For just $249 per year, Wally’s members get unlimited cleanings and diagnostics, with exclusive access to additional proactive care treatments that are up to 75% more affordable.

Wally recently surpassed 50,000 members who visit 3x per year and give the platform a 4.9 star rating. It has a 97% hygienist retention rate and plans to expand from 15 to 100 locations by the end of 2027.

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2026 — Wally, a nationwide oral care platform, today announced $25 million in Series A funding led by Maveron, along with Bling Capital, and notable angel investors including Jack Abraham, co-founder of Hims. The company is also announcing a strategic partnership with EMS Dental, the developer of the world’s most advanced dental cleaning technology.

America’s Dental Problem: High Cost, Discomfort, and Bureaucracy

The U.S. dental system is fundamentally broken, trapped in an insurance model that results in only 40% of American adults going to the dentist each year. Over 80% of people want more dental care, but stay away because traditional visits are defined by financial complexity and physical discomfort. Legacy insurance rules and private equity takeovers force practices to maximize reimbursements rather than patient satisfaction, leading to rushed appointments and unnecessary invasive treatments. By profiting off decay rather than preventing it, the current system turns routine dental care into a stressful and high-cost ordeal.

“Wally is the best dental experience I’ve ever had. They really go above and beyond to understand your dental history, how you feel, what your worries are. They’re wonderful at explaining the how’s and why’s of what they’re doing. I tell everyone I know to go there,” said Natasha S, a Wally customer.

Wally’s Solution: $249 Per Year Membership for Unlimited Cleanings

Wally replaces traditional, reactive dental appointments with a seamless, AI-powered clinical platform built entirely around prevention and pricing transparency. No insurance, just a $249 per year membership to get the most modern preventative oral care experience: advanced diagnostics with AI-driven insights, and unlimited Swiss Airflow cleanings. Based on members’ needs, they offer exclusive access to treatments like cavity reversal, so you never need to get drilled again. Wally builds its locations in co-working spaces, which allow for significantly faster and more convenient visits. They currently have 15 locations in New York City, Philadelphia, Jersey City, and Chicago.

Wally’s key features include:

• Unlimited Cleanings & Whitening: Members receive unlimited preventative hygiene visits and professional whitening treatments to maintain optimal oral health year-round.
• Swiss AIRFLOW® Cleaning Technology: Uses Guided Biofilm Therapy to eliminate up to 100% of harmful biofilm and stain-causing bacteria without painful metal scraping.
• AI-Powered Diagnostics & Exams: Utilizes digital X-rays, 3D intraoral scans, saliva testing, and AI detection to visually display objective health data.
• Non-Invasive Cavity Reversal: Stops and remineralizes early-stage tooth decay before cavities form, eliminating the need for expensive fillings.
• Aligners & Nightguards: Delivers custom-fit protective nightguards and clear aligner orthodontic treatments at half the price of brand-name competitors.
• Wally AI-Powered App: Members can book appointments, see diagnostics results, clinical recommendations, and more.

“For fifty years, dentistry has run on simple math: get someone in the chair, find something to fix, bill the insurance, repeat,” explained Tyler Burnett, Co-Founder and CEO of Wally. “Private equity-run dentistry perfected it. It works. Just not for people. The future is not more dentistry. We’re rebuilding oral healthcare from the ground up by taking insurance out of the equation and focusing entirely on proactive, technology-driven care.”

“Wally does something no one else in dental has pulled off: pain-free cleanings in half the time, on a single AI-driven platform that runs scheduling, operations, and guides clinicians through every appointment,” said Jason Stoffer, Partner at Maveron. “Dentistry hasn’t had a consumer brand people actually like. We think Wally is that brand, and the hardware, diagnostics, and AI behind it are what make it durable.”

Wally’s Future Plans: Nationwide Expansion & Hiring Across All Teams

With the new capital, Wally plans to bring its subscription oral care model to key new metropolitan hubs in Washington DC, Atlanta, Austin, and Miami, where they are establishing waitlists. To power this expansion from 15 to 100 locations, Wally is hiring aggressively across the board, both top-tier clinicians and operational leaders who will leverage its proprietary AI platform to deliver the most innovative oral care experience in the world.

Wally was founded by entrepreneur Tyler Burnett, engineer Stipe Latkovic, and consumer experience expert Chelsea Patel.

Patients or clinicians can learn more at https://www.carebywally.com/.

About Wally Health

Wally is the AI-powered, direct-to-consumer healthcare company building the first nationwide subscription dental brand. Powered by a proprietary technology platform and AI, Wally delivers a smarter, more personalized dental experience, including unlimited painless AIRFLOW® cleanings, exams, x-rays, 3D scans, and custom whitening for $249/year — no insurance needed. To learn more or book an appointment, visit https://www.carebywally.com/.

