-F4GE connects Korea’s manufacturing network with global demand from defense and advanced manufacturing companies, building a programmable manufacturing network

-Standardizes data from Korea’s core manufacturing factories and converts it to meet global buyer requirements, supporting supply chain compliance for the U.S. Department of Defense

-NAVER D2SF expands investments in defense and manufacturing technology startups, aligning with TEAM NAVER’s industrial AX initiatives

SEONGNAM-SI, South Korea, Aug. 25, 2026 — NAVER D2SF, the corporate venture capital arm of NAVER, has made a new investment in F4GE (CEO, Hyukhyun Kwon), a defense and manufacturing infrastructure startup. F4GE is building infrastructure that integrates Korea’s fragmented core manufacturing factories into a unified manufacturing network and connects them with global defense and advanced hardware companies. NAVER D2SF decided to invest in the team based on its ability to identify new business opportunities for Korea’s manufacturing capabilities amid supply shortages in the global defense and manufacturing industries.

Global demand across the defense and manufacturing sectors is growing rapidly, while the manufacturing infrastructure capable of reliably meeting that demand remains limited. In defense, large-scale procurement demand is surging, yet major defense companies cannot fulfill all of it through their own production infrastructure alone. Korea, meanwhile, is home to approximately 60,000 core manufacturing factories across areas such as casting, forging, machining, and molding, with high levels of manufacturing quality and productivity. However, many of these factories have been unable to secure global sales channels due to challenges in meeting the compliance, documentation, and traceability requirements demanded by global companies.

F4GE addresses this gap by integrating Korean manufacturing factories into a “programmable manufacturing network” that can be utilized by global defense and manufacturing companies. The company deploys its proprietary software into existing factory environments to collect real-time data on equipment, processes, inspections, and workflows, then converts that data into standardized documentation and compliance systems required by global buyers. This enables Korean manufacturers to meet the requirements for entering global supply chains without large-scale system replacements, while allowing global buyers to secure verifiable manufacturing partners.

F4GE’s infrastructure consists of three key layers. First, it automatically standardizes and integrates equipment data formats and languages that vary by manufacturing site. Second, it directly learns from skilled workers’ accumulated know-how and tacit knowledge, turning it into a new database. Third, F4GE manages the full process from factory allocation and process standardization to logistics, customs, and documentation. Through this approach, the company helps maintain a consistent level of manufacturing quality while supporting compliance with supply chain management certifications such as CoC(Chain of Custody), required by the U.S. Department of Defense and other global buyers.

F4GE is currently expanding partnerships with core manufacturing factories across Korea’s southeastern manufacturing hubs, including Sacheon, Changwon, and Busan. The company is also broadening its network with demand-side companies in North America and Europe across defense, aerospace, shipbuilding, and robotics. By connecting Korea’s manufacturing infrastructure with global demand, F4GE aims to increase factory utilization in Korea while strengthening the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers across global core industry value chains. Manufacturing sites are also showing strong expectations for F4GE’s ability to create new global sales channels.

Founded in January 2026, F4GE has secured its first institutional funding through this investment round. Investors participating in the round include NAVER D2SF, KNET Investment Partners, Sazze Partners, DCAMP, 500 Global. CEO Hyukhyun Kwon brings experience serving in the Republic of Korea Navy Special Warfare Flotilla, founding a defense startup, and working as an investor in AI and manufacturing startups in the United States. Based on his understanding of and network across the defense and manufacturing industries in Korea and abroad, F4GE brings strong execution capabilities in connecting global demand with Korea’s manufacturing sites. With this investment, the company plans to expand hiring across manufacturing engineering, AI development, and other areas, while broadening new manufacturing partnerships.

“Defense and manufacturing are sectors where global supply chain restructuring and technological advancement are creating new opportunities at the same time,” said Sanghwan Yang, Head of NAVER D2SF. “F4GE is building a structure that connects Korea’s on-the-ground manufacturing capabilities with global demand from defense and manufacturing industries. This is meaningful because it can help Korea’s manufacturing infrastructure play a greater role in global value chains.” He added, “As TEAM NAVER is also advancing industrial AX across areas such as defense-specialized AI models, defense and manufacturing LLMs, and physical AI, NAVER D2SF will continue to discover startups that solve structural problems in defense and manufacturing through technology and create opportunities in global markets.”

NAVER D2SF has also launched an open call for startups in the defense and manufacturing sectors. It plans to discover and invest in a broad range of startups across areas including data analysis and integration, simulation and verification, physical AI, strategic and tactical AI, command-and-control and battlefield management, manufacturing and maintenance automation, cybersecurity, and dual-use infrastructure. Applications for investment review will be accepted through the NAVER D2SF website until October 25.

NAVER D2SF is NAVER’s in-house corporate venture arm, supporting sustainable growth by collaborating with startups. Founded in 1999, NAVER has maintained its position as Korea’s leading search engine for over 20 years and operates across commerce, content, fintech, and cloud services. Under the technological vision of D2SF, NAVER is actively developing new technologies and global partnerships to grow as a leading tech company. To learn more, visit https://d2sf.naver.com

SOURCE NAVER D2SF

Founded by computer scientist and former AI entrepreneur Adrian Rosebrock, WheelMetrics helps traders evaluate the stocks behind their options trades before chasing premiums

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2026 — WheelMetrics, an educational and stock-screening platform for retail investors using the Wheel Strategy, is introducing a more systematic approach to one of the strategy’s most important decisions: choosing which stocks are worth owning before evaluating the available options premium.

Founded by Adrian Rosebrock, PhD, WheelMetrics grew out of a problem he encountered repeatedly while trading the Wheel Strategy. Learning how to sell a cash-secured put or covered call is relatively straightforward, but determining which companies are suitable for the strategy requires considerably more work and is often neglected or ignored by retail traders.

