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Blue Alliance Announces Strategic Investment from Prairie Capital

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Revolutionizing the MSP Landscape: Our Innovative Platform Breaks Through Consolidation Clutter, Gaining Momentum

CINCINNATI, Feb. 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Blue Alliance, a fast-growing, operator-led MSP collective, announced today that it has completed a growth recapitalization transaction with Prairie Capital, a proven firm in scaling companies across a wide array of industries. Prairie Capital’s investment will enable Blue Alliance to accelerate its growth strategy and offer more MSP owners an alternative to the standard agreement, as well as the opportunity to be part of a strong, supportive community focused on scaling and shared success.

For Nick Recker, founding partner and CEO of Blue Alliance, the fundamental synergies of the two companies felt like a partnership right from the start. “Freedom drives entrepreneurs like me. We designed the Blue Alliance model to offer MSPs owners continued freedom throughout our partnership, and Prairie’s business model resembles ours in that way.” Blue Alliance will continue to operate independently within the Prairie portfolio.

“We hand-selected Prairie as our investment partner because the two companies share many of the same philosophies for growing businesses,” added Recker. These shared philosophies include protecting the company’s brand, stakeholders, and relationships; leveraging best practices and building scalable platforms; embracing an entrepreneurial mindset; encouraging autonomy and focusing strategic investment in operational areas to unlock incremental value and growth. 

Blue Alliance is the fourth company founded by Nick Recker, and it was inspired by his experience and passion running the Cincinnati-based MSP, Path Forward IT, a company he founded in 2002 that specializes in providing concierge IT services to healthcare practices. The global interruption to business in 2020 exposed vulnerabilities, especially for founder-business owners. “I recognized that banding together would make us stronger. That sentiment became the vision to create a platform for MSP owners that fosters collaboration, sharing resources, buying power and expertise.” 

Today, Blue Alliance is redefining the MSP landscape by translating the founders’ experiences as MSP owners into a collaborative ecosystem where elite MSPs can thrive and grow, but it’s an increasingly crowded market.

“Consolidation is flooding the MSP industry. Regardless of whether it’s called a roll-up or a platform, most consolidations are transaction-based,” said Patrick Jensen, Partner, Prairie Capital. Blue Alliance is built on the understanding that for MSP owners, it’s not merely a transaction; it’s their life’s work and legacy. “Blue Alliance stands out for its empathetic approach and deeper integration model, making it a compelling alternative to traditional acquisition platforms.” 

“Our mission is to champion the independent MSP,” says Shaun Sexton, founding partner of Blue Alliance. “We set out to create an option for MSP owners like us who were ready to partner and take their business to the next level but hesitate because they don’t want the company they built to be dismantled, to lose its soul,” Sexton added. “Our approach is about collaboration, not control. We know the collective is only as strong as the sum of its parts. That’s why our mission is to amplify all the good things about a member MSP company, not change them.”

“What we’ve built at Blue Alliance is different from the other MSP platforms. For us, it’s personal. We’ve been where they are, we speak their language,” says Recker. “With Prairie on our team, we’ll be able to move faster, offering freedom to more MSP owners.”

ABOUT BLUE ALLIANCE
Blue Alliance is a fast-growing, operator-led MSP collective that offers a different option for MSP owners looking to invest in their future and unlock the full potential of their business. Built on first-hand entrepreneurial experience and insights, Blue Alliance invests in and nurtures a community where the best MSPs can unite and grow without losing their identity. For more information, visit bluealliance.com.

ABOUT PRAIRIE CAPITAL
Founded in Chicago in 1997, Prairie Capital is a private equity fund with a long and successful track record of scaling growth-oriented, lower middle market companies in partnership with talented founders and management teams. Since inception, Prairie has invested over $1 billion in 100+ platform companies. Prairie makes control equity investments in founder-owned companies that require company-building investments to evolve into scalable platforms capable of sustaining accelerated growth. Prairie targets companies that participate in growing subsectors within business services, consumer, education, healthcare, industrial, and technology. More information about Prairie can be found at www.prairie-capital.com.