Riley Munks
PR Advisor
Activate PR
https://www.activate-pr.com/
[email protected]

This release was issued through WebWire®. For more information, visit http://www.webwire.com.

SOURCE Wally

Outdoor industry veterans and commerce executives pair Outdoor Life’s trusted editorial authority with a new platform for discovering, evaluating and buying gear

BEND, Ore., Oct. 7, 2026 — eFormed Ventures, an investment fund focused on building media marketplaces for passionate enthusiast communities, today announced it acquired Outdoor Life from Recurrent Ventures. eFormed will integrate an AI-native marketplace connecting readers with content and best-in-class products from top retailers and brands. The company intends to retain all existing editorial and operations staff.

“A community of 183 million Americans hike, fish and hunt every year,” said Tom Beusse, managing partner at eFormed Ventures. “Now, they’ll have a digital platform combining the breadth of an outdoor marketplace, with the expertise, content and trust that help people choose the right gear, apparel and accessories to get outside.”

The marketplace will be powered by Resonance 2.0, eFormed’s proprietary AI search, discovery and pricing technology, which uses seasonality, location, online activity, and buying habits to pair audience interests with product recommendations at a competitive price.

Mike Morford, Tom Beusse, Scott Blackwell, and Lance Reese lead operations for eFormed Ventures, bringing decades of expertise across media, retail, outdoor and e-commerce. Beusse previously stewarded Outdoor Life as president of Time4 Media, giving him firsthand knowledge of the brand’s audience. Blackwell held leadership roles at Beretta USA, Mountain Khaki and Remington. Justin Phillips and Dan MacKeigan round out eFormed’s leadership and the combined team experience spans companies including Altrec.com, GreatOutdoors.com, Motorsport Network, Target, Tudor Investment Corporation and UPS.

“Outdoor Life’s legacy sits inside a much older American story, one shaped by the people who gave us a love of wild places,” said Mike Morford, managing partner at eFormed Ventures. “Amelia Earhart, Ernest Hemingway and Theodore Roosevelt are among the icons whose adventures are chronicled in pages of Outdoor Life. The brand has earned its readers’ trust one season and one honest story at a time. We’re here to build on that with an investment in the future and a focus on engaging the next generation.”

About eFormed Ventures

eFormed Ventures is an investment fund focused on building media marketplaces for passionate enthusiast communities, headquartered in Bend, Oregon. It pairs iconic media brands with modern commerce infrastructure, giving consumers and industry partners a better way to discover and buy the products they trust. Learn more at eFormedVentures.com 

SOURCE eFormed Ventures

Agentiq is creating a new way for fans to connect with athletes they believe in

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 2026 — Agentiq Sports, Inc. (“Agentiq”), the fintech platform allowing fans to indirectly invest in professional athletes’ careers, today announced $4 million in funding. The round was led by defy.vc, the Silicon Valley venture firm behind multiple breakout consumer and fintech companies, and by a group led by the owner of two major European football clubs. Agentiq believes that the funding will accelerate its platform launch and allow Agentiq to scale its team and pipeline.

“For too long, being a sports fan has meant paying an entertainment tax,” said Zach Kurtz, Co-Founder and CEO of Agentiq. “Betting apps, fantasy platforms, prediction markets: they all monetize your passion and give you nothing durable in return. We are building the opposite. The Agentiq platform gives fans a way to back the athletes they believe in and share in their journey. A real stake and a real connection.”

Traditionally, private athlete-equity funds have operated behind closed doors, signing more than 2,000 athletes to long-term income-share agreements with limited transparency. Athletes early in their careers have had few options for accessing capital beyond traditional debt or these opaque private arrangements.

On Agentiq’s platform, each athlete offering is conducted publicly through a designated series of a Delaware Series LLC. Under a Brand Advisory Agreement, the applicable Series provides the athlete with non-debt capital and brand advisory services in exchange for a defined percentage of covered future on-field Brand Income. By opening these athlete-linked offerings to everyday investors, the Agentiq platform aims to democratize investment opportunities historically dominated by private equity and other institutional counterparties. Agentiq believes its model gives athletes access to more flexible and transparent deal structures, allows them to de-risk their careers and invest in themselves, and creates a direct connection with the fans who believe in them.

Agentiq’s initial athlete offerings are headlined by Justin Martinez, the 25-year-old flamethrowing closer of the Diamondbacks, and Esmerlyn Valdez, the 22-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder who has emerged as one of the most electric rookies in Major League Baseball. Through July 19, 2026, Valdez had already hit 12 home runs in 31 games. Valdez is a prime example of the type of athlete the Agentiq platform was designed for: a dynamic talent at the beginning of what could be a standout career.

In addition to Martinez and Valdez, Agentiq has signed Cardinals starting pitcher Hunter Dobbins, Ronny Cruz, Carlos Virahonda and hopes to have more than 50 athletes on the roster within the next 12 months. The company maintains a pipeline of more than 200 professional athletes across MLB, the NFL, and other major leagues.