The Wheel Strategy typically begins when an investor sells a cash-secured put on a stock they would be willing to own. If the shares are assigned, the investor can then sell covered calls against the position. Rosebrock found that many traders reverse that logic by choosing stocks because the available premium looks attractive, only to confront the poor quality of the underlying company after assignment, often leading extensive losses

WheelMetrics is designed to move the stock selection decision earlier in the process.

The platform uses a two-stage, “quantamental” approach that combines quantitative screening with fundamental analysis before moving into options evaluation. Traders can first narrow the universe of potential companies based on business quality and other defined criteria, then evaluate cash-secured put and covered-call opportunities once a stock has passed that initial screen.

The methodology reflects Rosebrock’s background in computer science and his transition into investing.

Rosebrock earned his PhD in computer science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where his work focused on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and deep learning. During graduate school, he built PyImageSearch into a major computer vision and deep learning education platform, eventually authoring nine books and more than 500 tutorials before selling the company in 2021.

Following the sale, Rosebrock spent five years studying quantitative trading, swing trading and fundamental investing while developing the screening process that would later become the foundation for WheelMetrics. He also serves as portfolio manager at AltFnd Capital, a small friends-and-family quantamental investment fund.

WheelMetrics began after friends and colleagues repeatedly asked Rosebrock how he selected stocks for his own options trades. What started as informal explanations of his screening process eventually developed into a platform built for traders who wanted to replace gut decisions with a repeatable framework.

Today, WheelMetrics provides free educational material alongside a paid screening product focused on stock selection and position management. The platform is intended for self-directed investors who already understand the mechanics of options trading but want a more disciplined process for deciding where to deploy the Wheel Strategy.

Transparency is also central to the company’s positioning. Rosebrock has his trading results independently verified every six months rather than relying on selective screenshots or isolated winning trades.

WheelMetrics does not frame the Wheel Strategy as passive income and does not promise specific returns.

Instead, the platform emphasizes that the quality of the underlying stock matters more than the attractiveness of a single premium and that avoiding a weak setup can be as important as finding a strong one.

WheelMetrics is available at https://wheelmetrics.io.

About WheelMetrics

WheelMetrics is an educational and stock-screening resource founded by Adrian Rosebrock, PhD, to help retail investors apply a systematic process to the Wheel Strategy. WheelMetrics focuses on stock selection, options analysis, and position management through free educational content and its premium screening product. WheelMetrics provides educational and informational resources only and does not provide individualized investment advice. Options trading involves risk, including the potential loss of capital.

Media Contact
Name: Adrian Rosebrock
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE WheelMetrics

The firm’s first vice-president-level operator will build the practice that stops private-equity-backed distributors from giving coverage gains back at the counter, where industry research puts 3 to 5 points of recoverable margin at many mid-market distributors

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Aug. 25, 2026 — Revenue Optics, the commercial growth firm for private-equity-backed B2B distributors and industrial companies, today announced the launch of its Pricing and Revenue Growth Management practice and the appointment of Shafohi Alamgir as Vice President, Pricing and Revenue Growth Management. Alamgir began in the role on August 24 and reports to Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ali Hasham.

The appointment is the firm’s first vice-president-level operator hire and establishes pricing as the fourth line of the Revenue Optics commercial growth platform, alongside sales transformation, talent solutions, and AI and automation.

The practice was built in response to client demand. Revenue Optics builds inside sales engines that put proactive ownership around profitable accounts an outside-sales-centered model cannot economically reach, what the firm calls the distribution coverage gap. Those programs reactivate dormant accounts, increase share of wallet, and grow gross profit.

They also create thousands of new pricing decisions, often exposing a second problem: limited governance around how prices are set, exceptions are handled, and margin is protected.

“Many of our clients asked us a version of the same question this year: you fixed how we cover our accounts, can you do the same for how we price them,” said Ali Hasham, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Revenue Optics. “They were not asking us for another model. They wanted a system that could be installed and sustained. Shafohi and I came up inside WESCO at the same time, in the same office, on opposite sides of the same problem. Coverage decides whether you get the order. Pricing decides whether it was worth winning. Now we are putting the two together inside one firm.”

Pricing carries significant leverage in distribution. For a distributor operating at high-teens to low-twenties gross margin and mid-single-digit EBITDA, a 1 percent realized price improvement can translate into roughly a 22 percent increase in EBITDA because little incremental cost is required to capture it.

Alamgir brings more than 20 years of pricing and revenue growth management leadership across distribution and industrial manufacturing, supporting businesses ranging from $1.5 billion to more than $6 billion in revenue. Her work has generated more than $100 million in gross margin and EBITDA improvement, including repeated margin expansion of 200 to 300 basis points.

Her experience spans pricing architecture, customer segmentation, deal and discount governance, trade and promotional effectiveness, and commercial operating model redesign.

Alamgir has held enterprise pricing leadership roles at AG Growth International and Molex and previously worked in pricing roles at WESCO Distribution and GEXPRO, part of Rexel, after beginning her career at General Electric. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Distribution Management from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a Certified Pricing Professional through the Professional Pricing Society, and is Prosci certified in change management.

“Most distributors are not under-earning. They are leaking,” said Alamgir. “The margin is already in the business. It goes out through pricing by gut feel, slow cost pass-through, discount drift, and exception chaos. Those are governance problems before they are math problems. What convinced me about Revenue Optics is that they already understand the hard part: getting a sales organization to adopt something new and making it hold.”

The practice serves private-equity-backed distributors and industrial manufacturers. It begins with a fixed-scope pricing diagnostic designed to quantify recoverable margin across price variance, cost pass-through latency, discount leakage, and governance gaps.

Revenue Optics then builds the operating system required to capture that value, including key value item and price sensitivity analysis, pricing guardrails and floors, price-change governance, and seller enablement.

