds on older-generation CPUs, and a constant fight between over- and under-provisioning. Anthropic reported last month that its own CI volume grew 25x in six months as Claude took over most of its code output.

“Since Claude Code took off in March, almost every conversation we’ve had with a large engineering team has started the same way. Developers who used to push three or four pull requests a day are now pushing orders of magnitude more and their CI infrastructure can’t keep up. We’re grateful to our customers who are trusting us to solve this bottleneck, and excited to partner with Sequoia to solve it at scale,” said Aditya “JP” Jayaprakash, co-founder and CEO of Blacksmith.

CI is the most variable workload a company runs: a single customer’s demand regularly jumps from zero to tens of thousands of CPUs and back again. Blacksmith has designed every part of its infrastructure stack to absorb those spikes as a matter of routine. Customers switch with a one-line change to their workflow file and never provision, scale or maintain their CI infrastructure again. Developers using Blacksmith see their CI jobs complete twice as fast and at 60% lower cost on average, with zero operational overhead. Since January, the number of CI jobs running on Blacksmith each week has grown from 5 million to more than 90 million, and annual recurring revenue has grown 17x.

“JP and team understood early that as AI agents wrote more code, the infrastructure to build and test it would need to change,” said Isaiah Boone, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “What stood out to us was their deep systems expertise and speed of execution. That has translated into a product that helps their customers test and ship their software faster. We believe that foundation gives Blacksmith room to build much more as the demands of software development change.”

Blacksmith was founded in 2024 by Jayaprakash, Aayush Shah and Aditya Maru, who met as undergraduates at the University of Waterloo. Shah and Maru were early engineers at Cockroach Labs, and Jayaprakash was an engineer at Faire. All three are developers who have run spiky, large-scale infrastructure before, and they built Blacksmith on the bet that testing code, not writing it, would become the constraint on shipping software.

More than 10,000 companies, including Ashby, Granola, Handshake and LangChain, now run their CI on Blacksmith. The company manages nearly 10 MW of compute across data centers in the United States and Europe and is on track to grow that footprint at least 5x in 2027.

“Blacksmith has significantly reduced the burden of managing our CI runners while cutting our runner costs by roughly 40%, and that doesn’t even account for the engineering time we’ve saved,” said Joaquin Borggio, Infrastructure Engineer at LangChain.

To learn more or move your CI to Blacksmith, visit blacksmith.sh. Blacksmith is hiring engineers in New York and San Francisco at blacksmith.sh/careers. Follow Blacksmith on LinkedIn and X.

About Blacksmith

Blacksmith is the infrastructure platform for building and testing code. Companies bring Blacksmith their builds and tests, and Blacksmith runs them twice as fast and at 60% lower cost on average, on infrastructure purpose-built for CI workloads. More than 10,000 companies, including Ashby, Granola, Handshake and LangChain, run their CI on Blacksmith. The company was founded in 2024 by Aditya (JP) Jayaprakash, Aayush Shah and Aditya Maru and is backed by Sequoia Capital, Premji Invest, Peak XV Partners, GV and Y Combinator. For more information, visit blacksmith.sh.

SOURCE Blacksmith