Opened in December 2024, the WHO Academy is moving ahead with it ambition to become the global centre for lifelong learning in health. Last month, it held its inaugural conference in Lyon, France, where learning and health experts from around the world gathered to discuss the role of quality in health learning, training and capacity building.
Currently, there are no widely accepted global standards for high-quality learning courses in health. Building on the World Health Organization’s 75 years of expertise in setting global norms and standards, the WHO Academy aims to promote quality assurance standards in developing, implementing and evaluating learning materials.
“Quality is essential, and it is a key word for the entire operation of the Academy. Providing health and care workers with continuous access to upscaling and rescaling learning is crucial to achieving health for all,” explained Dr David Atchoarena, WHO Academy Executive Director, who also highlighted the Academy’s commitment to bringing together global expertise on learning in public health.
In her keynote address, Professor Asha Kanwar from Beijing Normal University stressed the urgent need to address the projected global shortfall of 11 million healthcare workers by 2030. She also advocated for integrating technology into lifelong learning, including AI-generated and interactive content.
A round table discussion featured global learning and health experts who shared best practices and success stories on improving learning opportunities and implementing online and blended courses. Through a series of in-person workshops in the afternoon, participants shared their inputs on the localization of learning content, the potential of team-based learning and assessments, and what learning recognition of WHO Academy courses could look like to ensure they are well-received by ministries of health or public accreditation bodies in their own contexts.
“It is necessary to construct a shared vision for lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is a right for health workers. Health workers are committed to their training, so we have to take advantage of that. We need to make lifelong learning more relevant for their careers and ensure their training is more relevant. It is not a personal possession but a collective good,” explained conference participant Isabel Dure.
Professor Janusz Janczukowicz from the Medical University of Lodz, Chair of the WHO Academy Quality Committee, concluded the conference by reiterating the importance of interprofessional and team-based learning in providing inclusive and high-quality patient care.
The WHO Academy will promote the incorporation of best practices in learning in the design and delivery of training across WHO to optimize the impact of lifelong learning. The insights from the conference will inform the WHO Academy Quality Standards and Criteria for Learning Programmes, which will be published in 2025.
The WHO Academy offers a range of free courses on its global online platform, open to anyone who would like to register at whoacademy.org.
San Francisco, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LambdaTest, a leading cloud-based unified testing platform has announced a strategic partnership with KineticSkunk™, a pioneer in DevOps, DevSecOps, and Observability solutions. This collaboration is set to enhance software testing capabilities, improve product quality, and streamline digital transformation processes for businesses globally.
By combining LambdaTest’s cutting-edge cloud testing infrastructure with KineticSkunk™’s expertise in DevOps and DevSecOps, the partnership will empower organizations with advanced, efficient, and scalable testing solutions. The alliance also underscores a shared commitment to innovation and social responsibility, ensuring that businesses not only achieve operational excellence but also contribute to a more inclusive digital future.
“At LambdaTest, we believe that great software is built on a foundation of seamless testing and continuous innovation. Partnering with KineticSkunk™ allows us to bring that vision to life by combining our strengths in cloud testing with their deep expertise in DevOps and security. Together, we’re not just optimizing testing—we’re helping businesses ship quality software faster, smarter, and with confidence,” said Mohit Juneja, VP Strategic Sales and Partnerships, LambdaTest.
Echoing this sentiment, Donovan Mulder, Chief Executive Officer, KineticSkunk™, stated, “At KineticSkunk™, we are committed to driving innovation in DevOps, DevSecOps, and Observability to help businesses achieve seamless digital transformation. Partnering with LambdaTest allows us to extend our expertise and deliver cutting-edge testing solutions that enhance software quality, security, and speed to market. Together, we are not just shaping the future of testing—we are enabling organizations to build resilient, high-performing software ecosystems with confidence.”
As part of this strategic collaboration, LambdaTest and KineticSkunk™ hosted an exclusive round-table event in Cape Town, bringing together industry leaders to discuss key trends and challenges in software testing, automation, and DevSecOps. The event provided valuable insights into how organizations can future-proof their software development and testing strategies.
Customers and affiliates of both companies will benefit from a seamless integration of advanced testing frameworks and DevSecOps solutions, ensuring faster release cycles, enhanced security, and improved software reliability. By leveraging each other’s strengths, LambdaTest and KineticSkunk are poised to set new benchmarks in software testing and development.
About LambdaTest LambdaTest is an AI-native, omnichannel software quality platform that empowers businesses to accelerate time to market through intelligent, cloud-based test authoring, orchestration, and execution. With over 15,000 customers and 2.3 million+ users across 130+ countries, LambdaTest is the trusted choice for modern software testing.
Browser & App Testing Cloud: Enables manual and automated testing of web and mobile apps across 5,000+ browsers, real devices, and OS environments, ensuring cross-platform consistency.
HyperExecute: An AI-native test execution and orchestration cloud that runs tests up to 70% faster than traditional grids, offering smart test distribution, automatic retries, real-time logs, and seamless CI/CD integration.
KaneAI: The world’s first GenAI-native testing agent, leveraging LLMs for effortless test creation, intelligent automation, and self-evolving test execution. It integrates directly with Jira, Slack, GitHub, and other DevOps tools.
About KineticSkunk™ KineticSkunk™ is a leader in DevOps, DevSecOps, and Observability, offering tailor-made solutions for business efficiency and security. With a strong commitment to social responsibility, KineticSkunk™ develops talent from disadvantaged backgrounds into top professionals while delivering cutting-edge technology solutions that drive business success.
ATLANTA, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Canto, a leading provider of digital asset management (DAM) software, is entering 2025 with top industry recognition and a continued drive to push the boundaries of DAM innovation. The company has been named to G2’s 2025 Best Software List for Best Content Management Products and Constellation Research’s ShortList™ for Digital Asset Management for Digital Experiences, underscoring its impact on customers and the industry.
“Brands today are managing more content than ever, and the challenge isn’t just volume—it’s complexity,” said Wain Kellum, CEO of Canto. “Recognition from G2 and Constellation Research affirms our focus on solving the real problems our customers face every day. We’re committed to making digital asset management more intuitive and efficient, so teams can maximize the value of their digital content rather than wrestling with their tools.”
Building on this momentum, Canto is introducing Canto Innovation Labs, a research and development initiative dedicated to solving content teams’ most pressing challenges. With AI-driven solutions at its core, this initiative highlights Canto’s commitment to continuous product innovation—reimagining how brands organize, discover, and distribute digital assets to help teams move faster and work more efficiently in an increasingly complex content landscape.
“The future of content management isn’t just about keeping up—it’s about staying ahead,” said Alan Beiagi, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Canto. “With Canto Innovation Labs, we’re developing AI-driven solutions that transform the way content teams work at every stage of the content lifecycle. Our goal is to eliminate bottlenecks—whether that means cutting search time in half, automating tedious tasks, or ensuring content remains consistent across every channel.”
Canto Innovation Labs builds on a strong foundation of recent product advancements, including the successful launch of Canto PIM. As brands increasingly struggle to keep product data and digital assets aligned across multiple channels, Canto PIM delivers a unified solution for managing both seamlessly. By integrating product information management (PIM) with DAM, Canto is helping businesses eliminate silos, simplify workflows, and maintain brand consistency—without the complexity of managing disconnected tools.
These advancements come at a critical time, according to Canto’s latest research report, The State of Digital Content: 2025 Edition. The survey of hundreds of content and creative professionals found that 77% of content teams expect to produce more content this year, but only 25% feel equipped with the right tools. “A unified content ecosystem is critical for brands that need to scale efficiently in an increasingly complex digital landscape,” said Beiagi. “Our research found that teams with integrated solutions were three times more likely to efficiently repurpose content across channels and twice as likely to maintain brand consistency. Whether it’s DAM, PIM, or future innovations, our focus is on eliminating fragmentation and giving content teams the seamless tools they need to work faster and smarter.”
As brands’ content demands continue to grow, Canto remains focused on delivering innovations that help its customers work more efficiently across their digital content lifecycle. For more information, visit www.canto.com.
About Canto
Canto is a leader in digital asset management (DAM), helping global brands maximize the value of their digital content with an intuitive, AI-powered platform. Our solutions make it easy for businesses to centralize, organize, and share digital assets, streamlining workflows and driving real business impact. With a legacy of innovation—from launching one of the first DAM solutions to advancing AI Visual Search and unified DAM+PIM capabilities—we continue to shape the future of content management. Backed by best-in-class support and implementation, Canto empowers industries like retail, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, and more to manage their growing content libraries. Headquartered in Atlanta, with offices in Berlin, Cork, and Sydney, Canto supports teams worldwide in optimizing their content workflows. For more information, visit www.canto.com.
Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message to the Tokyo Conference, held in Tokyo today:
I am pleased to send warm greetings to the Tokyo Conference. This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the founding of the United Nations.
This milestone is a crucial opportunity to reaffirm enduring principles that emerged from one of humanity’s darkest hours: Peace through dialogue. Respect for human rights and international law. The promotion of social progress and sustainable development.
Japan is a leader in advancing these values and a pillar of multilateralism. Your commitment to international cooperation stands as a powerful example of how nations can transform historical legacies into positive change.
As we look to our world today, we are confronted with myriad challenges — from multiplying conflicts to the raging climate crisis, from rampant inequalities to artificial intelligence (AI) without sufficient guardrails.
Your conference’s theme this year reminds us that global challenges demand global solutions. In September, Member States of the United Nations adopted the Pact for the Future. The Pact charts a bold course for reforming multilateral institutions for the twenty-first century;
It calls for reforming the Security Council and the international financial architecture — so every nation, large and small, has a voice in shaping our collective future.
It seeks to prioritize prevention, mediation and peacebuilding; enhance coordination with regional organizations; and develop innovative approaches to emerging security challenges.
The Pact includes new strategies to end the use of chemical and biological weapons, the first global agreement on the international regulation of AI and the first multilateral agreement on nuclear disarmament in more than a decade.
As we prepare to mark the eightieth anniversary of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we will continue to be guided by the inspiring example and vision of the hibakusha for a world free of nuclear weapons.
By bringing together government leaders and diverse voices from around the world, the Tokyo Conference offers an important platform to advance the Pact’s objectives and drive multilateralism into the future.
Let us seize this moment to strengthen the foundations of trust, solidarity and cooperation and write a new chapter in our shared journey towards lasting peace, dignity and progress.
MIAMI, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Kandji, the Apple endpoint security platform, today announced the opening of its new East Coast headquarters to further the company’s global scaling efforts, attract world-class talent, and support rapid customer growth. In addition to the East Coast headquarters in Miami, Kandji has offices in California, London, Sydney, and Japan.
Located at The Plaza Coral Gables, 2811 Ponce de Leon in Coral Gables, Fla., Kandji’s East Coast headquarters boasts nearly 30,000 square feet to accommodate the company’s sizable recruiting efforts. More than 100 new openings are available to support Kandji’s mission of empowering secure and productive global work.
“Miami is fueling the next frontier for technology advancement,” said Adam Pettit, co-founder and CEO of Kandji. “We’re thrilled to immerse ourselves in this dynamic community and look forward to welcoming its world-class talent to our expanding team. Our East Coast headquarters will not only allow us to contribute to the local economy, but will provide the space, talent, and resources to accommodate Kandji’s growth and ability to deliver cutting-edge solutions that enable our customers to manage and secure their Apple device fleets at scale.”
Kandji’s dedication to supporting local talent development in Miami-Dade County is evident through its alignment with organizations such as: The Beacon Council, Creative Hub, Miami Tech Works, eMerge, Opportunity Miami, Miami Dade College, and more. Through these partnerships, Kandji has participated in community events, workforce development programs, and initiatives that drive local innovation.
“Miami-Dade County is redefining what it means to be a global tech hub, and Kandji’s decision to open their East Coast headquarters in Miami-Dade is proof of that transformation,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “Our strategic location, diverse talent pool and pro-business environment make Miami-Dade a natural home for innovators. Collaboration with companies like Kandji drive our county’s continued growth and continue to strengthen our competitive edge as a premier tech hub.”
The opening of the East Coast headquarters follows continued company momentum for Kandji. In July 2024, the company raised $100 million in capital from General Catalyst – with $50 million allocated to equity financing for its Series D, and $50 million for go-to-market investment – bringing its total funding to over $280 million and its valuation to $850 million. Kandji has over 4,500 customers across 40+ industries, with 1,300 new customers signed in 2024. Notable customers include Canva, Deel, Twilio, Notion, and Wiz, and the company has partnerships with such industry giants as ServiceNow, AWS, and Okta. In addition, Kandji was recognized today on Forbes’ America’s Best Startup Employers 2025 list, which identified the top performing startups in the United States based on employer reputation, employee satisfaction and company growth.
Along with corporate and customer growth, Kandji continues to bring new solutions to the market to further its mission of creating an integrated platform for enterprise Apple device management and security. Most recently, Kandji announced Vulnerability Management, a new security product that helps organizations identify and remediate security vulnerabilities due to out of date software on their Mac computers, Kai, a first-of-its-kind AI device management assistant for Apple devices, and Device Management for Apple Vision Pro, a groundbreaking solution that revolutionizes how businesses deploy and manage Apple Vision Pro devices at scale.
“Kandji’s decision to establish its East Coast headquarters in Greater Miami is a testament to our region’s dynamic tech evolution,” said Rodrick T. Miller, President & CEO, Miami-Dade Beacon Council. “As one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the country, Miami continues to attract top investors, startups, and global leaders like Apple and Kandji who are fueling this momentum. By creating 200 high-value jobs and investing in our innovation ecosystem, Kandji is further strengthening Miami’s reputation as a pro-business community where talent and companies thrive. We look forward to continuing to partner on their growth as they make themselves at home in South Florida.”
Kandji is actively recruiting for a variety of roles across engineering, product, and go-to-market. To learn more about employment opportunities at Kandji, visit https://www.kandji.io/company/careers/#open-roles.