Revenue Optics is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.

About Revenue Optics

Revenue Optics is a commercial growth firm for private-equity-backed B2B distributors and industrial companies. The firm helps clients close the distribution coverage gap by designing and building inside sales coverage models, recruiting and assessing talent, implementing CRM and AI automation, and strengthening pricing governance.

Learn more at https://revenueoptics.com/

Contact:
Ali Hasham
***@revenueoptics.com

Photo(s):
https://www.prlog.org/13166679

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Revenue Optics

Seed funding from Redesign Health fuels U.S. expansion and broadens access to clinical and multi-omics data from Asia, bringing greater diversity to drug development and healthcare AI.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 25, 2026 — OmicsBank, a clinical data infrastructure company connecting fragmented hospital data for drug development and healthcare AI, today announced $2.25 million in seed funding from global venture capital and technology firm Redesign Health. The investment will support U.S. expansion across health systems, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, CROs, and AI developers, while growing its clinical data network across Asia and the Middle East.

Global drug development and healthcare AI rely heavily on clinical and genomic datasets from the U.S. and Europe, leaving some of the world’s largest populations significantly underrepresented in the evidence used to develop drugs, identify biomarkers, and train medical AI. India alone accounts for nearly 20% of the world’s population, and South Asian countries represent nearly 25% of the world’s population, yet they account for approximately 2% or less of participants in large-scale global genomic research.

OmicsBank is building the infrastructure to close that gap. Founded in 2025 by Sumit Sinha and Vijay Goel, the company’s technology now sits inside more than 90 hospitals and diagnostic labs in Asia, standardizing and de-identifying multimodal data at the source. Its ecosystem currently includes longitudinal EHR data from 12.5 million patients, more than 30 million DICOM images, 6 million pathology slides, and 500,000 genome sequences.

OmicsBank is already working with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on drug development and real-world evidence studies across oncology, neurology, cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, immunology, and dermatology. The company is also working with frontier AI organizations on pre-training, post-training, and reinforcement learning (RL) for clinical and multimodal models.

“Drug development and healthcare AI are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but the data powering them still represents a relatively narrow slice of the world,” said Sumit Sinha, Co-Founder and CEO of OmicsBank. “We’ve built the infrastructure to make rich clinical and biological data from Asia and other underrepresented populations available for research, ethically and at scale, while remaining compliant with local and international laws. As we expand beyond Asia, including the U.S., we see an opportunity to connect that global data foundation with leading health systems, drug developers, and AI companies to build a much richer picture of human health.”

Representation is only part of the challenge. Hospital data remains fragmented across EHRs, labs, imaging, pathology, and other systems, making it difficult to build longitudinal patient records linking diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes. That fragmentation has also limited researchers’ ability to tap the scale and diversity of clinical data across Asia, the US, and the EU.

OmicsBank standardizes and de-identifies that information within the hospital environment, linking clinical events with imaging and multi-omics data. For pharma, biotech, and frontier AI teams, that means diverse, research-ready multimodal data to study disease, biomarkers, and treatment response, and to train and evaluate models. For participating hospitals, it means tools to query their own clinical archives, identify research cohorts, and support prospective studies.

In the U.S., OmicsBank is pursuing a two-sided expansion strategy: providing pharmaceutical, biotechnology, CRO, and frontier AI organizations with access to research-ready data from Asia, while partnering with U.S. health systems to build research-ready data infrastructure and bring additional populations into its standardized, longitudinal data network. Together, this creates opportunities for research across populations and geographies using multimodal, multi-omics data.

“Healthcare innovation has become global, and we believe some of the companies with the greatest potential to impact U.S. healthcare will come from exceptional founders solving problems at global scale,” said Neil Patel, Head of Ventures at Redesign Health. “With OmicsBank, we underwrote Sumit and Vijay first, and the market second. They saw early that the lack of well-structured, representative clinical data was becoming a constraint on drug development and research, and they moved quickly to do something about it. Between them, they have built five companies and know how to operate in exactly the conditions OmicsBank demands, where progress depends on earning the trust of hospitals one institution at a time. That combination of speed and operating judgment is rare, and it’s what gave us the conviction to invest.”

“Making medical and pharmaceutical research more representative of emerging-market populations is not only a matter of inclusion. People underrepresented in medical research make up the majority of the world’s population. OmicsBank is building the infrastructure to make this data accessible and improve healthcare globally,” said Oscar Ramos Moreno, Managing General Partner at Orbit Ventures, who led OmicsBank’s pre-seed round in 2025.

With the new funding, OmicsBank will expand its hospital network across the U.S., the Middle East, and Southeast Asia while growing relationships with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and AI companies. The company is also developing GPU-enabled research environments for AI model training, reinforcement learning environments, biomarker discovery, real-world evidence, and other computational biology research.

About OmicsBank
OmicsBank is a clinical data infrastructure company. Its platform is deployed within hospital and diagnostic networks across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, turning fragmented, unstructured clinical records into standardized, de-identified, patient-level datasets that research and AI systems can query directly. Its offering spans FHIR, OMOP CDM-structured EHR data, imaging, and genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, phenomic, and metabolomic datasets and biospecimens — all made available under IRB and ethics committee approval, through an ISO 27001-certified, HIPAA- and GDPR-compliant process. OmicsBank works with pharma companies and frontier AI labs on drug discovery, drug development, and clinical AI. Backed by Redesign Health and Orbit Ventures, OmicsBank is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Learn more at omicsbank.com.