Agentiq sits at the intersection of three compounding trends:

• Fan engagement with financial products has gone mainstream. More than 40 million Americans actively use platforms like Robinhood, while Polymarket and Kalshi have normalized the idea of financial participation in real-world outcomes. Consumer demand for new, accessible ways to engage with sports has never been stronger.

• The sports economy is at an all-time high. League valuations, NIL deal volume, betting handle, and prediction-market activity have all compounded for a decade. Private athlete-equity funds close 500+ deals per year, demonstrating strong demand for athlete-linked financial products.

• Athletes are taking control of their economic futures. NIL reshaped college sports, and professional athletes increasingly view themselves as brands and businesses, not just players. Yet their options for non-debt capital remain limited to opaque private funds with rigid terms. Agentiq believes its model provides athletes with a transparent, fan-facing alternative.

“Fans have always wanted to feel closer to the athletes and teams they love, but there hasn’t been an easy, accessible way to be part of an athlete’s journey beyond simply watching and cheering them on,” said Medha Agarwal, General Partner at defy.vc. “Agentiq is changing that by giving fans a new way to support athletes and share in their success over the long term. We believe Zach and Reuben have the vision and experience to build something truly new for the next generation of sports fans.”

For decades, the sports industry has treated fans as a revenue source, not a stakeholder. Sports betting extracted a record $17 billion in revenue from American consumers in 2025 alone¹, with sportsbooks keeping roughly 10 cents of every dollar wagered. Research shows that 95 to 97 percent of sports bettors lose money over any meaningful time period.² Prediction markets are no better. On one of the main platforms, ordinary users have lost more than half a billion dollars since the platform launched.³ The common thread: fans pay to participate in short-duration products tied to discrete outcomes, while the house wins, and nothing of lasting value is created for most consumers.

Agentiq gives eligible fans the opportunity to indirectly invest in certain athletes’ on-field careers. These SEC-qualified offerings result in ownership of securities that are freely tradable under U.S. federal securities law.

Founded by Zach Kurtz (CEO, fintech veteran, former D1 baseball player at University of Richmond, owner of a sporting products company used by 50+ pro players) and Reuben Abraham (CTO, employee 10 at Pave, former NerdWallet, UPenn Jerome Fisher M&T and Wharton ’17, UAE Cricket National Team). The team includes former professional players and agents, as well as former data scientists with experience working in MLB front offices. Agentiq is headquartered in New York. For more information, visit agentiqsports.com.

About Agentiq Sports

Agentiq Sports, Inc. operates the Agentiq platform and serves as the Manager of Agentiq Sports 1 Series LLC and each of its designated Series. Through Regulation A, Tier 2 offerings qualified by the SEC, eligible investors may purchase Units of designated Series and obtain indirect exposure to an applicable athlete’s on-field Brand Income.

About defy.vc

Founded in 2016, defy.vc is a Silicon Valley based early stage venture capital firm. Defy was founded to invest in entrepreneurs and companies looking to solve complex problems. Defy’s focus is to help early stage companies mature and scale into companies ready for growth capital. The firm’s team has more than 50 years of venture experience, successful operating backgrounds, and actively helps successful entrepreneurs grow companies from inception through exit. Connect with defy at https://defy.vc/ and @defyvc. 

Media Contact:
Zach Kurtz, Co-Founder and CEO
[email protected] 
agentiqsports.com

Important Legal Notice

This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Any offering is made only by means of the qualified offering circular of Agentiq Sports 1 Series LLC for the applicable series. Securities of a series may not be sold before the offering statement, or the post-qualification amendment relating to that series, has been qualified by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

An offering statement on Form 1-A, as amended, relating to these securities has been filed with, and qualified by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The offering circular may be obtained on the AgentiqSports.com platform, at agentiqsports.com, or through the SEC’s EDGAR database at www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0002105654. Prospective investors should read the offering circular and any supplement thereto, including the risk factors disclosed therein, before investing.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not pass upon the merits of or give its approval to any securities offered, the terms of any offering, or the accuracy or completeness of any offering circular or other solicitation materials. These securities are offered pursuant to an exemption from registration; however, the Commission has not made an independent determination that the securities are exempt. Qualification by the Commission is not an endorsement or approval of any offering, of any series, or of the merits of any investment.

Generally, no sale may be made to you in this offering if the aggregate purchase price you pay is more than 10% of the greater of your annual income or net worth. Different rules apply to accredited investors and non-natural persons. Before making any representation that your investment does not exceed applicable thresholds, we encourage you to review Rule 251(d)(2)(i)(C) of Regulation A. For general information on investing, we encourage you to refer to www.investor.gov. 