Helpful Links
About Kandji Kandji is the Apple endpoint security platform. Kandji empowers companies to manage and secure Apple devices in the enterprise and at scale. By centrally securing and managing your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV devices, IT and InfoSec teams can save countless hours of manual, repetitive work with features like one-click compliance templates and more than 150 pre-built automations, apps, and workflows. Learn more at http://www.kandji.io.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin
When Israel signed a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza on January 15, the agreement was structured in three phases. Phase one, a six-week period in which Hamas would release hostages in return for Israel releasing Palestinians detained in its jails, ended on March 1.
The shaky deal has held for the full six weeks – just. At one point Hamas threatened to halt the exchange of hostages when it said Israel was breaching the terms of the deal. The Netanyahu government responded – with US backing – by threatening to end the ceasefire in mid-February, saying that Hamas was not living up to its side of the deal.
The hostage releases have continued, although Israelis have been shocked and angered at the condition of some of the hostages after 17 months in captivity. Hamas has also taken advantage of the world’s gaze during hostage releases to stage large parades of its fully armed fighters.
On March 1, as stage one of the deal was due to end, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a full blockade of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Middle East expert, Scott Lucas, answered our questions as to what is happening and how this situation may play out.
Why has Israel decided to block humanitarian aid to Gaza?
The Netanyahu government’s blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza’s population is part of a scheme to avoid a phase two of the ceasefire, while putting pressure on Hamas to extend phase one.
That would allow the Israeli government to pursue the return of the remaining 59 hostages, alive or dead, held by Hamas while avoiding the requirements of phase two – notably the withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza and the restoration of a Palestinian government in Gaza.
Of course, those who will pay the cost are more than 2.2 million Gazans, around 90% of whom have been displaced amid 17 months of mass killing. But Israel’s leaders are counting on that causing little concern, or at least significant action, by the international community.
Wasn’t the ceasefire deal dictated by a timetable?
Phase one of the agreement only stipulated that discussions for a phase two to begin within 14 days of implementation, which would have been about the start of February.
But the Netanyahu government reportedly sent mediators to Qatar without the authority to discuss phase two, only to ensure that hostage releases continued. The limit of its cooperation has been sending representatives to Egypt and conferring with Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, with current discussions suggesting little prospect of agreeing phase two.
What is driving Netanyahu’s decision-making right now?
Netanyahu’s vow has been “absolute victory over Hamas”. But as there is no sign that Hamas is going to disband – or even that its leaders will leave the Gaza – there is zero chance of that happening in phase two.
That assessment is compounded by pressure on Netanyahu from hard-right ministers and supporters, such as finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and former national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Their powerful hard-right factions only accepted phase one if there was no follow-up and certainly no return to the aim of allowing Palestinian self-determination in Gaza.
On the other side, Netanyahu faces families of hostages and their supporters, who say the priority must be the return of those held by Hamas. Thus the “solution”, proposed by the US and backed by the Israeli government is for a six-week extension until the end of Ramadan and Passover, or until April 20. Half the hostages would be released on day one of the extension and the remainder once a permanent ceasefire is agreed.
Hamas is unlikely to agree to that provision, as the hostages are their only leverage in discussions for a lasting ceasefire and their continued place in Gaza. But Netanyahu can frame their refusal in such as way as to blame Hamas for not wanting a peaceful solution and as an excuse for resuming military operations.
Where is the White House in all this?
For now Netanyahu can count on US backing for the pressure on Hamas and the extension of phase one.
Donald Trump’s ego trip was to claim credit for the phase one ceasefire. Since then, he and his officials have shown little interest in supporting a phase two. Instead, the US president has proposed what would amount to an ethnic cleansing of Gazans – removing and relocating them to other Arab countries to make way for his dream of a “Middle East Riviera” on the coast.
He shared a bizarre AI-generated video with a vision of “Trump Gaza”, complete with a gilded, giant statue of him as he and Netanyahu sit topless and sip drinks on the beach amid bearded belly-dancers.
Perhaps widespread Israeli military operations, and the consequent mass killing of civilians, would dent Trump’s “peacemaker” image. But it is likely that Israel could get US officials to back the “Blame Hamas” rationale. And, meanwhile, the administration is fine with the Israelis expanding their military presence and settlements in the West Bank.
What about the Arab world?
After more than a year of negotiations, the phase one settlement brought some relief to Egypt and Qatar, the chief sites of discussions. Jordan, always at risk of being unsettled by assaults on Palestinians, encouraged further talks. Gulf States, their plans for “normalisation” with Israel in tatters, could envisage a gradual return to the process.
But all of this has foundered on the lack of possibility for phase two. Most Arab leaderships have no affection for Hamas, but with no clear Palestinian alternative, they have no appetite for contributing to the necessity security arrangements.
So the easy option for now is to condemn the excesses of others, such as Trump’s ethnic cleansing whim or Netanyahu’s threat of renewed attacks. The tougher option is to envisage any untangling of the knot around Israeli occupation and Gaza governance.
That may mean that, without giving an endorsement, most Arab States will be happy with the kicking of the can down the road in a phase one extension.
Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Sometimes AI isn’t as clever as we think it is. Researchers training an algorithm to identify skin cancer thought they had succeeded until they discovered that it was using the presence of a ruler to help it make predictions. Specifically, their data set consisted of images where a pathologist had put in a ruler to measure the size of malignant lesions.
It extended this logic for predicting malignancies to all images beyond the data set, consequently identifying benign tissue as malignant if a ruler was in the image.
The problem here is not that the AI algorithm made a mistake. Rather, the concern stems from how the AI “thinks”. No human pathologist would arrive at this conclusion.
These cases of flawed “reasoning” abound – from HR algorithms that prefer to hire men because the data set is skewed in their favour to propagating racial disparities in medical treatment. Now that they know about these problems, researchers are scrambling to address them.
Recently, Google decided to end its longstanding ban on developing AI weapons. This potentially encompasses the use of AI to develop arms, as well as AI in surveillance and weapons that could be deployed autonomously on the battlefield. The decision came days after parent company Alphabet experienced a 6% drop in its share price.
This is not Google’s first foray into murky waters. It worked with the US Department of Defense on the use of its AI technology for Project Maven, which involved object recognition for drones.
When news of this contract became public in 2018, it sparked backlash from employees who did not want the technology they developed to be used in wars. Ultimately, Google did not renew its contract, which was picked up by rival Palantir instead.
The speed with which Google’s contract was renewed by a competitor led some to note the inevitability of these developments, and that it was perhaps better to be on the inside to shape the future.
Such arguments, of course, presume that firms and researchers will be able to shape the future as they want to. But previous research has shown that this assumption is flawed for at least three reasons.
The confidence trap
First, human beings are susceptible to falling into what is known as a “confidence trap”. I have researched this phenomenon, whereby people assume that since previous risk-taking paid off, taking more risks in the future is warranted.
In the context of AI, this may mean incrementally extending the use of an algorithm beyond its training data set. For example, a driverless car may be used on a route has not been covered in its training.
This can throw up problems. There is now an abundance of data that driverless car AI can draw on, and yet mistakes still occur. Accidents like the Tesla car that drove into a £2.75 million jet when summoned by its owner in an unfamiliar setting, can still happen. For AI weapons, there isn’t even much data to begin with.
Second, AI can reason in ways that are alien to human understanding. This has led to the paperclip thought experiment, where AI is asked to produce as many paper clips as possible. It does so while consuming all resources – including those necessary for human survival.
Of course, this seems trivial. After all, humans can lay out ethical guidelines. But the problem lies in being unable to anticipate how an AI algorithm might achieve what humans have asked of it and thus losing control. This might even include “cheating.” In a recent experiment, AI cheated to win chess games by modifying system files denoting positions of chess pieces, in effect enabling it to make illegal moves.
But society may be willing to accept mistakes, as with civilian casualties caused by drone strikes directed by humans. This tendency is something known as the “banality of extremes” – humans normalise even the more extreme instances of evil as a cognitive mechanism to cope. The “alienness” of AI reasoning may simply provide more cover for doing so.
Third, firms like Google that are associated with developing these weapons might be too big to fail. As a consequence, even when there are clear instances of AI going wrong, they are unlikely to be held responsible. This lack of accountability creates a hazard as it disincentivises learning and corrective actions.
The “cosying up” of tech executives with US president Donald Trump only exacerbates the problem as it further dilutes accountability.
Tech moguls like Elon Musk cosying up to the US president dilutes accountability. Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock
Rather than joining the race towards the development of AI weaponry, an alternative approach would be to work on a comprehensive ban on it’s development and use.
Although this might seem unachievable, consider the threat of the hole in the ozone layer. This brought rapid unified action in the form of banning the CFCs that caused it. In fact, it took only two years for governments to agree on a global ban on the chemicals. This stands as a testament to what can be achieved in the face of a clear, immediate and well-recognised threat.
In fact, banning the use and development of certain types of weapons has precedent – countries have after all done the same for biological weapons. The problem lies in no country wanting another to have it before they do, and no business wanting to lose out in the process.
In this sense, choosing to weaponise AI or disallowing it will mirror the wishes of humanity. The hope is that the better side of human nature will prevail.
Akhil Bhardwaj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The 50 American individuals and couples who gave or pledged the most to charity in 2024 committed US$16.2 billion to foundations, universities, hospitals and more. That total was 33% above an inflation-adjusted $12.2 billion in 2023, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest annual tally of these donations. Media mogul and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg led the list, followed by Netflix co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings, along with his wife, Patty Quillin. Businessman Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, pledged the third most in 2024.
Neither MacKenzie Scott nor Elon Musk, both of whom announced donations large enough to land them on this list, provided enough information for the Chronicle to include them. Musk didn’t name the nonprofits to which he gave stock, and Scott declined to confirm how much money she put into the donor-advised funds through which she gives. Known as DAFs, these funds are savings accounts reserved for charitable giving.
The Conversation U.S. asked David Campbell, Lindsey McDougle and Susan Appe, three philanthropy scholars, to assess the significance of these gifts and to consider what they indicate about the state of charitable giving in the United States.
What trends stand out overall?
Appe: I think it’s good to see that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, an Iranian-American entrepreneur born in France, with his wife Pam, are among the top 12 donors. Omidyar is the only foreign-born philanthropist on this list who reported giving to democracy promotion in the U.S. through his Democracy Fund. The Omidyars also funded the AI Collaborative, a group that promotes artificial intelligence governance based on democratic values, and their Omidyar Network, an organization promoting responsible technology.
Omidyar is one of seven immigrants among 2024’s top U.S. donors. The others are Herta Amir, who was born in what was then Czechoslovakia; Sergey Brin, a Russian immigrant; the Pagidipati family, which came from India; K. Lisa Yang, who was born in Singapore; Michele Kang, who immigrated from South Korea; and Joe Wen, a Taiwanese immigrant.
In 2024, as in most years, many of these wealthy donors supported prestigious universities and large hospitals and stowed millions in their own foundations and donor-advised funds. Although it’s impossible to predict exactly what their foundations and DAFs will support in the future, history suggests that they’re unlikely to focus on addressing systemic issues such as economic inequality.
McDougle: It doesn’t appear that any of these top 50 donors are Black or Latino. This lack of representation is undoubtedly a reflection of broader societal disparities and may influence how individuals from these groups perceive their own potential as philanthropists.
Philanthropic capacity often correlates with wealth accumulation, and significant gaps in wealth between racial groups are likely to have a direct influence on who we see in the Philanthropy 50. Black families, for instance, possess just 15% of the wealth of white families, while Hispanic families have only about 22%. These wealth disparities likely prevent many Black and Latino Americans from having the wealth necessary to engage in large-scale philanthropy.
This reality highlights the need for the nation’s leading philanthropists to fund initiatives that focus on addressing systemic barriers to economic equality. MacKenzie Scott has been doing this through the millions of dollars she has donated to support racial equity and economic mobility.
Addressing these disparities also involves changing the narrative around who is considered a philanthropist. As I have argued before, underrepresented groups may not always see themselves as philanthropists, partly due to limited resources and the historical portrayal of philanthropy as the domain of the wealthy. But by redefining philanthropy to include a broader spectrum of giving, philanthropy can play a pivotal role in leveling the playing field and creating more opportunities for all.
What surprises you about the biggest donors?
Appe: The absence of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Google co-founder Larry Page and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also stands out due to the presence of many other tech billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, on this list.
Campbell: In addition to Elon Musk, a South African immigrant, not making this list for the second year in a row – even though he is the richest person in the world – Jeff Bezos isn’t listed either. Few private citizens have sought to change American society more than they have – Musk most recently through his role in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Bezos through actions he takes as the owner of The Washington Post and the founder of Amazon, among other initiatives.
I believe that it is worth asking why neither of these men, who rank among the wealthiest Americans, made the list this year. While Musk gave too little information to make the list, his previous giving choices raise questions about his commitment to philanthropy as a way to advance the public good. In 2022 and 2023, for example, his foundation gave away less money than required by law and supported organizations that benefit him and his interests, such as schools attended by his children.
Do you have concerns about the big gifts these donors provide?
McDougle: The nonprofits receiving these large donations can end up in a precarious situation if that funding suddenly stops. When nonprofits rely too heavily on a few wealthy donors, they may be forced to make abrupt decisions like cutting crucial programs or laying off staff. Obviously, this underscores a core problem with overdependence on these types of major gifts: They can leave nonprofits in a bind and unable to sustain their operations without continued long-term support.
This is particularly problematic if it affects a nonprofit’s ability to engage in long-term planning. As such, when focusing on the giving of the super rich, it is important to consider not just the immediate benefits of their generosity but also the potential instability it can create for the recipients if their gift is not managed strategically.
Campbell: The total given by America’s top donors in 2024 was the sixth-highest in the past decade, after adjusting for inflation. I’d expected to see a larger amount, given that 2024 was the second straight year of stock market gains of 20% or more.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, the top donors gave nearly twice as much to charity as they did this past year; and they gave close to $8 billion more than that in 2021. Why haven’t the wealthiest Americans sustained that level?
Giant gifts to universities, museums and hospitals are surely making a meaningful difference in America and the world. But I wonder why these donors tend not to focus on the challenges facing those who have the least.