About Redesign Health
Redesign Health is a global venture and applied technology firm focused on building next-generation healthcare companies. We manage venture capital and venture buyout strategies, each powered by an AI operating system and team of leading technologists, entrepreneurs, and investors. Our venture capital strategy backs exceptional founders at the earliest stage—often before an idea is fully formed—and provides first institutional capital and an unmatched degree of strategic leverage and domain expertise through exit. Our venture buyout strategy partners with proven management teams through control investments and delivers outsized value by rewiring core products and workflows with AI. Since inception in 2018, Redesign and our portfolio companies have touched the lives of more than 15 million patients, raised over $1.5 billion from premier institutional, sovereign, and strategic investors, and built distinctive partnerships with marquee healthcare organizations and senior leaders around the world. Redesign is based in New York and has offices in Bengaluru, Los Angeles, and Riyadh. For more information, visit www.redesignhealth.com 

Media Contact:

OmicsBank: [email protected] 

Redesign Health: [email protected] 

SOURCE Redesign Health; OmicsBank

Total funding reaches $232M under new leadership with investor group comprised of Electronic Arts, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25, 2026 — Stability AI, the leader in purpose-built AI products for professional creatives across music, gaming, and entertainment, today announced a Series B fundraise of $76M in new capital. The news brings total funding to $232M, inclusive of two equity rounds and convertible notes, under CEO Prem Akkaraju since his appointment in June 2024. The capital will fuel the development of its product suite for creative production, deepen its applied research discipline, and expand its professional services arm.

The round welcomes a new group of investors across entertainment and technology, including interactive entertainment innovator Electronic Arts, global leaders in music entertainment Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, and investment firms AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures.

They join an already stacked roster of the who’s who across the entertainment and technology industries backing Stability AI: Coatue, Greycroft, Kadmos Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis Capital, Sound Ventures, and WPP, alongside individual investors Sean Parker, Eric Schmidt, James Cameron, Kevin Mayer, Mark Burnett, Patrick Whitesell, Prem Akkaraju, and Robert Nelsen.

Coatue, Greycroft, Kadmos Capital, Sean Parker, and Eric Schmidt are also participating in the Series B, investing for a second consecutive round under new leadership.

“This unmatched group of investors is an affirmation of our vision where generative AI empowers every producer, musician, and storyteller,” said Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability AI. “Stability is unique in the AI field because we are creative people making tools for creatives. Developing industry-defining technology means assembling a team of industry-defining titans, and that’s what we have done here.” Akkaraju added, “Our investors set us up for long-term success because they provide not only capital, but expertise, credibility, and direct connection to artists.”

This round includes investments from existing strategic partners Electronic Arts, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. WPP, a global leader in marketing services, has been a strategic partner and investor throughout Stability AI’s growth under new leadership.

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Stable Audio 3.0, a family of open-weight music models trained on fully licensed data. Artists can now bring Stable Audio 3.0 into their workflow through a new DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) plugin or directly on StableAudio.com.

Additionally, Stability AI has announced that Coatue Co-Founder Thomas Laffont has joined its Board of Directors.

“While others are building generalized AI, Stability AI is building creative tools and doing it alongside the artists, studios, and rights holders whose work defines the field,” said Thomas Laffont, Co-Founder of Coatue. “I’m glad to be joining Prem and the team.”

Laffont rounds out a board that includes Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former President of Facebook Sean Parker, Greycroft Co-Founder and Managing Partner Dana Settle, and Stability AI CEO and former CEO of Weta Digital Prem Akkaraju. With this new funding, Stability AI will continue to build creative tools designed around the artist’s process, across music, gaming, and entertainment.

About Stability AI

Stability AI is the leader in purpose-built AI products for professional creatives across music, gaming, and entertainment.

Stability AI sparked the generative AI revolution with the release of Stable Diffusion in August 2022, putting generative technology in the hands of millions of creators globally and cementing its position as a leader in the field. Stable Diffusion models have since been downloaded more than 350 million times, serving as the technical foundation for an entire ecosystem of work.

We build for creatives first. Our work expands beyond the models themselves into products and solutions designed for specific production workflows. This artist-centric approach is why Electronic Arts, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, WPP, and others have chosen us as their strategic partner.

Stability AI is recognized among Fortune’s 50 AI Innovators and TIME’s Most Influential Companies, with Stable Audio named to TIME’s Best Inventions list. In June 2024, Stability AI entered a new phase of growth with a leadership team that included CEO Prem Akkaraju, Executive Chairman Sean Parker, and Board Member James Cameron, as well as board members Dana Settle and Thomas Laffont.

The company is backed by world-class investors including interactive entertainment innovator Electronic Arts; global leaders in music entertainment Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group; investment firms Greycroft, Coatue, WPP, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sound Ventures, AMD Ventures, and Mantis Capital; and individual investors Sean Parker, Eric Schmidt, and James Cameron.

You can learn more at stability.ai.

Media Contact:
[email protected] 

DUBAI, UAE, Aug. 25, 2026 — Mantle, the open financial network connecting global market participants to institutional-grade capital market assets on-chain, today announced the expansion of Mantle Vault into decentralised finance, built with Grove infrastructure, CIAN, and accessible through Fluxion. The launch extends Mantle Vault beyond its existing centralised finance footprint on Bybit, where it has already crossed $200 million in assets under management, into a new deposit-and-earn product open to any stablecoin holder.

From CeFi to DeFi: Mantle Vault Opens to All

The expansion follows Mantle’s continued momentum in real-world assets, with RWA TVL growing from $22 million to $257 million in a year and DeFi TVL exceeding $755 million. This marks the next stage of Mantle’s thesis that institutional-grade assets should be reachable by any market participant, not only the institutions and exchanges that first brought them on-chain.

The expanded Mantle Vault allows users to deposit $USDC and $USDT0 on Mantle to access variable yield generated by the underlying strategy. The strategy includes exposure to sUSDS, Sky Protocol’s yield-bearing token, alongside Fluxion Points. Built by CIAN in coordination with Grove, the vault follows a conservative, non-leveraged structure with transparency into the underlying strategy.