An investment in Units involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. Units are securities; they are not deposits, are not insured or guaranteed by any governmental agency, and are not wagering or gaming products. Units are illiquid, and there is no assurance that any secondary market will develop or be maintained. Each series is a separate offering, and an investment in one series does not entitle you to any interest in any other series or in Agentiq Sports, Inc. Distributions, if any, depend on the Series’ Free Cash Flow after fees, expenses, taxes, and reserves and are not guaranteed.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Forward-looking statements in this release, including regarding launch timing, future offerings, secondary trading, and market opportunity, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially, and neither Agentiq Sports 1 Series LLC nor Agentiq Sports, Inc. undertakes any obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, without limitation: the ability to obtain SEC qualification of future offerings or post-qualification amendments on anticipated timelines or at all; the timing, execution, and market acceptance of the Agentiq platform and athlete offerings; the development and availability of secondary trading functionality; general economic, market, competitive, and regulatory conditions; athlete performance, health, career duration, marketability, and conduct; the Company’s ability to attract and retain athletes, personnel, and strategic partners; and other factors described in the Risk Factors section of the applicable offering circular. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

^{1 https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/48045855/sports-betting-hits-record-1696-billion-revenue-2025
2 https://www.usnews.com/banking/articles/2025-sports-betting-and-debt-survey 
3 https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/since-kalshis-launch-ordinary-users-have-lost-half-a-billion-dollars/} 

SOURCE Agentiq Sports

New capital will accelerate production of the company’s next generation Panther rail vehicle and fuel commercial expansion including international markets

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7, 2026 — Parallel Systems (Parallel or The Company), the world’s leading battery-electric autonomous freight rail company, has closed its Series C funding round with $100 million in new capital. New investors include AVP which led the round, Hillspire, Agility Global, and Cobalt Capital, as well as participation from existing investors including Anthos Capital, Congruent Ventures, Riot Capital, and Collaborative Fund. Founded in 2020 by Matt Soule, who spent 13 years with SpaceX, the Company has assembled a team of engineers and rail operations professionals who will drive full commercialization, expansion into international markets, and scale manufacturing of Parallel’s third-generation Panther rail vehicle.

Parallel enables railroads to handle shorter, lower-density routes competitively, allowing shippers to use rail for short-haul freight that previously required trucks. The $1 trillion market for surface freight, dominated by trucking, continues to face severe pressure from rising operational costs, tightening capacity, and strict logistics constraints. The United States’ rail network remains significantly underutilized particularly for shorter haul routes less than 500 miles representing 60% of the surface freight market. Parallel’s integrated technology taps into this existing network, providing an on-demand freight movement solution that provides shippers with the flexibility of trucking combined with the cost and environmental efficiencies of rail.

“Closing our Series C round is a major inflection point for Parallel and as well as the short-haul logistics industry, and is the strongest market signal to-date that autonomous freight rail is ready for its moment,” said Matt Soule, Founder and CEO of Parallel Systems. “With the FRA-approved pilot proving our platform in real-world corridors, this capital will directly fund the production scale-up of our Panther vehicles and accelerate our entry into international markets hungry for lower cost, more resilient supply chains,” added Mr. Soule.

Since closing its Series B round in 2025, Parallel has successfully transitioned from initial prototyping to live commercial deployment under regulatory test approval. A number of major railroads are now under contract to deploy Parallel to transport commercial freight using the Company’s fully integrated autonomous delivery system, which seamlessly pairs its advanced hardware and software ecosystem. Parallel’s Georgia pilot is actively advancing in partnership with short-line railroad operator Genesee & Wyoming (G&W), operating under Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) supervision.

“Matt and the entire Parallel team have built a proven, viable and scalable autonomous freight rail platform that has generated significant commercial interest among the major rail companies in the U.S. and globally,” said Arun Gupta, Parallel’s Executive Chairman. “We are now past the question of ‘if’ and fully onto ‘how soon,'” added Mr. Gupta.

About Parallel Systems

Founded in 2020, Parallel Systems is the world’s first autonomous battery-electric rail system. The company is a U.S. based manufacturer and transportation technology innovator whose mission is to deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable alternative to short-haul trucking. The company provides significant benefits, including: 1) enables railroads to grow by increasing their role in shorter-route transportation; 2) makes America’s busiest roadways safer for motorists by decongesting; 3) reduces the costs of shipping; 4) creates new industry jobs; 5) reduces pollution. To-date the company has raised more than $200 million in funding.

For more information, please visit www.moveparallel.com

Media Contact
Dan Tarman Actum LLC
[email protected]
213-705-8454

SOURCE Parallel Systems

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 7, 2026 — Concierge healthcare service Velocity Health is now listed on Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Wellness.