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SOURCE Blue Alliance

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American Binary Sets New Standard in Post-Quantum Cryptographic VPNs with Symbolic Proof and Attestation

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WASHINGTON, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — American Binary, a leader in deep-tech cybersecurity, today announced an independent attestation regarding the validity of all 120 security properties of MaxKyber, their network protocol at the heart of their Ambit Client enterprise VPN, now third-party verified to comply with all Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA 2.0) requirements. This landmark verification is the result of an exhaustive private peer-review of their symbolic proof (Tamarin + ProVerif) and engineering documentation conducted by industry luminaries Dr. Joe Kiniry, PhD and Dr. Tom Shrimpton, PhD, both with long careers in academia and industry, including time at Galois as Principal Scientists.

“No known VPN — post-quantum or classical, deployed or research — has been subjected to specification and formal verification of comparable depth.” – Dr. Joe Kiniry, PhD and Dr. Tom Shrimpton, PhD

In a landscape defined by emerging quantum threats and unproven solutions, this formal third-party verification differentiates MaxKyber from traditional or hybrid solutions by providing certainty in engineering and compliance with National Security requirements. MaxKyber provides the world with long-term full post-quantum security unlike shorter-term temporary solutions such as hybrids (which mix classical and post-quantum encryption). This breakthrough marks a transition from speculative security to a foundation of verified, provable resilience, establishing a new global benchmark for secure communications.

“While organizations today are increasingly recognizing the significance of PQC, American Binary has been preparing for a post-quantum world for seven years. The result is a resilient foundation for secure operations, today and in the post‑quantum future” – Oracle

Additionally, American Binary signed ACM Turing Award winner Whitfield Diffie, cryptographic pioneer and co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, as a key advisor. Whitfield joins the ranks of existing cryptographic advisors Bruce Schneier and Brian LaMacchia.

“Buy American Binary and you’ll be safe”

– Whitfield Diffie at Quantum.Tech World 2026

Key security pillars of the MaxKyber attestation include:

Protection against “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL): By utilizing purely CNSA 2.0 algorithms, including ML-KEM-1024 without any classical key exchange variants, MaxKyber secures today’s data against decryption by quantum adversaries.Comprehensive Symbolic Verification: The attestation covers 120 security properties across 11 critical categories, including secrecy, authentication, forward secrecy, identity hiding, and resistance to Replay, Denial of Service, Resource Exhaustion, and Key Compromise Impersonation.Architectural Stability: Beyond its post-quantum cryptographic core, MaxKyber’s protocol architecture is rooted in well-established, operationally proven design patterns, retaining their performance and simplicity.

This foundational security architecture provides the necessary reliability to enable significant performance breakthroughs in the field and the following four key impacts.

Impact I: Unambiguous Security and Mitigation of “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later”

MaxKyber achieves the end-state of post-quantum cryptographic purity by utilizing a pure CNSA 2.0 post-quantum key exchange, without using any classical cryptography, hybrid cryptography, or legacy key exchange variants. Instead, American Binary’s more modern key exchange utilizes ML-KEM-1024 operations to replace the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. This approach ensures that modern enterprises are not tethered to the vulnerabilities of legacy components or negative market reactions to hybrid solutions being partially broken. If the classical encryption in hybrid solutions is verifiably broken, markets likely will not wait for forensics to determine whether the rest of the solution remains intact; reputation damage and capital flight will occur immediately.

MaxKyber exclusively employs CNSA 2.0 approved algorithms, specifically ML-KEM-1024 (FIPS 203), AES-256-GCM, and SHA-512/256. This construction provides the highest level of security available today without any loss of existing security properties.

Impact II: Optimal Performance from Mobile and Lossy Environments to High-Performance Scenarios

Historically, high-security protocols have suffered from significant system latency, creating a bottleneck for edge computing and mobile workforces. MaxKyber eliminates these traditional performance trade-offs, enabling high-performance security at the network’s most vulnerable points. One partner benchmarked Ambit Client, powered by MaxKyber, to have 70% faster download speeds than a comparable classically encrypted enterprise VPN.

The MaxKyber protocol optimizes efficiency through an “Authenticated Key Exchange” (AKE) which achieves mutual authentication in a single round trip, dramatically reducing the data burden on the network.

Quantifiably, the AKE saves approximately 4,600 bytes per handshake compared to the next best option. This ultra-low overhead ensures that robust post-quantum security functions reliably on mobile devices and in lossy environments where traditional, bulkier PQC handshakes consistently fail. Reliability in the field is a prerequisite for everything from remote work to warfighting environments, and MaxKyber’s AKE directly facilitates such operational readiness.