Mantle is also introducing a dedicated incentive programme of 5.14 million GROVE tokens, targeting up to 6.5% APY. Programme terms, duration and rates may vary based on market conditions, and incentives are not guaranteed.

“Mantle Vault started as a product built for Bybit’s user base. Its expansion into DeFi through Grove, CIAN, and Fluxion shows what an open financial network is meant to do: connect global market participants to institutional-grade capital market assets, wherever they are,” said Emily Bao, Key Advisor at Mantle and Spot Executive at Bybit.

Grove: Bringing Institutional Grade Economy onto Mantle

Within Mantle Vault, Grove provides the capital foundation through Grove Savings, the on-chain interface to the Sky Savings Rate. The Sky Savings Rate is set by Sky governance and delivered by the Sky Agent Network, an independent network of capital allocators competing across diversified, governance-approved yield strategies through Sky Protocol.

“We’re happy to bring Grove to Mantle. Grove supports the ecosystem by bringing Grove Savings, the on-chain interface to the Sky Savings Rate, a rate set by Sky governance. Partners like Mantle, CIAN, and Fluxion help make institutional-grade on-chain strategies accessible to more users.” said Kevin Chan, Co-Founder of Grove. 

CIAN: Translating Institutional Portfolio Construction into a Non-Custodial Product

CIAN built the original Mantle Vault on Bybit. That track record now extends into DeFi, with CIAN translating institutional-grade portfolio construction into a single, non-custodial product on top of the sUSDS exposure provided by Grove.

“At CIAN, we translate institutional-grade portfolio construction into transparent, non-custodial yield infrastructure. Together with Grove, Mantle, and Fluxion, we are making capital-preservation-first strategies easier for stablecoin holders to access,” said Luffy, Founder of CIAN.

Fluxion: The Liquidity Layer for Stablecoin Holders on Mantle

Fluxion provides the liquidity layer for the expanded Mantle Vault, giving stablecoin holders on Mantle access to the product and connecting deposits to Fluxion Points as an added benefit.

As the Mantle-native DEX for RWA distribution, Fluxion combines hybrid AMM/RFQ trading with xStocks’ xChange, giving users direct access to tokenized equity trading and supporting liquidity across Mantle’s RWA ecosystem.

Fluxion previously expanded its Earn offering with RWAIpha and now adds Mantle Vault to the lineup, giving users access not only to RWA token trading but also to the underlying infrastructure supporting these assets.

“Partnering with Grove and CIAN to introduce a stablecoin vault on Mantle marks a strong start for our Earn product. Together, we look forward to making Mantle the leading hub for real-world assets,” said Sham, CMO at Fluxion.

Borderless Access to Institutional-Grade Yield

The expansion of Mantle Vault from CeFi into DeFi  brings together four organisations around a single objective: making institutional-grade yield accessible to any stablecoin holder, without geographic restrictions or intermediary gatekeeping. Grove provides the capital foundation, CIAN the yield infrastructure, and Fluxion the liquidity layer, each composable within Mantle’s open financial network. As Mantle continues to expand the range of institutional-grade assets and strategies accessible on-chain, Mantle Vault represents the clearest demonstration yet of what an open financial network is built to deliver.

About Mantle

Mantle is the open financial network powering borderless access to global capital markets, connecting global market participants to institutional-grade capital market assets on-chain. Mantle brings the full lifecycle of real-world assets on-chain, from issuance and liquidity to distribution and settlement, spanning tokenized equities, treasury yield, private credit, commodities, and money markets. Anchored by one of the largest community-owned treasuries in the industry, Mantle combines credibility, deep liquidity, and institutional-grade infrastructure to support real-world finance on-chain.

For more information visit mantle.xyz.
For more social updates, please follow: Mantle Official X & Mantle Community Channel

About Grove

Grove is capitalizing the stablecoin economy. Through institutional-grade allocation, financing, and liquidity, Grove brings real-world assets and real-world use cases onchain to help build the next generation of global financial markets. Grove’s flagship product, Basin, is programmable credit infrastructure designed to provide eligible investors with real-time stablecoin liquidity in connection with approved sale, redemption, transfer, or other liquidity transactions for tokenized real-world assets. Grove is issuer-agnostic, product-conflict-free, and designed to serve as a neutral infrastructure layer for the tokenized asset ecosystem.

To learn more, visit grove.finance, X, and LinkedIn.

About Cian

CIAN Yield Layer is a leading on-chain yield strategy platform, offering users one-click access to advanced strategies while driving sustainable growth for emerging assets—both crypto-native and real-world —by generating extra on-chain yield for holders.

Standing at $1.4B in TVL, CIAN collaborates with top-tier protocols—including Mantle, Lido, Binance, Maple, USD1, Superstate, Renzo, Kernel, Horizon, pyUSD, cbBTC, fBTC, solvBTC, and Bedrock, etc. — to fuel asset growth. Beyond crypto-native assets, CIAN is expanding access to institutional-grade, interest-bearing RWAs issued by leading Wall Street and London institutions, partnering with RWA pioneers like Chainlink, Midas etc., which effectively bridges the gap between DeFi and TradFi.

For more information about CIAN, please visit: Cian.app
For documentation, please visit: Docs.Cian.app
For updates, please follow: X CIAN_protocol &DC Cian Discord

About Fluxion

Fluxion is a native DEX which is also a RWA distribution hub on Mantle. Fluxion adopts a hybrid trading model- AMM/RFQ. Now you can buy all xStock assets on Fluxion via RFQ. And for the Fluxion AMM model, users can trade and manage liquidity with a borderless access experience. Until now, accumulated trading volume across 1B+ USD, weekly high is 100M+USD.

Now, trade xStock assets on Fluxion can both earn Fluxion Points and xStock’s xPoints.