Cost Plus Wellness and Velocity Health share a common goal of helping consumers experience total transparency in their healthcare. As a service available through Cost Plus Wellness’s repository, Velocity Health is offering its industry-leading concierge executive health program, and has made its full contract and transparent pricing model publicly viewable to any company interested in providing unique benefits to their teams.

Based in Columbus, Ohio and licensed in all 50 states, Velocity Health’s physicians utilize a wide range of advanced diagnostic tests (such as full-body MRIs, heart disease monitoring, hormone evaluations, sleep analyses, genetic testing, advanced cancer screenings, and more) to craft targeted health plans designed to reduce burnout, improve cognitive performance, boost energy levels, and mitigate long-term health risk in top business leaders.

Velocity Health was founded in 2025 by former Mayo Clinic and Harvard physician, Dr. Sandeep Palakodeti. Velocity’s mission is rooted in the understanding that an executive’s mental and physical health is deeply tied to the success of their business. Providing exclusive benefits is key for companies who are looking to hire and retain top executive talent, and Velocity Health is built to help high-performing companies measure, manage, and continuously improve their most important asset: the well-being of their people.

“At Velocity Health, our mission is to give high-performing individuals the clarity and control they’ve been missing from traditional healthcare. Partnering with Cost Plus Wellness extends that mission by removing the guesswork, surprise fees, and hidden terms from the care that keeps executives and elite athletes performing at their best.”
— Dr. Sandeep Palakodeti, Founder and CEO, Velocity Health

Velocity Health’s contract has been available through Cost Plus Wellness since July of 2026.

For more information about Velocity Health’s executive health programs, visit https://velocityhealthclinic.com/executive-health/.

About Velocity Health

Velocity Health is a concierge telehealth clinic providing personalized, data-driven health plans to each of its members. Velocity Health’s physicians and clinical team harness the most up-to-date medical research to create performance optimization strategies, hormone balancing protocols, proactive disease interventions, and more.

About Cost Plus Wellness

Cost Plus Wellness (costpluswellness.com) is a public repository of transparent healthcare contracts, an open source project that helps self-funded employers contract directly and transparently with medical providers. It acts as an fully-transparent open alternative to insurance carrier networks. Every healthcare provider on the Cost Plus Wellness website has made their rates and terms publicly viewable. By publishing contracts openly, Cost Plus Wellness helps self-funded employers build direct relationships with providers, removing intermediaries, lowering costs, and improving the quality of care.

Media Contact: [email protected] 

SOURCE Velocity Health

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 7, 2026 — Biohub, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and new funding partners today announced a major expansion of an international effort to generate and make accessible the data enabling predictive AI models of biology. Together, the organizations are investing $1.8 billion in funding, data, computation, and new measurement technology, the largest coordinated commitment to generating AI-ready biological data to date. The result will be an open resource for the research community that provides the foundation for greater understanding and ultimately treatment of human diseases.

As part of this announcement, Biohub has partnered with the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance the frontier of artificial intelligence in biology. DOE will invest more than $500 million over five years in lab measurement, modeling and computation toward the international effort to build an AI-ready open data resource. NIH will coordinate the contribution of relevant datasets, repositories, and knowledge bases developed through more than $500 million in prior federal investment aligned to this initiative. Biohub will work with NIH to standardize these datasets for AI model training.

In addition, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs, and Meta are collectively investing $300 million in the Virtual Biology Initiative to create the technologies and multi-modal datasets needed to build predictive models of life.

These datasets will enable the global scientific community to collectively build and use AI models that allow researchers to ask, predict, and answer biological questions digitally, accelerating the path to new ways of preventing and treating diseases. This initiative will deliver the foundational measurements to train these models, expanding cell response data to interventions across far more cell types and conditions than have yet been studied, and building and validating technologies for studying cells and cellular interactions at greater scale, speed, and accuracy.

“An accurate predictive model of biology could dramatically accelerate scientific discovery by enabling scientists to perform experiments digitally. The insights that come from this could unlock a far greater understanding of disease and open up completely new paths for cures,” said Biohub Head of Science Alex Rives. “Because of this potential, the creation of a virtual cell is one of the most important challenges for the next era of science. It will require coordinated data generation efforts at a national and international scale, which is why these partners are coming together. We invite the worldwide scientific community to join us in this project.”

The Virtual Biology Initiative, announced in April 2026, will coordinate data generation across institutions and disciplines to build AI-ready open datasets to enable predictive models of life. Biohub’s founding $500 million commitment anchors that work: $400 million supports new technologies that expand what biologists can measure: cryo-electron tomography, which resolves near-atomic detail inside the cell; microscopy that can image millions to billions of cells in living tissue; and engineering tools to build and perturb biology at molecular, cellular, tissue, and whole-organism levels. A further $100 million funds research outside Biohub.