To be sure, some of these philanthropists use the foundations they or their relatives control to help meet the basic needs of Americans struggling to get by and address issues such as poverty, disease prevention and criminal justice reform. Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffett, and John and Laura Arnold all directed much of their giving in 2024 to those kinds of foundations.
What do you expect or hope to see in 2025 and beyond?
Top philanthropists have been slow to react so far. However, the MacArthur Foundation just announced plans to increase its giving over the next two years. MacArthur president John Palfrey said this is a response to what he called a “major crisis” brought on by the Trump administration’s spending cuts. I will observe whether other foundations or some of the wealthiest Americans follow suit.
Still, philanthropy cannot fill all these gaps. The $60 billion in foreign aid cuts represent a sliver of the trillions the Trump administration wants to slice from the federal budget. If it succeeds, donors will have countless other priorities.
Campbell: Events that took place during the first Trump administration, like the murder of George Floyd, the erosion of democratic norms and the separation of immigrant families, led philanthropists to embrace giving that addressed these issues, notably diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In the early days of the second Trump administration, prominent donors like Mark Zuckerberg have enthusiastically backtracked on their own DEI policies. I am now watching how other donors position themselves relative to the Trump administration’s objectives – as cheerleaders, combatants or something in between.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Arnold Ventures have provided funding for The Conversation U.S. in the past. The Gates foundation currently provides funding for The Conversation internationally.
David Campbell receives grants from the Learning by Giving Foundation and the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation to support the experiential philanthropy course he teaches at Binghamton University. He also serves as the chair of the Klee Foundation board.
Lindsey McDougle and Susan Appe do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — XBP Europe Holdings, Inc. (“XBP Europe”) (Nasdaq: XBP), a pan-European integrator of bills, payments, and related solutions and services, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive, non-binding letter of intent with Exela Technologies, Inc. to acquire Exela Technologies BPA, LLC (“BPA”), a leading provider of business process automation solutions. The closing of the acquisition will be subject to BPA completing a corporate reorganization which is expected to create a sustainable capital structure with a substantially deleveraged balance sheet. If completed, the acquisition will expand XBP Europe’s revenue to more than $1 billion from $145 million on a pro forma basis for the twelve months ending September 30, 2024.
“We are excited to announce this possible transaction, which will combine the forces of XBP Europe and BPA in a new way and allow us to pursue opportunities deploying the latest AI-enabled technologies and with a very robust balance sheet,” said Andrej Jonovic, Chief Executive Officer of XBP. “BPA has a longstanding blue chip client base in the Americas and a growing business in APAC, and with a reconstituted global platform, we look forward to competing with the top global business process automation players.”
The parties have agreed to act in good faith to negotiate definitive agreements, complete due diligence, undertake necessary regulatory approvals, and seek any necessary approvals, including from XBP Europe’s shareholders. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that a definitive agreement will be entered into or that the proposed transaction will be consummated. Readers are cautioned that those portions of the LOI that describe the proposed transaction are non-binding. XBP Europe only intends to announce additional details regarding the proposed transaction if and when a definitive agreement is executed.
About XBP Europe Holdings, Inc.
XBP Europe is a pan-European integrator of bills, payments and related solutions and services seeking to enable digital transformation of its more than 2,000 clients. The Company’s name – ‘XBP’ stands for ‘exchange for bills and payments’ and reflects the Company’s strategy to connect buyers and suppliers, across industries, including banking, healthcare, insurance, utilities and the public sector, to optimize clients’ bills and payments and related digitization processes. The Company provides business process management solutions with proprietary software suites and deep domain expertise, serving as a technology and services partner for its clients. Its cloud-based structure enables it to deploy its solutions across the European market, along with the Middle East and Africa. The physical footprint of XBP Europe spans 15 countries and 32 locations and a team of approximately 1,500 individuals. XBP Europe believes its business ultimately advances digital transformation, improves market wide liquidity by expediting payments, and encourages sustainable business practices. For more information, please visit: www.xbpeurope.com.
About Exela Technologies BPA, LLC
BPA is a leading provider of business process automation solutions, leveraging a global footprint and proprietary technology to provide digital transformation solutions enhancing quality, productivity, and end-user experience. With decades of experience operating mission-critical processes, BPA serves a growing roster of more than 1,550 customers worldwide. Utilizing foundational technologies spanning information management, workflow automation, and integrated communications, BPA’s software and services include multi-industry, departmental solution suites addressing finance and accounting, human capital management, and legal management, as well as industry-specific solutions for banking, healthcare, insurance, and the public sector. Through cloud-enabled platforms, built on a configurable stack of automation modules, and approximately 11,000 employees operating in 5 countries, BPA rapidly deploys integrated technology and operations as an end-to-end digital journey partner.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements include, without limitation, predictions regarding the possible transaction, and relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially from those stated or implied by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including without limitation those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in XBP Europe’s Annual Report on Form 10-K and other securities filings. XBP Europe assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made.
DENVER, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Poppulo, a global leader in digital signage and omnichannel employee communications software, today announced its acquisition of REACH Media Network (REACH), a prominent provider of reliable, user-friendly digital signage solutions to mid-market customers. With a combined reach of more than 10,000 digital signage customers worldwide, this strategic acquisition underscores Poppulo’s dedication to delivering high impact digital signage solutions for a broader range of customers and use cases.
With more than 45 years combined experience in the digital signage industry, Poppulo and REACH will drive innovation that helps organizations more effectively use digital signage to improve customer experience, increase revenue, drive brand awareness, improve performance and enhance their workplaces. Poppulo plans to retain both platforms to serve the needs of its diverse customer base, ensuring continuity for existing customers of both companies.
Key Benefits of the Acquisition:
Expanded Market Coverage: The acquisition allows Poppulo to bring the benefits of digital signage to a wider spectrum of businesses and use cases, from large enterprises to mid-market organizations.
Innovation at Scale: A broader portfolio of solutions, diverse expertise, and additional scale will drive product innovation for customers.
Increased Resources and Expertise: Customers will benefit from a scaled global provider with increased resources and advanced support options, while continuing to enjoy the dedicated support they trust.
Ruth Fornell, CEO of Poppulo, said: “We are thrilled to welcome REACH to the Poppulo family. This acquisition aligns perfectly with our vision to lead the market with best-in-class digital signage solutions that drive engagement, enhance productivity, and create meaningful connections. By joining forces, we are not only enhancing our offerings but also expanding our ability to support businesses of all sizes in creating exceptional communication experiences. This acquisition is a key milestone in our growth strategy.”
Darren Wercinski, CEO of REACH, added: “Joining forces with Poppulo marks an exciting new chapter for REACH. Together, we’ll deliver cutting-edge digital signage solutions on a global scale, empowering businesses to transform their communication strategies. We’re proud to bring our expertise to Poppulo and look forward to the opportunities this partnership will create for our customers.”
This acquisition represents Poppulo’s commitment to growing its leadership position in the digital signage industry and its dedication to meeting the evolving communications needs of organizations worldwide.
District Capital Partners (“DCP”) served as exclusive financial advisors to Poppulo in connection with the transaction.
For more information about the acquisition and what it means for Poppulo and REACH customers, contact info@poppulo.com.
About Poppulo
Poppulo helps enterprise companies achieve more by connecting and communicating with employees and customers at scale through leading, AI-powered digital signage, employee communications, and workplace management solutions. Poppulo’s 4,500+ customer base is representative of the world’s most successful companies, including more than 40 of the Fortune 100. Poppulo Digital Signage solutions are deployed across 500,000+ screens in 80 countries. For more information, visit https://www.poppulo.com/products/digital-signage. Follow Poppulo on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
About REACH Media Network
REACH Media Network is a leading provider of innovative digital signage solutions designed to connect people, enhance engagement, and simplify information sharing. Serving businesses, educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and more, REACH empowers organizations to effectively communicate with their audiences through dynamic, cloud-based signage solutions. Established in 2005, REACH serves over 9,000 customers and manages over 25,000 screens globally. For more information, visit www.reachmedianetwork.com. Follow REACH Media Network on LinkedIn.
PALO ALTO, Calif., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Anjuna, a leader in Universal Confidential Computing and AI Data Fusion Clean Rooms, today announced significant momentum in the digital payments industry. This announcement comes off the heels of Anjuna being selected by Gartner as a Tech Innovator in the Preemptive Cybersecurity category.
Several market-leading financial services and fintech companies have selected Anjuna’s platform to ensure secure data collaboration, privacy, and compliance while leveraging AI to drive innovation:
Global Leader in Financial Services – A Fortune 500 financial institution providing trusted payment, network, and digital banking solutions. Anjuna helped the institution secure its essential cryptographic services layers for public cloud acceleration.
Narval – A crypto institutional connectivity layer that enables secure connection & integration between custodians and crypto protocols/applications. Narval’s stack leverages Anjuna’s Confidential Pods to ensure credentials live and operations occur within a verifiable trusted execution environment.
Payfinia – an independent payments company, providing community financial institutions (CFIs) access to and ownership of their instant payments services. Anjuna enables Payfinia to ensure both speed and security for its users.
Portal – A borderless finance infrastructure provider, enabling companies to move money anywhere in the world fast and cheaply by leveraging blockchains and stablecoins. Anjuna enables Portal to speed up the wallet creation and account setup, open up the solution to more customers, and improve the user experience for wallet recovery.
rootVX – A unified infrastructure for value storage and interchange based on the three pillars of tokenization, programmability and proving systems. rootVX uses Anjuna’s advanced TEE mechanism to protect its platform services that handle sensitive user data and financial transactions.
Executives from Anjuna’s new customers emphasized the importance of implementing secure AI-driven collaboration for their operations:
“Security and trust are foundational for institutional crypto adoption. Anjuna’s Confidential Pods enable us to provide institutions with a secure connectivity layer that protects sensitive operations and credentials while enabling safe access to vetted protocols and applications.” — Greg Jessner, Co-Founder & CEO, Narval
“Anjuna enables us to process and analyze financial data in a confidential environment, ensuring both speed and security for our users.” — Nizar Jamal, Chief Technology Officer, Payfinia
“By leveraging Anjuna to deploy secure enclaves, we have strengthened our ability to serve enterprise customers with robust treasury management and seamless stablecoin orchestration—all while adhering to the highest security standards. Secure enclaves not only enable us to meet stringent compliance requirements but also unlock new opportunities to optimize our infrastructure, enhancing both security and operational efficiency without compromising trust.” — Parsa Attari, Co-Founder & Head of Product, Portal
Anjuna’s AI Data Fusion Clean Room, Anjuna Northstar, and its Universal Confidential Computing Platform, Anjuna Seaglass, allow digital payment providers to:
Enable secure AI-driven innovation – Unlock new business opportunities by sharing insights while keeping the raw sensitive data private.
Ensure regulatory compliance – Maintain adherence to financial and data privacy regulations, including GDPR and PCI DSS.
Faster, more granular fraud detection – Protect sensitive financial data with zero-trust security.
For more information on how Anjuna is transforming AI-driven financial collaboration, visit www.anjuna.io.
About Anjuna Anjuna unlocks secure, AI-driven innovation with two groundbreaking solutions. Anjuna Seaglass, the Universal Confidential Computing Platform, delivers ubiquitous data privacy and intrinsic cloud security. Anjuna Northstar, the AI Data Fusion Clean Room, builds on Seaglass to provide an out-of-the-box, private environment for limitless AI-driven data collaboration and value discovery. Anjuna works with enterprises around the globe, including financial services, government, healthcare and SaaS. Anjuna is backed by prominent investors, including Playground Global, Insight Partners, M Ventures, and SineWave Ventures.
BOSTON, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Risk Strategies, a leading North American specialty insurance brokerage and risk management and consulting firm, today announced that Mike Vitulli, National Casualty Practice Leader, will preside over an information-packed slate of events at the 15th annual Zywave Casualty Insights Conference taking place on March 6, 2025, in New York City.
Serving as conference chair, Vitulli will help shepherd a day-long event designed to share expert knowledge on everything from market trends, significant legal and regulatory developments, to emerging exposures and managing ever-evolving risk. Mo Tooker, Head of Commercial Lines at The Hartford, will be the keynote speaker for this year’s conference.
“The evolving challenges of the casualty market can be sometimes underappreciated,” said Vitulli. “These conference sessions are designed to bring expert insight to bear on these challenges, helping attendees to better understand what is happening, why, and what they can do to better manage their unique risks.”
The day’s planned agenda covers a wide range of topics and issues of increasing importance to a variety of stakeholders, including risk managers, brokers, underwriters, re-insurers, and attorneys. Panels will address key issues such as:
Modeling and Reserving for the Risks of Today – and Tomorrow
The Client Perspective: Surviving and Thriving in an Uncertain World
Tackling Fraud in Civil Litigation
“Zywave’s leaders and the conference board members have put a tremendous amount of work into shaping the event agenda and bringing together the world-class expertise for this year’s event,” said Vitulli. “This conference has consistently attracted sold-out crowds because of the quality of information it provides. I am honored to be part of the event and am confident that attendees will find it well worth their time.”
As conference chair, Vitulli will host the event and guide its agenda. Vitulli’s planned remarks to the conference will address the current state of the casualty insurance market, the critical role insurers play in the smooth functioning of the economy, the need for long term financial stability and predictability in the industry, as well as factors influencing that stability.
“We are grateful for innovative thought leaders like Mike Vitulli, and the other advisory board members, who invest their time and talent to move our industry forward in a challenging market,” said Jeff Cohen, Senior Vice President, Zywave. “Given today’s heightened level of risk with increasing loss costs and expanding causes of loss, Zywave is committed to helping carriers, brokers, and insurance buyers better understand the complicated casualty risk landscape, and we thank Mike and Risk Strategies for their ongoing support.”
Zywave’s Casualty Insights Conference will be hosted at Convene, 117 W 46th St, New York, NY. Risk Strategies is a branding sponsor of this year’s event.