Please come to visit: fluxion.network

For more social info: https://x.com/Fluxion_network

For media enquiries, please contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Mantle

Founders Compass awards cover lab bench and office space at Ocean State Labs for 12 months — with the equipment and support to carry a discovery forward

Companies may apply from anywhere in the country. Applications open August 24 and close September 24

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Aug. 25, 2026 — For an early-stage life science company, the hardest part often isn’t the discovery. It’s finding a place to develop it — a lab, the equipment, and the right environment to realize it.

Today the Rhode Island Life Science Hub (RILSH) announced the Founders Compass Program, offered in partnership with Portal Innovations — the first Rhode Island program to pay for laboratory space directly on behalf of early-stage companies to help accelerate them through the early stages of scientific development. It is open to founders and researchers across the United States and beyond.

Founders Compass will place up to eight companies at Ocean State Labs, the state’s first dedicated life science incubator. Each selected company receives up to two wet lab benches and a dedicated desk, at no cost for 12 months. Portal Innovations, which operates the incubator, provides the laboratory infrastructure, equipment, programming, access to capital, a global network of resources, and advisor support behind the residency. RILSH has committed $250,000 to the program to support up to 8 companies and their early-stage research and development.

What Founders Compass provides

• Rent-free lab and office space. Up to two wet lab benches and one dedicated desk at Ocean State Labs, at no cost for 12 months.
• Access to shared facilities and specialized equipment.
• Advisors and community. Advisor support throughout the residency, educational programming, and access to a growing community of founders, scientists, investors, and industry leaders — including Portal Innovations’ network of sites in Chicago, Providence, New Brunswick, and Salt Lake City (opening in 2027).
• Open to founders anywhere. Companies may apply from any state or from abroad; what is required is a commitment to operate in Rhode Island.
• Up to eight companies, selected from a total RILSH commitment of $250,000.

“Early-stage companies need a place to advance their work — access to lab space, specialized equipment, and expertise – resources that are difficult for a young company to build on its own,” said Bob Cormier, President and CEO of the Rhode Island Life Science Hub. “Founders Compass helps lower those barriers so promising companies can focus on advancing their science. Our goal is to make it easier for good science to move forward — and for companies to build their future here in Rhode Island.”

Applications open August 24, 2026 and close September 24, 2026, with awards announced approximately four weeks later. Applications are evaluated against published criteria: scientific and technical merit, commercial potential, team strength, residency readiness, financial readiness, and impact in Rhode Island. Each recipient commits to establish, maintain, or expand its operations in Rhode Island for the term of the award.

Open to founders anywhere

Founders Compass is not limited to companies already based in Rhode Island. Researchers and founders across the United States and internationally are eligible to apply. The requirement is not where a company starts — it is a commitment to establish, maintain, or expand operations in Rhode Island for the term of the award.

That path is already well traveled. RILSH’s portfolio includes companies that have relocated to Rhode Island from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ireland to build here.

“If you’re a researcher with a discovery and nowhere to develop it, we want you to look at Rhode Island,” Cormier said. “You don’t have to be from here. You have to want to build here.”

The space

Ocean State Labs opened in May 2026 at 150 Richmond Street as Rhode Island’s first dedicated life science incubator, with fully equipped laboratory facilities built for up to 30 companies. It sits in the heart of Providence’s Innovation District, in a building with additional purpose-built laboratory and office space for companies ready to grow beyond the incubator — so a company can start at a single bench, prove its science, and scale without ever changing addresses.

“Access to affordable, ready-to-use lab space can be a significant hurdle for an early-stage life science company,” said Glenn Robertelli, Executive Director of RI Bio. “Founders Compass adds an important resource to Rhode Island’s growing ecosystem by giving companies a place to work, connect with other founders and industry leaders, and establish a foothold here. It gives entrepreneurs another compelling reason to look at Rhode Island as a place to build.”

Take a look at Ocean State Labs drone video fly-through here.

Who is eligible

The program is open to early-stage, for-profit companies working in biotechnology, therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, biomanufacturing, genomics, cell and gene therapy, research tools, and other regulated human health technologies. Applicants must have at least one full-time founder or employee, have raised no more than $5 million in dilutive capital, have generated less than $1 million in revenue over the preceding 12 months, conduct work at BSL-1 or BSL-2, and be committed to establishing or expanding operations in Rhode Island.

Applications and full eligibility criteria are available at www.rilifescience.com/founders-compass.

About Ocean State Labs

Ocean State Labs is Rhode Island’s first dedicated life science incubator, located at 150 Richmond Street in the heart of 195 District – Providence’s Innovation District. It is operated by Portal Innovations.

About Portal Innovations

Portal Innovations builds life science ecosystems in emerging biotech markets, providing early-stage capital, fully equipped laboratory space, and operational support to scientists and entrepreneurs turning breakthroughs into businesses. Portal operates five sites — two in Chicago, Providence, New Brunswick, and Salt Lake City (opening in 2027) — comprising more than 110,000 square feet of lab and office space and more than $12 million in laboratory equipment, serving a community of over 500 members. For more information, visit www.portalinnovations.com.

About RI Bio

RI Bio is the professional trade association and hub for the life sciences in the greater Rhode Island area, with a mission to grow the life sciences economy in Rhode Island and Southeastern New England. RI Bio advances the industry and its professionals through education, collaboration, and advocacy — sharing information and resources, providing access to capital, and creating industry connections. For more information, visit www.ri-bio.org.

About the Rhode Island Life Science Hub

The Rhode Island Life Science Hub (RILSH) is a quasi-public state entity working to grow and serve Rhode Island’s life-science community — investing in, coordinating, and connecting academia, industry, clinical care, and capital to translate innovation into economic growth and improved health. Its vision is a Rhode Island recognized as a global life-science leader — a destination where companies from anywhere can build and grow, and where discovery becomes better health for people everywhere. As the state’s central coordinating organization for life sciences, RILSH is a gateway into Rhode Island’s research institutions, health systems, and talent — bringing companies and partners together to advance medical and scientific breakthroughs. For more information, please visit www.rilifescience.com.