“Generating the data to solve predictive systems biology requires scaling past the limits of what any single organization can produce today,” said Max Jaderberg, President of Isomorphic Labs. “By joining the Virtual Biology Initiative as a founding member, Isomorphic Labs is helping build a massive, multimodal data foundation. This initiative will generate the data needed to push the industry closer to the next significant breakthrough for biology.”

Through the Genesis Mission, a cross-agency initiative led by the Department of Energy, DOE will contribute more than $500 million over five years in fundamental cell research — data collection, AI analytics, measurement and imaging, modeling, and computation — drawing on exascale supercomputing, X-ray and neutron scattering, cryo-electron microscopy and tomography, and autonomous laboratories across the National Laboratory system.

“This partnership represents a critical step forward in leveraging artificial intelligence for public benefit,” said Darío Gil, DOE’s Under Secretary for Science. “By combining DOE’s exascale computing, experimental measurement, and modeling assets, including premier user facilities at the Joint Genome Institute, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, and advanced structural beamlines with the unique AI models, tool development, and biological data capabilities of Biohub, we are setting a new standard for open science that will accelerate discoveries in both medicine and biotechnology.”

Through its Bio Genesis Mission, NIH will bring together existing biomedical datasets, national data infrastructure, and research programs to help build AI-ready resources for the broader scientific community. NIH’s extensive investments in biomedical research provide a foundation for this work; resources include national biomedical repositories catalogued by NIH’s National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information, as well as NIH Common Fund programs that are already developing coordinated biological atlases, shared data standards, and AI-ready biomedical datasets.

“By combining resources and expertise, we can accelerate the development of universal cell models with sufficient biological complexity to predict how any cell responds to an intervention,” said Nicole Kleinstreuer, Ph.D., NIH Deputy Director Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI). “The return from these models could be broad and profound, resulting in substantially faster timelines for medical breakthroughs as compared with attempting to attain the same results through laboratory experiments alone.”

In addition, leading scientific institutions and consortia with experience in organizing transformative international collaborations, from the Human Genome Project onwards, have come together to help nucleate the scientific community across academia and industry around developing effective scientific strategies to maximize the impact of virtual biology. The groups include the Allen Institute, Broad Institute, Gladstone Institutes, the Human Cell Atlas, the Human Protein Atlas, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. These groups are committed to working together as part of the Virtual Biology Initiative as well as through independent efforts toward this shared goal. NVIDIA will support the initiative to leverage accelerated computing infrastructure, domain-specific software, and technical expertise. Renaissance Philanthropy is helping to expand funding for data generation.

As the initiative takes shape, Biohub is bringing together partners across disciplines and industries to build the layer that lets their datasets work in a unified fashion — shared standards, common identifiers, and a single point of access. Equally important is building the scientific community around these resources — convening researchers across institutions and disciplines, connecting complementary expertise and capabilities, and creating opportunities to define and pursue ambitious scientific questions together. Over the past decade, Biohub has expanded the reach and impact of measurement technologies and open datasets, leading projects such as Tabula Sapiens, OpenCell, and Zebrahub. It has also built and maintained community data infrastructure, including CELLxGENE and the CryoET Data Portal. The Virtual Biology Initiative builds on these experiences to enable coordinated efforts at a scale that no single institution could achieve alone.

“The quest to build a virtual cell is one of the great collective scientific challenges and key to understanding the mechanisms of life. We will not solve this challenge without open, experimental biological data at an unprecedented scale, showing how living cells behave and respond to changes,” said Pushmeet Kohli, VP, AI for Science at Google DeepMind and Google Cloud’s Chief Scientist. “This investment in biological data generation will help create an open, standardized data commons, which will lay the foundations researchers around the world need to better model biology.”

About Biohub 
Biohub is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research institute combining frontier AI and biology to accelerate science. With its compute capacity, AI research and engineering, and state-of-the-art technology for measuring, imaging, and programming biology, Biohub is enabling scientists worldwide to use AI-powered biology to study how cells operate and organize as systems — with the ultimate mission to cure or prevent all disease. Learn more at biohub.org.

SOURCE Biohub

Global companies including Veolia, Seagate and ServiceTitan are using Trmeric to connect strategy, planning, execution and outcomes across their transformation portfolios

SAN RAMON, Calif., Oct. 7, 2026 — Trmeric, the agentic platform for enterprise transformation, today announced a $6.5 million oversubscribed seed round led by Hitachi Ventures. Additional investors included Schema Ventures, CerraCap Impact Venture Capital, FalconX Ventures, Executive Venture Fund, and angel investors Gokul Rajaram, Yatish Mishra and Shailesh Lakhani. Trmeric already powers $1 billion in enterprise transformation and will use the new capital to accelerate product innovation, expand customer adoption and scale the business. 