Risk Strategies, part of Accession Risk Management Group, is a North American specialty brokerage firm offering comprehensive risk management services, property and casualty insurance and reinsurance placement, employee benefits, private client services, consulting services, and financial & wealth solutions. The 9th largest U.S. privately held broker, we advise businesses and personal clients, have access to all major insurance markets, and 30+ specialty industry and product line practices and experts in 200+ offices – Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Grand Cayman, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, DC. RiskStrategies.com.
Media Contact Alana Bannan Senior Account Executive (720) 400-8025 Rsc@matternow.com
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Data443 Risk Mitigation, Inc. (OTCPK: ATDS) (“Data443” or the “Company”), an AI data security and privacy software company for “All Things Data Security,” today announced the completion of major operational expense rationalizations yielding immediate and long-term financial benefits.
$3.1 Million in Annual Cost Savings Achieved
“As part of our march toward profitability and operational efficiencies across all acquisitions, we have successfully eliminated over $3.1 million in annualized operational expenses from our current operations,” stated Jason Remillard, CEO of Data443.
This cost optimization initiative follows the Company’s recent expansion in the AI sector, including an acquisition focused on email categorization and classification technologies and the launch of its innovative CAFAI™ training solution for AI large language models. Additionally, the newly established relationship with leading data center provider TierPoint, announced last week, has contributed significantly to these operational expense reductions.
Renewed Focus on Efficiency and Growth
“As the broader market recovers globally, we continue to identify new opportunities for a disciplined, optimization-focused approach in our operating reviews and deal structures, enabling us to deliver more unique, forward-leaning data security solutions for our customers,” Remillard continued. “These efficiencies drive higher quality and more focused product capabilities for customers while enabling greater investments in the business. Furthermore, as our recurring revenue continues to compound, the Company will realize additional cost savings around interest expense, which has historically been a significant financial burden.”
The Company expects to maintain these efficiencies consistently for current business operations without incurring any one-time charges.
These operational improvements coincide with significant market validation of AI-powered email security solutions, evidenced by Abnormal Security’s anticipated IPO and growing enterprise demand for intelligent security platforms such as Sailpoint.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by use of terms such as “expect,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “may,” “could,” “will,” “should,” “plan,” “project,” “intend,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “pursuant,” “target,” “continue” or the negative of these words or other comparable terminology. Statements in this press release that are not historical statements, including statements regarding Data443’s plans, objectives, future opportunities for Data443’s services, future financial performance and operating results, and any other statements regarding Data443’s future expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, financial conditions, assumptions or future events or performance, or regarding the anticipated consummation of any transaction, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and assumptions, many of which are difficult to predict or are beyond Data443’s control. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions could cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the statements. They may relate to the outcome of litigation, settlements and investigations; actions by third parties, including governmental agencies; volatility in customer spending; global economic conditions; inability to hire and retain personnel; loss of, or reduction in business with, key customers; difficulty with growth and integration of acquisitions; product liability; cybersecurity risk; anti-takeover measures in the Company’s charter documents; and the uncertainties created by global health issues, such as the ongoing outbreak of COVID, and political unrest and conflict, such as the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. These and other important risk factors are described more fully in the Company’s reports and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“the SEC”), including in Part I, Item 1A of the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 17, 2024, and subsequent filings with the SEC. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this press release, which are based on information available to the Company on the date hereof. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Data443 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise.
“DATA443” is a registered trademark of Data443 Risk Mitigation, Inc.
All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this press release are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, trademarks and brands does not imply endorsement.
Headline: Apple introduces iPad Air with powerful M3 chip and new Magic Keyboard
March 4, 2025
PRESS RELEASE
Apple introduces iPad Air with powerful M3 chip and new Magic Keyboard
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today introduced the faster, more powerful iPad Air with the M3 chip and built for Apple Intelligence. iPad Air with M3 brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time — taking its incredible combination of power-efficient performance and portability to a new level. iPad Air with M3 is nearly 2x faster compared to iPad Air with M1,1 and up to 3.5x faster than iPad Air with A14 Bionic.2 Users will feel the speed of M3 in everything they do, from creating engaging content faster than ever to playing demanding, graphics-intensive games. Available in two sizes and four gorgeous finishes that users love, the 11-inch iPad Air is super portable while on the go, and the 13-inch model provides an even larger display for more room to be creative and productive. Designed for iPad Air, the new Magic Keyboard enhances its versatility and delivers more capabilities at a lower price. With iPadOS 18, support for Apple Intelligence, advanced cameras, fast wireless 5G connectivity, and compatibility with Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C), the new iPad Air offers an unrivaled experience.
With the same starting price of just $599 for the 11-inch model and $799 for the 13-inch model, the new iPad Air is a fantastic value. And for education, the 11-inch iPad Air starts at just $549, and the 13-inch model starts at just $749. Customers can pre-order the new iPad Air with M3 and Magic Keyboard for iPad Air starting today, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 12.
“iPad Air is so popular because of its unmatched combination of powerful performance, portability, and support for advanced accessories, all at an affordable price,” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “For everyone from college students taking notes with Apple Pencil Pro, to travelers and content creators who need powerful productivity on the go, iPad Air with M3, Apple Intelligence, and the new Magic Keyboard take versatility and value to the next level.”
Supercharged Performance with M3
iPad Air with M3 empowers users to be productive and creative wherever they are, from aspiring creatives using demanding apps and working with large files, to travelers editing content on the go. The powerful M3 chip offers a number of improvements over M1 and previous-generation models. Featuring a more powerful 8-core CPU, M3 is up to 35 percent faster for multithreaded CPU workflows than iPad Air with M1. M3 features a 9-core GPU with up to 40 percent faster graphics performance over M1. M3 also brings Apple’s advanced graphics architecture to iPad Air for the first time with support for dynamic caching, along with hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing. For graphics-intensive rendering workflows, iPad Air with M3 offers up to 4x faster performance than iPad Air with M1, enabling more accurate lighting, reflections, shadows, and extremely realistic gaming experiences.3
The faster Neural Engine in M3 means iPad Air users can enjoy even more AI capabilities in iPadOS. Compared to M1, the Neural Engine in M3 is up to 60 percent faster for AI-based workloads. Other improvements over iPad models with A-series chips include support for Apple Intelligence, the choice of 11- and 13-inch sizes, and support for advanced accessories, including the new Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro.
iPad Air: Built for Apple Intelligence
iPad Air is built for Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that delivers helpful and relevant intelligence.4 In Photos, the Clean Up tool makes it easy to remove distracting elements in images, and natural language search allows users to search for just about any photo or video by simply describing what they are looking for. With Image Wand in the Notes app, users can make notes more visually engaging by turning rough sketches into delightful images, just by drawing a circle around the sketch with their Apple Pencil. Users can even circle empty space within a note, and Image Wand will gather context from the surrounding area to create a relevant image that complements the note and makes it more visual.
Apple Intelligence helps users explore creative new ways to express themselves visually with Image Playground, create the perfect emoji with Genmoji, and make their writing even more dynamic with Writing Tools. Users can now type to Siri, and Siri is more conversational with the ability to follow along if users stumble over their words. Siri can also maintain context from one request to the next, and with extensive product knowledge, Siri can answer thousands of questions about the features and settings of Apple products, so users can learn how to do things like take a screen recording.
With ChatGPT seamlessly integrated into Writing Tools and Siri, users can tap into ChatGPT’s expertise without jumping between applications, so they can get things done faster and easier than ever before. In addition, users can access ChatGPT for free without creating an account, and privacy protections are built in — their IP addresses are obscured and OpenAI won’t store requests. Users can choose whether to enable ChatGPT integration, and are in full control of when to use it and what information is shared with ChatGPT.
Designed to protect users’ privacy at every step, Apple Intelligence uses on-device processing, meaning that many of the models that power it run entirely on device. For requests that require access to larger models, Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of iPad into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence. When using Private Cloud Compute, users’ data is never stored or shared with Apple; it is used only to fulfill their request.
All-New Magic Keyboard for iPad Air
The all-new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air expands what users can do at an even lower price. The larger built-in trackpad brings greater precision for detail-oriented tasks, and a new 14-key function row allows easy access to features like screen brightness and volume controls. The new Magic Keyboard attaches magnetically, and the Smart Connector immediately connects power and data without the need for Bluetooth; a machined aluminum hinge also includes a USB-C connector for charging. Now starting at just $269 for the 11-inch model and $319 for the 13-inch model, the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Air features the magical floating design customers love and comes in white.
iPad Updated with Double the Starting Storage and the A16 Chip
Apple today also updated iPad with double the starting storage and the A16 chip, bringing even more value to customers. The A16 chip provides a jump in performance for everyday tasks and experiences in iPadOS, while still providing all-day battery life. Compared to the previous generation, the updated iPad with A16 is nearly 30 percent faster.5 In fact, compared to iPad with A13 Bionic, users will see up to a 50 percent improvement in overall performance,5 and A16 makes the updated iPad up to 6x faster than the best-selling Android tablet.6
Powerful and Intelligent Features with iPadOS 18
iPadOS 18 offers powerful features that enhance the iPad experience, making it more versatile and intelligent than ever:7
Designed for the unique capabilities of iPad, Calculator delivers an entirely new way to use Apple Pencil to solve expressions. With Math Notes, users are now able to write out mathematical expressions or type to see them instantly solved in handwriting like their own. They can also create and use variables, and add an equation to insert a graph. Users can access their Math Notes in the Notes app and use all of the math functionality in any of their other notes.
In Notes, handwritten notes become more fluid and flexible. Smart Script unleashes powerful new capabilities for users editing handwritten text, allowing them to easily add space or even paste typed text in their own handwriting. And as users write with Apple Pencil, their handwriting will be automatically refined in real time to be smoother, straighter, and more legible.
With new Audio Recording and Transcription, iPad can capture a lecture or conversation, and transcripts are synced with the audio, so users can search for an exact moment in the recording.
Users now have even more options to express themselves through the Home Screen. App icons and widgets can take on a new look with a dark or tinted effect, and users can make them appear larger to create the experience that’s perfect for them. A redesigned Control Center provides easier access to many of the things users do every day, including the option to organize new controls from third-party apps.
Better for the Environment
The new iPad Air and updated iPad are designed with the environment in mind. As part of Apple 2030, the company’s ambitious goal to be carbon neutral across its entire carbon footprint by the end of this decade, Apple is transitioning to renewable electricity for manufacturing, and investing in wind and solar projects around the world to address the electricity used to charge all Apple products, including the new iPad Air and iPad. Today, all Apple facilities run on 100 percent renewable electricity — including the data centers that power Apple Intelligence.
To achieve Apple 2030, the company is designing products with more recycled and renewable materials, which further drives down the carbon footprint. The new iPad Air and iPad each feature at least 30 percent recycled content overall, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. The batteries contain 100 percent recycled cobalt and — in a first for iPad — over 95 percent recycled lithium. The new iPad Air and iPad meet Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, and are free of mercury, brominated flame retardants, and PVC. The packaging is also entirely fiber-based, bringing Apple closer to its goal of removing plastic from its packaging by the end of this year.8
Pricing and Availability
Customers can pre-order the new iPad Air with M3 starting today, March 4, on apple.com/store, and in the Apple Store app in 29 countries and regions, including the U.S. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting March 12.
The 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air with M3 will be available in blue, purple, starlight, and space gray, with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB configurations.
The 11-inch iPad Air starts at $599 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi model, and $749 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. The 13-inch iPad Air starts at $799 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi model, and $949 (U.S.) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.
For education, the new 11-inch iPad Air starts at $549 (U.S.), and the 13-inch model starts at $749 (U.S.). Education pricing is available to current and newly accepted college students and their parents, as well as faculty, staff, and home-school teachers of all grade levels. For more information, visit apple.com/us-hed/shop.
The new Magic Keyboard, available in white, is compatible with the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air. The 11-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $269 (U.S.), and the 13-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $319 (U.S.). For education, the 11-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $249 (U.S.), and the 13-inch Magic Keyboard is available for $299 (U.S.).
Customers can pre-order the new iPad with A16 starting today, March 4, on apple.com/store, and in the Apple Store app in 29 countries and regions, including the U.S. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorized Resellers, starting March 12.
The new iPad starts with 128GB of storage, and is also available in 256GB and a new 512GB configuration. Available in blue, pink, yellow, and silver, Wi-Fi models of the new iPad are available with a starting price of $349 (U.S.), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $499 (U.S.). For education, Wi-Fi models of the new iPad are available with a starting price of $329 (U.S.), and Wi-Fi + Cellular models start at $479 (U.S.).
Magic Keyboard Folio for iPad is available for $249 (U.S.) and comes in white. For education, the Magic Keyboard Folio is available for $229 (U.S.).
Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil (USB-C) are compatible with the new iPad Air. Apple Pencil (USB-C) and Apple Pencil (1st generation) are compatible with the new iPad. Apple Pencil Pro is available for $129 (U.S.), and $119 (U.S.) for education. Apple Pencil (USB-C) is available for $79 (U.S.), and $69 (U.S.) for education.
Apple offers great ways to save on the latest iPad. Customers can trade in their current iPad and get credit toward a new one by visiting the Apple Store online, the Apple Store app, or an Apple Store location. To see what their device is worth and for terms and conditions, customers can visit apple.com/shop/trade-in.
Customers in the U.S. who shop at Apple using Apple Card can pay monthly at 0 percent APR when they choose to check out with Apple Card Monthly Installments, and they’ll get 3 percent Daily Cash back — all up front. More information — including details on eligibility, exclusions, and Apple Card terms — is available at apple.com/apple-card/monthly-installments.
About Apple Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.
Testing conducted by Apple in January and February 2025. See apple.com/ipad-air for more information.
Testing conducted by Apple in January and February 2025 using preproduction iPad Air 11-inch (M3) and iPad Air 13-inch (M3) units as well as production iPad Air (4th generation) units. Tested with Procreate Dreams v1.0.14 by exporting a 29-second project. Performance tests are conducted using specific iPad units and reflect the approximate performance of iPad Air.
Testing conducted by Apple in January and February 2025 using preproduction iPad Air 11-inch (M3) and iPad Air 13-inch (M3) units as well as production iPad Air (5th generation) units. Octane X 2024.1.01 for iPad tested using a scene with 770,000 meshes and 8 million unique primitives, utilizing hardware-accelerated ray tracing on M3-based systems and software-based ray tracing on all other units. Performance tests are conducted using specific iPad units and reflect the approximate performance of iPad Air.