Media contact:

RILSH
Sarah Sutton
[email protected]
(518) 932-3580

SOURCE Rhode Island Life Science Hub

Interval fund provides individual investors with access to diversified small and middle market infrastructure investments positioned to benefit from long-term megatrends.

MONUMENT, Colo., Aug. 25, 2026 — As demand grows for infrastructure investments, Advisors Asset Management (AAM) and Wilshire announced the launch of the AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund (AAWIX / AAWDX / AAWSX), enabling individual investors to participate in a private asset class that has historically been available primarily to large institutions. Sun Life Financial Inc., a global financial services organization with approximately $1.2 trillion in assets under management, has committed $150 million in seed capital to the Fund.

The AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund is designed to provide investors with access to a portfolio of global infrastructure assets positioned to benefit from long-term megatrends including digitalization, transportation, the energy transition, and social infrastructure. The Fund focuses on small- and middle-market opportunities, where specialized sourcing, value creation initiatives, and reduced competition may enhance return potential and diversification benefits.

“Private infrastructure has delivered compelling risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors for decades, yet access within the broader wealth channel has remained limited,” said Cliff Corso, Chief Executive Officer and President of Advisors Asset Management. “The AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund helps bridge that gap. Through our partnership with Wilshire, we are providing access to private infrastructure through an interval fund structure designed to meet the needs of individual investors.”

The Fund is sub-advised by Wilshire, a global financial services firm with approximately $1.3 trillion in assets under advisement and $33.2 billion in alternative assets under management.¹ Since 1972, Wilshire has been dedicated to improving investment outcomes for institutional investors and financial intermediaries worldwide, including pension plans, endowments, foundations, and wealth management firms. The firm has built its private markets capabilities in-house since 1984.

“We believe the world is at a pivotal moment, as powerful megatrends drive a significant need for new and upgraded infrastructure,” said Jason Schwarz, Chief Executive Officer of Wilshire. “The AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund is designed to capture opportunities arising from these trends. We are excited to bring our decades of private markets expertise to a broader range of investors.”

Through the Fund, investors gain exposure to difficult-to-access infrastructure managers and investment opportunities. Wilshire manages the Fund alongside similar infrastructure mandates for its institutional clients. The Fund invests across infrastructure funds, secondaries, and co-investments, providing diversified exposure across managers, strategies, and underlying assets.

Structured as an evergreen interval fund, the AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund is available for daily purchase with a minimum investment of $5,000.² The Fund does not require ongoing capital calls and provides tax reporting through Form 1099 rather than Schedule K-1, offering a streamlined investment experience for individual investors.

About Advisors Asset Management
With roots dating back to 1979, AAM has become a trusted resource for financial professionals. The firm offers access to alternative investments, exchange-traded funds, fixed income markets, managed accounts, mutual funds, structured products, and unit investment trusts. AAM is a part of SLC Management, the alternatives and traditional asset management business of Sun Life. For more information, visit www.aamlive.com.

Advisors Asset Management, Inc. (AAM) is a SEC-registered investment advisor and member FINRA/SIPC. | Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. | 18925 Base Camp Road | Monument, CO 80132

For more information, visit www.aamlive.com | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/advisors-asset-management-inc-/ 

About Wilshire
Wilshire is a leading global financial services firm and trusted partner to a diverse range of approximately 300 leading institutional investors and financial intermediaries.³ Our clients rely on us to improve investment outcomes for a better future. Wilshire advises on over $1.3 trillion in assets and manages $183 billion in assets as of March 31, 2026.¹ Wilshire is headquartered in the United States with offices worldwide. The firm has been providing services in the private markets since 1984; these capabilities were and continue to be developed in-house. In 1996, Wilshire created a specialized private markets practice to meet the growing institutional investor appetite for private markets investments. Wilshire’s private markets investment due diligence is led by local teams in North America, Europe and Asia allowing a combined global perspective with local market presence. Wilshire seeks to create high-performing diversified private markets solutions that prudently manage portfolio risk, compensate investors for illiquidity and meet or exceed clients’ risk-adjusted return expectations. More information on Wilshire can be found at www.wilshire.com.

Glossary of Terms

• A co-investment is in an investment, alongside a general partner, in an infrastructure asset or private infrastructure company.
• An evergreen interval fund is a type of closed-end fund that offers investors limited liquidity through scheduled periodic repurchase offers, rather than daily redemptions like a mutual fund.
• Secondaries involve buying existing interests in either Primary Funds from an investor (“LP-led”) or private assets from a General Partner (“GP-led”).
• Small and middle-market infrastructure opportunities include transaction sizes of approximately $100 million to $2 billion, and Portfolio Fund sizes of approximately $500 million to $5 billion.

Additional Important Information

Past performance does not guarantee future results. All amounts are shown in US$.

1. As of 3/31/2026. Assets under advisement refers to the total amount of assets (inclusive of assets under management) attributable to all of Wilshire’s advisory relationships, including various consulting and advisory relationships for which Wilshire provides investment advisory services without engaging, on either a discretionary or non-discretionary basis, in the direct management of a client’s portfolio. Assets under management refers to the amount of assets attributable to securities portfolios for which Wilshire provides discretionary and non-discretionary asset management services and is calculated differently than “regulatory assets under management”.
2. The minimum initial investment for Class S Shares (AAWSX) and Class D Shares (AAWDX) is $5,000, subject to certain exceptions, and minimum subsequent investments are $1,000. The minimum initial investment for Class I Shares (AAWIX) is $1,000,000, and minimum subsequent investments are $1,000.
3. As of 12/31/2025. Includes institutional investors, financial intermediaries, and Wilshire-sponsored vehicles. Does not include individual retirement plans and retail investors via financial intermediary platforms.