For CEOs, CIOs and technology leaders, the challenge is no longer access to AI but rather turning it into measurable business value. Enterprise transformation extends far beyond coding, and organizations must choose the right initiatives, mobilize teams, govern execution and measure results. Most still do that work through spreadsheets, disconnected tools, consultants and tribal knowledge that walks out the door when a project ends. Coding agents and general-purpose LLMs accelerate development, but they do not solve the harder problem of connecting strategy to business outcomes. Trmeric solves this problem by connecting transformation strategy, execution and outcomes in one AI platform.

At the foundation of Trmeric is a living transformation repository containing an enterprise’s strategy, technology landscape, initiatives, resources, decisions and outcomes. Above it sits the agentic layer, led by Tango, which coordinates purpose-built agents that support planning, resource mobilization, execution, governance, reporting and value measurement. With Trmeric, customers have already redirected tens of millions of dollars from low-return projects, reduced planning cycles from months to days and automated key PMO reporting and governance.

“Every enterprise transformation has hundreds of moments of truth that determine its eventual ROI,” said Siddharth Bohra, Founder and CEO of Trmeric. “Without a system to guide those decisions and drive the right actions, it is impossible to get most of them right. Enterprises are investing heavily in individual initiatives without building the foundational capability that every transformation depends on, and Trmeric solves that problem.”

Trmeric founders Siddharth Bohra and Debottam Datta spent decades helping Fortune 500 companies execute technology-led transformations of every size, from acquisition integrations and large ERP programs to cyber, cloud and AI. Together, they worked with more than a dozen CIO design partners to shape Trmeric, mapping decisions, workflows, KPIs, risks and signals between strategy and business results. That work became a proprietary data model, ontology and knowledge graph built specifically for enterprise transformation, supported by Trmeric’s orchestration layer and Tango with its team of agents. Foundation models serve as inputs into the platform, while Trmeric provides the enterprise context and workflows required to manage transformation from strategy through value realization.

“Transformation strategy is easy to write down and hard to prove,” said Balamurali Rengarajan, SVP and CIO, North America Business, at Veolia. “Trmeric gives us the structure and visibility to connect IT initiatives directly to business outcomes. We prioritize investment with clarity, and a live view of progress and impact across a complex portfolio has replaced manually prepared reporting.”

“IT budgets are shifting beyond running the business toward transforming it, with an increasing share directed to AI and digital transformation,” said Gayathri “G” Radhakrishnan, partner at Hitachi Ventures. “Yet enterprises still lack a connected way to see where that capital is going and whether it is delivering the intended ROI. We invested in Trmeric because we see this as a significant and growing gap. Trmeric gives enterprises the system to make better investment decisions and prove the value they create.”

About Trmeric

Trmeric is the agentic platform for enterprise transformation. Its agents work with business and technology teams to choose the right initiatives, execute them effectively and prove the return, turning scattered projects into a connected system that improves with every transformation. Learn more at trmeric.com. 

Media Contact
Colleen Harig
[email protected]

SOURCE Trmeric

Sell-side advisory engagement for the ten-location aesthetics business marks Aesthetic Brokers’ fourth platform creation

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 7, 2026 — Aesthetic Brokers, a sell-side M&A advisory firm exclusively representing founders of aesthetic and longevity practices, today announced that it served as exclusive sell-side advisor to SDBotox in a strategic partnership. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2012 by Dr. Alex Roher, SDBotox grew from a single San Diego office into a ten-location medical aesthetics business operating across Southern California and Texas. The transaction is the fourth platform Aesthetic Brokers has helped create.

Aesthetic Brokers led the full sell-side process, including valuation and positioning, buyer outreach, competitive process management, transaction strategy, and negotiations. The firm evaluated potential partners against the founder’s objectives, considering culture, clinical standards, leadership, growth strategy, and patient experience alongside financial terms.

“A successful transaction is not about finding someone willing to buy the business,” said Bill Walker, Founder and CEO of Aesthetic Brokers. “It’s about creating real choice for the founder, understanding what makes the business truly valuable to the right buyer, and identifying a partner that can protect what was built while creating the strongest path forward.”

“Aesthetic Brokers achieved truly uncommon results in finding our optimal growth partner. The cultural and strategic alignment coupled with the deep financial backing we now possess will fuel our continued expansion and allow us to continue to be at the forefront of optimizing clinical outcomes for our patients and provide cutting edge proven technologies for our staff. I could not be more pleased with their results,” said Dr. Alex Roher, Founder of SDBotox.

Founders considering a sale, or who want a confidential view of what their practice is worth in today’s market, can contact Aesthetic Brokers at aestheticbrokers.com.

About Aesthetic Brokers

Aesthetic Brokers is a sell-side M&A advisory firm working exclusively with founders of aesthetic and longevity practices, including medical spas, plastic surgery, dermatology, and specialty practices. Since 2023, the firm has represented founders across 11 states, including California, Texas, Ohio, and Massachusetts, advising on valuation, positioning, competitive buyer processes, negotiations, and strategic exits. Four of those engagements resulted in platform creations.