Additionally, MaxKyber is well suited for high-performance scenarios such as AI workloads, work with 3D models, and more thanks to Vector Packet Processing and Data Plane Development Kit further reducing overheads to the technical minimums and enabling line-rate speeds for server-to-server use cases.

Impact III: Compliance Savings

As the cost of compliance and diligence cycles for critical infrastructure continues to escalate, proofs can be a shortcut for approval. For CISO and Legal departments, formal verification provides a transparent, “glass-box” view of security that goes beyond traditional testing.

For integration partners, this symbolic proof significantly reduces diligence cycles. By providing an exhaustively checked security profile, American Binary allows partners to shorten the lengthy, costly investigative phases usually required for new cryptographic implementations. Verified compliance is transformed from a hurdle into a catalyst for product development.

Impact IV: R&D Acceleration

For engineering teams looking to integrate this technology and/or customize it, American Binary’s documentation serves as a powerful force multiplier. By providing pre-verified, exhaustive, and high-quality documentation, American Binary provides an extraordinary shortcut to rapid integration.

The scale of the documentation and formal models provided to partners is unprecedented in the VPN industry. This rigorous approach allows integration partners to save months, if not years, of R&D effort.

MaxKyber provides more than just a secure tunnel; it delivers a fully documented, mathematically proven blueprint that accelerates the transition to a quantum-safe future. With MaxKyber, American Binary has rewritten the industry standard for post-quantum network security.

About American Binary

American Binary is a leader in deep-tech cybersecurity, specializing in the development of CNSA 2.0 post-quantum cryptographic solutions. Through advanced rigor and high-performance engineering, American Binary provides the provable foundations for secure, resilient communication in the quantum era.

Learn more at www.ambit.inc

CONTACT: sales@ambit.inc 

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MetaOptics to Deploy its Direct Laser Writer at the University of Arizona’s Center of Semiconductor Manufacturing to Advance its U.S. Expansion

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SINGAPORE, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — MetaOptics Ltd (Catalist: 9MT) (“MetaOptics” or the “Company,” and together with its subsidiaries, the “Group”), announced that it has entered into an agreement to deploy its key metalens Direct Laser Writer (“DLW”) system at the University of Arizona’s Center of Semiconductor Manufacturing (the “University”). The agreement marks a critical step in advancing its U.S. expansion strategy and its collaborative research with world-class semiconductor stakeholders in Arizona. Installation of the DLW is expected to commence in 2027.

The DLW is designed for a 4-inch wafer to enable quick prototyping and fabrication of metalens samples within weeks. It also supports small-volume production for pilot builds and customer demand evaluation, enabling partners to iterate faster and move from concept to product more efficiently. The deployment of the Company’s DLW will allow prospective customers in the U.S. to physically witness the system in action for their metalens prototyping needs. It will also support collaborative research and evaluation by the University’s researchers under the guidance of Dr. Krishna Muralidharan of the University of Arizona’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. MetaOptics expects the deployment to generate user feedback and user demonstration opportunities, providing further technical validation of its metalens equipment and products, and serve as a launchpad to scale commercial production and collaboration in the U.S. market.

The deployment of its DLW serves as a key milestone for MetaOptics’ U.S. expansion strategy, prospective U.S. customer engagement, and commercialization roadmap. It also positions the Group to support emerging U.S. initiatives in silicon photonics, co-packaged optics, and integrated photonics, where its metalens technology is directly applicable. The DLW will anchor a “mini foundry” at the University for small-volume, quick turnaround prototyping. Beyond research, the installation serves a commercial purpose: a U.S. demonstration site where potential distributors, universities, and research institutions can physically witness the DLW in operation. It will also produce metalens samples for prospective customers’ evaluation. With Arizona’s fast-growing semiconductor ecosystem home to world-class manufacturers and suppliers, the Company aims to leverage its presence at the University and the wider ecosystem to deepen engagement with prospective industry partners and end customers.