Apple Intelligence is available on iPad mini (A17 Pro) and iPad models with M1 and later, in localized English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and the U.S. Additional languages — including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified), English (Singapore), and English (India) — will be available in April, with more languages coming over the course of the year, including Vietnamese. Some features, applications, and services may not be available in all regions or all languages.
Testing conducted by Apple in January and February 2025 using preproduction iPad (A16) units as well as production iPad (10th generation) units. Tested with a selection of tasks using Microsoft Excel for iPad v2.93. Performance tests are conducted using specific iPad units and reflect the approximate performance of iPad.
Testing conducted by Apple in January and February 2025 using preproduction iPad (A16) units with Apple A16, as well as production Qualcomm SM6375-based Android tablet units with the latest version of Android 14 available at the time of testing. Best-selling Android tablet based on publicly available sales data over the last 12 months. Tested with common tasks in commercial applications and select industry-standard benchmarks. Performance depends on device settings, usage, environment, and many other factors. Performance tests are conducted using specific systems and reflect the approximate performance of iPad.
Some features may not be available for all countries or all areas. For more information on iPadOS 18, visit apple.com/ipados/ipados-18.
Based on retail packaging as shipped by Apple. Breakdown of U.S. retail packaging by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coatings are excluded from calculations of plastic content and packaging weight.
Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –
From March 3 to May 30, 2025, Oleg Timofeev, a senior researcher at the Center for Socioeconomic and Political Research of China at the National University of Management, will visit this Chinese university at the invitation of the leadership of Tsinghua University (PRC) to deliver a lecture course in Chinese on “Security and International Order in Eurasia” (欧亚安全秩序) at the doctoral department.
It should be noted that on April 26, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin became an honorary doctor of Tsinghua University, where Chinese President Xi Jinping once studied. The rector of the higher educational institution, Qi Yong, personally presented the diploma to the head of the Russian state.
Founded in 1911, Tsinghua University has consistently ranked 1st or 2nd in the National University Rankings of China and is one of the world’s leading universities and a symbol of China’s economic and scientific progress.
Oleg Timofeev’s trip to China is part of a series of thematic events at the State University of Management, held in pursuance of the order of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to hold the Years of Russia-China Culture in 2024-2025 with the aim of developing Russian-Chinese relations and expanding bilateral ties in the field of culture.
The complex of events dedicated to relations with the PRC also includes the electronic exhibition “Academic Dialogue: Russia and China in the University Space”. The exhibition is addressed to everyone interested in the history and culture of China. Particular attention is paid to the culture of management in history, higher education, politics and the digital economy, as well as socio-cultural phenomena, institutions and social practices of Russia and China. Monographs and textbooks are presented. Publications from the collection of the Scientific Library of the State University of Management were used in creating the exhibition. The author of the exhibition is chief librarian Elena Novikova.
ACADEMIC DIALOGUE_RUSSIA AND CHINA IN THE UNIVERSITY SPACE
Let us recall that at the end of last year, the 4th volume of the book “Xi Jinping on Public Administration” was presented in Russian at the State University of Management. Also, a round table on the development of artificial intelligence in China was held the other day, at which the above-mentioned book by the leader of the PRC was presented to those present again.
Subscribe to the TG channel “Our GUU” Date of publication: 03/04/2025
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
New functionality adds additional protection against cyber threats and supports compliance with evolving security standards for sensitive data transfers
BURLINGTON, Mass., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS), the trusted provider of AI-powered digital experience and infrastructure software, today announced the addition of Web Application Firewall (WAF) functionality to Progress® MOVEit® Cloud managed file transfer (MFT) solution. This new feature strengthens security for sensitive data by blocking malicious web traffic before it can infiltrate systems, empowering organizations to meet Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) 4.0 requirements and harden the security of their file transfers.
With PCI DSS 4.0 mandating that organizations deploy a WAF in front of public-facing applications by March 31, 2025, the new WAF functionality in MOVEit Cloud WAF delivers a critical layer of protection for businesses managing sensitive data and mission-critical file transfers.
“The addition of a Web Application Firewall in MOVEit Cloud underscores our commitment to helping businesses protect sensitive data and maintain compliance in today’s evolving threat landscape,” said Loren Jarrett, EVP & GM of Digital Experience at Progress. “By layering WAF technology into MOVEit Cloud, we help our customers guard against cyber threats, meet regulatory demands and achieve peace of mind knowing their managed file transfers are scalable and hardened against cyber threats.”
Key Features and Benefits of WAF Functionality in the MOVEit Cloud Solution:
Enhanced Security and Defense: The WAF functionality in MOVEit Cloud WAF functionality automatically monitors and filters HTTPS traffic, mitigating risks from injection attacks, unauthorized file access and other malicious activities. It is built using OWASP-based industry standards to help protect against the OWASP Top 10 threats and is supported by Progress’ ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications, upholding industry-leading security practices.
Compliance with Latest Standards: MOVEit Cloud is continuously updated to align with the most recent compliance standards for a proactive response to regulatory changes. With this release, MOVEit Cloud software is certified to meet PCI DSS 4.0 in addition to HIPAA, HITECH and HIPAA Omnibus standards.
Streamlined Administration: MOVEit Cloud customers save valuable hours with Progress experts managing all WAF updates, testing and scaling to meet organizational needs. Its multi-node scaling supports rapid deployment and effortlessly manages spikes in demand. Additionally, MOVEit Cloud provides 24/7 monitoring, active alerts and support from Progress security specialists.
As cybercriminals evolve their tactics, IT leaders face mounting challenges in securing data transfers between external and internal systems. MOVEit Cloud now provides a proactive solution to help protect sensitive information, ease compliance efforts and centralize file transfers while simplifying management of the file transfer infrastructure.
About Progress Progress (Nasdaq: PRGS) empowers organizations to achieve transformational success in the face of disruptive change. Our software enables our customers to develop, deploy and manage responsible AI-powered applications and digital experiences with agility and ease. Customers get a trusted provider in Progress, with the products, expertise and vision they need to succeed. Over 4 million developers and technologists at hundreds of thousands of enterprises depend on Progress. Learn more at www.progress.com.
Progress and MOVEit are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
Press Contacts: Kim Baker Progress +1-800-477-6473 pr@progress.com
WATERTOWN, Mass., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cangrade today announced it will now offer synchronous video interviewing. This capability will enable human resources (HR) professionals to leverage Cangrade’s skills-based, AI-generated interview guides to conduct live interviews within Cangrade. The software takes the legwork out of the hard-to-score live interviewing process by automating interview planning, focusing on pertinent skills for specific roles, and streamlining decision-making with collaborative feedback tools.
Despite being tasked with acquiring and retaining top talent, HR experiences higher burnout and turnover compared to other industries (LinkedIn). In the face of high attrition rates, but also high expectations for recruiting teams, Cangrade’s synchronous video interviewing tool helps alleviate some of the burden of finding and vetting qualified candidates. Additionally, as candidates become increasingly AI-savvy, live interviews can help prevent cheating in the interview process.
Some of the benefits of Cangrade’s synchronous video interviewing include:
Automated interview planning: Build dynamic interview guides based on talent intelligence and your KPIs or build a static interview guide customizable to your unique needs.
Integrated interview guides: Provide real-time interview guides to your hiring team with dedicated spaces for notes and response ranking.
Skills-based interviewing: Assess candidates’ strengths and weaknesses on the key competencies the role requires, eliminating redundant interview questions.
Streamlined interview feedback collection: Leverage real-time note-taking and dedicated scoring fields during the interview to avoid chasing feedback.
Collaborative interview processes: Automatically collect and average each interviewer’s notes and scores to objectively evaluate candidate fit, while also receiving diverse feedback to facilitate discussions.
Accelerated review processes: Leverage response summaries and update notes and rankings with revised thoughts to speed up the review process.
Customizable interview methods: Interviewers can choose to interview candidates live or asynchronously to ensure a process that works for your team.
“The tightening job market leads to new challenges for resource-strained HR teams, which makes interviewing a high volume of applicants and making unbiased hiring decisions an even taller task for recruiters,” said Gershon Goren, founder and CEO, Cangrade. “Our new synchronous video interviewing aims to solve both problems by incorporating a highly effective, structured interview guide right into the conferencing experience.”
Click here to learn more about Cangrade’s video interviewing software. For more information about Cangrade’s AI-powered, bias-free hiring and talent management solutions, visit www.cangrade.com.
About Cangrade For HR leaders, Cangrade is the bias-free, AI-powered talent intelligence platform. By integrating data into talent acquisition and management processes, Cangrade enables businesses to make strategic and efficient decisions from initial screening through the entire employee lifecycle. Delivering 10x more accurate predictions of talent success and retention than traditional methods, the company’s Pre-Hire Assessment has helped organizations like Wayfair, FDNY, Lamar Advertising, and Applied Industrial Technologies make the right hiring decisions for over 10 million candidates and counting. For more information, visit www.cangrade.com.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — This past December marked the 10-year anniversary of Android Studio’s 1.0 release, a key milestone in the long-standing partnership between Google—producer of Android Studio—and Gradle Inc, the company behind Gradle Build Tool, one of the world’s most popular build systems. For the past decade, Android Studio has been the go-to IDE (integrated development environment) for millions of Android developers worldwide with Gradle Build Tool as the default build system. From faster build times to managing complex build requirements, Gradle Build Tool has been a critical part of Android toolchain, fostering developer productivity and happiness.
The partnership is a testament to Gradle and Android’s shared commitment to equipping developers with tools to improve the developer experience. According to industry market research firm Evans Data, there are 5.9 million Android developers across the globe. The vast majority of them rely on Gradle Build Tool integration in Android Studio via the Android Gradle Plugin to build their apps.
‘With Android Studio, we made two big bets: switching to a new IDE and switching to a new build system. After evaluating the alternatives, we chose Gradle as our default build system because of its ability to handle Android’s complex build requirements and be seamlessly integrated into the IDE creating a single consistent build experience across IDE usage and CI builds,” said Tor Norbye, Engineering Director of Android Studio at Google. “We’re incredibly thankful for our partnership with Gradle over the last decade, and are looking forward to many more years of working together to power fast and flexible builds!”
Over the years, Gradle has scaled to support the tremendous growth of the Android ecosystem. Improved build performance thanks to parallel execution, build cache, and more recently configuration cache, allowed Gradle Build Tool to scale to support even the largest of Android projects. The addition of Kotlin DSL as the default for new builds allows Android developers to use the same language in both production code and build scripts.
“Android Studio’s 10th anniversary marks a decade of incredible progress for Android developers,” said Hans Dockter, co-founder and CEO of Gradle Inc. “We are proud that Gradle Build Tool has continued to be a foundational part of the Android toolchain, enabling millions of Android developers to build their apps faster, more elegantly, and at scale.”
With current initiatives, like Declarative Gradle and Isolated Projects, Google and Gradle continue to collaborate on the next advancements in usability and scalability. Android developers can also access Gradle’s free Build Scan® service, which has generated over 100 million detailed reports on builds since 2020. In addition to Android, Gradle Build Tool also supports Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and Scala ecosystems and is trusted by millions of developers creating innovative, high-quality software. Develocity offers advanced features like advanced Build Cache, Predictive Test Selection, Test Distribution, Flaky Test Detection, Test Failure Analytics, and deep toolchain observability leveraged by multiple Android projects, including AndroidX.
About Gradle Gradle Inc. is the award-winning developer productivity company behind Gradle Build Tool—one of the most used build systems in the world—and Develocity, the leading developer toolchain observability platform. Develocity provides comprehensive observability, build and test acceleration technologies, and rapid troubleshooting features for Apache Maven, Android, Bazel, sbt, npm, Python, and Gradle Build Tool. Top companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, ASML, Airbnb, Microsoft, Nasdaq, and SAP use Develocity to deliver critical software faster at scale.
AMSTERDAM, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Vector database developer Weaviate just added a crucial piece to its AI development stack. Today it launched Weaviate Agents, a new set of services for building the next generation of AI and agentic applications.
Weaviate Agents join Weaviate’s industry-leading vector database and vector embedding service to provide a unified solution for developers building applications powered by GenAI.
“Weaviate’s development tools come with batteries included,” said Weaviate VP of Product Alvin Richards. “By unifying data management, agentic workflows and vector storage and search on our enterprise-class infrastructure, we empower development teams to quickly create applications that bring intelligent AI to the masses.”
Weaviate Agents
Weaviate Agents are modular agentic workflows that use LLMs and prompts to interact dynamically with data in Weaviate. They are pretrained on Weaviate’s APIs, making them experts in performing Weaviate-specific data tasks based on natural language commands. Agents can be easily swapped, rearranged or used together, speeding up development with their simple APIs and powerful functionality.
The first three Weaviate Agents, launching in Public Preview this month, enable developers to query, improve and augment their data with less operational overhead.
Query Agent: Simplify complex query workflows and supercharge RAG pipelines by querying data in Weaviate using natural language. Developers configure Query Agent with their desired collections in Weaviate and submit search parameters and aggregations for each query in plain text prompts. Query Agent decides which data is relevant, formulates the necessary searches, retrieves the data, correlates and ranks the answers and returns the results. It can even chain commands together, taking the results of a previous query and extending it with a new prompt.
Transformation Agent: Organize, enrich or augment datasets at scale with a single prompt. Based on the natural language instructions passed into it, Transformation Agent can automatically update data, create new properties, add new data and more. Use cases include cleaning and organizing raw data for AI, generating and enriching metadata, automatically categorizing, labeling and preprocessing data or even translating your entire dataset.
Personalization Agent: Dynamically personalize experiences based on user behavior. With Weaviate Personalization Agent, developers can go beyond static, rules-based recommendations and deliver smart, LLM-based personalization on the fly. Personalization Agent makes it easy to curate search results tailored to each user’s preferences and interactions. It can be used in conjunction with Weaviate Query and Transformation Agents to deliver hyper-personalized user experiences in real-time.