The firm runs a selective, founder-first process designed to create real competition among buyers, find the right long-term partner, and protect the value a founder spent years building. 

About SDBotox

SDBotox is a medical aesthetics practice with ten locations across Southern California and Texas. Founded in 2012 by Dr. Alex Roher, the company has grown from a single San Diego office into a multi-state platform offering injectables, skin rejuvenation, laser and energy-based treatments, and other non-surgical aesthetic services. SDBotox is known for its experienced licensed medical providers, personalized treatment approach, and natural-looking results.

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on LinkedIn and Instagram.

SOURCE Aesthetic Brokers

• Funds will scale Ledgebrook’s tech-led approach to U.S. specialty underwriting, covering custom and complex insurance needs
• Ledgebrook on track to surpass USD 1 billion in cumulative premium written since it started writing business in 2023
• Investment expands Allianz X’s U.S. property and casualty (P&C) platform into mid-sized general liability risks in excess and surplus (E&S) market
• Allianz Re agrees to enter a multi-year reinsurance agreement with Ledgebrook

BOSTON and MUNICH, Oct. 7, 2026 — Ledgebrook, the AI-native specialty insurance platform, today announced it has raised USD 200 million in primary equity financing co-led by Allianz X, the strategic investment arm of the Allianz Group, and Rockefeller Capital Management. Existing and new investors also participated. Ledgebrook will use the funds to scale its technology and extend Blackbird, Ledgebrook’s proprietary AI-native underwriting platform. Separately, Allianz Re has agreed to enter a multi-year reinsurance agreement with Ledgebrook.

Headquartered in Boston, Ledgebrook sits between the brokers who need cover for hard-to-place risks and the capital that backs them, running on technology it built from the ground up. It writes general liability, professional liability, and specialty cover for mid-sized-market businesses in the E&S market, distributed exclusively through wholesale brokers. Ledgebrook’s proprietary AI-based platform, Blackbird, reads submissions, classifies risk, and calculates a technical price, quoting specialty risks, often in hours rather than weeks, with experienced underwriters making the final decision. As such, brokers, and therefore their clients, get fast, reliable answers on placing risks. Ledgebrook’s approach has put it on track to surpass USD 1 billion in cumulative premium written since it started writing business in 2023.

Gage Caligaris, Founder & CEO of Ledgebrook, said: “Our vision is for Ledgebrook to be the company that makes the wheels of insurance spin faster. Businesses with complex risk deserve specialized underwriting, rated with rigor and delivered at speed. Our platform lets our underwriters do that with real discipline. Allianz X backing gives us the capital to keep investing in technology and talent. We’re building this company for the long term.”

Dr. Nazim Cetin, CEO of Allianz X, said: “The industry is applying AI to its simplest risks first, because that is where automation comes easily. We think the larger prize sits at the other end, in complex, hard to place business, where underwriting judgment is scarce and slow decisions cost the most. That’s exactly the gap Blackbird is built to close, and it’s why Ledgebrook fills a meaningful space in our U.S. P&C platform.”

John Mullen, President of E&S at Ledgebrook, added: “E&S is seeing strong multi-year growth. Admitted carriers tightened their appetite and pushed risks that were once routinely placed in the admitted market into this channel, and we’re excited about accelerating the delivery of value to our distribution partners and insured customers in this segment.”

This investment both scales and diversifies Allianz X’s U.S. P&C platform, which is built across various lines of business and segments from micro to mid-sized. Ledgebrook writes general liability in the mid-sized segment of the E&S market, filling a meaningful gap on the platform, deepening Allianz’s presence in that space, and complementing Allianz X’s existing positions.

About Ledgebrook:

Ledgebrook is an AI-native specialty insurance platform. It sits between the brokers who need coverage for hard-to-place risks and the capital that backs them, running on proprietary technology it built from the ground up. Founded in Boston in 2022 by Gage Caligaris, a Harvard mathematician and actuary, Ledgebrook writes general liability, professional liability and specialty coverage through wholesale brokers. In August 2026, AM Best assigned its carrier, Ledgebrook Specialty Insurance Company, a Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and a Financial Size Category of VIII, completing Ledgebrook’s transition to a full-stack platform. The company employs around 300 people, including some 80 underwriters and 50 engineers.

https://www.ledgebrook.com/

About Allianz X:

Allianz X is the strategic investment arm of the Allianz Group, dedicated to keeping the leading global insurer and asset manager at the forefront of the industry. By making and actively managing high-conviction investments in companies with exceptional growth potential and forging unique partnerships between them and Allianz, Allianz X enables transformative collaborations, builds platforms, and unlocks value for the Group.

Stay connected with Allianz X on Medium, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter).

SOURCE Ledgebrook