Before investing, carefully consider the AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund’s (the “Fund”) investment objectives, risk factors, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the Fund’s prospectus, which may be obtained by visiting www.aamlive.com. Investors should read the prospectus carefully before investing.

An investment in the Fund involves risks. The Fund should be considered a speculative investment that entails substantial risks, and a prospective investor should invest in the Fund only if it can sustain a complete loss of its investment. Fund fees and expenses may offset trading profits. Fund shares are illiquid and appropriate only as a long-term investment. There is no market exchange available for shares of the Fund thereby making them difficult to liquidate. Use of leverage may increase the Fund’s volatility. The Fund is non-diversified, meaning it may concentrate its assets in fewer individual holdings than a diversified fund. Investments may consist of loans to small and/or less well-established privately held companies that have reduced access to the capital markets, resulting in diminished capital resources and the ability to withstand financial distress. Please see the prospectus for details of these and other risks.

The Fund is a non-diversified, closed-end investment company that continuously offers its shares. An investment in the Fund should be considered a speculative investment that entails substantial risks, including but not limited to the following:

• You will not have access to the money you invest for an extended period of time
• You will not be able to sell your Shares regardless of how the Fund performs.
• Because you will be unable to sell your Shares, you will be unable to reduce your exposure to Shares upon any market downturn.
• The Fund does not intend to list its Shares on any securities exchange and the Fund does not expect a secondary market in its Shares to develop.
• The Fund has implemented a Share repurchase program, but the Fund is required to repurchase only 5% (and may not repurchase more than 25%) of its outstanding Shares per quarter.
• Shares are appropriate only for those investors who can tolerate a high degree of risk, do not require a liquid investment, and for whom an investment in the Fund does not constitute a complete investment program.
• The amount of distributions that the Fund may pay, if any, is uncertain.
• The Fund’s distributions may be funded from offering proceeds or borrowings, which may constitute a return of capital and reduce the amount of capital available to the Fund for investment. A return of capital to shareholders is a return of a portion of their original investment in the Fund, thereby reducing the tax basis of their investment. As a result of such reduction in tax basis, shareholders may have taxable gains in connection with the sale of Shares, even if such Shares are sold at a loss relative to the shareholder’s original investment.
• Fund distributions may also be funded from the waiver or payment of certain expenses by the Advisor that will be subject to repayment in the future. The repayment of any amounts owed to the Advisor will reduce the future distributions to which you would otherwise be entitled.

Infrastructure companies may be subject to a variety of factors that may adversely affect their business, including economic slowdown, supply and demand volatility, increased competition, fluctuations in usage, expenses, and revenue, lack of fuel availability, energy conservation policies, technological obsolescence and changes in interest rates, regulations, or fiscal and monetary policy. Property values may fall due to increasing vacancies or declining rents resulting from unanticipated economic, legal, cultural or technological developments. There is no regular market for interest in infrastructure assets, which typically must be sold in privately negotiated transactions that can occur at a discount to the stated NAV.

The Fund will allocate a portion of its assets to multiple investment funds, and shareholders will bear two layers of fees and expenses: management fees and administrative expenses at the Fund level, and asset-based management fees, carried interests, incentive allocations or fees and expenses at the Investment Fund level.

A significant portion of the Fund’s investments will likely be priced by investment funds in the absence of a readily available market and may be priced based on determinations of fair value, which may prove to be inaccurate. Please see the prospectus for additional information.

The AAM Wilshire Infrastructure Fund is distributed by Quasar Distributors, LLC. Quasar, Wilshire and AAM are not affiliated.

CRN: 2026-0731-13663 R

CONTACT:

AAM Media Contact:
Matthew Bono
JConnelly
(973) 590-9110
[email protected]

Wilshire Media Contact:
‍Prosek Partners
[email protected]

SOURCE Advisors Asset Management; Wilshire

— Funds will accelerate AI design automation platform and customer projects —

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 25, 2026 — Celera Semiconductor, the leading analog IC supplier using AI to slash the cost and time to develop and supply analog ICs, today announced it had closed $30M of Series B financing. The round was fully funded by Maverick Silicon, Celera’s largest investor.

“Celera has made significant progress in the last two years,” said Patrick Brockett, CEO of Celera Semiconductor. “We recently acquired Silicon Gate, a world class product development and design automation team in Portugal. We are rapidly expanding that team.”

“We have also enhanced Celera’s design and AI leadership in California, expanding the power management applications we can address,” said Dr. Helen Song, CTO of Celera Semiconductor. “Furthermore, this funding will accelerate our design automation roadmap.”

“Celera is creating a new and highly efficient option to source custom analog designs,” said Kenneth Safar, Managing Director at Maverick Silicon. “Every system has critical analog content, and sourcing those products has created schedule challenges for many customers. Celera is providing a way to remove these barriers. We believe the impact will be substantial.”

About Celera Semiconductor

Celera Semiconductor is redefining the future of analog IC design. Using software acceleration based on its patented Nesto™ technology – the industry’s first library of digital twins of analog functions. Celera Semiconductor is the first to offer full-custom or standard products in a fraction of the time of traditional semiconductor companies. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Celera partners with world-class supply chain players to deliver high-performance, cost-efficient analog solutions at unprecedented speed. Maverick Silicon is the major investor in Celera.

For more information, visit www.celerasemi.com

About Maverick Silicon

Maverick Silicon is an investment adviser focused on private semiconductor growth companies and related opportunities. This includes a focus on companies designing or producing chips, hardware, software or processes that accelerate or enable the performance of the broader infrastructure stack underlying artificial intelligence. Maverick Silicon is a division of Maverick Capital, a global $10B asset manager.

For more information, visit www.mavericksilicon.com/

SOURCE Celera Semiconductor