MetaOptics Executive Chairman Thng Chong Kim commented: “By placing our Direct Laser Writer within a world-class semiconductor research environment in Arizona, we will be able to strengthen technical validation and gather valuable user feedback. It also supports our ongoing engagements with potential industry partners and end-customers while showcasing our metalens manufacturing equipment to prospective distributors and institutions across the United States. We believe this deployment reinforces our broader U.S. expansion efforts and deepens our engagement in Arizona’s world-class semiconductor ecosystem.”

About MetaOptics Ltd

MetaOptics Ltd (Catalist: 9MT) is a semiconductor optics company pioneering glass-based metalens solutions enhanced by AI-driven image processing. Using advanced optical design and a scalable 12-inch DUV lithography process, it powers next-generation applications in CPO, mobile, AR VR, automotive, and other emerging markets. Find out more at www.metaoptics.sg.

Forward-Looking Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements which can be identified by words or phrases such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “aim,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “likely to,” “potential,” “continue” or other similar expressions. Any statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the Company’s beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: the Company’s growth strategies, its future business development, results of operations and financial condition, its research and development efforts, its ability to attract and retain customers, and its ability to establish and maintain relationships with suppliers and business partners; and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

Singapore (HQ)
Metaoptics Technologies Pte Ltd. 81 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #01-45 Singapore 139967

United States
Metaoptics Inc. (USA) 1 Ferry Building, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 9411

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SOURCE METAOPTICS LTD

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11:11 Systems Announces Strategic Partnership with Cato Networks to Deliver SASE Solution for Distributed Enterprises

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New Managed Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution combines SD-WAN, cloud-native networking and security capabilities with 11:11’s connectivity, cyber resilience and cloud expertise

SYDNEY, July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — 11:11 Systems, a leading managed infrastructure solutions provider, today announced the global availability of its 11:11 Managed Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution and a new strategic partnership with Cato Networks.

11:11 Managed SASE is a fully managed secure connectivity solution leveraging Cato Networks AI-native network security platform. This solution brings together intelligent SD-WAN, cloud-delivered security and global connectivity into a single offering. It enables organisations to simplify and secure access across branch offices, data centres, users and cloud environments, reducing complexity without sacrificing performance or control.

Built on the Cato Networks cloud-native SASE platform, 11:11 Managed SASE combines zero trust network access (ZTNA), firewall as a service (FWaaS), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), advanced threat protection and centralised visibility into a unified managed experience. 11:11 also delivers 24x7x365 monitoring and support, incident management integration and operational accountability to help customers limit vendor sprawl, increase agility and free internal teams to focus on higher-value priorities.

The offering is backed by 11:11’s broader networking, cloud and cyber resilience capabilities. Through its global backbone, carrier-agnostic connectivity options and integrated portfolio spanning cloud, backup, disaster recovery and security services, 11:11 gives customers a practical path to modernise network and security architecture while strengthening resilience across the business.

“Enterprises are under pressure to support users, applications and locations that are more distributed than ever, while limiting complexity and improving security,” said Justin Giardina, CTO, 11:11 Systems. “Our Managed SASE solution provides customers with a unified approach to modernising networking and security, along with the visibility, support and flexibility they need to thrive in a rapidly changing environment.”

According to Karl Soderlund, global channel chief, Cato Networks, “As enterprises move beyond fragmented legacy networking and security stacks, they need a simpler way to gain visibility, context and control across hybrid work environments and reduce the operational burden on IT. Through our partnership, we can address these challenges head on and deliver end-to-end visibility and protection in a single service built for the reality of modern work.”

The joint offering is well suited for distributed enterprises, multi-site organisations, hybrid workforce initiatives, SD-WAN refreshes, security modernisation efforts and businesses with limited IT resources. 11:11 meets customers where they are by supporting existing environments, simplifying multi-vendor operations and serving as a single provider accountable for network, security, cloud and data integration.

This partnership expands 11:11’s Network as a Service portfolio and follows Forrester’s inclusion of 11:11 Systems in its report, “The Secure Access Service Edge Services Landscape, Q1 2026.”

About 11:11 Systems

11:11 Systems is a managed infrastructure solutions provider that empowers customers to modernise, protect and manage mission-critical applications and data, leveraging 11:11’s resilient cloud platform. Learn more at www.1111Systems.com and follow 11:11 on LinkedIn.

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SOURCE 11:11 Systems

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