As they are released, Weaviate Agents will become available in Weaviate Cloud, including its free developer sandbox. Query Agent is available now, and Transformation and Personalization Agents are coming later this month.
“The emergence of vector databases, vector embedding services and agentic architectures represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of data management and transformation,” said Bob van Luijt, CEO of Weaviate.
“Vector embeddings have been at the core of AI’s development—from early deep learning models to transformers and today’s large language models. What started as a linear process—data to vector, to database, to model, to results—evolved into dynamic feedback loops, giving rise to agentic architectures. This milestone is a natural next step in a journey we saw beginning a decade ago. And that’s why I’m incredibly excited to see a new stack emerging for developers. For those using Weaviate, it’s made up of the Weaviate vector database, Agents and Vector Embeddings. And what’s most exciting is that this is just the beginning.”
For more on Weaviate Agents, visit Weaviate’s website.
About Weaviate Weaviate is an open-source AI-native vector database that makes it easier for developers to build and scale AI applications. With powerful hybrid search out of the box, seamless connection to machine learning models and a purpose-built architecture that scales to billions of vectors and millions of tenants, Weaviate is a foundation for modern, AI-native software development. Customers and open-source users, including Instabase, NetApp and Morningstar power search and generative AI applications with Weaviate while maintaining control over their own data. Weaviate was founded in 2019 and is funded by Battery Ventures, Cortical Ventures, Index Ventures, ING Ventures, NEA and Zetta Venture Partners. For more information, visit Weaviate.io.
Media Contact Chris Ulbrich weaviate@firebrand.marketing 415 848 9175
SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ushur, a leader in Customer Experience Automation (CXA), today introduced its AI Agent for Member Service, the first-of-its-kind solution purpose-built to revolutionize health plan support. Powered by generative and agentic AI, this solution analyzes data, makes informed decisions and guides members to fast, seamless resolutions. By automating requests with empathetic, real-time assistance, Ushur’s AI Agent empowers health plans to scale service delivery while ensuring more equitable access to care.
With increasing demand for healthcare services and a shortage of resources, health plans are struggling to meet the needs of their members. In fact, despite digital investments, call centers remain inundated with only 25% of members and patients actively engaging with portals and apps, according to the National Institute of Health. Ushur’s AI Agent bridges this gap by offering fast, accurate, and empathetic responses, ensuring that members can access the support they need—at any time—without burdening already overworked customer support teams.
Health plans benefit from Ushur’s AI Agent in multiple ways, including:
Faster Resolutions: Automates common tasks–like benefits explanations, ID card replacements and Primary Care Physician updates–reducing turnaround times and operational costs.
Scalable Support: Manages 24×7 demand and peak periods like open enrollment without requiring additional staff.
Enhanced Member Satisfaction: Provides clear, accurate and empathetic responses that improve satisfaction and experience scores.
Proactive Engagement: Automates two-way updates for appointments, benefits information and claims progress to reduce member frustration and employee burden.
Compliance Adherence: Fully HIPAA-compliant with secure handling of sensitive data, ensuring peace of mind for both health plans and members.
“In our work with highly regulated industries, we recognize the critical importance of innovation rooted in security and trust,” shares Simha Sadasiva, Co-Founder and CEO of Ushur. “Ushur’s AI Agent that we developed is tailored with healthcare-specific guardrails, ensuring compliance and protecting customer data. These safeguards empower health plans to deliver round-the-clock personalized assistance to their members, achieving unprecedented levels of intelligence and efficiency.”
Powered by Ushur’s Customer Experience Automation™ platform, Ushur’s AI Agent seamlessly supports health plans to deliver intelligent, compliant, and empathetic member interactions.
Healthcare-Specific Intelligence: Finely tuned Large Language Models (LLMs) and knowledge graphs ensure precise, policy-driven responses tailored to payer-specific language.
Adaptive Decision Making: A powerful reasoning engine analyzes data from CRMs, enterprise knowledge bases, and other sources to extract insights, determine the best course of action, and dynamically refine recommendations in real time.
Goal-Based Task Completion: Integrates with third-party applications and downstream systems, enabling proactive member support and streamlined resolutions.
Multimodal & Omni-Channel Engagement: Enhances interactions with dynamic elements like geo-location maps and file attachments, while seamlessly transitioning conversations across preferred digital channels, from text and email to voice and web portals.
Empathetic, Context-Aware Conversations: Built-in safeguards handle sensitive topics with care, escalating issues to human resources when needed while simplifying complex healthcare information to a 6th-grade reading level.
Privacy, Accessibility & Compliance: Adheres to HIPAA, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and other regulations to protect Private Health Information (PHI), while supporting multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Portuguese.
Ushur is revolutionizing customer engagement for highly regulated industries with secure, empathetic and AI-driven solutions at scale. The AI Agent for Member Service embodies Ushur’s mission to enhance healthcare access and transform customer experiences for both businesses and the people they serve.
To see how Ushur’s AI Agent can help you provide faster, more equitable care, please visit www.ushur.com or contact us at anthony@scribewise.com.
About Ushur Ushur delivers the world’s first Customer Experience Automation platform built specifically for regulated industries. Purpose-built for delivering ideal self-service, Ushur infuses intelligence into digital experiences for the most delightful and impactful customer engagements. Equipped with guardrails and compliance-ready infrastructure, Ushur powers vertical AI Agents for healthcare, financial services and insurance use cases. Designed for rapid code-less deployment with flexible, advanced capabilities for IT and business teams, enterprises can transform customer and employee journeys at scale, driving faster time-to-value and improved outcomes.
SAN DIEGO, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Point Predictive, the leader in risk solutions for dealerships and consumer lending today announced that Ken Garff Automotive Group, one of the nation’s largest automotive retailers, has selected BorrowerCheck™ to protect its 70 dealerships from the rising tide of loan fraud and costly lender pushbacks of loans. The decision follows a successful six-month pilot program where the solution identified significant instances of hidden fraud and misrepresentation that traditional red flag tools missed.
With auto lending fraud reaching $8 billion last year, dealers face mounting challenges from sophisticated identity theft schemes and income misrepresentation. Lenders are increasingly pushing back fraudulent loans to dealers, creating substantial financial risk. Ken Garff’s implementation of BorrowerCheck represents a strategic move to protect its dealerships while streamlining the car-buying process for legitimate customers.
Ken Garff dealers will benefit from BorrowerCheck in several ways:
Prevent pushbacks by detecting over 90% of fraud traditional red flag reports miss.
Detect all types of fraud including identity, income, and employment misrepresentation.
Activate 100% seamless integration requiring no change to existing processes.
“The automotive retail landscape is evolving rapidly, and so are the fraud risks our dealers face,” said Brett Hopkins, CEO of Ken Garff Automotive Group. “By partnering with Point Predictive, we’re not just protecting our bottom line, we’re ensuring our customers have a seamless, secure car-buying experience while safeguarding our relationships with lending partners. When our dealerships identify a single instance of fraud with BorrowerCheck it delivers a significant Return on Investment”.
The implementation of BorrowerCheck requires no operational changes for dealerships, seamlessly integrating into existing workflow and process while providing more comprehensive protection against identity, income, and employment fraud.
“The automotive industry is moving beyond outdated red flag solutions that generate excessive false positives and miss sophisticated fraud schemes,” said Tim Grace, CEO of Point Predictive. “By leveraging our proprietary database and technology, BorrowerCheck helps dealerships like Ken Garff identify fraud that traditional tools miss and that often leads to costly loan pushbacks. Our modern approach doesn’t just catch more fraud – it makes the entire process significantly faster and more effective, replacing cumbersome 15-minute authentication surveys with 90-second verifications. This is the future of fraud prevention and customer satisfaction at dealerships.”
The pilot program revealed BorrowerCheck’s ability to detect sophisticated fraud schemes that traditional red flag solutions missed. The system’s comprehensive approach draws on Point Predictive’s proprietary data repository, which includes intelligence from over 250 million historical loan applications, historical information on over 93 million unique identities, insights on more than 23 million employers and 300 million historically reported incomes.
The solution will be rolled out across all 70 Ken Garff dealerships in the coming months, representing one of the largest implementations of BorrowerCheck in the automotive retail sector.
For more information, contact info@pointpredictive.com.
About Point Predictive
Point Predictive powers a new level of lending confidence and speed through artificial intelligence, powerful data insight from our proprietary data repository, and decades of risk management expertise. The company’s data and technology solutions quickly and accurately identify truthful and untruthful disclosures on loan applications. As a result, lenders can fund the majority of loans without requiring onerous documentation from consumers, such as pay stubs, utility bills, or bank statements, improving funding rates while reducing early payment default losses. Subsequently, borrowers get loans faster, and lenders realize a more profitable bottom line.
About Ken Garff Automotive Group
Ken Garff Automotive Group is one of the largest privately-held automotive retailer groups in the United States, with 70 dealerships across multiple states. Founded in 1932, Ken Garff has built its reputation on a commitment to treat customers and employees with respect while maintaining the highest standards of integrity in automotive retail. The company’s success is driven by its mission to create lifetime customers through exceptional experiences.
MIAMI, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Moderne, the automated code refactoring and analysis company, is proud to announce the launch of the first-ever multi-repository AI agent—code-named Moddy—designed to transform how developers understand and evolve large-scale codebases. Unlike code assistants that operate within a single repository and integrate solely with the developer’s IDE, Moddy is a powerful component of the multi-repository Moderne Platform, offering unprecedented power and precision to developers tasked with managing today’s sprawling codebases.
Moddy is a complementary solution to code assistants in the IDE, like GitHub Copilot, that focus entirely on net-new code authorship. These code assistants rely on IDEs’ internal representations of code, limiting them to a single repository at a time. This restriction prevents them from scaling to multi-repo capabilities and unable to address important use cases—such as vendor migrations, security remediations, and dependency upgrades—that require understanding and modifying code across multiple repositories at once.
Moddy shatters the single-repo barrier with access to the OpenRewrite Lossless Semantic Tree (LST) code representation and Moderne’s unique ability to serialize LSTs. LSTs capture the intricate structure, dependencies, and relationships across multi-repository codebases, which Moddy can use to analyze and modify vast codebases deterministically using thousands of OpenRewrite recipes.
“Moddy opens the door to billions of lines of code. This is a fundamental shift that empowers engineering teams to evolve software faster and with greater confidence, giving businesses the agility to keep pace with change,” said Olga Kundzich, CTO and Co-Founder of Moderne. “With Moddy, developers can now see and act on the entire codebase, not just the fraction open in their IDE. Think of the ability to onboard a developer to a new codebase in one day rather than six months.”
For example, if a developer wants to migrate legacy database usage to PostgreSQL, they can ask Moddy how SQL is used across the organization’s entire codebase. Moddy will identify the appropriate Moderne recipe to locate SQL usage, then execute it across all repositories, gathering the results in a structured format.
From there, Moddy can analyze the data, cluster results by various dimensions, and pinpoint proprietary legacy SQL syntax that needs updating for PostgreSQL compatibility. The developer can then decide whether to apply deterministic changes using additional OpenRewrite recipes or make manual updates, all while maintaining full visibility into the migration process across the entire business unit.
Moddy seamlessly integrates large language models (LLMs) with Moderne’s deterministic systems, allowing each to excel at what they do best. The advent of LLM tool-function calling in late 2024 is what enabled this hybrid approach. Suddenly, the thousands of OpenRewrite recipes that already existed in the Moderne marketplace became tools that an LLM could use.
LLMs are good at interpreting human requests, while deterministic tools deliver accurate, actionable data. When equipped with accurate data, all LLMs perform remarkably well. The hallucination problem many LLMs face stems from insufficient access to in-depth code data. This synergy allows developers to receive clear, trustworthy insights and execute large-scale code changes with confidence because changes can be validated by the underlying data.
In addition, Moddy also has access to knowledge graphs (built through the LLM and recipe interaction) that enable deep understanding of business logic, not just the technology in use. For example, Moddy can answer questions about where payments processing happens in a business unit.
Moderne offers a choice of LLM with Moddy (including BYOM). Moderne tested AI models from many providers, and, when enabled with deterministic tools, they all performed well and were undifferentiated.
Developers typically have only a tiny fraction of their enterprise code open in their IDE. Moddy changes the game by providing multi-repo visibility, enabling developers to understand and evolve entire codebases—not just the repository in front of them. This leap in capability represents a step function increase in developer productivity, particularly for maintaining, modernizing, and securing complex software environments.
Moddy is currently available in an exclusive beta for Moderne customers. For more information, please read this blog post.
About Moderne Moderne automates mass-scale code modernization that’s critical to the progress and success of enterprise companies today—making a difference in minutes, not months. Moderne is based in Miami, and its investors include Acrew Capital, Intel Capital, True Ventures, Mango Capital, Allstate Strategic Ventures, Morgan Stanley, Amex Ventures, and TIAA Ventures, among other investors and advisors. To learn more visit www.moderne.ai
CorelDRAW Go provides a beginner-friendly design experience, empowering creativity from anywhere.
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite delivers Painterly Brush tool enhancements and streamlined print to PDF workflows, alongside flexible, online design with CorelDRAW Web.
OTTAWA, Ontario, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Introducing CorelDRAW Go, a beginner-friendly online graphic design tool for creative enthusiasts and aspiring designers. This newest addition to the CorelDRAW family simplifies the creative process, equipping users with intuitive tools to design efficiently from anywhere.
Alongside this, the latest updates to award-winning graphic design software, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, are unveiled, including CorelDRAW Web, providing subscribers with a flexible, cloud-based design experience.
“With CorelDRAW Go and CorelDRAW Web, we’re making creativity more accessible than ever,” said Prakash Channagiri, Senior Director of Product Management for CorelDRAW. “The flexibility of these new cloud-based tools combined with the latest creative and workflow enhancements in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, reinforce our commitment to empowering design professionals and creative enthusiasts to work more efficiently and push the boundaries of what’s possible in graphic design.”
CorelDRAW Go is a browser-based tool that makes design more intuitive and accessible, without the steep learning curve that comes with professional graphic design software. With an easy-to-use interface it delivers more advanced drawing and editing capabilities than many template-based alternatives.
Here’s what’s available in CorelDRAW Go:
Robust Design Tools
Interactive drawing tools
Realistic brushes
Straightforward node editing
User-friendly text tools
Easy-to-use masking controls
Essential image editing features
Extensive Creative Assets
Fully customizable templates
Thousands of editable vector icons, illustrations, and clipart
More than 6 million royalty-free stock photos
Thousands of fonts
In this latest release, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite customers get access to powerful tools and enhancements designed to elevate creativity and simplify workflows.
Here’s what’s new in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025:
NEW!CorelDRAW Web: CorelDRAW is more accessible than ever thanks to the introduction of CorelDRAW Web, a powerful browser-based version of the award-winning graphic design suite. Available exclusively to subscribers, CorelDRAW Web delivers a full CorelDRAW experience in the browser, allowing users to design seamlessly from any device.
NEW!Advanced Print to PDF capabilities: Streamline workflows and enjoy faster, more efficient output with new Print to PDF functionality, now integrated into CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.
ENHANCED!Painterly Brush tool: Unleash creativity with the upgraded Painterly Brush tool, now featuring additional brush controls, and improved compatibility with other tools. Plus, subscribers get exclusive access to 50 additional free brushes, unlocking a world of new creative possibilities.
NEW! Simplified multi-seat license management: The redesigned Corel Customer Account Portal streamlines license administration, allowing businesses to assign licenses or deploy software without requiring individual user accounts.
This latest release also includes performance and quality improvements, direct access to additional Google Fonts, and advanced security upgrades.
Availability and Pricing
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is available on Windows, macOS, and web in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Swedish, and Japanese. Subscription is $269 USD / €369 / £319 per year. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2025 is available for one-time purchase at the suggested retail price of $549 USD / €779 / £659. EUR and GBP prices include VAT.
CorelDRAW Web is available to all CorelDRAW subscribers and active maintenance customers and is supported on the most recent versions of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox, on both Windows and macOS. To learn more about CorelDRAW Web, or to try a 15-day trial, visit: www.coreldraw.corel.com.
CorelDRAW Go performs best with Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, with the latest updates, on both Windows and macOS, and is available in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, and Czech. A subscription is $9.99 USD / €9.99 / £8.99 monthly or $99 USD / €115 / £95 per year. EUR and GBP prices include VAT. To learn more about CorelDRAW Go, visit: www.go.corel.com.
About Alludo
Alludo is a global technology company helping people work better and live better. We’re the people behind award-winning, globally recognizable brands including Parallels, Corel, MindManager, and WinZip. Our professional-caliber graphics, virtualization, and productivity solutions are finely tuned for the digital remote workforce delivering the freedom to work when, where, and how you want.
With a 35+ year legacy of innovation, Alludo empowers all you do, helping more than 2.5 million paying customers to enable, ideate, create, and share on any device, anywhere. To learn more, visit www.alludo.com.
ST. LOUIS, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Swipesum, a leading payment processing consultancy and merchant services company, announced today its partnership with Facility Ally, a premier provider of business solutions for sports and entertainment facilities. Together, Swipesum and Facility Ally have launched AllyPay, an embedded payments solution that streamlines transactions and customer support and improves financial management for eatertainment venues, sports clubs, and facility management organizations.
Through AllyPay, Facility Ally customers will now have access to a more seamless and efficient payment processing experience backed by Swipesum’s industry expertise. Key features of AllyPay include:
Optimized Transaction Processing: In addition to providing higher-level payment security, Swipesum will use its proprietary auditing software, Staitment, to negotiate lower payment processing fees and transaction costs with facility operators.
Real-Time Chargeback Notifications and Support: Proactively addresses disputes to save time and reduce manual workloads.
White Glove Support: Offers access to Swipesum’s team of payments experts with a dedicated support team that provides personalized guidance, expert insights and tailored solutions that improve efficiency.
Next-Day Funding: Offers an expedited funding timeline, allowing businesses to access their revenue as soon as the next day.
Beyond payment processing, Facility Ally delivers comprehensive business solutions that support every aspect of facility operations. In addition to scheduling, resource management, and consulting, Facility Ally’s dedicated media agency provides branding, website development, SEO, and marketing services tailored for sports and eatertainment venues. With the rise of membership-based and social sports clubs—including the 18,000 new pickleball courts added in 2024—sports facilities increasingly rely on recurring payment systems, reinforcing the need for robust chargeback support and optimized payment solutions.
“Swipesum is thrilled to leverage our embedded payments expertise in partnership with Facility Ally’s cutting-edge solution,” said Michael Seaman, founder and CEO of Swipesum. “Our goal with AllyPay is to equip facility managers with efficient tools that streamline operations, reduce costs, and deliver a seamless payment experience for their clients while increasing the revenues from payment processing for Facility Ally.”
With AllyPay, facilities gain access to an embedded payment gateway with additional features like QuickBooks syncing, detailed sales tracking reports and enhanced security features. These tools help eliminate manual work and errors, accelerate payment cycles, and create a seamless, user-friendly payment experience for facility members and visitors.
“Partnering with Swipesum to launch AllyPay allows us to provide unparalleled value to our clients,” said Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally. “By offering a specialized payment solution tailored to our industry, we’re empowering our customers to streamline their financial processes and focus on what matters most.”
About Swipesum Swipesum is a comprehensive credit card processing company and merchant services consultancy delivering innovative auditing solutions to businesses nationwide. Swipesum acts as a company’s Chief Payments Officer, combining industry knowledge, AI and proprietary software to create a transparent payments strategy that optimizes payment processing fees. The team of expert consultants provides 24/7 assistance and continued monitoring to return the budgetary power back to the business owner. Visit www.swipesum.com for more information.
About Facility Ally Facility Ally is a turnkey business solution designed for sports and entertainment facilities, offering everything you need to launch and manage your venue seamlessly. From simplified booking software to a dedicated media agency for branding, website development, and SEO, Facility Ally ensures your new facility is set up for success. Their expert consulting services provide the guidance needed to plan, strategize, and execute a successful facility launch with confidence. With over 15 years of experience and a proven track record of successful implementations, Facility Ally delivers the tools and expertise to streamline operations and enhance customer experiences. For more information, visit https://facilityally.com.
STEVENS POINT, Wis., March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Skyward, a school administration software provider committed to helping K-12 leaders spend less time on tasks and more time with students, held their international conference, iCon, February 26-28 in St. Pete Beach, Florida. The event featured over 80 sessions and various networking opportunities, with the highlight being the unveiling of Skyward’s DistrictPulse, a new analytics reporting tool designed to quickly connect data to capture strategic insights, integrated seamlessly with Skyward’s Qmlativ Education Management System.
Developed in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Skyward’s DistrictPulse is designed to pull data directly from Qmlativ and deliver actionable insights to key district personnel. Unlike many existing solutions, DistrictPulse ensures that data remains secure and accessible only to authorized users, reflecting the security established in Qmlativ. To learn more about Skyward’s DistrictPulse, go to skyward.com/districtpulse.
“The launch of DistrictPulse emphasizes our commitment to providing powerful analytics that empower district leaders with the insights needed to improve performance and achieve their goals,” said Tom King, chief marketing officer at Skyward. “iCon 2025 was a fantastic opportunity to connect with edtech leaders and showcase how Skyward continues to innovate.”
“AWS was thrilled be a part of iCon 2025 to show Skyward users how DistrictPulse is a game-changer for them,” said Adam Leahy, senior enterprise account executive at AWS. “We’ve worked closely with Skyward over the past year to ensure this tool saves customers time and delivers data in an entirely new way to analyze and visualize trends, which district leaders can then act on.”
The unveiling of DistrictPulse sparked immediate excitement among iCon attendees, with many eager to explore how the new tool will transform their reporting capabilities and data analytics.
“I’m excited about the potential of DistrictPulse,” said Liz Boyles, iCon 2025 attendee and director of information services at Troy CCSD 30C in IL. “This tool will significantly reduce concerns regarding data accuracy, and at-a-glance visuals will provide opportunities for continuous growth at our district and play a significant role in our strategic plan.”
iCon provided attendees with hands-on learning about how Skyward can help streamline district operations. Attendees also participated in leadership-focused presentations, had the opportunity to connect with other like-minded professionals, heard from keynote Thomas C. Murray, and recognized this year’s Leader in Excellence winners. Find the full list of winners at skyward.com/leaders.
Next year’s international conference will take place February 25-27, 2026 at TradeWinds Island Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida. For more information, visit skyward.com/icon.
About Skyward
Since 1980, Skyward’s SIS and ERP solutions have helped more than 2,500 school districts save time, connect with families, and empower success. By blending advanced technology guided by actual users with world-class support delivered with a personal touch, Skyward is the clear choice for K-12 leaders who want to spend less time on tasks and more time with students. To learn more about the next generation of K-12 administration software, visit www.skyward.com.
About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 114 Availability Zones within 36 geographic regions, with announced plans for 12 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
ATLANTA, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — nuVizz, a provider of transportation management solutions and last-mile delivery technology, today announced its recognition as a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Gartner® Market Guide for Vehicle Routing and Scheduling1. This is the second consecutive year that nuVizz is recognized as a Representative Vendor in Gartner’s VRS Market Guide.
nuVizz was also recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2024 Gartner Market Guide for Last-Mile Delivery Technology Solutions.
The report says, “Gartner defines a vehicle routing and scheduling (VRS) solution as an application that creates vehicle routes and schedules, considering multiple constraints and service requirements while minimizing transportation fleet costs and mileage. VRS creates repeatable scheduled static routes and/or dynamic routes based on inputs (orders, deliveries and pickups), rules and constraints for meeting objectives. Transportation delivery fleets include both full truckload and last mile. VRS solutions are capable of running both scenario modeling analysis to support fleet sizing, delivery window optimization, long-term planning and tactical optimization for execution of deliveries.”
nuVizz’s AI- and ML-powered last-mile TMS platform serves shippers with large delivery networks, last-mile delivery fleets, carriers, LSPs, and agents, optimizing both B2B and B2C deliveries. By analyzing data and real-time conditions, nuVizz can route and schedule last-mile deliveries and streamline delivery progress updates through real-time notifications.
The report goes on to note, “Vendors are also optimizing other aspects of the transportation operation, such as driver and fleet utilization and address validation. Routing algorithms can process new data inputs to provide more accurate, optimal routing, resulting in near-real-time operation control and visibility. Examples of the new data inputs include historical and predicted traffic patterns, weather or detention times at distribution centers, and customers preferences and their delivery options.”
nuVizz recently announced its new AI assistant, Vizzard, which helps dispatchers select ideal algorithms to optimize routes, improve vehicle utilization, and reduce mileage based on delivery demand patterns, as well as provide intelligent address correction and validation. nuVizz empowers users to optimize last-mile operations with predictive analytics, real-time alerts, and omnichannel supply chain visibility.
“For fleets, drivers and shippers to thrive in the evolving supply chain landscape, they need intelligent, adaptable technology that enables seamless orchestration and optimization of deliveries in real-time,” said nuVizz CEOGuru Rao. “We believe that being recognized in Gartner’s VRS Market guide underscores our commitment to providing innovative solutions that empower logistics operators to enhance efficiency, visibility, and the overall last-mile experience for their customers.”
Gartner® adds, “Routing algorithms are one of the components that define and differentiate VRS solutions from other transportation solutions. Vendors keep adding more capabilities that enhance the optimization options provided. In order to maximize the use of the different routing options (static, dynamic or real-time routing), vendors are adding options to outsource transportation to external fleets, such as parcel couriers, on-demand fleets and full truckload carriers. This has created an opportunity for VRS to have specialized solutions for the complexity to support each routing type.”
Gartner® subscribers can access the full report here.
Disclaimer Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
About nuVizz nuVizz lights the way to better delivery and transportation logistics. From the first mile to the last mile-and everything in between – we’re trailblazers in supply chain optimization and digitization. Infinitely flexible, the nuVizz SaaS platform drives visibility, control, cost savings, and a better customer experience across the fulfillment lifecycle.
Our single-minded mission: simple, sustainable transportation solutions for every business on the planet. Go further, grow faster. For more information, visit nuvizz.com.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Server-Class Ethernet NIC revenues increased by $2 billion in calendar-year 2024, according to the latest report from Crehan Research. The increase reflects a continuation in the trend of strong investment in server-class Ethernet NICs, resulting in a doubling of market revenues in just three years — despite one of those years having seen relatively weak performance due to a general market inventory correction. Analysis of the strong growth also reveals that data center customers are spending a greater portion of networking budgets on Ethernet NICs (see accompanying chart).
“Data Center Ethernet NICs have gone from low-cost commodity chips soldered down on volume server motherboards to high-performance, differentiated, add-in cards that provide a multitude of high-value network functions, including ones formerly handled by CPUs,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “As a result, Ethernet NICs have seen an upward trend in share of data center networking budgets, even as those budgets grew robustly.”
Crehan also reported a strong surge in demand for the highest speed NICs during the year, with combined 100GbE, 200GbE and 400GbE NICs increasing more than 50% in both shipment and revenues. “Although generative AI was a driver of the high-speed Ethernet NIC demand surge,” Crehan said, “there were numerous other areas contributing to the growth, including general cloud compute and storage.”
About Crehan Research Inc. Crehan Research Inc. produces reports with very detailed statistics and information on the data center switch and server-class adapter & LOM/controller (NIC) markets. The company’s reports are supported with rich insights and context to deliver increased value.
AUSTIN, Texas, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ambiq®, a leading provider of ultra-low-power semiconductor solutions that address the significant power consumption challenges of conventional and AI compute at the edge, unveils the Apollo330 Plus System-on-Chip (SoC) series. The series consists of the base Apollo330 Plus, the Apollo330B Plus, and the Apollo330M Plus, each offering a rich set of peripherals and connectivity options for healthcare, smart homes and buildings, industrial edge applications, and more to drive always-on and real-time AI at the edge.
Key Features:
Up to 250 MHz Arm® Cortex ®-M55 application processor with turboSPOT® and Arm® Helium™ technology
48/96 MHz Arm Cortex-M4F network processor and multi-protocol radio (in wireless product options)
Over 16x faster performance and lower latency, and 30x better AI energy efficiency than similar solutions based on previous generation Cortex-M processors
Ultra-low power digital microphone PDM for truly always-on voice
Multiple package and connectivity options such as Bluetooth® Low Energy, Matter, and Thread for diverse edge devices
The Apollo330 Plus series is purpose-built to enable always-on and real-time AI inferencing on devices. Built on Ambiq’s proprietary subthreshold power optimized technology (SPOT®) platform, it achieves unprecedented 16x faster performance and up to 30x better AI energy efficiency compared to similar solutions based on previous generation Cortex-M processors, so manufacturers can deliver innovative features while extending device lifetimes, offering multi-protocol connectivity across diverse endpoints, and enhancing user experiences.
The Apollo330 Plus architecture fully leverages the Arm Cortex-M55 processor with Arm Helium technology for AI acceleration, processing up to 8 MACs per cycle. The Apollo330 Plus series includes 2MB of on-chip system RAM, 2MB of embedded non-volatile memory, a large 32kB I-cache and 32kB D-cache on a wide bus, and a multi-protocol radio for developers to create high-performing and power-efficient products.
“While today’s smart devices rely heavily on power-hungry cloud computing, the Apollo330 Plus series creates a brand-new opportunity by enabling true edge AI processing,” says Fumihide Esaka, CEO of Ambiq. “This empowers manufacturers to create longer-lasting, more responsive, intelligent devices for homes, offices, and factories.“
“With a growing number of new and compelling edge AI applications emerging across markets including industrial and smart home, enabling ultra-low-power AI processing directly at the edge will be transformative,” said Laurence Bryant, VP segment marketing, IoT Line of Business at Arm. “With this new solution, built on Arm, Ambiq is paving the way for smarter, more efficient devices that can deliver real-time intelligence across a wide range of use cases.“
The Apollo330 Plus series offers three variants:
The Apollo330 Plus base model without wireless connectivity offers a rich set of peripherals for wearables, medical/healthcare, and smart home, empowering developers to create sophisticated sensor-based applications easily.
The Apollo330B Plus extends upon the Apollo330 Plus with Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE) support for a wide selection of connected peripherals and audio applications
The Apollo330M Plus further adds multi-protocol radio support for IEEE 802.15.4, Thread, and Matter, enabling low-power interoperability mesh networking between next-gen smart home, smart meter, and industrial edge devices
Its streamlined multi-core architecture comprises a powerful application processor and a dedicated network co-processor for uncompromised radio performance. The design simplifies development while delivering uncompromised multi-protocol radio performance with robust signal strength up to +14dBm signal strength and enhanced radio sensitivity.
Innovative secureSPOT® 3.0 features based on Arm TrustZone® technology further enhance Apollo330 Plus Series SoCs, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data transmitted and processed by connected devices. With hardware-based security mechanisms, such as secure boot and secure firmware updates, these SoCs provide robust protection against unauthorized access and malicious attacks, enabling secure deployment in various applications.
As the newest addition to Ambiq’s portfolio, the Apollo330 Plus SoC series sets a new standard for ultra-low-power AI processing at the edge. With more connectivity, security, a wider set of peripheral interfaces, and multiple package options, these SoCs provide developers with the tools they need to implement sophisticated, energy-efficient AI solutions in edge devices.
Our mission is to enable intelligence (artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond) everywhere by delivering the lowest power semiconductor solutions. We enable our customers to deliver artificial intelligence compute at the edge where power consumption challenges are the most profound. Our technology innovations, built on the patented and proprietary subthreshold power optimized technology (SPOT), fundamentally deliver a multi-fold improvement in power consumption over traditional semiconductor designs. We’ve powered over 260 million devices today. For more information, visit www.ambiq.com.
Contact
Charlene Wan VP of Branding, Marketing, and Investor Relations cwan@ambiq.com +1.512.879.2850
Pioneering AI-Powered Cleaning Technology Deployment Marks Strategic Expansion into Hong Kong Market
SINGAPORE, March 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Primech AI Pte. Ltd. (“Primech AI”) or (the “Company”), a subsidiary of Primech Holdings Limited (Nasdaq: PMEC), is proud to announce the launch of its innovative Robotics as a Service (RaaS) business line, revolutionizing the cleaning solutions industry. This strategic initiative addresses critical industry challenges including labor shortages, hygiene standards, and operational costs through proprietary AI-driven technology.
As part of this global expansion strategy, Primech AI has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with CCG Property Services, a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s leading property developer Chinachem Group, to deploy HYTRON, an AI-powered fully automated toilet cleaning robot, in selected facilities managed by CCG Property Services in Hong Kong.
Figure 1: Nina Tower 1 in Hong Kong, where Primech AI’s HYTRON will be deployed.
The deployment of HYTRON marks the initial phase of Primech AI’s bold initiative to roll out 300 cleaning robots across Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai. This expansion reinforces the company’s position as a technology leader in autonomous cleaning solutions for facility services and sanitation.
“This collaboration marks a significant milestone in our global expansion of our Robotics as a Service solution,” said Charles Ng, Chief Operating Officer of Primech AI. “While our cleaning services continue to serve the Singapore market, we are extending the Raas business model making it accessible internationally, beginning with this strategic partnership in Hong Kong’s premier property portfolio.”
Under the two-year MoU, Primech AI will supply and install HYTRON robots in designated facilities, including the iconic Nina Tower 1, with comprehensive maintenance, technical support, and staff training. CCG Property Services will integrate the robots into daily operations, showcasing HYTRON’s capabilities in elevating cleanliness standards and operational efficiency.
Primech AI envisions a long-term expansion of HYTRON into additional global markets, including Australia, Europe, and the United States, bringing cutting-edge cleaning solutions to more regions worldwide. Beyond this initial deployment, the company also plans to extend its Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering to these markets, further enhancing accessibility of its advanced cleaning technology on a global scale.
“Beyond advancing automation in the traditional cleaning industry, this deployment marks a significant milestone for Primech Holdings Limited. It demonstrates our ability to expand internationally and provide cutting-edge cleaning solutions across borders. By working with esteemed partners like Chinachem Group and CCG Property Services, we are proving that our technology is not only effective but also scalable on a global level. This is just the beginning of our vision to redefine commercial cleaning through AI and robotics.” said Kin Wai Ho, CEO of Primech Holdings Limited. This initiative underscores Primech Holdings’ commitment to transforming the cleaning industry through advanced technology while expanding its global footprint beyond its traditional Singapore base.
Primech AI’s self-developed HYTRON bathroom cleaning robot is integrated with advanced NVIDIA technology. The latest HYTRON model incorporated the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super, a state-of-the-art System-on-Module (SoM) designed for robust edge AI and robotics applications. The HYTRON robot also uses a suite of NVIDIA software, including CUDA, CuDNN, TensorRT, and NVIDIA Driver, to optimize its AI capabilities. This combination of hardware and software allows HYTRON to deliver superior processing speed, efficiency, and reliability in its cleaning tasks.
About Chinachem Group
Founded in 1960, Chinachem Group is a private real estate company in Hong Kong, with a portfolio covering residential, commercial, retail and industrial buildings for sales and investment, in addition to operating hotels and property management services as well as elderly services.
Dedicated to making better places to live, work and raise future generations in Hong Kong and beyond, the Group seeks to deliver lasting commercial, social and environmental benefits.
About Primech Holdings Limited Headquartered in Singapore, Primech Holdings Limited is a leading provider of comprehensive technology-driven facilities services, predominantly serving both public and private sectors throughout Singapore. Primech Holdings offers an extensive range of services tailored to meet the complex demands of its diverse clientele. Services include advanced general facility maintenance services, specialized cleaning solutions such as marble polishing and facade cleaning, meticulous stewarding services, and targeted cleaning services for offices and homes. Known for its commitment to sustainability and cutting-edge technology, Primech Holdings integrates eco-friendly practices and smart technology solutions to enhance operational efficiency and client satisfaction. This strategic approach positions Primech Holdings as a leader in the industry and a proactive contributor to advancing industry standards and practices in Singapore and beyond. For more information, visit www.primechholdings.com.
About Primech AI
Primech AI is a leading robotics company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of innovation in technology. With a team of passionate individuals and a commitment to collaboration, Primech AI is poised to revolutionize the robotics industry with groundbreaking solutions that make a meaningful impact on society. For more information, visit www.primech.ai.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this announcement are forward-looking statements, including, for example, statements about completing the acquisition, anticipated revenues, growth, and expansion. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on the Company’s current expectations and projections about future events that the Company believes may affect its financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are also based on assumptions regarding the Company’s present and future business strategies and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future. Investors can find many (but not all) of these statements by the use of words such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “aim,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “likely to” or other similar expressions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure that such expectations will be correct. The Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results and encourages investors to review other factors that may affect its future results in the Company’s registration statement and other filings with the SEC.
STMicroelectronics reveals STM32U3 microcontrollers extending ultra-low power innovation for remote, smart and sustainable applications
Latest MCUs leverage cutting-edge near-threshold chip design to set record performance-per-watt efficiency benchmark
Secret-key protection and in-factory provisioning boost cyber security
Typical applications include utility meters, healthcare devices, and industrial sensors
Geneva, Switzerland, March 4, 2025 – STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, has introduced new STM32U3 microcontrollers (MCUs) with cutting-edge power-saving innovations that ease deployment of smart connected tech, especially in remote locations.
The latest MCUs are aimed at IoT devices, which must typically operate for extended periods without maintenance and with limited energy from a coin cell or ambient solar or thermoelectric source. Typical applications that depend on the lowest possible power consumption include utility meters, healthcare devices such as glucose meters and insulin pumps, animal care monitors, forest-fire sensors, and industrial sensors including thermostats and smoke detectors. STM32U3 MCUs are also used in consumer products such as smart watches, wearables, and hearables.
“The STM32U3 series builds on the heritage of ST-established ultra-low-power general-purpose microcontroller class as it is known today, which opened the door to widespread diffusion of smart technology in diverse environments,” commented Patrick Aidoune, General-Purpose MCU Division General Manager, STMicroelectronics. “Leveraging innovative techniques such as recent advancements in near-threshold design, the new devices cut dynamic power consumption to the bone, boosting efficiency by a factor of two compared to our previous generation, hence contributing to companies’ sustainability goals.”
In addition to its extreme energy efficiency, the STM32U3 series meets the needs of IoT devices by providing robust cyber protection using the latest hardware security techniques. The MCUs are designed to confine secret keys permanently in secure memory, eliminating vulnerable CPU fetches. In addition, attestation credentials for each device are provisioned by ST at manufacture before leaving the factory, which strengthens security and simplifies provisioning. All those security mechanisms, in addition to the SESIP3 and PSA Level3 certifiable security assets, such as cryptographic accelerators, TrustZone® isolation, random generator, and product lifecycle will contribute and enable ST customers to reach compliancy towards the upcoming RED and CRA regulations.
Customer testimonials:
“STM32U3 enables us [smaXtec] to bring our hardware for animal health monitors to the next level. The consumption in active mode is extremely low, only a few µA/MHz, which enables us to reduce the energy needed for current data processing algorithms while at the same time adding new features to our products. In addition, its advanced range of low-power modes lets us put the device into deep sleep if no data is processed. The newly implemented STOP3 mode, including its wakeup capabilities, is a neat way to keep power consumption low,” said Manuel Frech, Product Development Engineer, smaXtec.
Technical Notes for Editors
ST has set the pace in ultra-low-power (ULP) MCUs with previous STM32 variants and is now taking ULP performance to a new level with the new STM32U3 series. Leveraging advanced power-saving chip design, fine-tuned with AI-enhanced tools, and the latest Arm® Cortex®-M33 core running at up to 96MHz, the new MCUs achieve the market-leading Coremark-per-milliwatt score of 117. This is almost twice the efficiency of ST’s preceding STM32U5 series, and five times that of the STM32L4 series.
STM32U3 MCUs set new standards in dynamic performance by taking advantage of near-threshold technology that operates IC transistors at extremely low voltage, saving energy proportionately according to a square law
ST’s innovative near-threshold implementation uses AI-driven adaptive voltage scaling at wafer level to compensate for process variations in the foundry
In addition to dynamic power savings (down to 10µA/MHz), the STM32U3 series achieve extremely low stop current, at 1.6µA
STM32U3 embeds up to 1MB of Flash memory dual-bank and 256kB of SRAM
In terms of security, STM32U3 MCUs embed all successful security features of the STM32U5, with additional keystore capabilities. Newly, secret keys are loaded in-factory by ST on the STM32U3 MCUs and are protected by a coupling and chaining bridge (CCB), representing the first use of this technology in the STM32 MCU family
Two product lines are available, presenting a choice of MCUs either with or without a hardware cryptographic accelerator
Combined with their low power, the devices integrate efficient and high-performing peripherals including the latest I3C digital connectivity
MCUs are available in commercial (-40°C to 85°C) and extended industrial (-40°C to 105°C) temperature ranges
The STM32U3 series is in production now and available from $1.93 for orders of 10,000 pieces. For more information, please go to www.st.com/stm32u3
STM32 is a registered and/or unregistered trademark of STMicroelectronics International NV or its affiliates in the EU and/or elsewhere. In particular, STM32 is registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
About STMicroelectronics At ST, we are 50,000 creators and makers of semiconductor technologies mastering the semiconductor supply chain with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. An integrated device manufacturer, we work with more than 200,000 customers and thousands of partners to design and build products, solutions, and ecosystems that address their challenges and opportunities, and the need to support a more sustainable world. Our technologies enable smarter mobility, more efficient power and energy management, and the wide-scale deployment of cloud-connected autonomous things. We are on track to be carbon neutral in all direct and indirect emissions (scopes 1 and 2), product transportation, business travel, and employee commuting emissions (our scope 3 focus), and to achieve our 100% renewable electricity sourcing goal by the end of 2027.
